draw than that which the centurion did, truly this was the Son of God*? To us indeed who have not seen these mighty works, and who live at the distance of eighteen hundred years from the time when they were wrought, the force of this evidence is undoubtedly less than it was to an eye-witness. But if the reality of these miracles is proved to us by sufficient testimony, by testimony such as no ingenuous and unprejudiced mind can withstand, they ought still to produce in us the firmest belief of the divine power of him who wrought them †.

It must be admitted at the same time, that these miracles, being facts of a very uncommon and very extraordinary nature, such as have never happened in our own times, and but very seldom even in former times, they require a much stronger degree of testimony to support them than

*Matt. xxvii. 54.

common

+ Mr. Hume's abstruse and sophistical argument against miracles, has been completely refuted by Drs. Adams, Campbell, and Paley.

common historical facts. And this degree of testimony they actually have. They are supported by a body of evidence fully adequate to the case; fully competent to outweigh all the disadvantages arising from the great distance and the astonishing nature of the events in question.

1. In the first place, these miracles are recorded in four different histories, written very near the time of their being performed, by four different men, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; two of whom saw these miracles with their own eyes; the other two had their account from them who did the same; and affirm, that they had a perfect knowledge of every thing they relate *."

66

They were plain artless men, without the least appearance of enthusiasm or credulity about them, and rather slow than forward to believe any thing extraordinary and out of the common course of nature. They were perfectly competent

Luke, i. 3.

to

to judge of plain matters of fact, of things which passed before their eyes, and could certainly tell, without the least possibility of being mistaken, whether a person whom they knew to be blind was actually restored to sight, and a person whom they knew to be dead was raised to life again, by a few words spoken by their master. They were men, who, from the simplicity of their manners, were not at all likely to invent and publish falsehoods of so extraordinary a nature; much less falsehoods by which they could gain nothing, and did in fact lose every thing. There is not therefore, from the peculiar character of these persons, the least ground for disbelieving the reality of any thing they relate. Nor is there any reason to doubt whether the writings we now have under their names are those which they actually wrote. They have been received as such ever since they were published; nor has any one argument been yet produced against their authen

ticity,

ticity, which has not been repeatedly and effectually confuted.

2. It is a very strong circumstance in favour of our Saviour's miracles, that they were related by contemporary historians, by those who were eye-witnesses of them, and were afterwards acknowledged to be true by those who lived nearest to the times in which they were wrought; and what is still more to the point, by many who were hostile to the Christian religion. Even the emperor Julian himself, that most bitter adversary of Christianity, who had openly apostatized from it, who professed the most implacable hatred to it, who employed all his ingenuity, all his acuteness and learning, which were considerable, in combating the truth of it, in displaying in the strongest colours every objection he could raise up against it; even he did not deny the reality of our Lord's miracles*.

He

* Julian apud Cyrillum, L. vi. viii. x. Celsus also acknowledged the truth of the gospel-miracles in

general,

He admitted that Jesus wrote them, but contended that he wrote them by the power of magic.

3. Unless we admit that the Founder of our religion did actually work the miracles ascribed to him by his historians, it is utterly impossible to account for the success and establishment of his religion. It could not, in short, to all appearance, have been established by any other means.

Consider only for a moment what the apparent condition of our Lord was, when he first announced his mission among the Jews, what his pretensions and what his doctrines were, and then judge what kind of a reception he must have met with among the Jews, had his preaching been accompanied by no miracles. A young man of no education, born in an obscure village, of obscure parents, with

out

general, but ascribed them to the assistance of demons, "The Christians, says he, seem to prevail, dayover τινων ονομασι και κατακλησεσι, by virtue of the names and the invocations of certain demons." Orig. contra Celsum, ed. Cantab. 1. i. p. 7.