i 



NYPL RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



3 3433 06822799 4 



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INFIDELITY; 

COMPRISING 

JENYNS' INTERNAL EVIDENCE, 

LESLIE'S METHOD, 

LYTTELTON'S CONVERSION OF PAUL, 

AVATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON AND PAINE, 



NOTICE OF HU:\rE OX .AilRACLES, 



AX EXTKACT TROM WEST 0^ THE RESUEEECTIOX 



PUBLISHED BY THE 
AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

150 NASSAU-STREET, NEW YORK. 



THE NEW TOUK 
PUBLIC LIBRARY 

9r?2186R 

ASTOR. LENOX AND 

TaDEN FOUNDATIONB 

E 184J L 



CONTENTS 



Soaine Jenyns on the Internal Evidence of tlie Chris- 
tian Religion, 5 

Leslie's Method with the Deists, 89 

Lord Lyttelton on the Conversion of St. Paul, . 127 
Bishop Watson's Reply to Gibbon, or Apology for 

Christianity, 225 

Bishop Watson's Reply to Paine, or Apology for the 

Bible, 355 

Hume's Denial of Miracles, 554 

Starkie's Examination of Hume's Argument, . 558 

The Resurrection — order of events, .... 567 



A VIEW 



ov 



THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE 



OF 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 



BY SOAME JENYNS, ESQ. 



Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. — Acts 26 :28. 



Of the following treatise Dr. Paley says, in his incom- 
parable work on the evidences of Christianity, "I should 
willingly, if the limits and nature of my work admitted of 
it, transcribe into this chapter the whole of what has been 
said upon the morality of the gospel by the author of 'A 
View of the Internal Evidence of Christianity 5' because it 
perfectly agrees with my own opinion, and because it is 
impossible to say the same thing so well." 

The Rev. Dr. Alexander says he *'has often heard it 
asserted, and never contradicted, that the late Patrick 
Hexry, the celebrated orator of Virginia and of the Ameri- 
can Revolution, had been in early life sceptical, but was 
fully satisfied of the truth of the Christian religion by the 
perusal of this little treatise of Soame Jenyxs.'- 

lu the present edition a few passages, not essential to the 
argument, have been omitted. 



INTERNAL EVIDENCE 



OF 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 



Mos"^ of the writers who have undertaken to 
prove the divine origin of the Christian rehgion, 
have had recourse to arguments drawn from these 
three heads : The prophecies still extant in the Old 
Testament ; the miracles recorded in the New ; or 
the internal evidence arising from that excellence, and 
those clear marks of supernatural interposition, 
which are so conspicuous in the religion itself. The 
two former have been sufficiently explained and 
«^nforced by the ablest pens ; but the last, which 
g^eems to carry with it the greatest degree of con- 
viction, has never, I think, been considered with 
that attention which it deserves. 

I mean not here to depreciate the proofs arising 
^from either prophecies, or miracles ; they both have, 
^or ought to have, their proper weight. Prophecies 



6 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

are permanent miracles, whose authority is suffi- 
ciently confirmed by their completion, and are there- 
fore solid proofs of the supernatural origin of a 
rehgion whose truth they were intended to testify. 
Such are those to be found m various parts of the 
Scriptures relative to the coming of the Messiah, 
the destruction of Jerusalem, and the unexampled 
state in which the Jews have ever since continued : 
all so circumstantially descriptive of the events^ 
that they seem rather histories of past, than pre- 
dictions of future transactions ; and whoever will 
seriously consider the immense distance of time 
between some of them and the events which they 
foretell, the uninterrupted chain by which they are 
connected for many thousand years, how exactly 
they correspond with those events, and how totally 
inapplicable they are to all others in the history of 
mankind — I say, whoever considers these circum- 
stances, he will scarcely be persuaded to believe 
that they can be the productions of preceding arti- 
fice or posterior application, or be able -to enter- 
tain the least doubt of their being derived from 
supernatural inspiration. The miracles recorded in 
the New Testament to have been performed by 
Christ and his apostles, were certainly convmcing 
proofs of thek' divine commission to those who saw 
them ; and as they were seen by such numbers, 
and are as well attested as other historical facts, 



THE CHRISTIAN EELiaiON. 7 

and, above all, as they were wrought on so great 
and so wonderful an occasion, they must still be 
admitted as incontrovertible evidence. 

To prove the truth of the Christian religion, I 
prefer, however, to begin by showing the internal 
marks of divinity which are stamped upon it, be- 
cause on this the credibility of the prophecies and 
miracles in a great measure depends ; for if we 
have once reason to be convinced that this relig- 
ion is derived from a supernatural origin, prophe- 
cies and miracles will become so far from being 
incredible, that it will be highly, probable that a 
supernatural revelation should be foretold and en- 
forced by supernatural means. 

What pure Christianity is, divested of all its 
ornaments, appendages, and corruption, I pretend 
not now to say j but what it is not, I will venture 
to affirm, which is, that it is not the offspring of 
fraud or fiction. Such, on a superficial view, I 
know it may appear to a man of good sense, whose 
sense has been altogether emploj^ed on other sub- 
jects ; but if any one will give himself the trouble 
to examine it with accuracy and candor, he will 
plainly see, that however fraud and fiction may 
have grown up with it, yet it never could have 
been grafted on the same stock, nor planted by 
the same hand. 

To ascertain the true system and genuine doc- 



8 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

trines of this religion after the controversies of 
above seventeen centuries, and to remove all the 
rubbish which artifice and ignorance have been 
heaping upon it during all that time, would indeed 
be an arduous task, which I shall by no means 
undertake ; but to show that it cannot possibly be 
derived from human wisdom, or human imposture, 
is a work, I think, attended with no great difficulty, 
and requiring no extraordinary abihties ; and there- 
fore I shall attempt that, and that alone, by stating 
and then explaining the following plain and undeni- 
able propositions. 

First, that there is now extant a book entitled 
the New Testament. 

Secondly, that from this book may be extracted 
a system of religion entirely new, both with regard 
to the object and the doctrines, not only infinitely 
superior to, but unlike every thing which had ever 
before entered into the mind of man. 

Thirdly, that from this book may likewise be 
collected a system of ethics, in which every moral 
precept founded on reason is earned to a higher 
degree of purity and perfection, than in any other 
of the wisest philosophers of preceding ages ; 
every moral precept founded on false principles is 
totally omitted ; and many new precepts added 
pecuHarly corresponding with the new object of 
this religion. 



THE CHUISTIAN RELIGION. 9 

Lastly, that such a system of rehgion and moral- 
ity could not possibly have been the work of any 
man, or set of men ; much less of those obscure, 
ignorant, and ilHterate persons who actually did 
discover and publish it to the world ; and that 
therefore it must undoubtedly have been effected 
by the interposition of divine power ; that is, that 
it must derive its origin from God. 

PROPOSITION I. 

Very Mttle need be said to estabUsh my first 
proposition, which is simply this : that there is now 
extant a book entitled the New Testament ; that is, 
there is a collection of writings distinguished by 
that denomination, containing four historical ac- 
counts of the birth, life, actions, discourses, and 
death of an extraordinary person named Jesus 
Christ, who was born in the reign of Augustus 
Caesai*, preached a new rehgion throughout the 
country of Judea, and was put to a cruel and igno- 
minious death in the reign of Tiberius. Also one 
other historical account of the travels, transactions, 
and orations of some plain and ilhterate men, known 
by the title of his apostles, whom he commissioned 
to propagate his religion after his death, which he 
foretold them he must suffer in confirmation of its 
truth. To these are added several epistolary writ- 
ings, addressed by these persons to their fellow- 



10 OTET.NAL EVIDENCE OF 

laborers in this work, or to the several chui'ches or 
societies of Christians which they had estabhshed 
in the several cities through which they had passed. 
It would not be difficult to prove that these 
books were written soon after those extraordinary 
events which are the subjects of them, as we find 
them quoted and referred to by an uninterrupted 
succession of writers from those to the present 
time ; nor would it be less easy to show that the 
truth of all those events, miracles only excepted, can 
no more be reasonably questioned, than the truth 
of any other facts recorded in any history what- 
ever : and there can be no more reason to doubt 
that there existed such a person as Jesus Christ, 
speaking, acting, and suffering in such a manner 
as is there described, than that there were such 
men as Tiberius, Herod, or Pontius Pilate, his con- 
temporaries ; or to suspect that Peter, Paul, and 
James were not the authors of those epistles to 
which their names are affixed, than that Cicero and 
Pliny did not write those which are ascribed to 
them. It might also be made to appear that these 
books, having been written by various persons at 
different times, and in distant places, could not pos- 
sibly have been the work of a single impostor, nor 
of a fraudulent combination, being all stamped with 
the same marks of a uniform origmaUty in their 
very frame and composition. 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON. H 

But all these circumstances I shall pass over un- 
observed, as they do not fall in with the course of 
my argument, nor are necessary for the support 
of it. Whether these books were written by the 
authors whose names are prefixed to them ; wheth- 
er they have been enlarged, diminished, or any 
way corrupted by the artifice or ignorance of trans- 
lators or transcribers ; whether, in the historical 
parts, the writers were instructed by a perpetual, 
a partial, or by any inspiration at all ; whether, in 
the religious and moral parts, they received their 
doctrines from a divine influence, or from the in- 
structions and conversation of their Master ; wheth- 
er in their facts or sentiments there is always the 
most exact agreement, or whether in both they 
sometimes differ from each other ; whether they 
are in any case mistaken, or always infallible, or 
ever pretended to be so, I shall not here dispute : 
let the deist avail himself of all these doubts and 
difficulties, and' decide them in conformity to his 
own opinions ; I shall not now contend, because 
they affect not my argument. All that I assert is 
a plain fact, which cannot be denied, that such 
writings do now exist. 

PROPOSITION II. 

My second proposition is not quite so simple, but 
I think not less undeniable than the former, and 



12 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

is this : that from this book may be extracted a 
system of religion entirely new, both with regard 
to the object and the doctrines, not only infinitely 
superior to, but totally unlike every thing which 
had ever before entered into the mind of man. I 
say extracted, because all the doctrines of this 
religion having been delivered at various times, 
and on various occasions, and here only histor- 
ically recorded, no regular system of theology is 
here to be found ; and better perhaps it had 
been, if less labor had been employed by the learn- 
ed to bend and twist these divine materials into 
the polished forms of human systems. Why their 
great Author chose not to leave any such behind 
him, we know not ; but it might possibly be be- 
cause he knew that the imperfection of man was 
incapable of receiving such a system, and that 
we are more properly and more safely conduct- 
ed by the distant and scattered rays, than by the 
too powerful sunshine of divine illumination: " If 
I have told you earthly things," says he, "and ye 
believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of 
heavenly things?" John 3:12; that is, if my 
instructions concerning your behavior in the pres- 
ent, as relative to a future life, are so difficult to be 
understood that you can scarcely believe me, how 
shall you believe me if I endeavor to explain to 
you the nature of celestial beings, the designs of 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIGHON. 13 

Providence, and the mysteries of liis dispensation ; 
subjects wliich you have neither ideas to compre- 
hend, nor language to express ? 

First, then, the ohjed of this rehgion is entirely trnjo^ 
and is this, to prepare us by a state of probation 
for the kingdom of heaven. This is everywhere 
professed by Christ and his apostles to be the chief 
end of the Christian's life, the crown for which he 
is to contend, the goal to which he is to run, the 
harvest which is to repay all his labors. Yet, pre- 
vious to their preaching, no such prize was ever 
hung out to mankind, nor any means prescribed 
for the attainment of it. 

It is indeed true, that some of the philosophers 
of antiquity entertained notions of a future state, 
but mixed with much doubt and uncertainty. Their 
legislators also endeavored to infuse into the minds 
of the people a behef of rewards and punishments 
after death ; but by this they only intended to give 
a sanction to their laws, and to enforce the practice 
of virtue for the benefit of mankind in the present 
life. This alone seems to have been their end, and 
a meritorious end it was ; but Christianity not 
only operates more effectually to this end, but has a 
nobler design in view, which is, by a proper educa- 
tion here^to render us fit members of a celestial 
society hereafter. 

In all former religions, the good of the present 



14 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

life was the first object ; in the Christian, it is but 
the second : in those, men were incited to promote 
that good by the hopes of a future reward ; in this, 
the practice of virtue is enjoined in order to qualify 
them for that reward. There is great difference, 
I apprehend, in these two plans ; that is, in adher- 
ing to virtue from its present utiUty in expectation 
of future happmess, and Uving in such a manner as 
to qualify us for the acceptance and enjoyment of 
that happiness ; and the conduct and dispositions 
of those who act on these different principles must 
be no less different. On the first, the constant 
practice of justice, temperance, and sobriety, will 
be sufficient ; but on the latter, we must add to 
these an habitual piety, faith, resignation, and con- 
tempt of the world. The first may make us very 
good citizens, but will never produce a tolerable 
Cliristian. Hence it is that Christianity insists 
more strongly than any preceding institution, re- 
ligious or moral, on purity of heart, and a benevo- 
lent disposition, because these are absolutely nec- 
essary to its great end ; but in those whose recom- 
mendations of virtue regard the present life only, 
' and whose promised rewards in another were low 
and sensual, no preparatory qualifications were re- 
quisite to enable men to practise the one, Qj.' to enjoy 
the other ; and therefore we see this object is pecul- 
iar to this religion, and with it was entirely new. 



THE CHEISTIAN RELiaiON. 15 

But although this object, and the principle on 
which it is founded, were new, and perhaps undis- 
coverable by reason ; yet, when discovered, they 
are so consonant to it, that we cannot but readily 
assent to them. For the truth of this principle, 
that the present life is a state of probation and 
education to prepare us for another, is confirmed 
by every thing which we see around us : it is the 
only key which can open to us the designs of Prov- 
idence in the economy of human affairs, the only 
clue which can guide us through that pathless 
wilderness, and the only plan on which this world 
could possibly have been formed, or on which the 
history of it can be comprehended or explained. 
It could never have been formed on a plan of hap- 
piness, because it is everywhere overspread with 
innumerable miseries ; nor of misery, because it is 
interspersed with many enjoyments. It could not 
have been constituted for a scene of wisdom and 
virtue, because the histor}^ of mankind is little more 
than a detail of their follies and wickedness ; nor 
of vice, because that is no plan at all, being de- 
structive of all existence, and consequently of its 
own. But on this system, all that we here meet 
with may be easily accounted for ; for this mixture 
of happiness and misery, of virtue and vice, neces- 
sarily results from a state of probation and educa- 
tion ; as probation implies trials, sufferings, and a 



16 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

capacity of offending, and education a propriety of 
chastisement for those offences. 

In the next place, the doctrines of this rehgion 
are equally new with the object, and contain ideas 
of God and of man, of the present and of a future 
life, and of the relations which all these bear to 
each other, totally unheard of, and quite dissimilar 
from any which had ever been thought on previous 
to its publication. No other ever drew so just a 
portrait of the worthlessness of this world and all 
its pursuits, nor exhibited such distinct, lively, and 
exquisite pictures of the joys of another ; of the 
resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, and 
the triumphs of the righteous in that tremendous 
day, "when this corruptible shall put on incorrup- 
tion, and this mortal shall put on immortality." 
1 Cor. 15 :53. No other has ever represented the 
supreme Being in the character of three Persons 
united in one God. No other has attempted to 
reconcile those seeming contradictory, but both 
true propositions, the contingency of future events 
and the foreknowledge of God, or the freewill of 
the creature with the overruhng grace of the Cre- 
ator. No other has so fully declared the necessity 
of wickedness and punishment, yet so effectually 
instructed individuals to resist the one, and to 
escape the other ; no other has ever pretended to 
give any account of the depravity of man, or to 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 17 

point out any remedy for it ; no other has ventured 
to declare the unpardonable nature of sin without 
the influence of a mediatorial interposition, and a 
vicarious atonement from the sufferings of a supe- 
rior Being.* Whether these wonderful doctrines 
are worthy of our belief, must depend on the opin- 
ion which we entertain of the authority of those 
who published them to the world ; but certain it is, 
that they are all so far removed from every track of 
the human imagination, that it seems equally im- 
possible that they should ever have been derived 
from the knowledge, or the artifice of man. 

Soniv; indeed there are; who, by perverting the 
esT:ablished signification of words — which they call 
explaining — have ventured to expunge all these 
doctrines out of the Scriptures, for no other reason 
than that they are not able to comprehend them ; 
and argue thus : The Scriptures are the word of 
God ; in his word no propositions contradictory to 
reason can have a place ; these propositions are 
contradictory to reason, and therefore they are not 

=^ That Christ suffered and died as an atonement for the 
suis of mankind, is a doctrine so constantly and so strongly- 
enforced through every part of the New Testament, that 
whoever will seriously peruse those writings, and deny that 
it is there, may with as much reason and truth, after read- 
ing the works of Thucydides and Livy, assert, that in them 
no mention is made of any facts relative to the histories of 
Greece and Rome. 

Infidelity. 2 



18 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

there. But if these bold assertcrs would claim 
any regard, they should reverse their argument, 
and say, These doctrines make a part, and a ma- 
terial part of the Scriptures ; they are contradictory 
to reason ; no propositions contrary to reason 
can be a part of the word of God ; and therefore, 
neither the Scriptures, nor the pretended revelation 
contained in them, can be derived from him. This 
would be an argument worthy of rational and can- 
did deists, and demand a respectful attention ; but 
when men pretend to disprove fads by reasoning, 
they have no right to expect an answer. 

And here I cannot omit observing, that the per- 
sonal character of the author of this religion is no less 
new and extraordinary than the religion itself: 
''T^Hio spake as never man spake," Jolm 7 : 49, and 
lived as never man lived. In proof of this, I do 
not mean to allege that he was born of a virgin, 
that he fasted forty days, that he performed a vari- 
ety of miracles, and that after being buried three 
days, he rose from the dead, because these ac- 
counts will have but little effect on the minds of 
unbelievers, who, if they believe iiot the religion, 
will give no credit to the relation of these facts ; 
but I will prove it from facts which cannot be dis- 
puted. For instance, he is the only founder of a 
religion, in the history of mankind, which is totaUy 
unconnected with all human policy and government. 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON. 19 

and therefore totally unconducive to any worldly pur- 
pose whatever. All others, Mahomet, Numa, and 
even Moses himself, blended their religious insti- 
tutions with their civil, and by them obtained domin- 
ion over their respective people ; but Christ neither 
aimed at, nor would accept of any such power : he 
rejected every object which all other men pursue, 
and made choice of all those which others fly from, 
and are afraid of : he refused power, riches, honors, 
and pleasures, and courted poverty, ignominy, tor- 
tures, and death. Many have been the enthusiasts 
and impostors who have endeavored to impose on 
the world pretended revelation ; and some of them 
from pride, obstinacy, or principle, have gone so 
far as to lay down their lives rather than retract ; 
but I defy history to show one who ever made his 
own sufferings and death a necessary part of his 
original plan, and essentiaF to his mission. This 
Christ actually did ; he foresaw, foretold, declared 
their necessity, and voluntarily endured them. If 
we seriously contemplate the divine lessons, the 
perfect precepts, the beautiful discourses, and the 
consistent conduct of this wonderful person, we 
cannot possibly imagine that he could have been 
either an idiot or a madman ; and yet, if he was not 
what he pretended to be, he can be considered in 
no other light ; and even under this character he 
would deserve some attention, because of so sub- 



20 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

lime and rational an insanit}^ there is no other 
instance in the history of mankind. 

If any one can doubt of the superior excellence 
of this rehgion above all which preceded it, let liim 
but peruse with attention those unparalleled writ- 
ings in which it is transmitted to the present times, 
and compare them with the most celebrated pro- 
ductions of the pagan world ; and if he is not sen- 
sible of their superior beauty, simplicity, and orig- 
inality, I will venture to pronounce, that he is as 
deficient in taste as in faith, and that he is as bad 
a critic as a Christian. In what school of ancient 
philosophy can he find a lesson of morality so per- 
fect as Christ's sermon on the mount ? From which 
of them can he collect an address to the Deity so 
concise, and yet so comprehensive, so expressive 
of all that we want, and all that we could depre- 
cate, as that short prayer which he formed for, and 
recommended to his disciples? From the works of 
what sage of antiquity can he produce so pathetic a 
recommendation of benevolence to the distressed, 
and enforced by such assurances of a reward, as 
in those words of Christ, "Come, ye blessed of my 
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from 
the foundation of the world ; for I was a hungered, 
and ye gave me meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave 
me drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took me in ; I 
was naked, and ye clothed me : I was sick, and vc 



THE^CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 21 

visited me ; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, 
when saw we thee a hungered, and fed thee, or 
thirsty and gave thee drink? when saw we thee 
a stranger, and took thee in, or naked and clothed 
thee? or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, 
and came unto thee? Then shall he answer and 
say unto them. Verily, I say unto you, inasmuch 
as ye have done it to the least of these my breth- 
ren, ye have done it unto me." Matt. 25 : 34-40. 
Where is there so just, and so elegant a reproof of 
eagerness and anxiety in worldly pursuits, closed 
with so forcible an exhortation to confidence in the 
goodness of our Creator, as in these words : "Be- 
hold the fowls of the air ; for they sow not, neither 
do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heav- 
enly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better 
than they? Consider the lilies of the field, how 
they grow ; they toil not, neither do they spin ; 
and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all 
his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Where- 
fore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which 
to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall 
he not much more clothe you, ye of little faith ?" 
Matt. 6 : 26-28. By which of their most celebrated 
poets are the joys reserved for the righteous in a 
future state so sublimely described, as by this 
short declaration, that they are superior to all de- 



22 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

scription : " Eje hath not seen, nor ear heard, nei- 
ther have entered into the heart of man, the things 
which God hath prepared for them that love him." 
1 Cor. 2 : 9. Where amidst the dark clouds of pa- 
gan philosophy, can he show us such a clear pros- 
pect of a future state, the immortality of the soul, 
the resurrection of the dead, and the general judg- 
ment, as in St. Paul's first epistle to the Corinthi- 
ans ? Or from whence can he produce such cogent 
exhortations to the practice of every virtue, such 
ardent incitements to piety and devotion, and such 
assistances to attain them, as those which are to 
be met with throughout every page of these inimi- 
table writings ? To quote all the passages in them 
relative to these subjects, would be almost to 
transcribe the whole. It is sufficient to observe, 
that they are everywhere stamped with such ap- 
parent marks of supernatural assistance, as render 
them indisputably superior to, and totally unhke all 
human compositions whatever ; and this superior- 
ity and dissimilarity is still more strongly marked 
by one remarkable circumstance peculiar to them- 
selves, which is, that while the moral parts, being 
of the most general use, are intelligible to the 
meanest capacities, the learned and inquisitive, 
throughout all ages, perpetually find in them inex- 
haustible discoveries concerning the nature, attri- 
butes, and dispensations of Providence. 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 23 

To say the truth, before the appearance of Chris- 
tianity there existed nothing like rehgion on the 
face of the earth, the Jewish only excepted ; all 
other nations were immersed in the grossest idol- 
atry, which had little or no connection with moral- 
ity, except to corrupt it by the infamous exam- 
ples of their own imaginary deities. They all wor- 
shipped a multiplicity of gods and demons, whose 
favor they courted by impious, obscene, and ridic- 
ulous ceremonies, and whose anger they endeav- 
ored to appease by the most abominable cruelties. 
In the politest ages of the politest nations in the 
world, at a time when Greece and Rome had car- 
ried the arts of oratory, poetry, history, architec- 
ture, and sculpture to the highest perfection, and 
made no inconsiderable advances in those of math- 
ematics, natural, and even moral philosophy, in 
religious knowledge they had made none at all — a 
strong presumption, that the noblest efforts of the 
mind of man, unassisted by revelation, were un- 
equal to the task. Some few indeed, of their phi- 
losophers were wise enough to reject these general 
absurdities, and dared to attempt a loftier flight. 
Plato introduced many sublime ideas of nature and 
its first cause, and of the immortality of the soul, 
which being above his own and all human discov- 
ery, he probably acquired from the books of Moses, 
or the conversation of some Jewish rabbins which 



24 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

ho might have mot with iu Egypt, whcro he resided, 
and studied for several years. From him, Aristotle, 
and from both, Cicero and some few others drew 
most amazing stores of philosophical science, and 
carried their researches into divine truths as far as 
human genius alone can penetrate. But these 
were bright constellations, which appeared singly 
in several centuries, and even these, with all this 
knowledge, were very deficient in true theology. 
From the visible works of the creation they traced 
the being and principal attributes of the Creator ; 
but the relation which his being and attributes 
bear to man, they little understood : of piety and 
devotion they had scarce any sense, nor could they 
form any mode of worship worthy of the purity 
and perfection of the divine nature. They occa- 
sionally flung out many elegant encomiums on the 
native beauty and excellence of virtue ; but they 
founded it not on the commands of God, nor con- 
nected it with a holy life, nor hung out the happi- 
ness of heaven as its reward, or its object. They 
sometimes talk of virtue carrying men to heaven 
and placing them among the gods ; but by this 
virtue they meant only the invention of arts, or 
feats of arms ; for with them heaven was open 
only to legislators and conquerors, the civihzers or 
destroyers of mankind. Tliis was, then, the sum- 
mit of rehgion in the most polished nations in the 



THE CHRISTIAN E.ELIG-ION. 25 

world ; and even this was confined to a few phi- 
losophers, prodigies of genius and literature, who 
were Uttle attended to, and less understood by the 
generality of mankind in their own countries ; 
while all the rest were involved in one common 
cloud of ignorance and superstition. 

At this time Christianity broke forth from the 
East like a rising sun, and dispelled this universal 
darkness wliich obscured every part of the globe, 
and even at this day prevails in all those remote 
regions to which its salutary influence has not as 
yet extended. From all those which it has reached, 
it has, notwithstanding its corruptions, banished 
all those enormities, and introduced a more rational 
devotion, and pure morals : it has taught men the 
unity and attributes of the Supreme Being, the 
remission of sins, the resurrection of the dead, life 
everlasting, and the kingdom of heaven ; doctrines 
as inconceivable to the wisest of mankind antece- 
dent to its appearance, as the Newtonian system is 
at this day to the most ignorant tribes of savages 
in the wilds of America : doctrines which human 
reason never could have discovered ; but which, 
when discovered, coincide with, and are confirmed 
by it ; and which, though beyond the reach of all 
the learning and penetration of Plato, Aristotle, 
and Cicero, are now clearly laid open to the eye of 
every peasant and mechanic with the Bible in his 



26 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

hand. These are all plain facts, too glaring to be 
contradicted ; and therefore, whatever we may- 
think of the authority of these books, the relations 
which they contain, or the inspiration of their au- 
thors, of these facts no man who has eyes to read, 
or ears to hear, can entertain a doubt, because 
there are the books, and in them is this religion. 

PROPOSITION III. 

My third proposition is tliis : that from this book, 
called the New Testament, may be collected a sys- 
tem of etliics, in which every moral precept founded 
on reason is carried to a higher degree of purity and 
perfection than in any other of the ancient philoso- 
phers of 23receding ages ; every moral precept founded 
on false principles is entirely omitted ; and many new 
precepts added; peculiarly corresponding with the 
new object of this religion. 

By a moral precept founded on reason, I mean 
all those which enforce the practice of such duties 
as reason informs us must improve our nature, and 
conduce to the happiness of mankind: such are 
piety to God, benevolence to man, justice, charity, 
temperance, and sobriety, with all those which 
prohibit the commission of the contrary vices, all 
which debase our natures, and by mutual injuries 
introduce universal disorder, and consequently uni- 
versal misery. By precept founded on false prin- 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON. 27 

ciples, I mean those which recommend fictitious 
virtues, productive of none of these salutary effects, 
and therefore, however celebrated and admired, are 
in fact no virtues at all • such are valor, patriotism, 
and friendship. 

That virtues of the first kind are carried to a 
higher degree of purity and perfection by the Chris- 
tian religion than by any other, it is here unneces- 
sary to prove, because this is a truth which has 
been frequently demonstrated by her friends, and 
never once denied by the most determined of her 
adversaries ; but it will be proper to show that 
those of the latter sort are most judiciously omitted, 
because they have really no intrinsic merit in them, 
and are totally incompatible with the genius and 
spirit of this institution. 

Valor, for instance, or active courage, is for the 
most part constitutional, and therefore can have no 
more claim to moral merit than wit, beauty, health, 
strength, or any other endowment of the mind or 
body ; and so far is it from producing any salutary 
effects by introducing peace, order, or happiness 
in society, that it is the usual perpetrator of all the 
violences which, from retaliated injuries, distract 
the world with bloodshed and devastation. It is 
the engine by which the strong are enabled to 
plunder the weak, the proud to trample upon the 
humble, and the guilty to oppress the innocent ; it 



28 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

is the chief instrument which ambition employs in 
her unjust pursuits of wealth and power, and is 
therefore so much extolled by her votaries : it was 
indeed congenial with the religion of pagans, whose 
gods were, for the most part, made out of deceased 
heroes, exalted to heaven as a reward for the mis- 
chiefs which they had perpetrated upon earth ; and 
therefore with them this was the first of virtues, 
and had even engrossed that denomination to itself. 
But whatever merit it may have assumed among 
pagans, with Christians it can pretend to none, 
and few or none are the occasions in which they 
are permitted to exert it. They are so far from 
being allowed to inflict evil, that they are forbid 
even to resist it ; they are so far from being en- 
couraged to revenge injuries, that one of their 
first duties is to forgive them ; so far from being 
incited to destroy their enemies, that they are 
commanded to love them, and serve them to the 
utmost of their power. If Christian nations there- 
fore were nations of Christians, all war would be 
impossible and unknown among them, and valor 
could be neither of use or estimation, and therefore 
could never have a place in the catalogue of Chris- 
tian virtues, being irreconcilable with all its pre- 
cepts. I object not to the praise and honors be- 
stowed on the valiant : they are the least tribute 
which can be paid them by those who enjoy safety 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON. 29 

and affluence by the intervention of theii' dangers 
and sufferings : I assert only, that active courage 
can never be a Christian virtue, because a Chris- 
tian can have nothing to do with it. Passive cour- 
age is indeed frequently and properly inculcated 
by this meek and suffering religion, under the titles 
of patience and resignation : a real and substantial 
virtue this, and a direct contrast to the former ; 
for passive courage arises from the noblest dispo- 
sitions of the human mind, from a contempt of mis- 
fortunes, pain, and death, and a confidence in the 
protection of the Almighty ; active, from the mean- 
est — h'om passion, vanity, and self-dependence. 
Passive courage is derived from a zeal for truth, 
and a perseverance in duty; active, 'is the off- 
spring of pride and revenge, and the parent of 
cruelty and injustice : in short, passive courage is 
the resolution of a philosopher ; active, the ferocity 
of a savage. Nor is this more incompatible with 
the precepts, than with the object of this religion, 
which is the attainment of the kingdom of heaven ; 
for valor is not that sort of 'violence by which that 
kingdom is to be taken ; nor are the turbulent 
spirits of heroes and conquerors admissible into 
those regions of peace, subordination, and tran- 
quillity. 

Patriotism, also, that celebrated virtue so much 
practised in ancient, and so much professed in 



30 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

modern times — that virtue which so long preserved 
the hberties of Greece, and exalted Rome to the 
empire of the world — this celebrated virtue, I say, 
must also be excluded, because it not only falls 
short of, but directly counteracts the extensive 
benevolence of this religion. A Christian is of no 
country, he is a citizen of the world ; and his 
neighbors and countrymen are the inhabitants of 
the remotest regions, whenever their distresses 
demand Ms friendly assistance. Christianity com- 
mands us to love all mankind ; patriotism, to 
oppress all other countries to advance the imagi- 
nary prosperity of our own. Christianity enjoins 
us to imitate the universal benevolence of our 
Creator, ^vho pours forth his blessings on every 
nation upon earth ; patriotism, to copy the mean 
partiality of an Enghsh parish officer, who thinks 
injustice and cruelty meritorious whenever they 
promote the interests of his own inconsiderable 
Aillage. This has ever been a favorite virtue with 
mankind, because it conceals self-interest under 
the mask of public spirit, not onl}^ from others, 
l^ut even from themselves, and gives a license 
to inflict wrongs and injuries, not only with im- 
punity, but with applause ; but it is so diametri- 
cally opposite to the great characteristic of this 
institution, that it never coukl have been admitted 
into the Ust of Christian virtues. 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON. 31 

Friendship, likewise, although more, congenial to 
the principles- of Christianity, arising from more 
tender and amiable dispositions, could never gain 
admittance among her benevolent precepts for the 
same reason, because it is too narrow and confined, 
and appropriates that benevolence to a single object 
which is here commanded to be extended over all. 
Where friendsliips arise from similarity of senti- 
ments and disinterested affections, they are advan- 
tageous, agreeable, and innocent, but have little 
pretensions to merit ; for it is justly observed, "If 
ye love them which love you, what thank have 
ye ? for sinners also love those that love them." 
Luke 6 : 32. But if they are formed from alKances 
in parties, factions, and interests, or from a partici- 
pation of vices, the usual parents of what are called 
friendships among mankind, they are then both 
mischievous and criminal, and consequently for- 
bidden ; but in their utmost purity they deserve 
no recommendation from this religion. 

To the judicious omission of these false virtues, 
we may add that remarkable silence which the 
Christian Legislator everywhere preserves on sub- 
jects esteemed by all others of the highest impor- 
tance, civil government, national policy, and the rights 
of war and peace. Of these he has not taken the 
least notice, probably for this plain reason, because 
it would have been impossible to have formed any 



• 32 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

explicit regulations concerning them, which must 
not have been inconsistent with the purity of his 
religion, or with the jDractical observance of such 
imperfect creatures as men, ruling over and con- 
tending with each other. For instance, had he 
absolutely forbid all resistance to the reigning pow- 
ers, he had constituted a plan of despotism, and 
made men slaves ; had he allowed it, he must have 
authorized disobedience, and made them rebels : 
had he, in direct terms, prohibited all war, he must 
have left his followers for ever an easy prey to 
every infidel invader ; had he permitted it, he must 
have licensed all that rapine and murder with 
which it is unavoidably attended. 

. Let us now examine what are those new precepts 
in this religion peculiarly corresponding with the 
new object of it ; that is, preparing us for the king- 
dom of heaven. Of these, the chief are poorness 
of spirit, forgiveness of injuries, and charity to all 
men ; to these we may add repentance, faith, self- 
abasement, and a detachment from the world, all 
moral duties peculiar to this religion, and abso- 
lutely necessary to the attainment of its end. 

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the 
kingdom of heaven." Matthew 5 : 3. By which 
poorness of spirit is to be understood a disposition 
of mind meek, humble, submissive to power, void 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 33- 

of ambition, patient of injuries, and free from all 
resentment. This was so new, and so opposite to 
the ideas of all pagan moralists, that they thought 
this temper of mind a criminal and contemptible 
meanness, which must induce men to sacrifice the 
glory of their country and their honor to a shameful 
pusillanimity ; and such it appears to almost all 
who are called Christians, even at this day, who 
not only reject it in practice, but disavow it in 
principle, notwithstanding this explicit declaration 
of their Master. We see them revenging the 
smallest affronts by premeditated murder, as indi- 
viduaL, on principles of honor ; and, in their nation- 
al capacities, destroying each other with fire and 
sword for the low considerations of commercial 
interests, the balance of rival power, or the ambi- 
tion of princes. We see them with their last breath 
animating each other to a savage revenge, and, in 
the agonies of death, plunging with feeble arms 
their daggers into the hearts of their opponents ; 
and what is still worse, we hear all these barba- 
risms celebrated by historians, flattered by poets, 
applauded in theatres, approved in senates, and 
even sanctified in pulpits. But universal practice 
cannot alter the nature of things, nor universal 
error change the nature of truth. Pride was not 
made for men, but humility, meekness, and resig- 
nation ; that is, poorness of spirit was made for 



34 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

man, and properly belongs to his dependent and pre- 
carious situation, and is the only disposition of mind 
which can enable him to enjoy ease and quiet here 
and happiness hereafter. Yet was this important 
precept entirely unknown until it was promulgated 
by Him who said, " Suffer little children to come 
unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the 
kingdom of heaven. Verily I say unto you, whoso- 
ever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little 
child, he shall not enter therein." Mark 10 : 14, 15. 
Another precept equally new, and no less excel- 
lent, is forgivemss of injuries. "Ye have heard," 
says Christ, "thou shalt love thy neighbor, and 
hate thine enemy ; but I say unto you, love your 
enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to 
them that hate you, and pray for them which de- 
spitefully use you and persecute you, Matthew 
5 : 43. This was a lesson so new, and so utterly 
unknown till taught by his doctrines, and enforced 
by his example, that the wisest moralists of the 
wisest nations and ages represented the desu^e of 
revenge as a mark of a noble mind, and the accom- 
phshment of it as one of the chief felicities attend- 
ant on a fortunate man. But how much more mag- 
nanimous, how much more beneficial to mankind, 
is forgiveness ! It is more magnanimpus, because, 
every generous and exalted disposition of. the hu- 
man mind is requisite to the practice of it, for these 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 35 

alone can enable us to bear the wrongs and insults 
of wickedness and folly with patience, and to look 
down on the perpetrators of them with pity, rather 
than indignation : these alone can teach us that 
such are but a part of those sufferings allotted to 
us in this state of probation ; and to know that to 
overcome evil with good, is the most glorious of 
all victories. It is the most henefidal, because this 
amiable conduct alone can put an end to an eternal 
succession of injuries and retahations ; for every 
retaliation becomes a new injury, and requires an- 
other act of revenge for satisfaction. But would 
we observe this salutary precept, to love our ene- 
mies, and do good to those who despitefully use. us, 
this obstinate benevolence would at last conquer 
the most inveterate hearts, and we should have no 
enemies to forgive. How much more exalted a 
character therefore is a Christian martyr suffering 
with resignation, and praying for the guilty, than 
that of a pagan hero breathing revenge, and destroy- 
ing the innocent? Yet noble and useful as this 
virtue is, before the appearance of this religion it 
was not only unpractised, but decried in principle 
as mean and ignominious, though so obvious a rem- 
edy for most of the miseries of this life, and so neces- 
sary a quahfication for the..haj)pine^S of another. 

A third precept, first noticed and first enjoined 
by this institution, is charity to all men. What this 



36 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

is, we may best learn from the admirable descrip- 
tion painted in the following words : "Charity suf- 
fereth long, and is kind ; charity envieth not ; 
charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth 
not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, 
is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil ; rejoiceth 
not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; beareth 
all things, beheveth all things, hopeth all things, 
endure th all things." 1 Cor. * 13 : 4. Here we 
have an accurate delineation of this bright constel- 
lation of all vhtues, which consists not, as many 
imagine, in the building of monasteries, endow- 
ment of hospitals, or the distribution of alms, but 
in such an amiable disposition of mind as exercises 
itself every hour in acts of kindness, patience, 
complacency, and benevolence to all around us, 
and which alone is able to promote happiness in 
the present life, or render us capable of receiving 
it in another ; and yet this is totally new, and so 
it is declared to be by the author of it: "A new 
commandment I give unto you, that ye love one 
another ; as I have loved you, that ye also love 
one another. By this shall all men know that ye 
are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." 
John 13 : 34. This benevolent disposition is made 
the great characteristic of a Christian, the test of 
his obedience, and the mark by which he is to be 
distinguished. This love for each other is that 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 37 

charity just now described and contains all those 
qualities which are there attributed to it : humil- 
ity, patience, meekness, and beneficence ; without 
which we must hve in perpetual discord, and con- 
sequently cannot pay obedience to his command- 
ment by loving one another : a commandment so 
sublime, so rational, and so beneficial, so wisely 
calculated to correct the depravity, diminish the 
wickedness, and abate the miseries of human na- 
ture, that, did we universally comply with it, we 
should soon be relieved from all the inquietudes 
arising from our own unruly passions, anger, envy, 
revenge, malice, and ambition, as well as from all 
those injuries to which we are perpetually exposed 
from the indulgence of the same passions in others. 
It would also preserve our minds in such a state of 
tranquillity, and so prepare them for the kingdom 
of heaven, that we should slide out of a life of 
peace, love, and benevolence, into that celestial soci- 
ety, by an almost imperceptible transition. Yet 
was this commandment entirely new when given 
by Him who so entitles it, and has made it the cap- 
ital duty of his religion, because the most indispen- 
sably necessary to the attainment of its great ob- 
ject, the kingdom of heaven ; into which, if proud, 
tur])ulent, and vindictive spirits were permitted to 
enter, they must unavoidably destroy the happi- 
ness of that state by the operations of the same 



38 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

passions and vices by which they disturb the pres- 
ent ; and therefore all such must be eternally ex- 
cluded, not only as a punishment, but also from 
incapacity. 

Repentance by this, we plainly see, is another 
new moral duty strenuously insisted on by this 
religion, and by no other, because absolutely 
necessary to the accomphshment of its end ; for 
this alone can purge us from those transgressions 
from which we cannot be totally exempted in this 
state of trial and temptation, and purify us from 
that depravity in our nature which renders us 
incapable of attaining this end. Hence, also, we 
may learn that no repentance can remove this 
incapacity", but such as entirely changes the nature 
and disposition of the offender, which, in the lan- 
guage of Scripture, is called, "being born again." 
Mere contrition for past crimes, and even the par- 
don of them, cannot effect this, unless it operates 
to this entu-e conversion, or new birth, as it is 
properly and emphatically named ; for sorrow can 
no more purify, a mind corrupted by a long con- 
tinuance in vicious habits, than it can restore 
health to a body distempered by a long course of 
vice and intemperance. Hence, also, every one 
who is in the least acquainted with himself, may 
judge of the reasonableness of the hope that is in 
him, and of his situation in a future state, by that 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 39 

of his present. If he feels iu hmiself a temper 
proud, turbulent, vindictive, and malevolent, and 
a violent attachment to the pleasures or business 
of the world, he may be assured that he must be 
excluded from the kingdom of heaven ; not only 
because his conduct can have no such reward, but 
because, if admitted, he would find there no objects 
satisfactory to his passions, incKnations, and pur- 
suits ; and therefore could only disturb the happi- 
ness of others, without enjoying any share of it 
himself. 

. Faith is another moral duty enjoined by this 
institution, of a species so new, that the philos- 
ophers of antiquity had no word expressive of this 
idea, nor any such idea to be expressed ; for the 
word TTffTnf, or fides, which we translate faith, was 
never used by any pagan writer in a sense the 
least similar to that to which it is apphed in the 
New Testament, where in general it signifies an 
humble, teachable, lind candid disposition, a trust in 
God, and confidence in his promises. When ap- 
plied particularly to Christianity, it means no more 
than a behef of this single proposition, that Christ 
was the Son of God ; that is, in the language of 
those writings, the Messiah, who was foretold by 
the prophets, and expected by the Jews ; who 
was sent by God into the world to preach right- 
eousness, judgment, and everlasting life, and to die 



40 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

as an atonement for the sins of mankind. This 
was all that Christ required to be believed by those, 
wlio were willing to become Ms disciples : he who 
does not believe this, is not a Christian ; and he 
who does, beheves the whole that is essential to 
his profession, and all that is properly compre- 
hended under the name of faith. This unfortunate 
word has indeed been so tortured and so misap- 
plied to mean every absurdity which artifice could 
unpose upon ignorance, that it has lost all preten- 
sions to the title of virtue ; but if brought back to 
the simplicity of its original signification, it well 
deserves that name, because it usually arises from 
the most amiable dispositions, and is always a 
direct contrast to pride, obstinacy, and self-conceit. 
If taken in the extensive sense of an assent to the 
evidence of things not seen, it comprehends the 
existence of a God, and a future state, and is 
therefore not only itself a moral virtue, but the 
source fi'om whence all others 'must proceed ; for 
on the beUef of these all religion and morality 
must entirely depend. It cannot be altogether 
void of moral excellence, as some represent it, be- 
cause it is in a degree voluntary ; for daily experi- 
ence shows us that men not only pretend to, but 
actually do beheve and disbelieve almost any prop- 
ositions which best suit theu* interests or incli- 
nations, and unfeignedly change their sincere opin- 



THE CHRISTIAN HELIG-ION. 41 

ions with their situations and circumstances. For 
we have power over the mind's eye, as well as 
over the body's, to shut it against the strongest 
rays of truth and religion, whenever they become 
painful to us ; and to open it again to the faint 
glimmerings of scepticism and infidelity, when we 
• 'love darkness rather than light, because our 
deeds are evil." John 3 : 19. And this, I think, 
sufficiently refutes all objections to the moral na- 
ture of faith, drawn from the supposition of its 
being quite involuntary, and necessarily dependent 
on the degree of evidence which is offered to our 
understandings. 

Self -aba se?nent is another moral duty inculcated 
by this religion only ; which requires us to impute 
even our o^vn virtues to the grace and favor of 
our Creator, and to acknowledge that we can do 
nothing good by our own powers, unless assisted 
by his overruling influence. This doctrine, seems 
at first sight to infringe on our free will, and to de- 
prive us of all merit ; but, on a closer examination, 
the truth of it may be demonstrated both by rea- 
son and experience, and that in fact it does not im- 
pair the one or depreciate the other ; and that it is 
productive of so much humility, resignation, and 
dependence on God, that it justly claims a place 
among the most illustrious moral virtues. Yet 
was this duty utterly repugnant to the proud and 



42 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

self-sufficient principles of the ancient philosophers, 
as well as modern deists ; and therefore, before 
the pubhcation of the gospel, totally unknown and , 
uncomprehended. 

Detadumnt from the. world is another moral virtue 
constituted by this religion alone ; so new, that 
even at this day few of its professors can be per- 
suaded that it is required, or that it is any virtue 
at all. By this detachment fi'om the world, is not 
to be understood a seclusion from society, abstrac- 
tion from all business, or retu-ement to a gloomy 
cloister. Industry and labor, cheerfulness and 
hospitality, are frequently recommended ; nor is 
the acquisition of wealth and honors prohibited, if 
they can be obtained by honest means and a mod- 
erate degree of attention and care ; but such an 
unremitted anxiety and perpetual application as 
engross our whole time and thoughts are forbid, 
because. they are incompatible with the spuit of 
this religion, and must utterly disquahfy us for the 
attainment of its great end. We toil on in the 
vain pursuits and frivolous occupations of the 
world, die in our harness, and th-en expect, if no 
gigantic crime stands in the way, to step immedi- 
ately into the kingdom of heaven : but this is im- 
possible ; for without a previous detachment from 
the Ijusiness of tliis world, we cannot be prepared 
for the happiness of another. Yet this could make 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON. 43 

no part of the morality of pagans, because their 
virtues were altogether connected with this busi- 
ness, and consisted chiefly in conducting it with 
honor to themselves and benefit to the public. But 
Christianity has a nobler object in view, which, if 
not attended to, must be lost for ever. This ob- 
ject is that celestial mansion of which we should 
never lose sight, and to which we should be ever 
advancing during our journey through life ; but 
this by no means precludes us from performing 
the business, or enjoying the amusements of trav- 
ellers, ■ provided they detain us not too long, nor 
lead us too far out of our way. 

It cannot be denied, that the great Author of 
the Christian institution first and singly ventured 
to oppose all the chief principles of pagan virtue, 
and to introduce a religion directly opposite to 
those erroneous, though long estabhshed opinions, 
both in its duties and in its object. The most cele- 
brated virtues of the ancients were high spirit, 
intrepid courage, and implacable resentment. 

Imjpiger, iracundus, iiwxorahilis, acer — turbulent, 
irascible, implacable, virulent — was the portrait of 
the most illustrious hero, drawn by one of the first 
poets of antiquity. To all these admired qualities, 
those of a true Christian are an exact contrast ; for 
this religion constantly enjoins poorness of spirit, 
meekness, patience, and forgiveness of injuries. 



44 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

"But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil ; but 
whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, 
turn to him the other also." Matt. 5 : 39. The 
favorite characters among the pagans were, the 
turbulent, ambitious, and intrepid, who, through 
toils and dangers, acquired wealth, and spent it in 
luxury, magnificence, and corruption ; but both 
these are equally adverse to the Christian system, 
which forbids all extraordinary efforts to obtain 
wealth, care to secure, or thought concerning the 
enjoyment of it. "Lay not up for yourselves 
treasures on earth," etc. "Take no thought, say-, 
ing, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or 
wherewithal shall we be clothed? for after- all 
these things do the Gentiles seek." Matt. 6 : 31. 
The chief object of the pagans was immortal fame ; 
for this theii' poets sung, their heroes fought, and 
their patriots died ; and this was hung out by 
their philosophers and legislators as the great in- 
citement to all noble and virtuous deeds. But 
what says the Christian Legislator to his disciples 
on this subject ? "Blessed are ye when men shall 
revile you, and shall say all manner of evil against 
you falsely for my sake ; rejoice, and be exceeding 
glad, for great is your reward in heaven." Matt, 
5 : n. So widely different is. the genius of the 
pagan and Christian morality, that I will venture to 
affirm, that the most celebrated virtues of the for- 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON, 45 

mer are not less opposite to the spirit, or inconsis- 
tent with the end of the latter, than even their 
most infamous vices ; and that a Brutus, wrench- 
ing vengeance out of His hands to whom alone it 
belongs, by murdering the oppressor of his country ; 
or a Cato, murdering himself from an impatience 
of control, leaves the world as unqualified for, and 
inadmissible into the kingdom of heaven, as even 
a Messalina, or a Heliogabalus, with all their prof- 
ligacy about them. 

Nothing, I beUeve, has so much contributed to 
corrupt the true spirit of the Christian institution, 
as that partiality which we contract from our ear- 
liest education for the manners of pagan antiquity : 
from whence we learn to adopt every moral idea 
which is repugnant to it ; to applaud false virtues, 
which that disavows ; to be guided by laws of 
honor, which that abhors ; to imitate characters 
which that detests ; and to behold heroes, patriots, 
conquerors, and suicides with admiration, whose 
conduct that utterly condemns. From a coahtion 
of these opposite principles, was generated that 
monstrous system of cruelty and benevolence, of 
barbariKm and civility, of rapine and justice, of 
fighting and devotion, of revenge and generosity, 
which harassed the world for several centuries 
with crusades, holy wars, knight-errantry, and 
single combats ; and even still retains influence 



46 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

enough, under the name of honor, to defeat the 
most beneficent ends of this holy institution. I 
mean not by this to pass any censure on the prin- 
ciples of valor, patriotism, or honor : they may be 
useful, and perhaps necessary, in the commerce 
and business of the present turbulent and imper- 
fect state ; and those who are actuated by them 
may be virtuous, honest, and even religious men : 
all that I assert is, that they cannot be Christians. 
A Christian may be overpowered by passions and 
temptations, and his actions may contradict his 
principles ; but a man whose ruling principle is 
honor, however virtuous he may be, cannot be a 
Christian, because he erects a standard of duty, 
and deliberately adhenes to it, diametrically oppo- 
site to the whole' tenor of that religion. 

The contrast between the Christian and all 
other institutions, reUgious or moral, previous to 
its appearance, is sufficiently evident ; and surelj^ 
the superiority of the former is as Uttle to be dis- 
puted, unless any one shall undertake to prove 
that humihty, patience, forgiveness, and benevo- 
lence are less amiable, and less beneficial quahties 
than pride, turbulence, revenge, and malignity ; 
that the contempt of riches is less noble than their 
acquisition by fraud and villany, or the distribution 
of them to the poor less commendable than avarice 
or profusion • or that- a real. immortaUty in the 



. THE CHRISTIAN RELIG-ION. 47 

kingdom of heaven is an object less exalted, less 
rational, and less worthy of pursuit, than an imag- 
inary immortality in the applause of men : that 
worthless tribute, which the folly of one part of 
mankind pays, to the wickedness of the other — a 
tribute which a wise man ought always to despise, 
because a good man can scarce ever obtain. 

CONCLUSION. 

If I mistake not, I have now fully established 
the truth of my three propositions : 

First, that there is now extant a book entitled 
the New Testament. 

Secondly, that from this book may be extracted 
a system of religion entirely new, both in its object 
and its doctrines ; not only superior to, but totally 
unlike every thing which had ever before entered 
into the mind of man. 

Thirdly, that from this book may likewise be 
collected a system of ethics, in which every moral 
precept founded on reason is carried to a higher 
degree of purity and perfection than in any other of 
the wisest philosophers of preceding ages ; every 
moral precept founded on false principles totally 
omitted ; and many new precepts added, pecuharly 
corresponding "with the new object of this religion. 

Every one of these propositions, I am persuaded, 
is incontrovertibly true ; "and if true, this short 
but certain conclusion must inevitably follow, that 



48 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

such a system of religion and morality could not 
'possibly have been the work of any man, or set of men^ 
much less of those obscure, ignorant, and illiterate 
persons who actually did discover and publish it to 
the world ; and that therefore it must have been 
eflfected by the supernatural interposition of divine 
power and wisdom, that is, that it must derive its 
origin from God. 

This argument seems to me little short of dem- 
onstration, and is indeed founded on the ver^ 
same reasoning by which the material world is 
proved to be the work of his invisible hand. We 
view with admiration the heavens and the earth, 
and all therein contained ; we contemplate with 
amazement the minute bodies of animals too small 
for perception, and the immense planetary orbs too 
vast for imagination. We are certain that these 
cannot be the works of man, and therefore we con- 
clude with reason, that they must be the produc- 
tions of an omnipotent Creator. In the same man- 
ner we see here a scheme of religion and morality 
unlike and superior to all ideas of the human mind, 
equally impossible to have been discovered by the 
knowledge or invented by the artifice of man ; and 
therefore by the very same mode of reasoning, and 
with the same justice, we conclude that it must 
derive its origin from the same omnipotent and 
omniscient Being. 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIOION. 49 

Nor was the propagation of this religion less 
extraordinary than the religion itself, or less above 
the reach of all human power, than the discovery 
of it was above that of all human understanding. 
It is well known, that in the course of a very few 
years it was spread over all the principal parts of 
Asia and of Europe, and this by the ministry only 
of an inconsiderable number of the most inconsider- 
able persons ; that at this time paganism was in the 
highest repute, behoved in uuiversaUy by the vulgar, 
and patronized by the great ; that the wisest men 
of the wisest nations assisted at its sacrifices, and 
consulted its oracles on the most important occa- 
sions. Whether these were the tricks of the priests 
or of the devil is of no consequence, as they 
were both equally unlikely to be converted or 
overcome : the fact is certain, that on the preach- 
ing of a few -fishermen, their altars were deserted 
and their deities were dumb. This miracle they 
undoubtedly performed, whatever we may think of 
the rest ; and this is surely sufficient to prove the 
authority of their commission, and to convince us 
that neither their undertaking nor the execution of 
it could possibly be their own. 

How much this divine institution has been cor- 
rupted, or how soon these corruptions began ; how 
far it has been discolored by the false notions of 
illiterate ages, or blended with fictions by pious 

Infi.lelity. 4 



50 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

frauds"; or how early these notions and fictions 
were introduced, it may be difficult now precisely to 
ascertain ; but surely no man who seriously con- 
siders the excellence and novelty of its doctrines, 
the manner in which it was at first propagated 
through the world, the persons who achieved that 
wonderful work, and the originality of those writ- 
ings in which it is still recorded, can possibly be- 
lieve that it could ever have been the production 
of imposture or chance ; or that from an imposture 
the most wicked and blasphemous — for if an impos- 
ture, such it is — all the religion and virtue now- 
existing on earth can derive their source. 

But notwithstanding what has been here urged, 
if any man can believe that, at a time when the 
literature of Greece and Rome, then in their merid- 
ian lustre, were insufficient for the task, the son 
of a carpenter with twelve of the humblest and 
most illiterate men his associates, unassisted by 
any supernatural power, should be able to discover 
or invent a system of theology the most sublime, 
and of ethics the most perfect, which had escaped 
the penetration and learning of Plato, Aristotle, 
and Cicero ; and that from this system, by their 
own sagacity, thej^ had excluded every false virtue, 
though universally admired, and admitted every 
true virtue, though despised and ridiculed by all 
the rest of the world — if anv one can believe that 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIG-ION. 51 

these men could become impostors for no other 
purpose than the propagation of truth, villains for 
no end but to teach honesty, and mart^Ts without 
the least prospect of honor or advantage ; or that 
if all this should have been possible, these few 
inconsiderable persons should have been able, in 
the course of a few j^ears, to have spread this their 
religion over most parts of the then known world, 
in opposition to the interests, pleasures, ambition, 
prejudices, and even reason of mankind ; to have 
triumphed over the power of princes, the intrigues 
of states, the force of custom, the blindness of 
zeal, tne influence of priests, the arguments of 
orators, and the philosophy of the world, without 
any supernatural assistance — if any one can be- 
lieve these miraculous events, contradictory to the 
experience of the powers and dispositions of human 
nature, he must be possessed of much more faith 
than is necessary to make him a Christian, and 
remain an unbeKever from mere credulity. 

But should these credulous infidels after all be 
in the right, and this pretended revelation be all a 
fable, from beheving it what harm could ensue? 
Would it render princes more tyrannical, or sub- 
jects ungovernable ; the rich more insolent, or the 
poor more disorderly ? Would it make worse par- 
ents or children, husbands or wives, masters or 
servants, friends or neighbors ? Or would it not 



52 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

make men more virtuous, and consequently more 
happy in every situation ? It could not be crim- 
inal, it could not be detrimental. It could not be 
criminal, because it cannot be a crime to assent to 
such an evidence as has been able to convince the 
best and wisest of mankind ; by wliich, if false, 
Providence must have permitted men to deceive 
each other for the most beneficial ends, and which, 
therefore, it would be surely more meritorious to 
beheve from a disposition of faith and charity 
which beheveth all things, than to reject with scorn 
from obstinacy and self-conceit. It cannot be det- 
rimental, because if Christianity is a fable, it is a 
fal)le the belief of which is the only principle which 
can retain men in a steady and uniform course of 
virtue, piety, and devotion ; or can support them 
in the hour of distress, of sickness, and of death. 
Whatever might be the operations of true deism 
on the minds of pagan pliilosophers, that can now 
avail us nothing ; for that light which once light- 
ened them, is now absorbed in the brighter illumi- 
nation of the gospel : we can now form no rational 
system of deism but what must be borrowed from 
that source ; and as far as it reaches towards 
perfection, must be exactly the same ; and there- 
fore, if we will not accept of Christianity, we have 
no religion at all. Accordingly we see that those 
who fly from this, scarce ever stop at deism, but 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON. 53 

hasten on with alacrity to a total rejection of all 
religious and moral principles whatever. 

If I have here demonstrated the divine origin of 
the Christian religion by an argument which can- 
not be confuted, no others, however plausible or 
numerous, founded on probabilities, doubts, and 
conjectures, can ever disprove it ; because if it is 
once shown to be true, it cannot be false. But as 
many arguments of this kind have bewildered 
some candid and ingenuous minds, I shall here 
bestow a few lines on those which have the most 
weight, in order to wipe out, or at least to diminish 
their perplexing influence. 

But here I must previously observe, that the 
most insurmountable as well as the most usual 
obstacle to our belief, arises from our passions, 
appetites, and interests ; for faith being an act of 
the will as much as of the understanding, we 
oftener disbelieve for want of inclination than want 
of evidence. The first step towards thinking this 
revelation true, is our hope that it is so ; for when- 
ever we much wish any proposition to be true, we 
are not far from believing it. It is certainly for the 
interest of all good men that its authority should 
be well founded, and still more beneficial to the 
bad, if ever they intend to be better, because it is 
the only system, either of reason or religion, which 



54 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

can give tliem any assurance of pardon. The pun- 
ishment of vice is a debt due to justice, which can- 
not be remitted without compensation. Repent- 
ance can be no compensation ; it may change a 
wicked man's disposition, and prevent his offending 
for the future, but can lay no claim to pardon for 
what is past. If any one, by profligacy and extrav- 
agance, contracts a debt, repentance may make him 
wiser, and hinder him from running into farther 
distresses, but can never pay oS" his old bonds, for 
which he must be ever accountable, unless they 
are discharged by himself or some other in his stead. 
This very discharge Ctmstianity alone holds forth on 
our repentance, and if true, will certainly perform ; 
the truth of it, therefore, must ardently be wished 
for by all except the wicked, who are determined 
neither to repent nor reform. It is well worth ev- 
ery man's while who either is or intends to be vir- 
tuous, to believe Christianity if he can, because he 
will find it the surest preservative against all vicious 
habits and their attendant evils ; the best resource 
under distresses and disappointments, ill-health and 
ill-fortune, and the firmest basis on which contem- 
plation can rest ; and without some, the human 
mind is never perfectly at ease. But if any one is . 
attached to a favorite pleasure, or eagerly engaged 
in worldly pursuits incompatible with the precepts 
of this religion, and he believes it, he must either 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 55 

relinquish those pursuits with uneasiness, or per- 
sist in them with remorse and dissatisfaction, and 
therefore must commence unbeliever in his own 
defence. With such I shall not dispute, nor pre- 
tend to persuade men by arguments to make them- 
selves miserable ; but to those who, not afraid 
that this religion may be true, are really affected by 
such objections, I will offer the following answers, 
which, though short, will, I doubt not, be sufficient 
to show their weakness and futility. 

In the first place, then, some have been so bold 
as to strike at the root of all revelation from God, 
by assertmg that it is incredible heca,use unnecessary, 
and unnecessary because the reason which he has 
bestowed on mankind is sufficiently able to discover 
all the religions and moj-al duties which he requires 
of them, if they would but attend to her precepts, 
and be guided by her friendly admonitions. Man- 
kind have undoubtedly, at various times, from the 
remotest ages, received so much knowledge by 
divine communications, and have ever been so 
much inclined to impute it all to their own suffi- 
ciency, that it is now difficult to determine what 
human reason, unassisted, can effect. But to form 
a true judgment on this subject, let us turn our 
eyes to those remote regions of the globe to which 
this supernatural assistance has never yet extend- 
ed, and we shall there see men endued with 



56 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

sense and reason not inferior to our own, so far 
from being capable of forming systems of religion 
and morality, that they are at this day totally un- 
able to make a nail or a hatchet ; fi'om whence we 
may surely be convinced that reason alone is so 
far from being sufficient to offer to mankind a per- 
fect religion, that it has never yet been able to 
lead them to any degree of culture or civilization 
whatever. These have uniformlj^ flowed from that 
great fountain of divine communication opened in 
the Ea^t in the earliest ages, and thence been 
gradually diff'used in salubrious streams through- 
out the various regions of the earth. Their rise 
and progress, by surveying the history of the 
world, may easily be traced backwards to their 
source ; and wherever thesd have not as yet 
been able to penetrate, we there find the human 
species not only void of all true religious and moral 
sentiments, but not the least emerged from their 
original ignorance and barbarity ; which seems a 
demonstration, that although human reason is ca- 
pable of progression in science, yet the first founda- 
tions must be laid by supernatural instructions ; 
for surely no other probable cause can be assigned 
why any one part of mankind should have made 
such an amazing progress in religious, moral, met- 
aphysical, and philosophical inquiries — such won- 
derful improvements in policy, legislation, com- 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 57 

merce, and manufactures ; while the other part, 
formed with the same natural capacities, and divid- 
ed only by seas and mountains, should remain, 
during the same number of ages, in a state little 
superior to brutes, without government, without 
laws or letters, and even without clothes and hab- 
itations ; murdering each other to satiate their re- 
venge, and devouring each other to appease their 
hunger. I say, no cause can be assigned for this 
amazing difference, except that the first have re- 
ceived information from those divine communica- 
tions recorded in the Scriptures, and the latter 
have never yet been favored with such assistance. 
This remarkable contrast seems an unanswerable, 
though perhaps a new proof of the necessity of 
revelation, and a solid refutation of all arguments 
against it, drawn from the sufficiency of human 
reason. And as reason in her natural state is thus 
incapable of making any progress in knowledge, so 
when furnished with materials by supernatural 
aid, if left to the guidance of her own wild imagi- 
nations, she falls into more numerous and more 
gross errors than her own native ignorance could 
ever have suggested. There is then no absurdity 
so extravagant which she is. not ready to adopt : 
she has persuaded some that there is no God ; 
others, that there can be no future state : she has 
taught some that there is no difference between 



58 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

vice and virtue, and that to eut a mail's throat, 
and to relieve his necessities, are actions equally 
meritorious: she has convinced many that they 
have no free will, in opposition to their own expe- 
rience ; some, that there can be no such thing as 
soul or spirit, contrary to their own perceptions ; 
and others, no such thing as matter or body, in 
contradiction to their senses. By analyzing all 
things, she can show that there is nothing in any 
thing ; by perpetual sifting, she can reduce all ex- 
istence to the invisible dust of scepticism ; and, by 
recurring to first principles, prove to the satisfac- 
tion of her followers that there are no principles at 
all. How far such a guide is to be depended on 
in the important concerns of religion and morals, I 
leave to the judgment of every considerate man to 
determine. Tliis is certain, that human reason, in 
its highest state of cultivation among the philoso- 
phers of Greece and Rome, was never al)le to form 
a religion comparable to Christianity ; nor have all 
those sources of moral virtue, such as truth, beauty, 
and the fitness of things, which modern philoso- 
phers have endeavored to substitute in its stead, 
ever been effectual to produce good men ; and 
have themselves often been the productions of 
some of the worst. 

Others there are^ who allow that a revelation 
from God may be both necessary and credible, but 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON. 59 

allege that the Scriptures, that is, the books of tlic 
Old and Xew TestanEieiit, cannot be that revela- 
tion, because in them are to be found errors and 
inconsistencies, fabulous stories, false facts, and false . 
philosophy, wliicli can never be derived from the 
fountain of all wisdom and truth. To this I repl}^, 
that the Scriptures are the history of a revelation 
from God : the revelation itself is derived from 
God.; the history of it is the production of men, 
and therefore the truth of it is not in the least 
affected by their fallibility, but depends on the 
internal evidence of its own supernatural excel- 
lence. If, in these books, such a religion as- has 
been here described actually exists, no seeming, 
or even real defects found in them can disprove 
the divine origin of this religion, or invalidate my 
argument. Let us, for instance, grant that the 
Mosaic history of the creation was founded on the 
erroneous but popular principles of those early 
ages, who imagined the earth to be a vast plain, 
and the celestial bodies no more than luminaries 
hung up in the concave firmament to enlighten it ; 
will it from thence follow, that Moses could not be 
a proper instrument, in the hands of Providence, to 
impart to the Jews a divine law, because he was 
not inspired with a foreknowledge of the Coperni- 
can and Newtonian systems ? or that Christ must 
be an impostor, because Moses was not an astrono- 



60 INTERKAL EVIDENCE OF 

mer? Let us also suppose that the accounts of 
Christ's temptation in the wilderness, the devil's 
taking refuge in the herd of swine, with several 
other narrations in the New Testament, frequently 
ridiculed by unbehevers, were all but stories ac- 
commodated to the ignorance and superstitions of 
the times and countries in which they were writ- 
ten, would this impeach the excellence of the 
Christian rehgion, or the authority of its founder ? 
The sacred writers were undoubtedly directed by 
supernatural influence in all things necessary to 
the great work which they were appointed to per- 
form. At particular times, and on particular occa- 
sions, they were enabled to utter prophecies, to 
speak languages, and to work miracles ; but in the 
science of history, geography, astronomy, and phi- 
losophy, they appear to have been no better instruct- 
ed than others. They related facts like honest 
men ; they recorded the divine lessons of their 
Master with the utmost fidelity ; and ajDparent 
discrepancies prove only that they did not act or 
write in a combination to deceive, but do not in 
the least impeach the truth of the revelation which 
they published, which depends not on any exter- 
nal evidence whatever. For I will venture to 
affirm, that if any one could prove, what is impos- 
sible to be proved, because it is not true, that 
there are errors in geography, chronology, and phi- 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIG-ION. 61 

losophy, in every page of the Bible ; that the proph- 
ecies therein deUvered are all but fortunate guesses, 
or artful applications, and the miracles there record- 
ed no better than legendary tales ; if one could 
show that these books were never written by their 
pretended authors, but were posterior impositions 
on illiterate and credulous ages — all these wonder- 
ful discoveries would prove no more than this, 
that God, for reasons to us unknown, had thought 
proper to permit a revelation, by him communi- 
cated to mankind, to be mixed with their igno- 
rance, and corrupted by their frauds from its ear- 
liest infancy, in the same manner in which he has 
visibly permitted it to be mixed and con-upted from 
that period to the present hour. If in these books 
a religion superior to all human imagination actu- 
ally exists, it is of no consequence to the proof of 
its divine origin, by what means it was there intro- 
duced, or with what human errors and imperfec- 
tions it is blended. A diamond, though found in 
a bed of mud, is still a diamond ; nor can the dirt 
which surrounds it depreciate its value or destroy 
its lustre. 

To some speculative and refined observers, it has 
appeared incredible that a wise and benevolent 
Creator should have constituted a world upon one 
flan, and a religion for it on another ; that is, that he 
should have revealed a religion to mankijid which 



62 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

not only contradicts tUe principal passions and in- 
clinations which he has implanted in their natures, 
but is incompatible with the whole economy of 
that world which he has created, and in which he 
has thought proper to place them. "This," say 
they, "with regard to Christianity, is apparently 
the case : the love of power, riches, honor, and 
fame, are the great incitements to generous and 
magnanimous actions ; yet by this institution are 
all these depreciated and discouraged. Govern- 
ment is essential to the nature of man, and can- 
not be managed without certain degrees of vio- 
lence, corruption, and imposition ; yet are all these 
strictly forbid. Nations cannot subsist without 
wars, nor war be carried on without rapine, deso- 
lation, and murder ; yet are these prohibited under 
the severest threats. The non-resistance of evil 
must subject individuals to continual oppression, 
and leave nations a defenceless prey to their ene- 
mies ; yet is this recommended. Perpetual pa- 
tience under insults and injuries must every day 
provoke new insults and new injuries ; yet is this 
enjoined. A neglect of all we eat and drink and 
wear, must put an end to all commerce, manufac- 
tures, and industry ; yet is this required. In short, 
were these precepts universally obeyed, the dispo- 
sition of all human affairs must be entirely chang- 
ed, and the business of the world, constituted as 



THE CHRIgTIAN RELIG-ION. 63 

it now iSj could not go on," To all this I answer, 
that such indeed is. the Ohristian revelation, though 
some of its advocates may perhaps be unwilling to 
own it, and such it is constantly declared to be by 
Him who gave it, as well as by those who publish- 
ed it under his immediate direction : to these he 
says, "If 3^e were of the world, the world would 
love his own ; but because ye are not of the world, 
but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore 
the world hateth you." John 15 : 19. To the Jews 
lie declares, " Ye are of this world; I am not of this 
world." John 8 : 23. St. Paul writes to the Romans, 
"Be not conformed to this world," Rom. 12:2; 
and to the Corinthians, "We speak not the wis- 
dom of this world." Cor. 2 : 6. St. James says, 
" Know ye not that the friendship of the world is 
enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a 
friend of the world is the enemy of God." James 
4:4. This irreconcilable disagreement between 
Christianity and the world is announced in num- 
berless other places in the New Testament, and 
indeed by the whole tenor of those writings. These 
are plain declarations, which in spite of all the 
evasions of those good managers, who choose to 
take a little of this world in their way to heaven, 
stand fixed and immovable against all their argu- 
ments drawn from public benefit and pretended 
necessity, and must ever forbid any reconciliation 



64 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

between the pursuits of this world and the Chris- 
tian institution : but they who reject it on this 
account, enter not into the subhme spirit of this 
rehgion, which is not a code of precise laws de- 
signed for the well ordering of society, adapted 
to the ends of worldly convenience, and amenable 
to the tribunal of human prudence ; but a divine 
lesson of purity and perfection, so far superior to 
the low considerations of conquest, government, 
and commerce, that it takes no more notice of 
them than of the battles of game-cocks, the poUcy 
of bees, or the industry of ants. They recollect 
not what is the first and principal object of this 
institution ; that it is not, as has been often repeat- 
ed, to make us happy, or even virtuous in the 
present life, for the sake of augmenting our happi- 
ness here, but to conduct us through a state of 
dangers and sufferings, of sin and temptation, in 
such a manner as to qualify us for the enjoyment 
of happiness hereafter. All other institutions of 
religion and morals were made for the world, but 
the characteristic of this is to be against it ; and 
therefore the merits of Christian doctrines are not 
to be weighed in the scales of public utility, like 
those of moral precepts, because worldly utiUty is 
not their end. If Christ and his apostles had pre- 
tended that the religion which they preached would 
advance the power, wealth, and prosperity of na- 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON. 65 

tions, or of men, they would have deserved but 
httlc credit ; but they constantly profess the con- 
trary, and cver3^where declare, that their rehgion 
is adverse to the world and all its pursuits. Christ 
says, speaking of his disciples, "They are not of 
the world, even as I am not of the world." John 
It : 16. It can therefore be no imputation on this 
religion, or on any of its precepts, that they tend 
not to an end which their author professedly dis- 
claims : nor can it surely be deemed a defect, that 
it is adverse to the vain pursuits of this world ; 
for so are reason, wisdom, and experience ; they 
all teach us the same lesson, they all demonstrate 
to us every day, that these are begun on false 
hopes, carried on with disquietude, and end in dis- 
appointment. This professed incompatibility with 
the little, wretched, and iniquitous business of the 
world, is therefore so far from being a defect in 
this religion, that, was there no other proof of its 
divine origin, this alone, I think, would be abun- 
dantly sufficient. The great plan and benevolent 
design of this dispensation is plainly this : to en- 
lighten the minds, purify the religion, and amend 
the morals of mankind in general, and to select 
those of them who believe in its divine Author 
and obey his commands, to be successively trans- 
planted into the kingdom of heaven ; which gra- 
cious offer is impartially tendered to all who, by 

Infidelity. 5 



66 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

faith in him, perseverance in meekness, patience, 
piety, charit}^, and a detachment from the world, 
are wilUng to quahfy themselves for this holy and 
happy society. Was this universally accepted, and 
did every man observe strictly every precept of 
the gospel, the face of human affairs and the econ- 
omy of the world would indeed be greatly chang- 
ed ; but surely they would be changed for the 
better, and we should enjoy much more happi- 
ness, even here, than at present ; for we must not 
forget, that evils are by it forbid, as well as resist- 
ance ; injuries, as well as revenge ; all unwilling- 
ness to diffuse the enjoyments of life, as well as 
solicitude to acquire them ; all obstacles to ambi- 
tion, as well as ambition itself; and therefore all 
contentions for power and interest would be at an 
end, and the world would go on much more hap- 
pily than it now does. But this universal accept- 
ance of such an offer was not expected from so 
depraved and imperfect a creature as man : It was 
foreknown and foretold by Him who made it, that 
few, very few, would accept it on these terms. 
He says, "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the 
way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that 
find it." Matt. *7 : 14. Accordingly, we see that 
very few are prevailed on by the hope of future 
happiness to relinquish the pursuit of present pleas-- 
ures or interests ; and therefore these pursuits are 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON. 67 

littlo interrupted by the secession of so inconsid- 
erable a number. As the natural world subsists 
by the struggles of the same elements, so does 
the moral by the contentions of the same passions, 
as from the beginning. The generality of mankind 
are actuated by the same motives ; fight, scuffle, 
and scramble for power, riches, and pleasures with 
the same eagerness ; all occupations and profes- 
sions are exercised with the same alacrity ; and 
there are soldiers, lawyers, statesmen, patriots, 
and politicians, just as if Christianity had never 
existed. Thus, we see this wonderful dispensa- 
tion has answered all the purposes for which it was 
intended : it has enlightened the minds, purified 
the religion, and amended the morals of mankind ; 
and without subverting the constitution, policy, or 
business of the world, opened a gate, though a 
strait one, through which all who are wise enough 
to choose it, and are fitted for it, may find an en- 
trance into the kingdom of heaven. 

Others have said, that if this revelation had 
really been from God, his infinite power and good- 
ness could never have suffered it to have been so 
soon perverted from its original purify, to have con- 
tinued in a state of corruption through the course 
of so many ages, and at last to have proved so 
ineffectual tolhe reformation of mankind. To these 
I answer, that all this, on examination, must be 



68 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

expected to result from the nature of all revela- 
tions communicated to so imperfect a creature as 
man, and from circumstances peculiar to the rise 
and progress of the Christian in particular ; for 
when this was first preached to the gentile nations, 
though they were not able to withstand the force 
of its evidence, and therefore received it, yet they 
could not be prevailed on to relinquish their old 
superstitions and former opinions, but chose rath- 
er to incorporate them with it ; by which means 
it was necessarily mixed with their ignorance and 
their learning, by both which it was equally injur- 
ed. The people defaced its worship by blending it 
with their idolatrous ceremonies, and the philoso- 
phers corrupted its doctrines by weaving them up 
with the notions of the Gnostics, Mystics, and 
Manichaeans, the prevailing systems of those times. 
By degrees its irresistible excellence gained over 
princes, potentates, and conquerors, to its inter- 
ests, and it was supported by theu* patronage, but 
that patronage soon engaged it in their policies 
and contests, and destroyed that excellence by 
which it had been acquired. At length the meek 
and humble professors of the gospel enslaved these 
princes and conquered these conquerors, their pat- 
rons, and erected for themselves [in the Papal 
church] such a stupendous fabric of wealth and 
power as the world had never seen. They then 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON. 69 

propagated their religion by the same methods by 
which it had been persecuted ; nations were con- 
verted by fire and sword, and the vanquished were 
baptized with daggers at their throats. All these 
CA^cnts we see proceed from a chain of causes and 
consequences, which could not have been broken 
without changing the established course of things 
by a constant series of miracles, or a total alter- 
ation of human nature. While that continues as 
it is, the purest religion must be corrupted by a 
conjunction with power and riches ; and it will also 
then appear to be much more corrupted than it 
really is, because many are inclined to think that 
every deviation from its primitive state is a cor- 
ruption. Christianity was at first preached by the 
poor and mean, in holes and caverns, under the 
iron rod of persecution ; and therefore many ab- 
surdly conclude that any degree of wealth or pow- 
er in its ministers, or of magnificence in its wor- 
ship, are corruptions inconsistent with the genuine 
simplicity of its original state : they are offended 
that modern bishops should possess titles, palaces, 
revenues, and coaches, when it is notorious that 
their predecessors, the apostles, were despised 
wanderers, without houses or money, and walked 
on foot. The apostles indeed lived in a state of 
poverty and persecution attendant on their partic- 
ular situation, and the work which they had un- 



70 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

dertaken ; but this was no part of their religion, 
and it can be no more incumbent on their successors 
to imitate their poverty and meanness, than to be 
whipped, imprisoned, and put to death, in comph- 
ance with their example. These are all but the 
suggestions of envy and malevolence, but no ob- 
jections to these favorable alterations in Christi- 
anity and its professors, which, if not abused to 
the purposes of tyranny and superstition, are in 
fact no more than the necessary and proper effects 
of its more prosperous situation. When a poor 
man grows rich, or a servant becomes a master, 
they should take care that their exaltation prompts 
them not to be unjust or insolent ; but surely it is 
not requisite or right that their behavior and mode 
of living should be exactly the same when their 
situation is altered. How far this institution has 
been effectual to the reformation of mankind, it is 
not easy now to ascertain, because the enormities 
which prevailed before the appearance of it are by 
time so far removed from our sight that they are 
scarcely visible ; but those .of the most gigantic 
size still remain in the records of history as monu- 
ments of the rest. Wars in those ages were car- 
ried on with the ferocity and cruelty unknown to 
the present : whole cities and nations were extir- 
pated by fire and sword, and thousands of the 
vanquished were crucified and impaled for having 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON 71 

endeavored only to defend themselves and their 
country. The lives of new-born infants were then 
entirely at the disposal of their parents, who were 
at liberty to bring them up, or expose them to per- 
ish by cold and hunger, or to be devoured by birds 
and beasts ; and this was frequently' practised with- 
out punishment, and even without censure. Glad- 
iators were employed by hundreds to cut one an- 
other to pieces in public theatres for the diversion 
of the most polite assemblies ; and though these 
combatants at first consisted of criminals only, by 
degrees men of the highest rank, and even ladies 
of the most illustrious famihes, enrolled themselves 
in this honorable list. On many occasions human 
sacrifices were ordained; and at the funerals of 
rich and eminent persons great numbers of the 
slaves were murdered as victims pleasing to their 
departed spirits. The most infamous obscenities 
were made part of their religious worship, and the 
most unnatural lusts publicly avowed and celebrat- 
ed by their most admired poets. At the approach 
of Christianity all these horrid abominations van- 
ished ; and among those who first embraced it, 
scarce a single vice was to be found. To such an 
amazing degree of piety, charity, temperance, pa- 
tience, and resignation were the primitive converts 
exalted, that they seem literally to have been re- 
generated, and purified from all the imperfections 



72 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

of human nature ; and to have pursued such a 
constant and uniform course of devotion, innocence, 
and virtne, as in the present times it is almost as 
difficult for us to conceive as to imitate. If it is 
asked, why should not the belief of the same relig- 
ion now produce the same effects ? the answer is 
short, because to so great an extent it is not be- 
lieved. The most sovereign medicine can perform 
no cure, if the patient will not be persuaded to 
take it. Yet, notwithstanding all impediments, it 
has certainly done a great deal towards diminish- 
ing the vices and correcting the dispositions of man- 
kind ; and was it universally adopted in belief and 
practice, would totally eradicate both sin and pun- 
ishment. 

Objections have likewise been raised' to the 
divine authority qf .this religion from the incredi- 
lility of sonm of its doctrines, particularly of those 
concerning the Trinity, and atonement for sin by 
the sufferings and death of Christ ; the one con-, 
tradicting all the principles of human reason, and 
the other all our ideas of divine justice. To these 
objections I shall only say, that no arguments, 
founded on principles which we cannot compre- 
hend, can possibly disprove a proposition already 
proved on principles which we do understand ; and 
therefore, that on this subject they ought not to 
1)0 attended to. That three being's should be one 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON. 73 

being, is a proposition which apparently contra- 
dicts reason, that is, our reason ; but it does not 
from thence follow that it cannot be true, for there 
are many propositions wliich are above our reason, 
and yet are demonstrably true. One is the very 
first principle of all religion, the being of a God ; 
for that any thing should exist without a cause, 
or that any thing should be the cause of its own 
existence, are propositions equally contradictory to 
our reason ; yet one of them must be true, or 
nothing could ever have existed. In like manner 
the overruling grace of the Creator, and the free- 
will of his creatures, his certain foreknowledge of 
future events, and the uncertain contingency of 
those events, are to our apprehensions absolute 
contradictions to each other ; and yet the truth of 
every one of these is demonstrable from Scripture, 
reason, and experience. All these difficulties arise 
from our imagining that the mode of existence of 
all beings must be similar to our own ; that is, 
that they -must all exist in time and space ; and 
hence proceeds our embarrassment on this subject. 
We know that no two beings, with whose mode 
of existence we are acquainted, can exist in the 
same point of time, in the same point of space, and 
that therefore they cannot be one ; but how far 
beings whose mode of existence bears no relation 
to time or space may ])e united, we cannot com- 



74 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

prehend ; and therefore the possibihty of such a 
union we cannot positively deny. In Hke manner, 
our reason informs us that the punishment of the 
innocent, instead of the guilty, is diametrically 
opposite to justice, rectitude, and all pretensions 
to utility ; but we should also remember, that the 
short line of our reason cannot reach to the bottom 
of this question ; it cannot inform us by what 
means either guilt or punishment ever gained a 
place in the works of a Creator infinitely good and 
powerful, whose goodness must have induced him, 
and whose power must have enabled him to ex- 
clude them. It cannot assure us, that some suf- 
ferings of individuals are not necessary to the hap- 
piness and well-being of the whole. It cannot 
convince us, that they do not actually arise from 
this necessity, or that for this cause they may not 
be required of us, or that they may not be borne 
by one being for another ; and therefore, if volun- 
tarily offered, be justly accepted from the innocent 
instead of the guilty. Of all these circumstances 
we are totally ignorant ; nor can our reason afford 
us any information, and therefore we are not able 
to assert that this measure is contrary to justice, 
or void of utility. For unless we could first re- 
solve that great question, -ivhence came evil ? we can 
decide nothing on the dispensations of Providence, 
])ecause they must necessarily be connected with 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIG-ION. 75 

that undiscoverable principle ; and as we know 
not the root of the disease, we cannot judge of 
what is, or is not, a proper and effectual remedy. 
It is remarkable, that notwithstanding all the seem- 
ing absurdities of this doctrine, there is one circum- 
stance much in its favor ; which is, that it has 
been universally adopted in all ages, as far as his- 
tory can carry us back in our inquiries to the earli- 
est times ; in which we find all nations, civilized 
and barbarous, however differing in all other relig- 
ious opinions, agreeing alone in the expediency of 
appeasing theu' offended deities by sacrifices, that 
is, by the vicarious sufferings of men or other 
animals. These notions could never have been 
derived from reason, because it directly contradicts 
it ; nor from ignorance, because ignorance could 
never have contrived so unaccountable an expedi- 
ent, nor have been uniform in all ages and coun- 
tries in any opinion whatsoever ; nor from the arti- 
fice of kings or priests, in order to acquire domin- 
ion over the people, because it seenis not adapted 
to this end ; and we find it implanted in the minds 
of the most remote savages at this do^j discovered, 
who have neither kings nor priests, artifice nor 
dominion among them. It must therefore be de- 
rived from natural instinct or supernatural revela- 
tion, both which are equally the operations of di- 
vine power. 



76 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

It may be further urged, that however true 
these doctrines may be, yet it must be inconsist- 
ent with the justice and goodness of the Creator 
to require from his creatures the behef of propo- 
sitions which contradict, or are above the reach of 
that reason which he has thought proper to be- 
stow upon them. To this I answer, that genuine 
Christianity requires no such behef. It has discov- 
ered to us many important trutlis, with which we 
were before entirely unacquainted ; and among 
them are these, that three beings are some way 
united in the divine essence, and that God will 
accept of the sufferings of Christ as an atonement 
for the sins of mankind. These, considered as dec- 
larations of facts only, neither contradict, nor are 
above the reach of human reason. The first is a 
proposition as plain as that three equilateral hues 
compose one triangle ; the other is as intehigible 
as that one man should discharge the debts of an- 
other. In what manner this union is formed, or 
why God accepts these vicarious sufferings, or to 
what purposes they may be subservient, it informs 
us not, because no information could enable us to 
comprehend these mysteries ; and therefore it does 
not require that we should know or receive them. 
The truth of these doctrines must rest entirely on 
tlie authority of those who taught them ; but then 
we should reflect, tliat those were the same per- 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON. 77 

sons who taught us a system of religion more 
sublime, and of ethics more perfect, than any 
which our faculties were ever able to discover, but 
which, when discovered, are exactly consonant to 
our reason ; and that therefore we should not 
hastily reject those informations which they have 
vouchsafed to give us, of which our reason is not 
a competent judge. If an able mathematician 
proves to us the truth of several propositions, by 
demonstrations which we understand, we hesitate 
not on his authority to assent to others, the pro- 
cess 0^ whose proofs we are not able to follow ; 
why therefore should we refuse that credit to 
Christ and his apostles which we tliink reasonable 
to give to one another ? 

Many have objected to the whole scheme of this 
revelation as partial, fluctuating, indeterminate, un- 
just, and unworthy an omniscient and omnipotent 
Author, who cannot be supposed to have favored 
particular persons, countries, and times with this 
divine communication, while others, no less meri- 
torious, have been altogether excluded from its ben- 
efits ; nor to have changed and counteracted his 
own designs ; that is, to have formed mankind 
able and disposed to render themselves miserable 
by their own wickedness, and then to have con- 
trived so strange an expedient to restore them to 
that happiness which they need never have been 



78 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

permitted to forfeit, and this to be brought about 
by the unnecessary interposition of a mediator. 
To all this I shall only say, that however unac- 
countable tills may appear to us, who see but as 
small a part of the Christian as of the universal 
plan of creation, they are both, in regard to all 
these cu'cumstances, exactly analogous to each 
other. In all the dispensations of Providence with 
which we are acquainted, benefits are distributed 
in a similar manner ; health and strength, sense 
and science, wealth and power, are all bestowed 
on individuals and communities in different degrees 
and at different times. The whole economy of this 
world consists of evils and remedies ; and these, 
for the most part, administered by the instrumen- 
tahty of intermediate agents. God has permitted 
us to plunge ourselves into poverty, distress, and 
misery, by our own vices, and has afforded us the 
advice, instructions, and examples of others, to 
deter or extricate us from these calamities. He 
has formed us subject to innumerable diseases, and 
he has bestowed on us a variety of remedies. He 
has ntade us liable to hunger, thirst, and naked- 
ness, and he supplies us with food, drink, and 
clothing, usually by the administration of others. 
He has created poisons, and he has provided anti- 
dotes. He has ordained the winter's cold to cure 
the pestilential heats of the summer, and the sum- 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON. 79 

mer's sunshine to dry up the inundations of the 
winter. Why the constitution of nature is so 
formed, why all the visible dispensations of Prov- 
idence are such, and why such is the Christian dis- 
pensation also, we know not, nor have faculties to 
comprehend, God might certainly have made the 
material world a system of perfect beauty and reg- 
ularity, without evils and without remedies ; and 
the Christian dispensation a scheme only of moral 
virtue, productive of happiness, without the inter- 
vention of any atonement or mediation. He might 
have exempted our bodies from all diseases, and 
our minds from all depravity ; and we should tlien 
have stood in no need of medicines to restore us to 
health, or expedients to reconcile us to his favor. 
It seems, indeed, to our ignorance, that this would 
have been more consistent with justice and rea- 
son ; but his infinite wisdom has decided in anoth- 
er manner, and formed the systems, both of nature 
and Christianity, on other principles, and these so 
exactly similar, that we have cause to conclude 
that they both must proceed from the same source 
of divine power and wisdom, however inconsistent 
with our reason they may appear. Reason is un- 
doubtedly our surest guide in all matters which 
lie within the narrow circle of her intelligence. On 
the subject of revelation, her province is only to 
examine into its authority ; and when that is once 



80 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

proved, she has no more to do but to acquiesce in 
its doctrines ; and therefore is never so ill-employed 
as when she pretends to accommodate them to her 
own ideas of rectitude and truth. ''God," says 
this self-sufficient teacher, ''is perfectly wise, just, 
and good;" and what is the inference? "That 
all his dispensations must be conformable to our 
notions of perfect wisdom, just-ice, and goodness." 
But it should first be proved that man is as perfect 
and as wise as his Creator, or thi^ consequence 
will by no means follow, but rather the reverse ; 
that is, that the dispensations of a perfect and all- 
wise Being must probably appear unreasonable, 
and perhaps unjust, to a being imperfect and igno- 
rant ; and therefore their seeming impossibility 
may be a mark of their truth, and in some measure 
justifj^ that pious rant of a mad enthusiast, "Credo^ 
quia impossibile "^ — I believe it, because it is impos- 
sible. Nor is it the least surprising that we are 
not able to imderstand the spiritual dispensations 
of the Almighty, when his material works are to 
us no less incomprehensible. Our reason can af- 
ford us no insight into those great properties of 
matter, gravitation, attraction, elasticity, and elec- 
tricity, nor even into the essence of matter itself. 
Can reason teach us how the sun's luminous orb 
can fill a circle, whose diameter contains many mill- 
ions of miles, with a constant inundation of sue- 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON 81 

cessive rays during thousands of years, without 
any perceptible diminution of that body from 
whence they are continually poured, or any aug- 
mentation of those bodies on which they fall, and 
by which they are constantly absorbed ? Can rea- 
son tell us how those rays, darted with a velocity 
greater than that of a cannon-ball, can strike the 
tenderest organs of the human frame without in- 
flicting any degree of pain, or by what means this 
percussion only can convey the forms of distant 
objects to an immaterial mind ? or how any union 
can be formed between material and immaterial 
essences? or how the wounds of the body can 
give pain to the soul? or the anxiety of the soul 
can emaciate and destroy the body ? That all these 
things are so, we have visible and indisputable 
demonstration ; but how they can be so is to us as 
incomprehensible as the most abstruse mysteries 
of revelation can possibly be. In short, we see so 
small a part of the great whole ; we know so little 
of the relation which the present life bears to pre- 
existent and future states ; we conceive so little of 
the nature of God and his attributes, or mode of 
existence ; we can comprehend so little of the ma- 
terial, and so much less of the moral plan on which 
the universe is constituted, or on what principle it 
proceeds, that if a revelation from such a being, on 
such subjects, was in every part familiar to our 



82 INTEENAL EVIDENCE OF 

understandings, and consonant to our reason, we 
should have great cause to suspect its divine au- 
thority ; and therefore, had this revelation been 
less incomprehensible, it would certainly have been 
more incredible. 

But I shall not enter farther into the considera- 
tion of these abstruse and difficult speculations, 
because the discussion of them would render this 
short essay too tedious and laborious a task for the 
perusal of them for whom it was principally in- 
tended ; which are all those busy or idle persons 
whose time and thoughts are wholly engrossed by 
the pursuits of business or pleasure, ambition or 
luxury ; who know nothing of this religion except 
what they have accidentally picked up by desul- 
tory conversation or superficial reading, and have 
thence determined with themselves that a pretend- 
ed revelation, founded on so strange and improba- 
ble a story, so contradictory to reason, so adverse 
to the world and all its occupations, so incredible 
in its doctrines, and in its precepts so impractica- 
ble, can be nothing more than the imposition of 
priestcraft upon ignorant and ilhterate ages, and 
artfully continued as an engine well adapted to 
awe and govern the superstitious vulgar. To talk 
to such about the Christian religion, is to converse 
with the deaf concerning music, or with the bhnd 
on the beauties of painting. They want all ideas 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON. 83 

relative to the subject, and therefore can never be 
made to comprehend it. To enable them to do 
this, their minds must be formed for these concep- 
tions by contemplation, retirement, and abstraction 
from business and dissipation ; by ill health, disap- 
pointm'ents, and distresses, and possibly b}^ divine 
interposition, or by enthusiasm, which is usually 
mistaken for it. Without some of these prepara- 
tory aids, together with a competent degree of 
learning and apphcation, it is impossible that they 
can think or know, understand or believe any thing 
about it. If they profess to believe, they deceive 
others ; if they fancy that they believe, they de- 
ceive themselves. I am ready to acknowledge 
that these gentlemen, though endued with good 
understandings, which have been entirely devoted 
to the business or amusements of the world, must 
be expected to pass no other judgment, and to re- 
volt from the history and doctrines of this religion. 
"The preaching Christ crucified was to the Jews a 
stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness," 
1 Cor. 1 : 23 ; and so it must appear to all who, 
like them, judge from established prejudices, false 
learning, and superficial knowledge ; for those who 
fail to follow the chain of its prophecy, to see the 
beauty and justness of its moral precepts, and to 
enter into the wonders of its dispensations, will 
probably form no other idea of this revelation but 



84 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

that of a confused rhapsody of fictions and absurd- 
ities. 

If it is asked, was Christianity then intended 
only for learned divines and profound philosophers ? 
I answer, No. It was at first preached by the illiter- 
ate, and received by the ignorant ; and to such are 
the practical, which are the most necessary parts 
of it, sufficiently intelligible ; but many proofs of 
its authority are drawn from other parts, of a spec- 
ulative nature, opening to our inquiries inexhaust- 
ible discoveries concerning the nature, attributes,' 
and disj^ensations of God, which cannot be under- 
stood without some learning, and much attention. 
From these the generality of mankind must neces- 
sarily be excluded ; and must therefore, in respect 
to them, trust to others for the grounds of their 
behef. And hence, perhaps, it is, that faith, or 
easiness of belief, is so frequently and so strongly 
recommended in the gospel ; because, if men re- 
quire proofs of which they themselves are incapa- 
ble, and those who have no knowledge on this im- 
portant subject will not place some confidence in 
those who have, the illiterate and inattentive must 
ever continue in. a state of unbelief. But then all 
such should remember, that in all sciences, even 
in the mathematics themselves, there are many 
propositions which, on a cursory view, appear to 
the most acute understandings, uninstructed in 



THE CHRISTIAN RELiaiON. 85 

that science, to be impossible to be true, which 
yet, on a closer examination, are found to be truths 
capable of the strictest demonstration ; and that, 
therefore, in disquisitions on which we cannot de- 
termine without much learned investigation, rea- 
son, uninformed, is by no means to be depended 
on : and from hence they ought surely to conclude 
that it may be at least as possible for them to be 
mistaken in disbeUeving this revelation, who know 
nothing of the matter, as for those great masters 
of reason and erudition, Grotius, Bacon, Newton, 
Boyle, Locke, Addison, and Lyttelton, to be de- 
ceived in their belief — a belief to which they firmly 
adhered after the most diligent and learned re- 
searches into the authenticity of its records, the 
completion of the prophecies, the sublimity of its 
doctrines, the purity of its" precepts, and the argu- 
ments of its adversaries — a belief which they have 
testified to the world by their writings, without 
any other motive than their regard for truth, and 
the benefit of mankind. Should the few foregoing 
pages add but one mite to the treasures with which 
these learned writers have enriched the world ; if 
they should be so fortunate as to persuade any of 
these minute philosophers to place some confidence 
in these great opinions, and to distrust their own ; 
if they should convince them, that notwithstand- 
ing all unfavorable appearances, Christianity may 



86 INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF 

not be altogether artifice and error ; if they should 
prevail on them to examine it with some attention, 
or if that is too much trouble, not to reject it with- 
out any examination at all, the purpose of this lit- 
tle work will be sufficiently answered. Had the 
arguments herein used, and the new hints here 
flung out, been more largely discussed, it might 
easily have been extended to a more considerable 
bulk ; but then the busy would not have had lei- 
sure, nor the idle inclination to have read it. 
Should it ever have the honor to be admitted into 
such good company, they will immediately, I know^ 
determine that it must be the work of some enthu- 
siast or fanatic, some beggar or some madman. I 
shall, therefore, beg leave to assure them, that the 
author is very far removed from all these charac- 
ters. That he once, perhaps, believed as little as 
themselves, but having some leisure and more cu- 
riosity, he employed them both in resolving a ques- 
tion which seemed to him of some importance — ■ 
whether Christianity was really an imposture, 
founded on an absurd, incredible, and obsolete 
fable, as many suppose it ; or whether it is what 
it pretends to be, a revelation communicated to 
mankind by the interposition of supernatural pow- 
er. On a candid inquiry, he soon found that the 
first was an absolute impossibility, and that its 
pretensions to the latter were founded on the most 



THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 87 

solid grounds. In the further pursuit of his exam- 
ination, he perceived, at every step, new lights 
arising, and some of the brightest from parts of it 
the most obscure, but productive of the clearest 
proofs, because equally beyond the power of human 
artifice to invent, and human reason to discover. 
These arguments, which have convinced him of 
the divine origin of this religion, he has here put 
together in as clear and concise a manner as he 
was able, thinking they might have the same effect 
upon others ; and being of opinion, that if there 
were a few more true Christians in the world, it 
would be beneficial to themselves, and by no means 
detrimental to the public. 



THE SUBSTANCE 



OF 



LESLIE'S 
METHOD WITH THE DEISTS; 



AND 



TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY 
DEMONSTRATED. 



It has been said of this brief and triumphant 
argument of Leslie, that it is "the standing re- 
proach of Deism ;" no serious reply to it having 
been even attempted. 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. 



Dear Sir — You are desirous, you inform me, to 
receive from me some one topic of reason which 
shall demonstrate the truth of the Christian relig- 
ion, and at the same time distinguish it from the 
impostures of Mahomet, and the heathen deities ; 
that our Deists may be brought to this test, and 
be obliged either to renounce their reason and the 
common reason of mankind, or to admit the clear 
proof, from reason, of the revelation of Christ ; 
which must be such a proof as no impostor can 
pretend to, otherwise it will not prove Christianity 
not to be an imposture. And ypu cannot but 
imagine, you add, that there must be such a proof, 
because every truth is in itself one ; and therefore 
one reason for it, if it be a true reason, must be 
sufficient, and if sufficient, better than many, be- 
cause multiplicity creates confusion, especially in 
weak judgments. 

Sir, you have imposed a hard task upon me : I 
wish I could perform it. For though every truth 



92 METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

be one, yet our sight is so feeble that' we cannot 
always come to it directly, but by many inferences 
■ and laying of things together. But I think that 
in the case before us, there is such a proof as you 
desire, and I will set it down as shortly and as 
plainly as I can. 

I suppose, then, that the truth of the Christian 
doctrines will be sufficiently evinced, if the matters 
of fact recorded of Christ in the gospels are proved 
to be true ; for his miracles, if true, establish the 
truth of what he delivered. The same may be 
said with regard to Moses. If he led the children 
of Israel through the Ked sea, and did such other 
wonderful things as are recorded of him in the 
book of Exodus, it must necessarily follow that he 
was sent by God ; these being the strongest evi- 
dences we can require, and which every Deist will 
confess he would admit, if he himself had witness- 
ed then* performance. So that the stress of this 
cause will depend upon the proof of these matters 
of fact 

With a view, therefore, to this proof, I shall 
proceed, 

I. To lay down such marks, as to the truth of 
matters of fact in general, that, where they all 
meet, such matters of fact cannot be false ; and, 

II. To show that they all do meet in the matters 
of fact of Moses and of Christ ; and do not meet in 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. 93 

those reported of Mahomet and of the heathen 
deities, nor can possibly meet in any imposture 
whatsoever. 

I. The marks are these : 

1. That the fact be such as men's oiUward senses 
can judge of : 

2. That it be performed piiblidy, in the presence 
of witnesses, 

3 That there be public monuments and actions 
kept up in memory of it ; and, 

4. That such monuments and actions shall be 
established and commence at the time of the fact. 

The two first of these marks make it impossible 
for any false fact to be imposed upon men at the 
time when it was said to be done, because every 
man's senses would contradict it. For example, 
suppose I should pretend that yesterday I divided 
the Thames in the presence of all the people of 
London, and led the whole city over to South wark 
on dry land, the w^ater standing hke w^alls on each 
side : it would be morally impossible for me to con- 
vince the people of London that this was true ; 
when every man, woman, and child, could contra- 
dict me, and affirm that they had not seen the 
Thames so divided, nor been led over to Soutlr 
wark on dry land. I take it then for granted — and 
I apprehend with the allowance of all the Deists in 
the world — that no such imposition could be put 



94 METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

upon mankind at the time when such matter of 
fact was said to be done. 

" But," it may be urged, " the fact might be in- 
vented when the men of that generation in which 
it was said to be done were all past and gone ; and 
the credulity of after-ages might be induced to be- 
lieve that things had been performed in eariier 
times, which had not." 

From this the two latter marks secure us, as 
much as the two first in the former case. For 
whenever such a fact was invented, if it were 
stated that not only public monuments of it re- 
mained, but likewise that pubhc actions or observ- 
ances had been kept up in memory of it ever since, 
the deceit must be detected by no such monuments 
appearing, and by the experience of every man, 
woman, and child, who must know that they had 
performed no such actions and practised no such 
observances. For example, suppos>e I should now 
fabricate a story of something done a thousand 
years ago ; I might perhaps get a few persons to 
believe me ; but if I were farther to add, that from 
that day to this, every man, at the age of twelve 
years, had a joint of his little finger cut off in 
memory of it, and that of course every man then 
living actually wanted a joint of that finger, and 
vouched this institution in confirmation of its truth, 
it would be morally impossible for me to gain credit 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. 95 

ill such a case, because every man then Hving 
would contradict me as to the circumstance of 
cutting off a joint of the finger ; and that being an 
essential part of my original matter of fact, must 
prove the whole to be false. 

11. Let us now come to the second point, and 
show that all these marks do meet in the matters 
of fact of Moses, and of Christ ; and do not meet 
in those reported of Mahomet, and of the heathen 
deities, nor can possibly meet in any unposture 
whatsoever. 

As to Moses, he, I take it for granted, could not 
have persuaded six hundred thousand men that he 
had brought them out of Egypt by the Red sea, 
fed them forty years with miraculous manna, etc., if 
it had not been true, because the senses of every 
man who was then alive would have contradicted 
him. So that here are the two first marks. 

For the same reason, it would have been equally 
impossible for him to have made them receive his 
five books as true, which related all these things 
as done before their eyes, if they had not been so 
done. Observe how positively he speaks to them. 
"And know you this day, for I speak not with 
your children, which have not known, and which 
have not seen the chastisement of the Lord your 
God, his greatness, his mighty hand, and his 
stretched-out arm, and his miracles — but your 



96 METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

eyes have seen all the great acts of the Lord 
which he did." Deut. 11 : 2-7. Hence we must 
admit it to be impossible that these books, if writ- 
ten by Moses in support of an imposture, could 
have been put upon the people who were alive at 
the time when such things were said to be done. 

"But they might have been written," it may be 
urged, "in some age after Moses, and published 
as his." 

To this I reply, that if it were so, it was impos? 
sible they should have been received as such, 
because they speak of themselves as delivered by 
Moses, and kept in the ark from liis time, Deut. 
31:24-26; and state that a copy of them, was 
likewise deposited in the hands of the king, " that 
he might learn to fear the Lord liis God, to keep 
all the words of this law and these statutes, to do 
them." Deut. 1*T : 19. Here these books express- 
ly represent themselves as being not only the civil 
history, but also the cstabhshed municipal law of 
the Jews, bindmg the king as well as the people. 
In whatever age, therefore, after Moses, they 
might have been forged, it was impossible they- 
should have gained any credit, because they could 
not then have been found either in the ark, or with 
the king, or anywhere else ; and when they were 
first published, every l)ody must know that they 
had never heard of them l^efore. 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. 97 

And they could still less receive them as their 
book of statutes, and the standing law of the land, 
by which they had all along- been governed. Could 
any man at this day invent a set of acts of parlia- 
ment for England, and make it pass upon the na- 
tion as the only book of statutes which they had 
ever known? As impossible was it for these 
books, if written in any age after Moses, to have 
been received for what they declare themselves to 
be, that is, the municipal law of the Jews ; and 
for any man to have persuaded that people that 
they had owned them as their code of statutes 
from tne time of Moses^ that is, before they had 
ever heard of them I Nay, more, they must in- 
stantly have forgotten their former laws, if they 
could receive these books as such ; and as such 
only could they receive them, because such they 
vouched themselves to be. Let me ask the Deists 
but one short question: "Was a book of sham 
laws ever palmed upon any nation since the world 
])egan ?" If not, with what face can they say this 
of the law books of the Jews ? Why will they 
affirm that of them, which they admit never to 
have happened in any other instance ? 

But they must be still more unreasonable. For 
the books of Moses have an ampler demonstration 
of their truth than even other law books have, 
as they not only contain the laws themselves, but 

Infidelity. t 



98 METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

give a historical account of their institution and 
regular fulfilment : of the passover, for instance, 
in memory of their supernatural protection upon 
the slaying of the first-born of Egypt ; the dedica- 
tion of the first-born of Israel, both of man and 
beast ; the preservation of Aaron's rod which 
budded, of the pot of Manna, and of the brazen 
serj^ent, which remained till the days of Hezekiah. 
2 Kings 18 : 4, etc. And besides these memorials 
of particular occurrences, there were other solemn 
observances in general memory of their deliver- 
ance out of Egypt, etc., as their annual expiations, 
their new moons, their sabbaths, and their ordina- 
ry sacrifices ; so that there were yearly, monthly, 
weekly, and daily recognitions of these things. 
The same books likewise farther inform us, that 
the tribe of Levi were appointed and consecrated 
by God as his ministers, by whom alone these in- 
stitutions were to be celebrated ; that it was death 
for any others to approach the altar ; that their 
high-priest wore a brilliant mitre and magnificent 
robes, with the miraculous Trim and Thummim in 
his breastplate ; that at his word all the people 
were to go out, and to come in ; that these Levites 
were also their judges, even in all civil causes, and 
that it was death to resist their sentence. Deut. 
17:8-13; 1 Chron. 23:4. 

Hence, too, in whatever age after Moses they 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. 99 

might have been forged, it was impossible they 
should have gained any credit ; unless indeed the 
fabricators could have made the whole nation be- 
lieve, in spite of their invariable experience to the con- 
trary, that they had received these books iong be- 
fore, from their fathers ; had been taught them 
when they were children, and had taught them to 
their own children ; that they had been circumcised 
themselves, had circumcised their families, and uni- 
formly observed their whole minute detail of sac- 
rifices and ceremonies ; that they had never eaten 
any swine's flesh, or other prohibited meats ; that 
they had a splendid tabernacle, with a regular 
priesthood to administer in it, confined to one par- 
ticular tribe, and a superintendent high-priest, 
whose death alone could deliver those that had 
fled to the cities of refuge ; that these priests were 
their ordinary judges, even in civil matters, etc. 
But this would surely have been impossible, if 
none of these things had been practised ; and it 
would consequently have been impossible to cir- 
culate, as true, a set of books which affirmed that 
they had practised them, and upon that practice 
rested their own pretensions to acceptance. So 
that here are the two latter marks. 

■ '' But," to advance to the utmost degi'ee of sup- 
position, it may be urged, ''these things might 
have been practised prior to this alleged forgery ; 



100 METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

and those books only deceived the nation, by mak- 
ing them believe that they were practised in mem- 
ory of such and such occurrences as were then 
invented." 

In this hypothesis, however groundless, the 
same impossibilities press upon our notice as be- 
fore. For it implies that the Jews had previously 
kept these observances in memory of nothing, or 
without knowing why they kept them ; whereas; 
in all their particulars, they strikingly express 
their original : as the Passover, instituted in mem- 
ory of God's passing over the children of the Israel- 
ites, when he slew the first-born of Egypt, etc. 

Let us admit, however contrary both to proba- 
bihty and to matter of fact, that they did not know 
why they kept these observances ; yet, was it 
possible to persuade them that they were kept in 
memory of something which they had never heard 
of before ? For example, suppose I should now 
forge some romantic story of strange things done 
a long while ago ; and in confirmation of this, 
should endeavor to convince the Christian world 
that they had regularly, from that period to this, 
kept holy the first day of the week, in memory of 
such or such a man — a Ceesar, or a Mahomed : and 
had all been baptized in his name, and sworn by it 
upon the very book which I had then fabricated, 
and which of course they had never seen before in 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. lOl" 

their public courts of judicature ; that this book 
hkewise contained their laws, civil and ecclesiasti- 
cal, which they had ever since his time acknow- 
ledged, and no other : I ask any Deist, whether 
he thinks it possible that such a cheat could be re- 
ceived as the gospel of Christians, or not? The 
same reason holds with regard to the books of 
Moses, and must hold with regard to every book 
which contains matters of fact accompanied by the 
abovementioned four mai'ks. For these marks, 
togetlier, secure mankind from imposition with 
regard to any false fact, as well in after-ages as 
at the time when it was said to be done. 

Let me produce, as another and a familiar illus- 
tration, the Stonehenge of Salisbury plain. Almost 
every body has seen or heard of it; and yet no- 
body knows by whom, or in memory of what, it 
was set up. 

Now, suppose I should write a book to-morrow, 
and state in it that these huge stones were erected 
by a Csesar or a Mahomed, in memory of such and 
such of their actions ; and should farther add, that 
this book was written at the time when- those 
actions were performed, and by the doers them- 
selves, or by eye-witnesses ; and had been con- 
stantly received as true, and quoted by authors of 
the greatest credit in regular succession ever since ; 
that it was well known in England, and even en- 



102 METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

joined by act of Parliament to be taught our chil- 
dren ; and that we accordingly did teach it our 
children, and had been taught it ourselves when 
we -were children ; would this, I demand of any 
Deist, pass current in England ? Or, rather, should 
not I, or any other person who might insist upon 
its reception, instead of being believed, be con- 
sidered insane ? 

Let us compare, then, this rude structure with 
the Stonehenge, as I may call it, or ''twelve 
stones" set up at Gilgal. Josh. 4:6. It is there 
said that the reason why they were set up was, 
that when the children of the Jews, in after-ages, 
should ask their meaning, it should be told them. 
Josh. 4 : 20-22. And the thhig in memory of 
which they were set up, the passage over Jordan, 
was such as could not possibly have been imposed 
upon that people at the time when it was said to 
be done : it was not less miraculous, and from the 
previous notice, preparations, and other striking 
circumstances of its performance, Josh. S : 5, 15, 
still more unassailable by the petty cavils of infidel 
sophistry, than their passage through the Red sea. 

Now, to form our argument, let us suppose that 
there never was any such thing as that passage 
over Jordan ; that these stones at Gilgal had been 
set up on some unknown occasion ; and that some 
designing man, in an after-age, invented this book 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. 103 

of Joshua, affirmed that it was written at the time 
of that imaginary event by Joshua liimself, and 
adduced this pile of stones as a testimony of its 
truth; would not every body say to him, *'We 
know this pile very well, but we never before 
heard of this reason for it, nor of this book of 
Joshua. Where has it lain concealed all this 
while ? And where and how came you, after so 
long a period, to find it? Besides, it informs us 
that this passage over Jordan was solemnly di- 
rected to be taught our children from age to age ; 
and to that end, that they were always to be hi- 
str noted in the meaning of this particular monu- 
ment ; but we were never taught it ourselves 
when we were children, nor did we ever teach it 
to our children. And it is in the highest degree 
improbable that such an emphatic ordinance should 
have been forgotten during the continuance of so 
remarkable a pile of stones, set up expressly for 
the purpose of preserving its remembrance." 

If then, for these reasons, no such fabrication 
could be put upon us as to the stones in SaHsbury 
plain, how much less could it succeed as to the 
stonage at Gilgal ? If, where we are ignorant of 
the true origin of a mere naked monument, such a 
sham origin cannot be imposed, how much less 
practicable would it be to impose upon us in ac- 
tions and observances which we celebrate in mem- 



104 METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

ory of ^vliat we actually know ; to make us forget 
what we have regularly commemorated; and to 
persuade us that we have constantly kept such 
and such institutions, with reference to something 
which we never heard of before ; that is, that we 
knew something before we knew it ! And if we 
find it thus impossible to practise deceit, even in 
cases which have not the above four marks, how 
much more impossible must it be that any deceit 
should be practised in cases in which all these four 
marks meet ? 

In the matters of fact of Christ hkewise, as well 
as in those of Moses, these four mai'ks are to be 
found.' The reasoning, indeed, which has been 
already advanced with respect to the Old Testa- 
ment, is generally applicable to the New. The 
miracles of Christ, like those of Moses, were such 
as men's outward senses could judge of ; and were 
performed publicly, in the presence of those to whom 
the history of them, contained in the gospel, was 
addressed. And it is related, that ''about three 
thousand" at one time, Acts 2:41, and about " five 
thousand" at another. Acts 4 : 4, were converted 
in consequence of what they themselves saw and 
heard, in matters where it was impossible that 
they should have been deceived. Here, therefore,; 
were the two first marks. 

And with regard to the two latter, baptism and 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. 105 

the Lord's supper were instituted as memorials of 
certain things, not in after-ages, but at the time 
when these things were said to be done ; and 
have been strictly observed, from that time to this, 
without interruption. Christ himself also ordained 
apostles, etc., to preach and administer his ordi- 
nances, and to govern his church '' even unto the 
end of the world." Now, the Christian ministry is 
as notorious a matter of fact among us as the set- 
ting apart of the tribe of Levi was among the 
Jews ; and as the era and object of their appoint- 
ment are part of the gospel narrative, if that nar- 
rati\ e had been a fiction of some subsequent age, 
at the time of its fabrication no such order of men 
could have been found, which would have effect- 
ually given "the lie to the whole story. And the 
truth of the matters of fact of Christ, being no 
otherwise asserted than as there were at the time — 
whenever the Deist will suppose the gospel to 
have been fabricated — public ordinances, and a pub- 
lic ministry of his institution to dispense them, and 
it being impossible, upon this hypothesis, that there 
could be any such things then in existence, we 
must admit it to be equally impossible that the for- 
gery should have been successful. Hence, it was 
as impossible to deceive mankind, in respect to these 
matters of fact, by inventing them in after-ages, as 
at the time wlien they were said to be done. 



106 METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

The matters of fact reported of Mahomed and of 
the heathen deities, do all want some of these four 
marks by wliieh the certainty of facts is estabhsh- 
ed. Mahomed himself, as he tells ns in his Koran, 
6, etc., pretended to no miracles ; and those 
which are commonly related of him pass, even 
among his followers, for ridiculous legends, and as 
such are rejected by theu' scholars and philosophers. 
They have not either of the two first marks ; for 
his converse with the moon, his night-journey from 
Mecca to Jerusalem, and thence to heaven, etc., 
were not performed before any witnesses, nor was 
the tour indeed of a nature to admit human attes- 
tation: and to the two latter they do not even 
affect to advance any claim. 

The same may be affirmed, with httle variation, 
of the stories of the heathen deities : of Mercury^s 
steaUng sheep, Jupiter's transforming himself into 
a bull, etc., besides the absurchty of such degrading 
and profligate adventures. And accordingly we 
find that the more enhghtened pagans themselves 
considered them as fables involving a mystical 
meaning, of which several of their writers have 
endeavored to give us the explication. It is true, 
these gods had their priests, their feasts, their 
games, and other pubhc ceremonies ; but all these 
want the fourth mark, of commencing at the time 
when the things which they commemorate were 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. 107 

said to liave been done. Hence they cannot secure 
mankind, in subsequent ages, from imposture, as 
they furnish no internal means of detection at the 
period of the forgery. The BacchanaUa, for exam- 
ple, and other heathen festivals, were estabhshed 
long after the events to which they refer ; and the 
priests of Juno, Mars, etc., were not ordained by 
those imaginary deities, but appointed by others in 
some after-age, and are therefore no evidence to 
the truth of their preternatural achievements. 

To apply what has been said : 

We may challenge all the Deists in the world to 
show any fabulous action accompanied by these 
four marks. The thing is impossible. The histo- 
ries of the Old and New Testament never could 
have been received, if they had not been true, 
because the priesthoods of Levi and of Christ, the 
observance of the Sabbath, the Passover, and Cir- 
cumcision, and the ordinances of Baptism and the 
Lord's Supper, etc., are there represented as de- 
scending uninterruptedly from the times of their 
respective institution. And it would have been 
as impossible to persuade men in after-ages that, 
they had been circumcised or baptized, and cele- 
brated Passovers, Sabbaths, and other ordmances, 
under the ministration of a certain order of priests,, 
if they had done none of those things, as to make 



108 METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

them believe at the time, without any real founda- 
tion, that they had gone tlirough seas on dry land, 
seen the dead raised, etc. But without such a 
persuasion, it was impossible that either the law 
or the gospel could have been received. And the 
truth of the matters of fact of each being no other- 
wise asserted than as such public ceremonies had 
been previously practised, their certainty is estab- 
lished upon the full conviction of the senses of 

MANKIND. 

I do not say that every thing which wants these 
four marks is false ; but that every thing which 
has them all, must be true. 

I can have no doubt that there was such a man 
as Julius Caesar, that he conquered at Pharsalia, 
and was killed in the senate-house, though neither 
his actions nor his assassination be commemorated 
by an}'- public observances. But this shows that 
the matters of fact of Moses and of Christ have 
come down to us better certified than any other 
whatsoever. And yet our Deists, who would con- 
sider any one as hopelessly irrational that should 
offer to deny the existence of Casar, value them- 
selves as the only men of profound sense and judg- 
ment, for ridiculing the histories of Moses and of 
Christ, though guarded by infallible marks, which 
that of Cassar wants. 

Besides, the nature of the subject would of itself 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. 109 

lead to a more minute examination of the one than 
of the other : for of what consequence is it to me, 
or to the world, whether there ever was such a 
man as Caesar, whether he conquered at Pharsalia, 
and was killed in the senate-house, or not ? But 
our eternal welfare is concerned in the truth of 
what is recorded in the Scriptures ; whence they 
would naturally be more narrowly scrutinized, 
when proposed for acceptance. 

How unreasonable, then, is it to reject matters 
of fact so important, so sifted, and so attested ; and 
yet to think it absurd, even- to madness, to deny 
other matters of fact which have not the thou- 
sandth part of their evidence, have had compara- 
tively little investigation, and are of no conse- 
quence at all ! 

TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY DEMONSTRATED. 

To the preceding four marks, which are common 
to the matters of fact of Moses and of Christ, I sub- 
join four additional marks ; the three last of which, 
no matter of fact, how true soever, either has had, 
or can have, except that of Christ. 

This will obviously appear, if it be considered, 

5. That the book which relates the facts contains 
likewise the laws of the people to whom it belongs : 

6, That Christ was previously announced for 
that very period, by a long train of prophecies ^ and. 



no METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

1. Still more peculiarly prefigured by types, both 
of a circumstantial and personal nature, from the 
earliest ages ; and, 

8. That the facts of Christianity are such as to 
make it impossible for either their relators or hear- 
ers to beUeve them, if false, without supposing a 
universal deception of the senses of mankind. 

The fifth mark, which has been subordinately 
discussed above, in such a manner as to supersede 
the necessity of dwelling upon it here, renders it 
impossible for any one to have imposed such a book 
upon any people. For example, suppose I should 
forge a code of laws for Great Britain, and publish 
it next term ; could I hope to persuade the judges, 
lawyers, and people, that this was their genuine 
statute-book, by which all their causes had been 
determined in the public courts for so many centu- 
ries past? Before they could be brought to this, 
they must totally forget their established laws, 
which they had so laboriously committed to mem- 
ory, and so familiarly quoted in every day's prac- 
tice ; and believe that this new book, which they 
had never seen before, was that old book which 
had been pleaded so long in Westminster Hall, 
which has been so often printed, and of which the 
originals are now so carefully preserved in the 
Tower. 

This applies strongl^^ to the books of Moses, in 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. Ill 

which, not only the history of the Jews, but like- 
wise their whole law, secular and ecclesiastical, 
w^as contained. And though, from the early exten- 
sion and destined universality of the Christian sys- 
tem, it could not, without unnecessary confusion, 
furnish a uniform civil code to all its various fol- 
low^ers, who were already under the government 
of laws in some degree adapted to their respective 
cKmates and characters, yet was it intended as the 
spiritual guide of the new church. And in this 
respect, tliis mark is still stronger with regard to 
the gospel, than even to the books of Moses ; inas- 
mucii as it is easier, however hard, to imaghie the 
substitution of an entire statute-book in one par- 
ticular nation, than that all the nations of Christen- 
dom should have unanimously conspired in the for- 
gery. But without such a conspiracy, such a 
forgery could never have succeeded, as the gospel 
universally formed a regular part of their daUy 
public offices. 

But I hasten to the sixth mark, namely, projpkecy. 

The great fact of Christ's coming was previously 
announced to the Jews, in the Old Testament, 
" by all the holy prophets which have been since 
the world began." Luke 1 : *rO. 

The first promise upon the subject was made to 
Adam, immediately after the fall. Gen. 3 : 15> 
Compare Col. 2 : 1.5, and Hebrews 2 : 14. 



112 METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

He was again repeatedly promised to Abraham, 
Gen. 12:3; 18 : 18, and 22 : 18 ; Gal. 3:16; to 
Isaac, Gen. 26 : 4 ; and to Jacob, Gen. 28 : 14. 

Jacob expressly prophesied of him, under the 
appellation of '* Shiloh," or Him that was to he sent, 
Gen. 49 : 10. Balaam also, with the voice of in- 
sphation, pronounced him " the Star of Jacob, and 
the Sceptre of Israel." Num. 24 : 11 Moses 
spoke of him as One " greater than himself." Deut. 
18 : 15, 18, 19 ; Acts 3 : 22. And Daniel hailed 
his arrival, under the name of ''Messiah the 
Prmce." Chap. 9 : 25. 

It was foretold that he should be born of a vir- 
gin, Isa. . ^ : 14, in the city of Bethlehem, Micah 
5 : 2, of the seed of Jesse, Isa. 11:1, 10 ; that he 
should lead a life of poverty and suffering, Psalm 
22, inflicted upon him, "not for himself," Dan. 
9 : 26, but for the sins of others, Isa. 53 ; and after 
a short confinement in the grave, should rise 
again, Psalm 16 : 10 ; Acts 2 : 27, 31, and 13 : 35- 
3T ; that he " should sit upon the throne of David 
for ever," and be called "the mighty God," Isa. 
9:6, 1, " the Lord our righteousness," Jer. 33 : 16, 
" Immanuel, that is, God with us," Isa. t : 14 ; 
Matt. 1 : 23 ; and by David himself, whose son he 
was according to the flesh, "Lord," Psalm 110:1, 
applied to Christ by himself. Matt. 22 : 44, and by 
Peter, Acts 2 : 34. 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. 113 

The time of his incarnation was to be before 
" the sceptre should depart from Judah," Gen. 
49 : 10, dm'ing the continuance of the second tem- 
ple, Hag. 2 : t, 9, and within seventy weeks, or 
four hundred and ninety days, that is, according to 
the constant interpretation of prophecy, four hun- 
dred and ninety years from its erection, Dan. 
9 : 24. 

From these, and many other predictions, the 
coming of Christ was at all times the general ex- 
pectation of the Jews ; and fully matured at the 
time of his actual advent, as may be inferred from 
the i^umber of false Messiahs who appeared about 
that period. 

That he was Ukewise the expectation of the 
Gentiles, in conformity to the prophecies of Gen. 
49:10, and Hag. 2:7, where the terms ''peo- 
ple," and "nations," denote the heathen world, is 
evinced by the coming of the wise men from the 
East, etc., a story which would of course have 
been contradicted by some of the individuals so 
disgracefully concerned in it, if the fact of their 
arrival, and the consequent massacre of the infants 
in and about Bethlehem, had not been fresh in 
every one's memory : by them, for instance, who 
afterwards suborned false witnesses agamst Christ, 
and gave large money to the soldiers to conceal, if 
possible, the event of his resurrection ; or them 

Infidelity. 8 



lU METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

who, iu still later clays, everywhere zealously 
"spake agamst" the tenets and practices of his 
rising church. 

All over the East, indeed, there was a general 
tradition, that ahout that time a king of the. Jews 
would he horn, who should govern the whole earth. 
This prevailed so strongly at Rome, a few months 
before the bii'th of Augustus, that the Senate made 
a decree to expose all the children born that year ; 
but the execution of it was eluded by a trick of 
some of the senators, who, from the pregnancy of 
their wives, were led to hope that they might be 
the fathers of the promised Prince. Its currency 
is also recorded with a remarkable identity of 
phrase by the pens of Suetonius and Tacitus. 
Now, that in this there was no collusion between 
the Chaldeans, Romans, and Jews, is sufficiently 
proved by the desperate methods suggested, or 
carried into effect, for its discomfiture. Nor in 
fact, is it practicable for whole nations of contem- 
porary, and still less, if possible, for those of suc- 
cessive generations to concert a story perfectly 
harmonious in all its minute accompaniments of 
time, place, manner, and other circumstances. 

In addition to the above general predictions of 
the coming, life, death, and resurrection of Christ, 
there are others which foretell still more strikingly 
several particular incidents of the gospel narrative — 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. 115 

instances unparalleled in the whole range of his- 
tory, and which could have been foreseen by God 
alone. They were certainly not foreseen by the 
human agents concerned in their execution, or they 
would never have contributed to the fulfilment of 
prophecies referred even by themselves to the 
Messiah, and therefore verifying the divine mis- 
sion of Him whom they crucified as an impostor. 

Observe then, how literally many of these pre- 
dictions were fulfilled. For example, read Psalm 
69 : 21, " They gave me gall to eat, and vinegar to 
drink;" and compare Matt. 21 : 34, "They gave 
him vinegar to drink, mingled with gall." Again, 
it is said, Psalm 22:16-18, "They pierced my 
hands and my feet. They part my garments 
among them, and cast lots upon my vesture ;"* 

* The soldiers did not tear his coat, because it was with- 
out seam, woven from the top throughout ; and therefore 
they cast lots for it. But this was to human view entirely 
accidental. With the passage in the Psalms, as Eomans, 
they were not likely to be acquainted. The same remark 
applies to the next instance, from Zechariah. 

And here it may be suggested— in reply to those who 
insidiously magnify " the power of chance, the ingenuity 
of accommodation, and the industry of research," as chiefly 
supporting the credit of obscure prophecy — that greater 
plainness would have enabled wicked men, as free agents, 
to prevent its accomplishment, when obviously directed 
against themselves. The Jews, not understanding what 
Christ meant by his "lifting up," John 8:28; 12:32, 33, 



116 METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

as if it had been written after. John 19 : 23, 24. 
It is predicted, likewise, Zech. 12 : 10, " They shall 
look upon me whom they have pierced ;" and we 
are told, John 19:34, that "one of the soldiers 
with a spear pierced his side." 

Compare also Psalm 22 : t, 8, " All they that see 
me laugh me to scorn : they shoot out their lips, 
and shake their heads, saying. He trusted in God 
that he would deliver him ; let him deliver him, see- 
ing he delighted in him ;" with Matt. 21 : 39, 41, 43, 
" And they that passed by reviled him, wagging 
their heads, and saying. Come down from the cross. 
Likewise also the chief priests, mocking him, with 
the scribes and elders, said, He trusted in God: 
let him deliver him now, if he will have him ; for 

and not knowing that he had foretold his crucifixion to his 
apostles, Matt. 20 : 19, instead of finally stoning him — the 
death appointed by their law, Lev. 24 : 16, for blasphemy. 
Matt. 26 : 65, more than once menaced against the Saviour, 
John 8 : 59 ; 10 : 33, and actually inflicted upon Stephen, Acts 
7 : 58, for that offence — unconsciously delivered him to the 
predicted Roman cross. Again, the piercing of his side 
was no part of the Roman sentence, but merely to ascertain 
his being dead previously to taking him down fi-om the 
cross; "that the body might not remain there on the Sab- 
bath-day," which commenced that evening a few hours 
after the crucifixion. From his early givi?ig uj) the ghost, 
however, it was not necessary that " a bone of him should 
be broken,'- Exod. 12:46; Num. 9:12; Psalm 34:20, like 
those of the two thieves, his fellow-sufferers, John 19 : 32-36. 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. 117 

he said, I am the Son of God." His very price, 
and the mode of laying out tlie money, previously 
specified, Zech, 11-: 13, are historically stated by 
Matthew, in perfect correspondence with the proph- 
et, chap. 21 : 6, 1. And his riding into Jerusalem 
upon an ass, predicted Zech. 9 : 9, and referred by 
one of the most learned of the Jewish Rabbies to 
the Messiah, is recorded by the same inspired his- 
torian, chap. 21:5. Lastly, it was foretold that 
" He should make his grave with the wicked, and 
with the rich in his death," Isa. 53 : 9 ; or, as Dr. 
Lowth translates the passage, " His grave was 
appointed with the wicked, but with the rich man 
was his tomb ;" which prediction was precisely 
verified by the very improbable incidents of his 
being crucified between two thieves, Matt. 27 : 38, and 
afterwards laid in the tomb of the rich man of Arima- 
thca. Matt. 21 : 51, 60. 

Thus do the prophecies of the Old Testament, 
without variation or ambiguity, refer to the person 
and character of Christ. His own predictions in" 
the New, demand a few brief observations. 

Those relating to the destruction of Jerusalem, 
which specified that it should be "laid even with 
the ground," and " not one stone be left upon an- 
other," Luke 9 : 44, "before that generation pass- 
ed," Matt. 24 : 34, were fulfilled in a most surpris- 
ii\2:ly literal manner, the very foundations of the 



118 METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

temple being ploughed up by Turnus Rufus. In 
another remarkable prophecy he announced the 
many false Messiahs that should come after him, 
and the ruin in which their followers should be 
involved. Matt. 24 : 24-26. That great numbers 
actually assumed that holy character before the 
final fall of the city, and led the people into the 
wilderness to their destruction, we learn from Jo- 
sephus. Antiq. Jud. 18 : 12 ; 20 : 6 ; and B. J. 
8 : 31. Nay, such was their wretched infatuation, 
that under this delusion they rejected the offers 
of Titus, who courted them to peace. Ibid. B. J. 
•7:12. 

It will be sufficient barely to mention his fore- 
telling the dispersion of that unhappy nation, and 
the triumph of his gospel over the gates of hell, 
under every possible disadvantage — himself low 
and despised, his immediate associates only twelve, 
and those illiterate and unpolished ; and hia adver- 
saries the allied powers, prejudices, habits, inter- 
ests, and appetites of mankind. 

But the seventh mark is still more peculiar, if 
possible, to Christ, than even that of prophecy. For 
whatever may be weakly pretended with regard to 
the oracular predictions of Delphi or Dodona, the 
heathens never affected to prefigure any future 
event by types, or resemblances of the fact, con- 
sisting of analogies either in individuals, or in sen- 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. 119 

sible institutions directed to be continued, till the 
antitype itself should make its appearance. 

These types, in the instance of Christ, were of a 
twofold nature, circumstantial and 'personal. 

Of the fomicr kind, not to notice the general rite 
of sacrifice, may be produced as examples : 

1. The Passover, appointed in memory of that 
great night when the destroying angel, who slew 
all ''the first-born of Egypt," passed over those 
houses upon whose door-posts the blood of the 
paschal lamb was sprinkled ; and directed to be 
eaten with what the apostle, 1 Cor. 5 : t, 8, calls 
" the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." 

2. The annual expiation, in two respects : first, 
as the high-priest entered into the holy of holies, 
representing heaven, Exod. 25 : 40 ; Heb. 9 : 24, 
with the blood of the sacrifice, whose body was 
burnt without the camp, " wherefore Jesus also, 
that he might sanctify the people with his own 
blood, suffered without the gate," Heb. 13 : 12 ; 
and " after he had offered one sacrifice for sin, for 
ever sat down at the right hand of God," Heb. 
10 : 12 ; and secondly, as "all the iniquity of the 
children of Israel was put upon the head" of the 
scape-goat. Lev. 16 : 21. 

3. The brazen serpent, by looking up to which the 
people were cured of the stings of the fiery ser- 
pents ; and whose "lifting up" was, by Christ 



120 METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

himself, interpreted as emblematical of his being 
lifted up on the cross. John 3 : 14. 

4. The manna, which represented "the bread of 
life that came down from heaven." John 6 : 31-35. 

5. The rock, whence the waters flowed to sui> 
ply drink in the wilderness ; " and that rock was 
Christ." 1 Cor. 10 : 4. 

6. The Sahhath, " a shadow of Christ," Col. 2:16, 
It ; ^nd as a figm*e of his eternal rest, denomi- 
nated " a sign of the perpetual covenant." Exod. 
31 : 16, n ; Ezek. 20 : 12, 20. And lastly, to omit 
others. 

The temjpk, where alone the shadowy sacrifices 
were to be offered, because Christ, " the body," 
was to be offered there himself. 

Of personal types, likewise, I shall confine my- 
self to such as are so considered in the New Tes- 
tament. 

1. Adam, between whom and Christ a striking 
series of relations is remarked. Rorn. 5 : 12-21, 
and 1 Cor. 15 : 45-49. 

2. Noah, who was " saved by water ; the like 
figure whereunto, even baptism, doth now save us, 
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ." 1 Peter 
3:20, 21. 

3. Melchizcdek, king of Salem, who was made 
"like unto the Son of God, a priest continually." 
Heb. t : 3. 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. 121 

4. Abraham, " the heir of the world," Kom. 4:13, 
" in whom all the nations of the earth are blessed." 
Gen. 18:18. 

5. Isaac, in his birth and intended sacrifice, whence 
also his father received him in a figure, Heb. 11 : 19, 
that is, of the resurrection of Christ. He too was 
the promised seed. Gen. 21 : 12, and Gal. 3:16, in 
whom all the nations of the earth were to be bless- 
ed. Gen. 22:18. 

6. Jacob, in his vision of the ladder, Gen. 28 : 12, 
and John 1:51, and his wrestling with the angel ; 
whence he, and after him the church, obtained the 
name of Israel. Gen. 32 : 28, and Matt. 11 : 21. 
The gentile world also, like Jacob, gained the 
blessing and heirship from their elder brethren 
the Jews. 

1. Moses, Deut 18 : 18, and John 1 : 45, in re- 
deeming the children of Israel out of Egypt. 

8. Joshua, called also Jesus, Heb. 4 : 8, in acquir- 
ing for them the possession of the Holy Laiid, and 
as lieutenant to the " Captain of the host of the 
Lord." Josh. 5 : 14. 

9. David, Psalm 16:10, and Acts 2:25-35, 
upon whose throne Christ is said to sit, Isa. 9 : 1, 
and by whose name he is frequently designated, 
Hos. 3:5, etc., in his pastoral, regal, and propheti- 
cal capacity. 

10. Jonah, in his dark imprisonment of three 



122 METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

days, applied by Christ to himself. Matthew 
12:40. 

The eighth mark is, that the facts of Christianity 
are such as to make it impossible for either the re- 
laters or the hearers to believe them, if false, with- 
out supposing a universal deception of the senses of 
mankind. 

For they were related by the doers, or by eye- 
witnesses, to those who themselves likewise either 
were, or might have been present, and undoubt- 
edly knew many that were present at their per- 
formance. To this circumstance, indeed, both 
Christ and his apostles often appeal. And they 
were of such a nature as wholly to exclude every 
chance of imposition. What juggler could have 
given sight to him "that was born blind," have 
fed five thousand hungry guests with " five loaves 
and two fishes," or have raised one who had been 
/'four days buried," from his grave? 

When, then, we add to this, that none of the 
Jewish or Roman persecutors of Christianity, to 
whom its first teachers frequently referred as wit- 
nesses of those facts, ever ventured to deny them ; 
that no apostate disciple, under the fear of punish- 
ment, or the hope of reward, not even the artful 
and accomphshed Julian himself, ever pretended to 
detect them ; that neither learning nor ingenuity, 
in the long lapse of so many years, has been able 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. 123 

to show their falsehood, though, for the first three 
centuries after their promulgation, the civil govern- 
ment strongly stimulated hostile inquiry ; and that 
their original relators, after lives of unintermitted 
hardship, joyfully incurred death in defence of their 
truth. We cannot imagine the possibility of a 
more perfect or abundant demonstration. 

It now rests with the Deists, if they would vin- 
dicate their claim to the self-bestowed title of ^^ rmn 
of reason,^^ to adduce some matters of fact of former 
ages, which they allow to be true, possessing evi- 
dence superior, or even similar, to those of Christ. 
This, however, it must at the same time be ob- 
served, would be far from proving the matters of 
fact respecting Christ to be false ; but certainly 
without this, they cannot reasonably assert that 
their own facts alone, so much less powerfully 
attested, are true. 

Let them produce their Caesar, or Mahomed, 

1. Performing a fact, of which men's outward 
senses can judge ; 

2. Publicly, in the presence of witnesses ; 

3. In memory of which, public monuments and 
actions are kept up ; 

4. Instituted and commencing at the time of the 
fact ; 

5. Recorded likewise in a set of books addressed 
to the identical people before whom it was per- 



124 METHOD WITH DEISTS. 

formed, and containing their whole code of civil and 
ecclesiastical laws; 

6. As the work of one previously announced for 
that very period by a long \Y2im oi p-oj)hecies ; 

7. And still more peculiarly prefigured by types, 
both of a circumstantial and personal nature, from 
the earliest ages ; and, 

8. Of such a character as made it impossible for 
either the relaters or hearers to beheve it, if false, 
without supposing a universal deception of the senses 
of mankind. 

Farther, let them display, in its professed eye- 
witnesses, similar proofs of veracity ; in some doctrin£s 
founded upon it, and unaided by force or intrigue, 
a like triumph over the prejudices and passions of 
mankind ; among its believers, equal skill and^equal 
diligence in scrutinizing its evidences, or let them 

SUBiriT TO THE IRRESISTIBLE CERTAINTY OF THE CHRIS- 
TIAN RELIGION. 

And now, reader, solemnly consider what that re- 
ligion is, the truth of which is proved by so many 
decisive marks. It is a declared revelation from 
God ; pronounces all men guilty in his sight ; pro- 
claims pardon, as his free gift through the merito- 
rious righteousness, sacrifice, and intercession of his 
only Son, to all who trust alone in his mercy and 
grace, cordially repenting and forsaking their sins ; 
rcfjuires fervent love, ardent zeal, and cordial sub- 



METHOD WITH DEISTS. 125 

mission towards himself, and the highest degree of 
personal purity and temperance, with rectitude and 
benevolence towards others ; and offers the aid of 
the Holy Spirit for these purposes, to all who sin- 
cerely ask it. Consider, this rehgion is the oidy true 
one, and while it promises peace on earth and eter- 
nal happiness to all who do receive and obey it, it 
denounces everlasting destruction against all who 
do not. It is in vain for you to admit its truth, 
unless you receive it as your confidence, and obey 
it as your rule. Study, then, embrace it for your- 
self; and may the God of love and peace be with 
you. 



LORD LYTTELTON 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL, 



IN 



A LETTER TO GILBERT WEST, ESQ. 



" It is stated by Rev. T. T. Biddolph, that Lord 
Lyttelton and his friend Gilbert West, Esq., both 
men of acknowledged talents, had imbibed the prin- 
ciples of infidelity from a superficial view of the 
Scriptures. ^uUy persuaded that the Bible was an 
imposture, they were determined to expose the 
cheat. Lord Lyttelton chose the Conversion of 
Paul, and Mr. West the Resurrection of Christ, for 
the subject of hostile criticism. Both sat down to 
then* respective tasks full of prejudice ; but the re- 
sult of their separate attempts was, that they were 
both converted by their efforts to overthrow the 
truth of Christianity. They came together not as 
they expected, to exult over an imposture exposed 
to ridicule, but to lament over their own folly, and 
to felicitate each other on their joint conviction 
that the Bible •was the word of God. Their able 
inquiries have furnished two of the most valuable 
treatises in favor of revelation, one entitled, ' Ob- 
servations on the Conversion of St. Paul,' and the 
other, ' Observations on the Resurrection of Christ.'" 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 



Sir — in a late conversation we liad upon the 
subject of the Christian religion, I told you, that 
besides all the proofs of it which may be drawn 
from the prophecies of the Old Testament, from 
the necessary connection it has with the whole 
system of the Jewish religion, from the miracles 
of Christ, and from the evidence given of his resur- 
rection by all the other apostles, I thought the con- 
version and the apostleship of St. Paul alone, duly 
considered, was of itself a demonstration sufficient 
to prove Christianity to be a divine revelation. 

As you seemed to think that so compendious a 
proof might be of use to convince those unbelievers 
that will not attend to a longer series of arguments, 
I have thrown together the reasons upon which I 
support that proposition. 

In the 26th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, 
wTitten by a contemporary author, and a compan- 
ion of St. Paul in preaching the gospel — as appears 
by the book itself, chap..20 : 6, 13, 14 ; 2t : 1, etc.— 

Infidelitr. 9 



130 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

St. Paul is said to have given, himself, this account 
of his conversion and preaching, to king Agrippa 
and Festus the Koman governor : " My manner of 
life from my j^outh, which was, at the first, among 
mine own nation at Jerusalem, know all the Jews ; 
which knew me from the beginning, if they would 
testify, that after the straitest sect of our religion, 
I lived a Pharisee. And now I stand and am 
judged for the hope of the promise made by God 
unto our fathers ; unto which promise our twelve 
tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope 
to come ; for which hope's sake, king Agrippa, I 
am accused by the Jews. A^Tiy should it be 
thought a thing incredible with you, that God 
should raise the dead? I verily thought with 
myself, that I ought to do many things contrary 
to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Which thing I 
also did in Jerusalem, and many of the saints did I 
shut up in prison, having received authority from 
the chief priests ; and when they were put to 
death, I gave my voice against them. And I pun- 
ished them oft in every synagogue, and compelled 
them to blaspheme ; and being exceedingly mad 
against them, I persecuted them even unto strange 
cities. Whereupon, as I went to Damascus with 
authority and commission from the chief priests, 
at mid-day, king, I saw in the way a light from ' 
heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 131 

round about me, and them which journeyed with 
mc. And when we were all fallen to the earth, I 
heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the 
Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou 
me ? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. 
And I said. Who art thon, Lord ? And he said, I 
am Jesus whom thou persecutest. But rise, stand 
upon thy feet ; for I have appeared unto thee for 
this purpose, to make thee a minister, and a wit- 
ness both of those things which thou hast seen, 
and of those things in the which I will appear unto 
thee ; delivering thee from the people, and from 
the Gentiles, unto whom I now send thee, to open 
their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to 
light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that 
they may receive forgiveness of sins and inherit- 
ance among them which are sanctified by faith that 
is in me. Whereupon, king Agrippa, I was not 
disobedient to the heavenly vision; but showed 
first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, 
and throughout all the coasts of Judea, and to the 
Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, 
and do works meet for repentance. For these 
causes the Jews caught me in the temple, and 
went about to kill me. Having therefore obtained 
help of God, I continue unto this day, witnessing 
both to small and great, saying none other things 
than those which Moses and the prophets did say 



132 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

should come : That Christ should suffer, and that 
he should be the first that should rise from the 
dead, and should show light to the people, and to 
the Gentiles. And as he thus spake for himself, 
Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art be- 
side thyself : much- learning doth make thee mad. 
But he said, I am not mad, most noble Festus, but 
speak forth the words of truth and soberness. For 
the king knoweth of these things, before whom 
also I speak freely ; for I am persuaded that none 
of these things are hidden from him ; for this thing 
was not done in a corner. King Agrippa, behev- 
est thou the prophets ? I know that thou be- 
lievest. Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost 
thou persuadest me to be a Christian. And Paul 
said, I would to God, that not only thou, but also 
all that hear me this day, were both almost and 
altogether such as I am, except these bonds." In 
another chapter of the same book, he gives in sub- 
stance the same account to the Jews, adding these 
further particulars : " And I said, What shall I do, 
Lord ? And the Lord said unto me. Arise, and go 
into Damascus ; and there it shall be told thee of 
all things which are appointed for thee to do. And 
when I could not see for the glory of that light, 
being led by the hand of them that were with me, 
I came into Damascus. And one Ananias, a de- 
vout man according to the law, having a good 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 133 

report of all the Jews that dwelt there, came unto 
me, and stood, and said unto me, Brother Saul, 
receive thy sight ; and the same hour I looked up 
upon him. And he said, The God of our fathers 
hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his 
will, and see that Just One, and shouldest hear 
the voice of his mouth. For thou shalt be his wit- 
ness unto all men, of what thou hast seen and 
heard. And now why tarriest thou ? Arise, and 
be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on 
the name of the Lord." Acts 22 : 10-16. 

In the 9th chapter of the same book, the author 
of it relates the same story with some other cir- 
cumstances not mentioned in these accounts ; as, 
that Saul in a vision saw Ananias before he came 
to him, coming in, and putting his hand on him, 
that he might receive his sight. And that when 
Ananias had spoken to him, immediately there fell 
from his eyes as it had been scales. Acts 9 : 12, 18. 

And agreeably to all these accounts, St. Paul 
thus speaks of himself in the epistles he wrote to 
the several churches he planted ; the authenticity 
of which cannot be doubted without overturning 
all rules by which the authority and genuineness 
of any writings can be proved or confirmed. ? 

To the Galatians he says, " I certify you, breth- 
ren, that the gospel which was preached of me is 
not after man. For I neither received it of man, 



134 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of 
Jesus Christ. For ye have heard of my conversa- 
tion in time past in the Jews' rehgion, how that 
beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, 
and wasted it : and profited in the Jews' rehgion 
above many my equals in mine own nation, being 
more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my 
fathers. But when it pleased God, who separated 
me from my mother's womb, and called me by his 
grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach 
him among the heathen, immediately I conferred 
not with flesh and blood," etc. Gal. 1 : 11-16. 

To the Philippians he says, "If any other man 
thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in 
the flesh, I more : circumcised the eighth day, of 
the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a He- 
brew of the Hebrews ; as touching the law, a 
Pharisee ; concerning zeal, persecuting the church ; 
touching the righteousness which is in the law, 
blameless. But what things were gain to me, 
those I counted loss for Christ. Yea, doubtless, 
and I count all things but loss for the excellency 
of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord ; for 
whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do 
count them but dung, that I may win Christ," 
Phil. 3 : 4-8. 

And in his epistle to Timothy he writes thus : 
*^ I thank Jesus Christ our Lord, who hath enabled 



CONVERSION OF ST. RAUL. 135 

me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me 
into the ministry, who was before a blasphemer, 
and a persecutor, and mjurious ; but I obtained 
mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief." 
1 Tim. 1 : 12, 13. 

In other epistles he calls himself ''an apostle by 
the will of God, by the commandment of God our 
Saviour, and Lord Jesus Christ ; and an apostle, 
not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, 
and God the Father, who raised him from the 
dead." 2 Cor. 1:1; Col. 1 : 1 ; 1 Tim. 1:1; Gal. 
1 : "• . All which implies some miraculous call that 
made him an apostle. And to the Corinthians he 
says, after enumerating many appearances of Je- 
sus after his resurrection, ''And last of all he was 
seen of me also, as of one born out of due time." 
1 Cor. 15:8. 

Now, it must of necessity be, that the person 
attesting these things of himself, and of whom they 
are related in so authentic a manner, either was 
an IMPOSTOR, who said what he knew to be false, 
with an intent to deceive ; or he was an enthu- 
siast, who, by the force of an overheated imagina- 
tion, imposed on himself; or he was deceived by 
the fraud of others, and all that he said must be 
imputed to the power of that deceit ; or what he 
declared to have been the cause of his conversion, 
and to have happened in consequence of it, did all ' 



136 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

REALLY HAPPEN ; and therefore the Christian relig- 
ion is a divine revelation. 

I. PAUL NOT AN IMPOSTOR. 

Now, that he was not an impostor, who said 
what he knew to be false, with an intent to de- 
ceive, I shall endeavor to prove, by showing that 
he could have no rational motives to undertake such 
an imposture, nor could have possibly carried it on 
with any success by the means we know he em- 
ployed. 

First, then, the inducement to such an imposture 
must have been one of these two : either the hope 
of advancing himself by it in his temporal interest, 
credit, or power ; or the gratification of some of his 
passions under the autliority of it, and by the means 
it afforded. 

Now, these were the circumstances in which 
St. Paul declared his conversion to the faith of 
Christ Jesus : that Jesus who called himself the 
Messiah, and Son of God, notwithstanding the in- 
nocence and holiness of his life, notwithstanding: 
the miracles by which he attested his mission, had 
been crucified by the Jews as an impostor and 
blasphemer ; which crucifixion not only must, 
humanly speaking, have intimidated others from 
following him, or espousing his doctrines, but 
served to confirm the Jews in their opinion that 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 137 

he could not be their promised Messiali, who, ac- 
cording to all their prejudices, was not to suffer in 
any manner, but to reign triumphant for ever here 
upon earth. His apostles, indeed, though at first 
they appeared to be terrified by the death of their 
Master, and disappointed in all their hopes, yet 
had surprisingly recovered tlieir spirits again, and 
publicly taught in his name, declaring him to be 
risen from the grave, and confirming that miracle 
by many they worked, or pretended to work, them- 
selves. But the chief priests and rulers among the 
Jews were so far from being converted, either by 
their words or their works, that they had begun a 
severe persecution against them, put some to 
death, imprisoned others, and were going on with 
implacable rage against the whole sect. In all 
these severities St. Paul concurred, being himself 
a Pharisee, "bred up at the feet of Gamaliel," 
Acts t : 9, 22, 23, one of the chief of that sect. 
Nor was he content, in the heat of his zeal, with 
persecuting the Christians who were at Jerusalem, 
but "breathing out threatenings and slaughter 
against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the 
high-priest, and desired of him letters to Damascus 
to the synagogues, that if he found any of this 
way, whether they w^ere men or women, he might 
bring them bound to Jerusalem." Acts 9:1, 2, 
His request was complied with, and he " went to 



138 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

Damascus with authority and commission from 
the chief priests." Acts 26 : 12. At this instant 
of time, and under these circumstances, did he bcr 
come a disciple of Christ. What could be his mo- 
tive to take such a part? Was it the hope of 
increasing his wealth? The certain consequence 
of his taking that part was not only the loss of all 
that he had, but of all hopes of a(!quiring more. 
Those whom he left were the disposers of wealth, 
of dignity, of power, in Judea ; those whom he 
went to, were indigent men, oppressed and kept 
down from all means of improving their fortunes. 
They among them who had more than the rest, 
shared what they had with their brethren ; but 
with this assistance the whole communit}'- was 
hardly supplied with the necessaries of life. And 
even in churches he afterwards planted himself, 
which were much more wealthy than that of Jeru- 
salem, so far was St. Paul from availing himself of 
their charity, or the veneration they had for him, 
in order to draw that wealth to himself, that he 
often refused to take any part of it for the neces- 
saries of life. 

Thus he tells the Corinthians : " Even unto this 
present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are 
naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwell- 
ing-place ; and labor, working with our own hands," 
ICor. 4:11. 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 139 

In another epistle he writes to ^hcm, " Behold, 
the third time I am ready to come to you ; and I 
will not be burdensome to you, for I seek not 
yours, but you ; for the children ought not to lay 
up for the parents, l)ut the parents for the chil- 
dren." 2 Cor. 12 : 14. 

To the Thessalonians he says, ''As we were 
allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, 
even so w^e speak, not as pleasing men, but God, 
which trieth our hearts. For neither at any time 
used we flattering words, nor a cloak of covetous- 
ness ; God is witness ; nor of men sought we 
glory, neither of you, nor yet of others, when we 
might have been burdensome, as the apostles of 
Christ. For ye remember, brethren, our labor and 
travail : for laboring night and day, because we 
would not be chargeable to any of you, we preach- 
ed unto you the gospel of God." And again in 
another letter to them he repeats the same testi- 
mony of his disinterestedness : '' Neither did we 
eat any man's bread for naught, but wrought with 
labor and travail night and day, that we might not 
be chargeable to any of you." 2 Thess. 3 : 8. And 
when he took his farewell of the church of Ephe- 
sus, to whom he foretold that they should see him 
no more, he gives this testimony of himself, and 
appeals to them for the truth of it : ''I have cov- 
eted no man's silver, or gold, or apparel. Yea, 



140 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

ye yourselves : know, that these hands have min- 
istered unto my necessities, and to them that were 
with me." Acts 20 : 33, 34. It is then evident, 
both from the state of the church when St. Paul 
first came into it, and from his behavior after- 
wards, that he had no thoughts of increasing his 
wealth by becoming a Christian ; whereas, by con- 
tinuing to be their enemy, he had almost certain 
hopes of making his fortune by the favor of those 
who were at the head of the Jewish state, to whom 
nothing could more recommend him than the zeal 
that he showed in that persecution. As to credit 
or reputation, that too lay all on the side he for- 
sook. The sect he embraced was under the great- 
est and most universal contempt of any then in 
the world. The chiefs and leaders of it were men 
of the lowest birth, education, and rank. They 
had no one advantage of parts, or learning, or other 
human endowments to recommend them. The 
doctrines they taught were contrary to those 
which they who were accounted the wisest and 
most knowing of their nation professed. The 
wonderful works that they did were either im- 
puted to magic or to imposture. The very author 
and head of their faith had been condemned as a 
criminal, and died on the cross between two thieves. 
Could the disciple of Gamaliel think he should gain 
any credit or reputation by becoming a teacher in 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. HI 

a college of fishermen ? Coiiid he flatter himself 
that either in or out of Judea the doctrines he 
taught could do him any honor ? No ; he knew 
very well that the preaching Christ crucified was 
a stumbling-block to the Jews, and to the Greeks 
foolishness. 1 Cor. 1 : 23. He afterwards found 
by Experience, that in all parts of the world, con- 
tempt was the portion of whoever engaged in 
preaching a mystery so unpalatable to the world, 
to all its passions and pleasures, and so irrecon- 
cilable to the pride of human reason. " We are 
made," says he to the Corinthians, " as the filth of 
the world, the off-scouring of all things unto this 
day." 1 Cor. 4 : 13. Yet he went on as zealously 
as he set out, and was not ashamed of the gospel 
of Christ. Certainly then, the desire of glory, the 
ambition of making to himself a great name, was 
not his motive to embrace Christianity. Was it 
then the love of power ? Power over whom ? over 
a flock of sheep driven to the slaughter, whose 
Shepherd himself had been murdered a little be- 
fore? All he could hope from that power was to 
be marked out in a particular manner for the same 
knife which he had seen so bloodily drawn against 
them. Could he expect more mercy from the chief 
priests and the rulers, than they had shown to 
Jesus himself? Would not their anger be proba- 
bly fiercer against the deserter and betrayer of 



142 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. • 

their cause, than against any other of the apos- 
tles ? Was power over so mean and desj^sed a 
set of men worth encountering so much danger? 
But still it may be said, there are some natures so 
fond of power that they will court it at any risk, 
and be pleased with it even over the meanest. 
Let us see then what power St. Paul assumed 
over the Christians. Did he pretend to any supe- 
riority over the other apostles ? No ; he declared 
himself the least of them, and less than the least 
of all saints. Eph. 3 : 8 ; 1 Cor. 15 : 9. Even in 
the churches he planted himself, he never pretend- 
ed to any primacy or power above the other apos- 
tles ; nor would he be regarded any otherwise by 
them, than as the instrument to them of the grace 
of God, and preacher of the gospel, not as the head 
of a sect. To the Corinthians he writes in these 
words : " Now this I say, that every one of you 
saith, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Ce- 
phas, and I of Christ. Is Christ divided ? Was 
Paul crucified for you ? Or were ye baptized in the 
name of Paul ?" 1 Cor. 1:12, 13. And in another 
place, " Who then is Paul, and who is xipollos, but 
ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord 
gave to every man?" 1 Cor. 3:5. "For we 
preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, 
and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake." 
2 Cor. 4 : 5. 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 143 

All the autliority he exercised over them was 
purely, of a spiritual nature, tending to their in- 
struction and edification, without any mixture of 
that civil dominion in which alone an impostor can 
find his account. Such was the dominion acquired 
and exercised through the pretence of divine in- 
spiration, by many ancient legislators, by Minos, 
Rhadamanthus, Triptolemus, Lycurgus, Numa, 
Zaleucus, Zoroaster, Xamolxis, nay, even by Py- 
thagoras, who joined legislation to liis philosophy, 
and like the others pretended to miracles and reve- 
lations from God, to give a more venerable sanction 
to the laws he prescribed. Such, in latter times, 
was attained by Odin among the Goths, by Mo- 
hammed among the Arabians, by Mango Copac 
among the Peruvians, by the Sofi family among 
the Persians, and that of the Xerififs among the 
Moors. To such a dominion did also aspire the 
many false Messiahs among the Jews. In short, 
a spiritual authority was only desired as a founda- 
tion for temporal power, or as the support of it, 
by all these pretenders to divine inspiration, and 
others whom history mentions in different ages 
and countries to have used the same arts. But 
St. Paul innovated nothing in government or civil 
affairs ; he meddled not with legislation ; he formed 
no commonwealths ; he raised no seditions ; he 
affected no temporal power. Obedience to then: 



144 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

rulers, Romans 13, was the doctrine he taught to 
the churches he planted ; and what he taught he 
practised himself: nor did he use any of those 
soothing arts by which ambitious and cunning men 
recommend themselves to the favor of those whom 
they endeavor to subject to their power. What- 
ever was 'UTong in the disciples under his care he 
freely reproved, as it became a teacher from God, 
of which numberless instances are to be found in 
all his epistles. And he was as careful of them 
when he had left them, as while he resided among 
them, which an impostor would hardly have been, 
whose ends were centred all in himself. This is 
the manner in which he writes to the Philippians : 
" Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obey- 
ed, not in my presence only, but now much more 
in my absence, work out your own salvation with 
fear and trembling." Phil. 2:12. And a little 
after he adds the cause why he interested himself 
so much in their conduct, " That ye may be blame- 
less and harmless, the sons of God in the midst of 
a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye 
shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word 
of hfe ; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, thaf 
I have not run in vain, neither labored in vain. 
Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and ser- 
vice of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all." 
Phil. 2 : 15-17. Arc these the words of an impos- 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 145 

tor, desiring nothing but temporal power ? No ; 
they are evidently written by one who looked be- 
yond the bounds of this life. But it may be said 
that he affected at least an absolute spiritual power 
over the churches he formed. I answer, he preach- 
ed Christ Jesus, and not himself. Christ was the 
head, he only the minister ; and for such only he 
gave himself to them. He called those who as- 
sisted him in preaching the gospel, his fellow- 
laborers and fellow-servants. 

So far was he from taking any advantage of a 
higher education, superior learning, and more use 
of the world, to claim to himself any supremacy 
above the other apostles, that he made light of all 
these attainments, and declared that he came not 
with excellency of speech, or of wisdom, but de- 
termined to know nothing among those he con- 
verted, save Jesus Christ- and him crucified. And 
the reason he gave for it was, that their faith 
should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the 
power of God. 1 Cor. 2 : 1-5. Now this conduct 
put him quite on a level with the other apostles, 
who knew Jesus Christ as well as he, and had the 
power of God going along with their preaching in 
an equal degree of virtue and grace. But an im- 
postor, whose aim had been power, would have 
acted a contrary part ; he would have availed him- 
self of all those advantages, he would have ex- 

Infidelity. 10 



146 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

tolled them as highly as possible, he would have 
set up himself by virtue of them as head of that 
sect to which he acceded, or at least of the prose- 
lytes made by himself. This is no more than 
what was done by every philosopher who formed 
a school ; much more was it natural in one who 
propagated a new religion. 

We see that the bishops of Rome have claimed 
to themselves a primacy, or rather a monarchy 
over the whole Christian church. If St. Paul had 
been actuated by the same lust of dominion, it was 
much easier for him to have succeeded in such an 
attempt. It was much easier to make himself 
head of a few poor mechanics and fishermen, 
whose superior he had always been in the eyes 
of the world, than for the bishops of Rome to re- 
duce those of Ravenna or Milan, and other great 
metropolitans, to their obedience. Besides the 
opposition they met with from such potent antag- 
onists, they were obhged to support their preten- 
sions in direct contradiction to those very Scrip- 
tures which they were forced to ground them upon, 
and to the indisputable practice of the whole Chris- 
tian church for many centuries. These were such 
difficulties as required the utmost ability and skill 
to surmount. But the first preachers of the gospel 
had easier means to corrupt a faith not yet fully 
known, and which in many places could only be 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 147 

known by what they severally published them- 
selves. It was necessary, indeed, while they 
continued together, and taught the same people, 
that they should agree,- otherwise the credit of 
their sect would have been overthrown ; but when 
they separated, and formed different churches in 
distant countries, the same necessity no longer 
remained. 

It was in the power of St. Paul to model most 
of the -churches he formed, so as to favor his own 
ambition ; for he preached the gospel in parts of 
the world where no other apostles had been, where 
Christ was not named till he brought the know- 
ledge of him, avoiding to build upon another man's 
foundation. Rom. 15 : 20. Now, had he been an 
impostor, would he have confined himself to just 
the same gospel as was delivered by the other 
apostles, where he had such a latitude to preach 
what he pleased without contradiction ? Would 
he not have twisted and warped the doctrines of 
Christ to his own ends, to the particular use and 
expediency of his own followers, and to the pecu- 
liar support and increase of his own power ? That 
this was not done by St. Paul, or by any other of 
the apostles in so many various parts of the world 
as they travelled into, and in churches absolutely 
under their own direction — that the gospel preach- 
ed by them all should be one and the same, the 



148 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

doctrines agreeing in every particular, without any 
one of them attributing more to himself than he 
did to the others, or establishing any thing even in 
point of order or discipline different from the rest, 
or more advantageous to his own interest, credit, 
or power, is a most strong and convincing proof of 
their not being impostors, but acting entirely by 
divine inspiration. 

If any one imagines that he sees any difference 
between the doctrines of St. James and St. Paul 
concerning justification by faith or by works, let 
him read Mr. Locke's excellent comment upon the 
epistles of the latter ; or let him only consider 
these words in the first epistle to the Corinthians, 
chap. 9:27: " But I keep under my body, and 
bring it into subjection ; lest that by any means, 
when I have preached to others, I myself should 
be a castaway." 

If St. Paul had beheved or taught that faith 
without works was sufficient to save a disciple of 
Christ, to what purpose did he keep under his body, 
since his salvation was not to depend upon that 
being subjected to the power of his reason, but 
merely upon the faith he professed? His faith 
was firm, and so strongly founded upon the most 
certain conviction, that he had iio reason to doubt 
its continuance ; how could he then think it possi- 
ble, that while he retained that saving faith, he 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 149 

might nevertheless he a castaumy? Or if he had 
supposed that his election and calling was of such a 
nature as that it irresistibly impelled him to good, 
and restrained him from evil, how could he express 
any fear, lest the lusts of his body should prevent 
his salvation ? Can such an apprehension be made 
to agree with the notion of absolute predestination, 
as destroying the motive to good works, by some 
ascribed to St. Paul ? He could have no doubt 
that the grace of God had been given to him in the 
most extraordinary maimer ; yet we see that he 
felt the necessity of continual watchfulpess, lest 
he should fall, through the natural prevalence of 
bodily appetites, if not duly restrained by his own 
voluntary care. This single passage is a full an- 
swer, out of the mouth of St. Paul himself, to all 
the charges that have been made of his depreciat- 
ing good works in what he has said concerning 
grace, election, and justification. 

If, then, it appears that St. Paul had nothing to 
gain by taking this part, let us consider, on the 
other hand, what he gave up, and what he had rea- 
son to FEAR. He gave up a fortune, which he was 
then in a fair way of advancing : he gave up that 
reputation which he had acquired by the labors 
and studies of his whole life, and by a behavior 
which had been blameless, "touching the right- 



150 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

eousness which is in the law." Phil.^ 3:6. He 
gave up his friends, his relations, and family, from 
whom he estranged and banished himself for life ; 
he gave up that religion which he had profited in 
above many his equals in his own nation, and 
those traditions of his fathers which he had been, 
more exceedingly zealous of. Gal. 1 : 14. How 
hard this sacrifice was to a man of his warm tem- 
per, and above all men, to a Jew, is worth con- 
sideration. That nation is known to have been 
more tenacious of their religious opinions than any 
other upon the face of the earth. The strictest and 
proudest sect among them was that of the Phari- 
sees, under whose discipline St. Paul was bred. 
The departing, therefore, so suddenly from their 
favorite tenets, renouncing their pride, and from 
their disciple becoming their adversary, was a most 
difficult effort for one to make so nursed up in the 
esteem of them, and whose early prejudices were 
so strongly confirmed by all the power of habit, 
all the authority of example, and all the allure- 
ments of honor and interest. ' These were the sac- 
rifices he had to make in becoming a Christian ; 
let us now see what inconveniences he had to fear : 
the implacable vengeance of those he deserted; 
that sort of contempt which is hardest to bear, the 
contempt of those whose good opinion he had most 
eagerly sought, and all those other complicated 



.CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 151 

evils which he described in his second epistle to 
the Corinthians, chapter 11 — evils, the least of 
which were enough to have frighted any impostor 
even from the most hopeful and profitable cheat. 
But where the advantage proposed bears no pro- 
portion to the dangers incurred, or the mischiefs 
endured, he must be absolutely out of his senses 
who will either engage in an imposture, or, being 
engaged, persevere. 

Upon the whole, then, I think I have proved 
that the desire of wealth, or fame, or of power, 
couM be no motive to make St. Paul a convert to 
Christ ; but that, on the contrary, he must have 
been checked by that desire, as well as by the just 
apprehension of many inevitable and insupportable 
evils, from taking a part so contradictory to his 
past life, to all the principles he had imbibed, and 
all the habits he had contracted. 

It only remains to be inquired, whether the 
GRATIFICATION OF ANY OTHER PASSION Under the au- 
thority of that religion, or by the means it afforded, 
could be his inducement. That there have been 
some impostors who have pretended to revelations 
from God merely to give loose to irregular passions, 
and set themselves free from all restraints of gov- 
ernment, law, or morality, both ancient and modern 
history shows. But the doctrine preached by St. 



152 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

Paul is absolutely contrary to all such designs. 
His writings* breathe nothing but the strictest 
morality, obedience to magistrates, order and gov- 
ernment, with the utmost abhorrence of all licen- 
tiousness, idleness, or loose behavior under the 
cloak of religion. We nowhere read in his works, 
that saints are above moral ordinances ; that do- 
minion or property is founded in grace ; that there 
is no difference in moral actions ; that any impulses 
of the mind are to direct us against the light of our 
reason, and the laws of nature ; or any of those 
wicked tenets, from which the peace of society has 
been disturbed, and the rules of morality have been 
broken by men pretending to act under the sanc- 
tion of a divine revelation. Nor does any part of 
his life, either before or after his conversion to 
Christianity, bear any mark of a libertine disposi- 
tion. As among the Jews, so among the Chris- 
tians, his conversation and manners were blame- 
less. Hear the appeal that he mjakes to the Thes- 
salonians upon his doctrine and behavior among 
them : " Our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of 
uncleanness, nor in guile. Ye are witnesses, and 
God also, how holily and justly and unblamably 
we behaved ourselves among you that believed."'f 

* See particularly Rom. 11 and 13, and Col. 3. 
t If St. Paul had held any secret doctrines, or esoteric, 
as the philosophers called them, we should have probably 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 153 

1 Thess. 2 : 3, 10. And to the Corinthians he saj^s, 
" We have wronged no man, we have corrupted no 
man, we have defrauded no man." 2 Cor. 1:2. 
See also 2 Cor. 1:12; 4:2. 

It was not, then, the desii'e of gratifying any- 
irregular passion, that could induce St. Paul to 
turn Christian, any more than the hope of advanc- 
ing himself either in wealth, or reputation, or pow- 
er. But still it is possible, some men may say — ■ 
and I would leave no imaginable objection unan- 
swered — that though St. Paul could have no selfish 
or interested view in undertaking such an impos- 
ture, yet, for the sake of its moral doctritfes, he 
might be inclined to support the Christian faith, 
and make use of some prous frauds to advance a 
religion which, though erroneous and false in its 
theological tenets, and in the fact upon which it is 

found them in the letters he wrote to Timothy, Titus, and 
Philemon, his bosom-friends and disciples. But both the 
theological and moral doctrines are exactly the same in 
them, as those he wrote to the churches. A very strong 
presumptive proof of his being no impostor. Surely, had 
he been one, he would have given some hints in these pri- 
vate letters of the cheat they were carrying on, and some 
secret directions to turn it to some worldly purposes of one 
kind or another. But no such thing is to be found in any 
one of them. The same disinterested, holy, and divine spirit 
breathes in all these, as in the other more public epistles. 



154 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

grounded, was, in its precepts and influence, bene- 
ficial to mankind. 

Now, admit that some good men in the heathen 
world have both pretended to divine revelations, 
and introduced or supported religions they knew 
to be false, under a notion of public utility. But 
besides that this practice was built upon maxims 
disclaimed by the Jews, who, looking upon truth, 
not utility, to be the basis of then religion, abhor- 
red all such frauds, and thought them injurious to 
the honor of God, the circumstances they acted in 
were different from those of St. Paul. 

The first reformers of savage, uncivilized nations 
had n* other way to tame those barbarous people, 
and to bring them to submit to order and govern- 
ment, but by the reverence which they acquired 
from this pretence. The fraud was therefore alike 
beneficial both to the deceiver and the deceived. 
And in all other instances which can he given of 
good men acting this part, they not only did it to 
serve good ends, but were secure of its doing no 
harm. Thus, when Lycurgus persuaded the Spar- 
tans, or Kuma the Komans, that the laws of the 
one were inspired by Apollo, or those of the other 
by Egeria ; when they taught their people to put 
great faith in oracles, or in augury, no temporal 
mischief, either to them or their people, could at- 
tend the reception of that belief. It drew on no 



CONVEESION OF ST. PAUL. 155 

persecutions, no enmity with the world. But at 
that time, when St. Paul undertook the preaching 
of the gospel, to persuade any man to -be a Chris- 
tian, was to persuade him to expose himself to all 
the calamities human nature could suffer. This 
St. Paul knew ; this he not only expected, but 
warned those he taught to look for it too. 1 Thess. 
3 : 4 ; 2 Cor. 6 : 4, 5 ; Eph. 6 : 10-16 ; Phil. 1 : 28- 
30. The only support that he had himself, or gave 
to them, was, that "if they suffered with Christ, 
they should be also glorified together." And that 
"he reckoned that the sufferings of the present 
time were not worthy to be compared with that 
glory." Rom. 8 : 17, 18. So likewise he writes to 
the. Thessalonians, "We ourselves glory in you in 
the churches of God, for your patience and faith in 
all your persecutions and tribulations that ye en- 
dure ; which is a manifest token of the righteous 
judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy 
of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer : see- 
ing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense," 
or repay, " tribulation to them that trouble you ; 
and to you who are troubled rest with us, when 
the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with 
his mighty angels," etc. 2 Thess. 1 : 4-*I. And 
to the Corinthians he says, " If in this life only we 
have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miser- 
able." How much reason he had to say this, the 



156 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

hatred, the contempt, the torments, the deaths 
endured by the Christians in that age, and long 
afterwards, abundantly prove. Whoever profess- 
ed the gospel under these circumstances, without 
an entire conviction of its being a divine revelation, 
must have been mad ; and if he made others pro- 
fess it by fraud or deceit, he must have been worse 
than mad — he must have been the most hardened 
villain that ever breathed. Could any man who 
had in his nature the least spark of humanity, sub- 
ject his fellow-creatures to so many miseries ; or 
could one that had in his mind the least ray of 
reason, expose himself to share them with those 
he deceived, in order to advance a religion which 
he knew to be false, merely for the sake of its 
moral doctrines ? Such an extravagance is too 
absurd to be supposed ; and I dwell too long on a 
notion that, upon a little reflection, confutes itself 
I would only add to the other proofs I have 
given, that St. Paul could have no rational motive 
to become a disciple of Christ unless he sincerely 
believed in him, this observation : that whereas it 
may be objected to the other apostles, by those 
who are resolved not to credit their testimony, that 
having been deeply engaged with Jesus during his 
life, they were obliged to continue the same profes- 
sions after his death, for the sujpport of their own credit, 
and from having gone too far to go back ; this can 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. ' 157 

by no means be said of St. Paul. On the contrary, 
whatever force there may be in that way of rea- 
soning, it all tends to convince us that St. Paul 
must have naturally continued a Jew, and an ene- 
my of Christ Jesus. If they were engaged on one 
side, he was as strongly engaged on the other ; if 
shame withheld them from changing sides, much 
more ought it to have stopped him, who being of a 
higher education and rank in life a great deal than 
they, had more credit to lose, and must be sup- 
posed to have been vastly more sensible to that 
sort of shame. The only difference was, that they, 
by quitting their Master after his death, might have 
preserved themselves ; whereas he, by quitting the * 
Jews, and taking up the cross of Christ, certainly 
brought on his own destruction. 

As therefore no rational motive appears for St. 
Paul's embracing the faith of Christ without having 
been really convinced of the truth of it, but on the 
contrary, every thing concurred to deter him from 
acting that part, one might very justly conclude, 
that when a man of his understanding embraced 
that faith, he was in reaUty convinced of the truth 
of it ; and that, by consequence, he was not an 
impostor, who said what he knew to be false with 
an intent to deceive. 

But that no shadow of doubt may remain upon 



158 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

the impossibility of his having been such an im- 
postor ; that it may not be said, " The minds of 
men are sometimes so capricious that they will act 
without any rational motives, they know not why, 
and so perhaps might St. Paul ;" I shall next en- 
deavor to prove, that if he had been so unaccount- 
ably wild and absurd as to undertake an imposture 
so unprofitable and dangerous both to himself and 
those he deceived by it, he could not possibly have 
CARRIED IT on WITH ANY SUCCESS by the mcaus that 
we know he employed. 

First, then, let me observe, that if his conver- 
sion, and the part that he acted in consequence of 
it, was an imposture, it was such an imposture as 
could not he carried on by one man alone. The faith 
he professed, and which he became an apostle of, 
was not his invention. He was not the author or 
beginner of it, and therefore it was not in his power 
to draw the doctrines of it out of his own imagina- 
tion. With Jesus, who was the Author and Head 
of it, he had never had any communication before 
his death, nor with his apostles after his death, 
except as their persecutor. As he took on himself 
the office and character of an apostle, it was abso- 
lutely necessary for him to have a precise and per- 
fect knowledge of all the facts contained in the 
gospel, several of which had only passed between 
Jesus himself and his twelve apostles, and others 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 159 

more privately still, so that they could be known 
but to very few, being not yet made public by any 
writings ; otherwise he would have exposed him- 
self to ridicule among those who preached that 
gospel with more knowledge than he ; and as the 
testimony they bore would have been different in 
point of fact, and many of their doctrines and inter- 
pretations of Scripture repugnant to his, from their 
entire disagreement with those Jewish opmions in 
which he was bred up, either they must have been 
forced to ruin his credit, or he would have ruined 
theirs. Some general notices he might have gain- 
ed of these matters from the Christians he perse- 
cuted, but not exact or extensive enough to qualify 
him for an apostle, whom the least error in these 
points would have disgraced, and who must have 
been ruined by it in all his pretensions to that in- 
spiration from whence the apostolical authority was 
chiefly derived. 

It was therefore impossible for him to act this 
part but in confederacy, at least, with the apostles. 
Such a confederacy was still more necessary for 
him, as the undertaking to preach the gospel did 
not only require an exact and particular knowledge 
of all it contained, but an apparent power of work- 
ing miracles ; for to such a power all the apostles 
appealed in proof of their mission, and of the doc- 
trines they preached. He was, therefore, to learn 



160 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

of them by what secret arts they so imposed on 
the senses of men, if this power was a cheat. But 
how could he gain these men to become his con- 
federates ? Was it by furiously persecuting them 
and their brethren, as we find that he did, to the 
very moment of his conversion ? Would they 
venture to trust their capital enemy with all the 
secrets of their imposture, with those upon which 
all their hopes and credit depended ? Would they 
put it in his power to take away not only their 
lives, but the- honor of their sect, which they pre- 
ferred to their lives, by so ill-placed a confidence ? 
Would men, so secret as not to be drawn by the 
most severe persecutions to say one word which 
could convict them of being impostors, confess 
themselves such to their persecutor, in hopes of 
his being their accomplice ? This is still more im- 
possible than that he should attempt to engage in 
their fraud without their consent and assistance. 

We must suppose then, that till he came to Da- 
mascus, he had no communication with the apos- 
tles, acted in no concert with them, and learnt 
nothing from them except the doctrines which they 
had publicly taught to all the world. When he 
came there, he told the Jews, to whom he brought 
letters from the high-priest and the synagogue 
against the Christians, of his having seen in the 
way a great light from heaven, and heard Jesus 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 161 

Christ reproaching him with his persecution, and 
commanding him to go into the city, where it 
should be told him what he was to do. But to 
account for his choosing this method of declaring 
himself a convert to Christ, we must suppose that 
all those who w^ere with him when he pretended 
he had this vision, were his accomplices ; other- 
wise the story he told could have gained no belief, 
being contradicted by them whose testimony was 
necessary to vouch for the truth of it. And yet 
how can we suppose that all these men should be 
wilUng to join in this imposture ? They were 
probably officers of justice, or soldiers, who had 
been employed often before in executing the orders 
of the high-priest and the rulers against the Chris- 
tians, Or, if they were chosen particularly for 
this expedition, they must have been chosen by 
them as men they could trust for their zeal in that 
cause. What should induce them to the betray- 
ing of that business they were employed in ? Does 
it even appear that they had any connection with 
the man they so lied for, before or after this time, 
or any reward from him for it ? This is, therefore, 
a difficulty in the first outset of this imposture not 
to be overcome. 

But further, he was to be instructed by one at 
Damascus. That instructor, therefore, must have 
been his accomplice, though they appeared to be 

Infidelity. 1 1 



162 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

absolute strangers to one another ; and tliougli he 
was a man of an excellent character, "who had a 
good report of all the Jews that dwelt at Damas- 
cus," and so was very unhkely to have engaged in 
such an imposture. Nothwithstanding these im- 
probabilities, this man, I say, must have been his 
confidant and accomplice in carrying on this fraud, 
and the whole matter must have been previously 
agreed on between them. But here, again, the 
same objection occurs. How could this man ven- 
ture to act such a dangerous part, without the 
consent of the other disciples, especially of the 
apostles ; or by what means could he obtain their 
consent ? And how absurdly did they contrive 
their business, to make the conversion of Saul the 
effect of a miracle, which all those who were with 
him must certify did never happen. How much 
easier would it have been to have made him be 
present at some pretended miracle wrought by the 
disciples, or by Ananias himself, when none were 
able to discover the fraud, and have imputed his 
conversion to that, or to the arguments used by 
some of his prisoners whom he might have dis- 
coursed with, and questioned about their faith, and 
the grounds of it, in order to color his intended 
conversion. 

As this was the safest, so it was the most nat- 
ural method of bringing about such a change, in- 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 163 

stead of ascribing it to an event which lay so open 
to detection. For, to use the words of St. Paul to 
Agrippa, "this thing was not done in a corner," 
Acts 26, but in the eye of the world, and subject 
immediately to the examination of those who would 
be the most strict in searcliing into the truth of it, 
the Jews at Damascus. Had they been able to 
bring any shadow of proof to convict him of fraud 
in this affair, his whole scheme of imposture must 
have been nipt in the bud. Nor were they, at 
Jerusalem, whose commission he bore, less con- 
cerned to discover so provoking a cheat. But we 
find that, many years afterwards, when they had 
all the time and means they could desire to make 
the strictest inquiry, he was bold enough to appeal 
to Agrippa, in the presence of Festus, Acts 26, 
upon his knowledge of the truth of his story ; who 
did not contradict him, though he had certainly 
heard all that the Jews could allege against the 
credit of it in any particular — a very remarkable 
proof, both of the notoriety of the fact, and the 
integrity of the man who, with so fearless a con- 
fidence, could call upon a king to give testimony 
for him, even while he was sitting in judgment 
upon him. 

But to return to Ananias. Is it not strange, if 
this stor}!' had been an imposture, and he had been 
joined with Paul in carrying it on, that, after their 



164 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

meeting at Damascus, we never should hear of 
their consorting together, or acting in concert ; or 
that the former drew any benefit from the friend- 
ship of the latter, when he became so considerable 
among the Christians ? Did Ananias engage and 
continue in such a dangerous fraud without any 
hopes or desire of private advantage ? Or was it 
safe for Paul to shake him off, and risk his resent- 
ment ? There' is, I think, no other way to get 
over this difficulty but by supposing that Ananias 
happened to die soon after the other's conversion. 
Let us, then, take that for granted, without any 
authority either of history or tradition, and let us 
see in what manner this wondrous imposture was 
carried on by Paul himself. His first care ought 
to have been to get himself owned and received as 
an apostle by the apostles. Till this was done, 
the bottom he stood upon was very narrow, nor 
could he have any probable means of supporting 
himself in any esteem or credit among the disci- 
ples. Intruders into impostures run double risks ; 
they are in danger of being detected, not only by 
those upon whom they attempt to practise their 
cheats, but also by those whose society they force 
themselves into, who must always be jealous of 
such an intrusion, and much more from one who 
had always before behaved as their enemy. There- 
fore, to gain the apostles, and bring them to admit 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 165 

him into a participation of all their mysteries, all 
their designs, and all their authority, was abso- 
lutely necessary at this time to Paul. The least 
delay was of dangerous consequence, and might 
expose him to such inconveniences as he never 
afterwards could overcome. But instead of attend- 
ing to this necessity, he went into Arabia, and then 
returned again to Damascus ; nor did he go to Jeru- 
salem till three years were passed. Gal, 1 : It, 18. 

Now, this conduct may be accounted for, if it be 
true that, as he declares in his epistle to the Gala- 
tians, he " neither received the gospel of any man, 
neither was he taught it, but by the revelation of 
Jesus Christ." Gal. 1:12. Under such a Master, 
and with the assistance of his divine power, he 
might go on boldly without any human associates ; 
but an impostor so left to himself, so deprived of 
all help, all support, all recommendation, could not 
have succeeded. 

Further, we find that, at Antioch, he was not 
afraid to withstand Peter to his face, and even to 
reprove him before all the disciples, because he 
was to be blamed. Gal. 2 : 11-14. If he was an 
impostor, how could he venture so to offend that 
apostle, whom it so highly concerned him to agree 
with and please ? Accomplices in a fraud are 
obliged to show greater regard to each other ; such 
freedom belongs to truth alone. 



166 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

But let us consider what difficulties he had to 
ExcouxTER AMOXG THE Gentiles themselves, in the 
enterprise he undertook of going to them, making 
himself their apostle, and converting them to the 
rehgion of Christ. As this undertaking was the 
distinguishing part of his apostolical functions, that 
which, in the language of his epistles, he was par- 
ticularly called to, or which, to speak like an unbe- 
liever, he chose and assigned to himself, it deserves 
a particular consideration. But I shall only touch 
the principal points of it as concisely as I can, be- 
cause you have in a great measure exhausted the 
subject in your late excellent book on the resur- 
rection, where you discourse with such strength of 
rea-son and eloquence upon the difficulties that oi> 
posed the propagation of the Christian religion in 
all parts of the world. 

Now, in this enterprise, St. Paul was to contend, 

1. With the policy and power of the magistrate. 

2. With the interest, credit, and craft of the priests. 

3. With the prejudice and passions of the people. 

4. With the wisdom and pride of the philosophers. 
That in all heathen countries the estabhshed re- 
ligion was interwoven with their civil constitution, 
and supported hy the magistrate as an essential part 
of the government, whoever has any acquaintance 
with antiquity cannot but know. They tolerated, 
indeed, many different worships, though not with 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 167 

SO entire a latitude as some people suppose, as 
they suffered men to discourse very freely con- 
cerning religion, provided they would submit to an 
exterior conformity with estal3lished rites ; nay, 
according to the genius of paganism, which allow- 
ed an intercommunity of worship, they in most 
places admitted, without any great difficulty, new 
gods, and new rites ; but they nowhere endured 
any attempt to overturn the estabhshed religion, 
or any direct opposition made to it, esteeming that 
an unpardonable offence, not to the gods alone, but 
to the state. This was so universal a notion, and 
so constant a maxim of heathen policy, that when 
the Christian religion set itself up in opposition to 
all other religions, admitted no intercommunity 
with them, but declared that the gods of the Gen- 
tiles were not to he worshipped, nor any society suf- 
fered between them and the only true God — when 
this new doctrine began to be propagated, and 
made such a progress as to fall under the notice of 
the magistrate, the civil power was everywhere 
armed with all its terrors against it. When, there- 
fore, St. Paul undertook the conversion of the Gen- 
tiles, he knew very well that the most severe per- 
secutions must be the consequence of any success 
in his design. 

2. This danger was rendered more certain by 
the opposition he was to expect from the interest, 



168 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

credit, and craft of the priests. How gainful a trade 
they, with all their inferior dependents, made of 
those superstitions which he proposed to destroy ; 
how much credit they had with the people, as well 
as the state, by the means of them ; and how much 
craft they employed in carrying on their impos- 
tures, all history shows. St. Paul could not doubt 
that all these men would exert their utmost abili- 
ties to stop the spreading of the doctrines he 
preached — doctrines which struck at the root of 
their power and gain, and were much more terri- 
ble to them than those of the most atheistical sect 
of philosophers ; because the latter contented them- 
selves with denying their principles, but at the 
same time declared for supporting their practices, 
as useful cheats, or at least acquiesced in them as 
establishments authorized by the sanction of law. 
Whatever, therefore, their cunning could do to 
support their own worship, whatever aid they 
could draw from the magistrate, whatever zeal 
they could raise in the people, St. Paul was to 
contend with, unsupported by any human assist- 
ance. And, 

3. This he was to do in direct opposition to all 
the prejudices and passions of the people. 

Now, had he confined his preaching to Judea 
alone, this difficulty would not have occurred in 
near so great a degree. The people were there so 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 169 

moved with the miracles the apostles had wrought, 
as well as hj the memory of those done by Jesus, 
that, in spite of their rulers, they began to be fa- 
vorably disposed towards them ; and we even find 
that the high-priest, and the council, had more than 
once been withheld from treating the apostles with 
so much severity as they desired to do, for fear of 
the people. Acts 4:21, and 5 : 26. But in the 
people among the Gentiles no such dispositions 
could be expected : then- prejudices were violent, 
not only in favor of their own superstitions, but in 
a particular manner against any doctrines taught 
by a Jew. As from their aversion to all idolatry, 
and irreconcilable separation from all other relig- 
ions, the Jews were accused of hating mankind, so 
were they hated by all other nations ; nor were 
they hated alone, but despised. To what a degree 
that contempt was carried, appears as well by the 
mention made of them in heathen authors, as by 
the complaints Josephus makes of the unreasona- 
bleness and injustice of it in his apology. What 
authority then could St. Paul iSatter himself that 
his preaching would carry along with it, among 
people to whom^he was at once both the object of 
national hatred, and national scorn ? But besides 
this popular prejudice against a Jew, the doctrines 
he taught were such as shocked all their most in- 
grafted- religious opinions. They agreed to no 



170 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

priuciples of which he could avail himself to pro- 
cure their assent to the other parts of the gospel 
he preached. To convert the Jews to Christ Je- 
sus, he was able to argue from their own scriptures, 
upon the authority of books which they owned to 
contain divine revelations, and from w^hich he 
could clearly convince them that Jesus was the, 
very Christ. Acts 9 : 22. But all these ideas were 
new to the Gentiles : they expected no Christ, they 
allowed no such scriptures, they were to be taught 
the Old Testament as well as the New. How. 
was this to be done by a man not even authorized 
by his own nation ; opposed by those who were 
greatest, and thought wisest, among them ; either 
quite single, or only attended by one or two more 
under the same disadvantages, and even of less 
consideration than he ? 

The light of nature, indeed, without express reve- 
lations, might have conducted the Gentiles to the 
knowledge of one God, the Creator of all things ; 
and to that light St. Paul might appeal, as we find 
that he did, Acts 14 : It ; It : 2t, 28. But clear 
as it was, they had almost put it out by their 
superstitions, "having changed the glory of the 
incorruptible God into an image made like to cor- 
ruptible man, and to birds and four-footed beasts, 
and creeping things, and serving the creature more 
than the Creator." Rom. 1 : 23, 25. And to this 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 171 

iclolati'}^ they were strongly attached, not by their 
prejudices alone, but by their passions, which were 
flattered and gratified in it, as they believed that 
their deities would be rendered propitious, not by 
virtue and hohness, but by offerings and incense 
and outward rites — rites which dazzled their senses 
by magnificent shows, and allured them by pleas- 
ures often of a very impure and immoral nature. 
Instead of all this, the gospel proposed to them no 
other terms of acceptance with God ]yat a worship 
of him in spirit and in truth, sincere repentance, and 
perfect submission to the divine laws, the strictest 
purity of hfe and manners, and the renouncing of 
all those lusts in which they had formerly walked. 
How unpalatable a doctrine was this to men so 
given up to the power of those lusts, as the whole 
heathen world was art that time ! If their philoso- 
phers could be brought to approve it, there could 
be no hope that the people would rehsh it, or ex- 
change the ease and indulgence which those relig- 
ions in which they were bred allowed to their 
appetites, for one so harsh and severe. But might 
not St. Paul, in order to gain them, relax that 
severity ? He might have done so, no doubt, and 
probably would, if he had been an impostor ; but 
it appears by all his epistles that he preached it 
as purely, and enjoined it as strongly, as Jesus 
himself. 



172 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

But supposing they might be persuaded to quit 
their habitual sensuahty for the purity of the gos- 
pel, and to forsake their idolatries, which St. Paul 
reckons among the works of the flesh. Gal. 5 : 19, 
20, for spiritual worship of the one invisible God; 
how were they disposed to receive the doctrine of 
the salvation of man by the cross of Jesus Christ ? 
Could they, who were bred in notions so contrary 
to that " great mystery." to that " hidden wisdom 
of God, which none of the princes of this world 
knew," 1 Cor. 2 : t, 8, inchne to receive it against 
the instructions of all their teachers, and the exam- 
ple of all their superiors ? Could they, whose gods 
had almost all been powerful kings, and mighty 
conquerors — they, who at that very time paid di- 
vine honors to the emperors of Rome, whose only 
title to deification was the imperial power — could 
they, I say, reconcile their ideas to a crucified Son 
of God, to a Redeemer of mankind on the cross? 
Would they look there for Him " who is the image 
of the invisible God, the first-born of every crea- 
ture ; by whom and for whom were all things 
created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, 
whether they be thrones, or dominions, or princi- 
palities, or powers?" Col. 1 : 15, 16. No; most 
surely the " natural man," to speak in the words 
of St. Paul, "received not these things, for they are 
foolishness to him ; neither could he know them, 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 173 

because they are spiritually discerned." 1 Cor. 
2 : 14. I may therefore conclude, that in the en- 
terprise of converting the Gentiles, St. Paul was 
to contend not only with the policy and power of 
the magistrates^ and with the interest, credit, and 
craft of the priests, but also with the prejudices 
and passions of the people. 

4. I am next to show that he was to expect no 
less opposition from the wisdom aTid pride of the 
philosophers. And though some may imagine, that 
men who pretended to be raised and refined above 
vulgar prejudices and vulgar passions, would have 
been helpful to him in his design, it will be found 
upon examination, that instead of assisting or be- 
friending the gospel, they were its worst and most 
irreconcilable enemies. For they had prejudices of 
their own still more repugnant to the doctrines of 
Christ than those of the vulgar, more deeply rooted, 
and more obstinately fixed in their minds. The 
wisdom upon which they valued themselves chiefly 
consisted in vain metaphysical speculations, in 
logical subtleties, in endless disputes, in high-flown 
conceits of the perfection and self-sufi&ciency of 
human wisdom, in dogmatical positiveness about 
doubtful opinions, or sceptical doubts about the 
most clear and certain truths. It must appear,- at 
first sight, that nothing could be more contradicto- 
ry to the first principles of the Christian rehgion, 



174 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

than those of the atheistical, or sceptical sects 
which at that time prevailed very much both 
among the Greeks and the Romans ; nor shall we 
find that the theistical were much less at enmity 
with it, when we consider the doctrines they held 
upon the nature of God and the soul. 

But I will not enlarge on a subject which the 
most learned Mr. Warburton handled so well. 
Div. Leg. 1:3. If it were necessary to enter par- 
ticularly into this argument, I could easily prove 
that there was not one of all the different philoso- 
phical sects then upon earth, not even the Platon- 
ists themselves, who are thought to favor it most, 
that did not maintain some opinions fundamentally 
contrary to those of the gospel. And in this they 
all agreed, to explode as most unphilosophical, and 
contrary to every notion that any among them 
maintained, that great article of the Christian re- 
ligion upon which the foundations of it are laid, and 
without which St. Paul declares to his proselytes, 
" their faith would be vain," 1 Cor. 15 : It, 20 : the 
resurrection of the dead with their bodies, of which 
resurrection Christ was the first-born. Col. 1:18. 
Besides the contrariety of their tenets to those of 
the gospel, the pride that was common to all the 
philosophers was of itself an almost invincible ob- 
stacle against the admission of the evangelical doc- 
trines calculated to humble that . pride, and teach 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 175 

them, that " professing themselves to be wise, they 
became fools." Rom. 1 : 22. This pride was no 
less intractable, no less averse to the instructions 
of Christ, or of his apostles, than that of the scribes 
and Pharisees. St. Paul was therefore to contend, 
in his enterprise of converting the Gentiles, with 
all the opposition that could be made to it by all 
the different sects of philosophers. And how 
formidable an opposition this was, let those con- 
sider who are acquainted from history with the 
great credit those sects had obtained at that time 
in the world — a credit even superior to that of the 
priests. Whoever pretended to learning or virtue 
was their disciple ; the greatest magistrates, gen- 
erals, kings, ranged themselves under their disci- 
pline, were trained up in their schools, and pro- 
fessed the opinions they taught. 

All these sects made it a maxim not to disturb 
the popular worship, or estabhshed religion ; but 
under those limitations they taught very freely 
whatever they pleased ; and no religious opinions 
were more warmly supported, than those they de- 
livered were by their followers. The Christian 
religion at once overturned their several systems, 
taught a morality more perfect than theirs, and 
established it upon higher and much stronger foun- 
dations ; mortified their pride, confounded their 
learning, discovered their ignorance, ruined their 



176 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

credit. Against such an enemy, what would they 
not do ? Would not they exert the whole power 
of their rhetoric, the whole art of their logic, their 
influence over the people, their interest with the 
great, to discredit a novelty so alarming to them 
all ? If St. Paul had had nothing to trust to but 
his own natural faculties, his own understanding, 
knowledge, and eloquence, could he have hoped to 
be singly a match for all theirs united against him ? 
Could a teacher unheard of before, from an obscure 
and unlearned part of the world, have withstood 
the authority of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno, 
Arcesilaus, Carneades, and all the great names 
which held the first rank of human wisdom ? He 
might as well have attempted alone, or with the 
help of Barnabas and Silas and Timotheus and 
Titus, to have erected a monarchy upon the ruins 
of all the several states then in the world, as to 
have erected Christianity upon the destruction of 
all the several sects of philosophy which reigned 
in the minds of the Gentiles among whom he 
preached, particularly the Greeks and the Romans. 
Having thus proved, as I think, that in the work 
of converting the Gentiles, St. Paul could have no 
assistance; but was sure, on the contrary, of the 
utmost repugnance and opposition to it imaginable 
from the magistrates, from the priests, from the 
people, and from the philosophers ; it necessarily 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 177 

follows, that to succeed in that work, he must have 
called in some extraordinai'y aid, some stronger 
power than that of reason and argument. Accord- 
ingly we find he tells the Corinthians, that ''his 
speech and preaching was not with enticing words 
of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spir- 
it, and of power." 1 Cor. 2 : 4. And to the Thes- 
salonians he says, " Our gospel came not unto you 
in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy 
Ghost." 1 Thess. 1:5, It was to the efficacy of 
the divine power that he ascribed all his success 
in thuse countries, and wherever else he planted 
the gospel of Christ. If that power really went 
with him, it would enable him to overcome all those 
difficulties that obstructed his enterprise ; but then 
he was not an impostor. 

Our inquiry, therefore, must be, whether, sup- 
posing him to have been an impostor, he could, 
by PRETENDING TO MIRACLES, liavc ovcrcomc all those 
difficulties, and carried on his work with success? 
Now, to give miracles, falsely pretended to, any 
reputation, two circumstances are principally nec- 
essary : an'^apt disposition in those whom they are 
designed to imj^ose upon, and a powerful confederacy 
to carry on and abet the cheat. Both these cir- 
cumstances, or at least one of them, have always 
accompanied all the false miracles, ancient and 

Infidelity. 12 



178 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

modern, which have obtained any credit among 
mankind. To both these was owing the general 
faith of the heathen world in oracles, auspices, au- 
guries, and other impostures, by which the priests, 
combined with the magistrates, supported the na- 
tional worship and deluded a people prepossessed 
in their favor, and wilhng to be deceived. Both 
the same causes likewise cooperate in the belief 
that is given to Popish miracles among those of 
their own church. But neither of these assisted 
St. Paul. What prepossession could there have 
been in the minds of the Gentiles, either in favor 
of him or the doctrines he taught? Or, rather, 
what prepossessions could be stronger than those 
which they undoubtedly had agamst both ? If he 
had remained in Judea, it might have been sug- 
gested by unbelievers, that the Jews were a cred- 
ulous jpeople, apt to seek after miracles, and to afford 
them an easy belief; and that the fame of those 
said to be done by Jesus himself, and by his apos- 
tles, before Paul declared his conversion, had pre- 
disposed their minds, and warmed their imagina- 
tions, to the admission of others supposed to be 
wrought by the same power. 

The signal miracle of the apostlea speaking with 
tongues on the day of Pentecost, had made three 
thousand converts ; that of healing the lame man 
at the gate of the temple, five thousand more. 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 179 

Acts 2:41; 4:4. Nay, such was the faith of the 
multitude, that they brought forth the sick into the 
streets, and laid them on beds and couches, " that 
at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might 
overshadow some of them." Acts 5 : 15. Here 
was therefore a good foundation laid for Paul to 
proceed upon in pretending to similar miraculous 
works ; though the priests and the rulers were 
hardened against them, the people were inclined 
to give credit to them, and there was reason to 
hope for success among them both at Jerusalem 
and m all the regions belonging to the Jews. But 
no such dispositions were to be found in the Gen- 
tiles. There was among them no matter prepared 
for imposture to work upon, no knowledge of 
Christ, no thought of Ms power, or of the power 
of those who came in his name. Thus when, at 
Lystra, St. Paul healed the man who was a cripple 
fi'om his birth, Acts 14, so far were the people there 
from supposing that he could be able to do such a 
thing as an apostle of Christ, or by any virtue de- 
rived from him, that they took Paul and Barnabas 
to be gods of their own, come down "in the like- 
ness of men," and would have sacrificed to them 
as such. 

Now, I ask, did the citizens of Lystra concur in 
this matter to the deceiving of themselves ? Were 
their imaginations overheated with any conceits of 



180 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

a miraculous power belonging to Paul, which could 
dispose them to think he worked such a miracle 
when he did not ? As the contrary is evident, so 
in all other places to which he carried the gospel, 
it may be proved to demonstration, that he could 
find no disposition, no aptness, no bias to aid his 
imposture, if the miracles by which he everywhere 
confirmed his preaching, had not been true. 

On the other hand, let us examine whether 
without the advantage of such an assistance there 
was any confederacy strong enough to impose his 
false miracles upon the Gentiles, who were both 
unprepared and indisposed to receive them. The 
contrary is apparent. He was in no combination 
with then' priests or their magistrates ; no sect or 
jparty among them gave him an}^ help ; all eyes 
were open and watchful to detect his impostures ; 
all hands ready to punish him as soon as detected. 
Had he remained in Judea, he would, at least, have 
had many confederates, all the apostles, all the dis- 
ciples of Christ, at that time pretty numerous ] but 
in preaching to the Gentiles, he was often alone, 
rarely with more than two or three companions 
or followers. Was this a confederacy powerful 
enough to caiTy on such a cheat, in so many dif- 
ferent parts of the world, against the united oppo- 
sition of the magistrates, priests, philosophers, peo- 
ple, all combined to detect and expose their frauds ? 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 181 

Let it be also considered, that those upon whom 
they practised these arts were not a gross or igno- 
rant people, apt to mistake any uncommon opera- 
tions of nature, or juggling tricks, for miraculous 
acts. The churches planted by St. Paul were in 
the most enlightened parts of the world : among 
the Greeks of Asia and Europe, among the Ro- 
mans, in the midst of science, philosophy, freedom 
of thought, and in an age more inquisitively curi- 
ous into the powers of nature, and less inchned to 
credit religious frauds, than any before it. Nor 
were they only the lowest of the people that he 
converted. Serglus Paulus, the proconsul of Pa- 
phos ; Erastus, chamberlain of Corinth ; and Dion}-- 
sius the Areopagite, were his proselytes. 

Upon the whole, it appears beyond contradiction, 
that his pretension to miracles was not assisted^ 
by the disposition of those whom he designed to 
convert by those means, nor by any powerful con- 
federacy to carry on and abet the cheat, without 
both which concurring circumstances, or one at 
least, no such pretension was ever supported with 
any success. 

Both these circumstances concurred even in the 
late famous miracles supposed to be done at Abbe 
Paris' tomb. They had not indeed the support of 
the government, and for that reason appear to de- 
serve more attention than other Popish miracles ; 



182 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

but they were supported by all the Jansenists, a 
very powerful and numerous party in France, 
made up partly of wise and able men, partly of 
bigots and enthusiasts. All these confederated 
together to give credit to miracles said to be 
worked in behalf of their party ; and those who 
believed them were strongly disposed to that be- 
lief. And yet, with these advantages, how easily 
were they suppressed. Only by walling up that 
part of the church where the tomb of the saint who 
was supposed to work them, was placed. Soon 
after this was done, a paper was fixed on the wall 
with this inscription : 

" De par le roy defense a Dieu 
De faire miracle en ce lieu :*' 

"By command of the king, God is forbidden to 
work any more works here." The pasquinade 
was a witty one, but the event turned the point 
of it against the party by which it was made ; for 
if God had really worked any miracles there, could 
this absurd prohibition have taken effect ? Would 
he have suffered his purpose to be defeated by 
building a wall? When all the apostles were 
shut up in prison to hinder their working of mira- 
cles, the angel of the Lord opened the prison doors, 
and let them out. Acts 5 : 16-26. But the power 
of Abbe Paris could neither throw down the wall 
that excluded his votaries, nor operate through 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 183 

that impediment. And yet his miracles arc often 
compared with, and opposed by unbelievers to 
those of Christ and his apostles, which is the rea- 
son of my having taken tliis particular notice of 
them here. But to go back to the times nearer to 
St. Paul's. 

There is in Lucian an account of a very extraor- 
dinary and successful imposture carried on in his 
days, by one Alexander of Pontus, who introduced 
a new god into that country, whose prophet he 
called himself, and in whose name he pretended to 
miracles, and delivered oracles, by which he ac- 
quired great wealth and power. All the arts by 
which this cheat was managed are laid open by 
Lucian, and nothing can better point out the differ- 
ence between imposture and truth, than to observe 
the different conduct of this man and St. Paul. 
Alexander made no alteration in the rehgion estab- 
lished in Pontus before ; he only grafted his own 
upon it ; and spared no pains to interest in the 
success of it the whole heathen priesthood, not only 
in Pontus, but all over the world, sending great 
numbers of those who came to consult him to 
other oracles, that were at that time in the highest 
vogue ; by which means he engaged t4iem all to 
support the reputation of his, and abet his impos- 
ture. He spoke with the greatest respect of all 
the sects of philosophy, except the Epicureans, 



184 CONVEUSION OF ST. PAUL. 

who from their prhiciples he was sure would deride 
and oppose his fraud ; for though they presumed 
not to innovate, and overturn established religions, 
yet they very freely attacked and exposed all inno- 
vations that were introduced under the name of 
religion, and had not the authority of a legal estab- 
lishment. To get the better of their opposition, as 
well as that of the Christians, he called in the aid 
of persecution and force, exciting the people against 
them, and answering objections with stones. 

That he might be sure to get money enough, he 
delivered this oracle in the name of liis god : / com- 
mand you to grace, with gifts my projihet and minister ; 
for I have no regard for riches myself, hut the greatest 
for my frojphet. And he shared the gains that he 
made, which were immense, among an infinite 
number of associates and instruments, whom he 
employed in carrying on and supporting his fraud. 
When any declared themselves to be his enemies, 
against whom he durst not proceed by open force, 
he endeavored to gain them by blandishments ; 
and having got them into his power, to destroy 
them by secret ways ; which arts he practised 
against Lucian himself. Others he kept in awe 
and dependence upon him, by detaining in his own 
hands the written questions they had proposed to 
his god upon state affairs ; and as these generally 
came from men of the greatest power and rank, 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 185 

liis being possessed of them was of infinite service 
to him, and made him master of all their credit, and 
of no little part of their wealth. 

He obtained the protection and friendship of 
Rntilianus, a great Roman general, by flattering 
him with promises of a very long life, and exalta- 
tion to deity after his death ; and at last having 
quite turned his head, enjoined him by an oracle 
to marry his daughter, whom he pretended to 
have had by the moon : which command Rntilia- 
nus obeyed, and by his alliance secured this im- 
postor from any danger of punishment ; the Roman 
governor of Bithynia and Pontus excusing himself 
on that account from doing justice upon him, when 
Lueian and several others offered themselves to be 
his accusers. 

He never quitted that ignorant and barJDarous 
country, which he had made choice of at first as 
the fittest place to play his tricks in undiscovered ; 
but residing himself among those superstitious and 
credulous people, extended his fame to a great dis- 
tance by the emissaries which he employed all over 
the world, especially at Rome, who did not pretend 
themselves to work any miracles, but only pro- 
mulgated his, and gave him intelligence of all that 
it was useful. for him to know. 

These were the methods by which this remarka- 
ble fraud was conducted, every one of which is 



186 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

directly opposite to all those used by St. Paul in 
preaching the gospel ; and yet such methods alone 
could give success to a cheat of this kind. I will 
not mention the many debaucheries and wicked 
enormities committed by this false prophet under 
the mask of religion, which is another characteris- 
tic difference between him and St, Paul ; nor the 
ambiguous answers, cunning evasions, and jug- 
gUng artifices which he made use of, in all which 
it is easy to see the evident marks of an impos- 
ture, as well as in the objects he plainly appears 
to have had in view. That which I chiefly insist 
upon is, the strong confederacy with which he took 
care to support his pretension to miraculous pow- 
ers, and the apt disposition in those he imposed 
upon to concur and assist in deceiving them- 
selves — advantages entirely wanting to the apos- 
tle of Christ. 

From all this it may be concluded, that no hu- 
man means employed by St. Paul, in his design of 
converting the Gentiles, were, or could be ade- 
quate to the great difficulties he had to contend 
with, or to the success that we know attended his 
work ; and we can in reason ascribe that success 
to no other cause but the power of God going 
along with, and aiding his ministry, because/ no 
other was equal to the effect. 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 187 

II. PAUL NOT AN ENTHUSIAST. 

Having then shown that St. Paul had no rational 
motives to become an apostle of Christ, without be- 
ing liimself convinced of the truth of that gospel he 
preached ; and that, had he engaged in such an 
imposture without any rational motives, he would 
have had no jpossihh imans to carry it on with any 
success; having also brought reasons of a very 
strong nature to make it appear that the success 
he undoubtedly had in preaching the gospel, was 
an effect of the divine power attending his minis- 
try, 1 might rest all my proof of the Christian relig- 
ion being a divine revelation, upon the arguments 
drawn from this head alone. But to consider this 
subject in all possible lights, I shall pursue the 
proposition which I set out with, through each of 
its several parts ; and having proved, as I hope, to 
the conviction of any impartial man, that St. Paul 
was not an impostor, who said what he knew to 
be false, with an intent to deceive, I come next to 
consider whether he was an enthusiast, who, by 
the force of an overheated imagination, imposed 
upon himself. 

Now, these are the ingredients of which enthusi- 
asm is generally composed : great heat of temper, 
melancholy, ignorance, credidity, and vanity, or self- 
conceit. That the first of these qualities was in 
St. Paul, may be concluded from that fervor of 



188 COj!TVERSION of ST. PAUL. 

zeal with which he acted, both as a Jew and Chris- 
tian, in maintaining that which he thought to be 
right ; and hence, I suppose, as well as from the 
impossibility of his having been an impostor, some 
unbelievers have chosen to consider him as an en- 
thusiast. But this quahty alone will not be suffi- 
cient to prove him to have been so, in the opinion 
of any reasonable man. The same temper has 
been common to others who undoubtedly were not 
enthusiasts — to the Gracchi, to Cato, to Brutus, to 
many more among the best and wisest of men. 
Nor does it appear that this disposition had such a 
mastery over the mind of St. Paul that he was not 
able, at all times, to rule and control it by the dic- 
tates of reason. On the contrary, he was so much 
the master of it, as, in matters of an indifferent 
nature, " to become all things to all men," 1 Cor. 
9 : 20-22 ; bending his notions and manners to 
theirs, so far as his duty to God would permit, 
with the most pliant condescension — a conduct 
neither compatible with the stiffness of a bigot, 
nor the violent impulses of fanatical delusions. 
His zeal was eager and warm, but tempered with 
prudence, and even with the civilities and deco- 
rums of life, as appears by his behavior to Agrippa, 
Festus, and Felix ; not the blind, inconsiderate, 
indecent zeal of an enthusiast. 

Let us now see if any one of those other quali- 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 189. 

ties which I have laid down as disposing the mind 
to enthusiasm, and as being characteristical of it, 
belong to St. Paul. First, as to melaiicholy, which, 
of all dispositions of body or mind, is most prone 
to fanaticism ; it neither appears by his writings, 
nor by any thing told of him in the Acts of the 
Apostles, nor by any other evidence, that St. Paul 
was inclined to it more than other men. Though 
he was full of remorse for his former ignorant \)QX- 
secution of the church of Christ, we read of no 
gloomy penances, no extravagant mortification, 
such as the Brahmins, the Jaugues, the monks of 
La Trappe, and other melancholy enthusiasts in- 
flict on themselves. His holiness only consisted 
in the simplicity of a good life, and the unwearied 
performance of those apostolical duties to which he 
was called. The sufferings he met with on that 
account he cheerfully bore, and even rejoiced in 
them for the love of Jesus Christ ; but he brought 
none on himself ; we find, on the contrary, that he 
pleaded the privilege of a Roman citizen to avoid 
being whipped. I could mention more instances 
of his having used the best methods that prudence 
could suggest, to escape danger and shun persecu- 
tion,, whenever it could be done without betraying 
the duty of his' office or the honor of God. 

A remarkable instance of this appears in his con- 
duct among the Athenians. There was at Athens 



190 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL, 

a law which made it a capital offence to introduce 
or teach any new gods in their state. Acts It, 
and Joscphus cont, Apion, 1. 2 : c. 7. Therefore, 
when Paul was preaching Jesus and the resurrection 
to the Athenians, some of them carried him before 
the court of Areopagus — the ordinary judges of 
criminal matters, and in a particular manner in- 
trusted with the care of religion — as having broken 
this law, and being "a setter forth of strange 
gods." Now, in this case, an impostor would have 
retracted his doctrine to save his hfe, and an en- 
thusiast would have lost his life without trjang to 
save it by innocent means. St. Paul did neither 
the one nor the other ; he availed himself of an 
altar wliich he had found in the city, inscribed to 
the unknown God, and pleaded that he did not pro- 
pose to them the worship of any new God, but 
only explain to them one whom their government 
had already received : " Whom therefore ye igno- 
rantly worship, him declare I unto you." By tliis 
he avoided the law, and escaped being condemned 
by the Areopagus without departiug in the least 
from the truth of the gospel, or violatiug the honor 
of God. An admirable proof, in my opinion, of the 
good sense with which he acted, and one that 
shows there was no mixture of fanaticism in his 
religion. 

Compare with this the conduct of Francis of 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 191 

Assisi, of Ignatius Loyola, and other enthusiasts 
sainted by Rome, it will be found the reverse of 
St. Paul's. " He wished indeed to die and be with 
Christ ;" but such a wish is no proof of melancholy, 
or of enthusiasm ; it only proves his conviction of 
the divine truths he preached, and of the happiness 
laid up for him in those blessed abodes which had 
been shown to him even in this life. Upon the 
whole, neither in his actions, nor in the instructions 
he gave to those under his charge, is there any 
tincture of melancholy ; which yet is so essential 
a characteristic of enthusiasm, that I have scarce 
ever heard of any enthusiast, ancient or modern, 
in whom some very evident marks of it did not 
appear. 

As to ignorance, which is another ground of en- 
thusiasm, St. Paul was so far from it, that he 
appears to have been master not of the Jewish 
learning alone, but of the Greek. And this is one 
reason why he is less liable to the imputation of 
having been an enthusiast than the other apostles, 
though none of them were such any more than he, 
as may by other arguments be invincibly proved. 

I have mentioned credulity as another character- 
istic and cause of enthusiasm, which, that it was 
not in St. Paul, the history of his life undeniably 
shows. For on the contrary, he seems to have 
been slow and hard of belief in the extremest de- 



192. CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

gree, having paid no regard to all the miracles 
done by our Saviour, the fame of which he could 
not be a stranger to, as he lived in Jerusalem, nor 
to that signal one done after his resurrection, and 
in his name, by Peter and John, upon the lame 
man at the beautiful gate of the temple ; nor to the 
evidence given in consequence of it by Peter, in 
presence of the high-priest, the rulers, elders, and 
scribes, that " Christ was raised from the dead." 
Acts 3. He must also have known that when all 
the apostles had been shut up in the common 
prison, and the high-priest, the council, and all the 
senate of the children of Israel, had sent their 
officers to bring them before them, the officers 
came and found them not in prison, but returned 
and made this report: "The prison truly found 
we shut with all safety, and the keepers standing 
without before the doors ; but when we had open- 
ed, we found no man within," And that the coun- 
cil was immediately told, that " the men they had 
put into prison were standing in the temple, and 
teaching the people." And that being brought 
from thence before the council, they had spoken 
these memorable words : " We ought to obey God 
rather than men. The God of our fathers raised 
up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. 
Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a 
Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 193 

Israel, and forgiveness of sins. And we arc his 
witnesses of these things ; and so is also the Holy 
Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey 
him." Acts 5 : 18-32. All this he resisted, and 
was consenting to the murder of Stephen, who 
preached the same tiling, and evinced it by mira- 
cles. Acts 8:1. So that his mind, far from being 
disposed to a credulous faith, or a too easy recep- 
tion of any miracle worked in proof of the Chris- 
tian rehgion, appears to have been barred against 
it by the most obstinate prejudices, as much as 
any man's could possibly be ; and from hence we 
may fairly conclude, that nothing less than the 
irresistible evidence of his own senses, clear from all 
possibihty of doubt, could have overcome his un- 
belief. 

Vanity or self-conceit is another circumstance that, 
for the most part, prevails in the character of an 
enthusiast. It leads men of a warm temper, and 
religious turn, to think themselves worthy of the 
special regard and extraordinary favors of God ; 
and the breath of that inspiration to which they 
pretend is often no more than the wind of this 
vanity, which puffs them up to such extravagant 
imaginations. This strongly appears in the writ- 
ings and lives of some enthusiastical heretics ; in 
the Mystics, both ancient and modern ; in many 
founders of orders and saints, both male and fe- 

Infidelity. 13 



194 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL.- 

male, among the Papists, in several Protestant 
sectaries of the last age, and even in some at the 
present time.* All the divine communications, 
illuminations, and ecstacies to which they have 
pretended, evidently sprung from much self-con- 
ceit, working together with the vapors of melan- 
choly upon a warm imagination. And this is one 
reason, besides the contagious nature of melan- 
choly, or fear, that makes enthusiasm so very 
catching among weak minds. Such are most 
strongly disposed to vanity ; and when they see 
others pretend to extraordinary gifts, are apt to 
flatter themselves that they may partake of them 
as well as those whose merit they think no more 
than their own. Vanity, therefore, may justly be 
deemed a principal source of enthusiasm. But that 
St. Paul was as free from it as any man, I think 
may be gathered from all that we see in his writ- 
ings, or know of his life. Throughout his epistles 
there is not one word that savors of vanity ; nor 
is any action recorded of him in which the least 
mark of it appears. 

In liis epistle to the Ephesians, he calls himself 

* See the account of Montanus and his followers, the writ- 
ings of the counterfeit Dionysius the Areopagite, Santa 
Theresa, St. Catherine of Sienna, Madame Bourignon, the 
lives of St. Francis of Assisi, and Ignatius Loyola ; see also 
an account of the lives of George Fox, and of Rice Evans. 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 195 

" less than the least of all saints." Eph. 3 : 8. 
And to the Corinthians he says, he is "the least 
of the apostles, and not meet to be called an apos- 
tle, because he had persecuted the church of God." 
1 Cor, 15 : 9. In his epistle to Timothy he says, 
" This is a faithful saying; and worthy of all accep- 
tation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to 
save sinners ; of whom I am chief. Howbeit for 
this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus 
Christ might show forth all long-suffering, for a 
pattern to them which should hereafter believe on 
him to Ufe everlasting." 1 Tim. 1 : 15, 16. 

It is true, indeed, that in another epistle he tells 
the Corinthians that he "was not a whit behind 
the very chiefest apostles." 2 Corinthians, 11 : 5. 
But the occasion which lirew from him these words 
must be considered. A false teacher by faction 
and calumny had brought his apostleship to be in 
question among the Corinthians. Against such an 
attack, not to have asserted his apostolical dignity, 
would have been a betraying of the office and duty 
committed to him by God. He was therefore con- 
strained to do himself justice, and not let down 
that character, upoa the authority of which the 
whole success and efficacy of his ministry among 
them depended. But how did he do it ? Not with 
that wantonness which a vain man indulges when 
he can get any opportunity of commending himself: 



196 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

not with a pompous detail of all the amazing mira- 
cles which he had performed in different parts of 
the world, though he had so fair an occasion of 
doing it ; but with a modest and simple exposition 
of his abundant labors and suffering in preaching 
the gospel, and barely reminding them, that "the 
signs of an apostle had been wrought ammig the,m 
in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty 
deeds." 2 Cor. 12 : 12. Could he say less than 
this? Is not such boasting humility itself^ And 
yet for this he makes many apologies, expressing 
the greatest uneasiness in being obliged to sjicak 
thus of himself, even in his own vindication. 2 Cor. 
11 : 1-16 ; 19-30. When, in the same epistle, and 
for the same purpose, he mentions the vision he 
had of heaven, how modestly docs he do it. Not 
in his own name, but in the third person : " I knew 
a man in Christ, etc., caught up into the third 
heaven." 2 Cor. 12 : 2. And immediately after 
he adds, "But now I forbear, lest any man should 
think of me above that which he seeth me to be, 
or that he heareth of me." 2 Cor. 12 : 6. How con- 
trary is this to a spirit of vanity ; how different 
from the practice of enthusiastic pretenders to rap- 
tures and visions, who never think they can dwell 
long enough upon those subjects, but fill whole 
volumes with their accounts of them. Yet St. Paul 
is not satisfied with th's forbearance ; he adds the 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 197 

confession of some infirmity, which he tells the 
Corinthians was given to him as an alloy, that he 
"might not be above measure exalted through the 
abundance of his revelations." 2 Cor. 12 : t. I 
would also observe, that he says this rapture, or 
vision of paradise, happened to him above fourteen 
years before. Now, had it been the effect of a mere 
enthusiastical fancy, c^n it be supposed that in so 
long a period of time he would not have had many 
more raptures of the same kind? would not his 
imagination have been perpetually carrying him to 
heaven, as we find St. Theresa, St. Bridget, and» 
St. Catharine were carried by theirs ? And if van- 
ity had been predominant in him, would he have 
remained fourteen years in absolute silence upon 
so great a mark of the divine favor ? No ; we 
should certainly have seen his epistles filled with 
nothing else but long accounts of these visions, 
conferences with angels, with Christ, with God Al- 
mighty, mystical unions with God, and all that we 
read in the works of those sainted enthusiasts 
whom I have mentioned before. But he only 
mentions this vision in answer to the false teacher 
who had disputed his apostolical pov/er, and com- 
prehends it all in three sentences, with many ex- 
cuses for being compelled to make any mention of 
it at all. 2 Cor. 12 : 1-11. Nor does he take any 
merit to himself, even from the success of those 



198 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

apostolical labors wliich he principally boasts of in 
his epistle. For in a former one to the same church 
he writes thus : ''Who then is Paul, and who is 
Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even 
as the Lord gave to every man ? I have planted, 
Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So 
then, neither is he that planteth any thing, neither 
he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase." 
And in another place of the same epistle he says, 
"By the grace of God I am w^hat I am : and his 
grace which was bestowed upon me w^as not in 
•vain ; but I labored more abundantly than the}^ all : 
yet not I, hut the grace of God ichich was with nieP 
1 Cor. 15 : 10. 

I think it needless to give more instances of the 
modesty of St. Paul. Certain I am not one can be 
given that bears any color of vanity, or that vanity 
in particular which so strongly appears in all enthu- 
siasts, of setting their imaginary gifts above those 
virtues w^hich make the essence of true religion, 
and the real excellency of a good man, or in the 
Scripture phrase, of a saint. In his first epistle to 
the Corinthians he has these words: "Though I 
speak wnth the tongues of men and of angels, and 
have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, 
or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift 
of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all 
knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 199 

could remove mountains, and have not charity, I 
am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods 
to feed the poor, and tiiough I give my body to be 
burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me noth- 
ing." 1 Cor. 13 : 2-4. Is this the language of 
enthusiasm ? Did ever enthusiast prefer that uni- 
versal benevolence which comprehends- all moral 
virtues, and which, as appears by the following 
verses, is meant by charity here ; did ever enthu- 
siast, I say, prefer thaf benevolence to faith and to 
miracles, to those religious opinions which he had 
embraced, and to those supernatural graces and 
gifts which he imagined he had acquired, nay, even 
to the merit of martyrdom ? Is it not the genius 
of enthusiasm to set moral virtues infinitely below 
the merit of faith ; and of all moral virtues, to value 
that least which is most particularly enforced by 
St. Paul, a spirit of candor, moderation, and peace ? 
Certainly neither the temper, nor the opinions of a 
man subject to fanatical delusions, are to be found 
in this passage ; but it may be justly concluded, 
that he who could esteem the value of charity so 
much above miraculous gifts, could not have pre- 
tended to any such gifts, if he had them not in 
reality. 

Since, then, it is manifest from the foregoing ex- 
amination, that in St. Paul's disposition and charac- 



200 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL/ 

ter those qualities do not occur which seem to be 
necessary to form an enthusiast, it must be reason- 
able to conclude he was none. But allowing, for 
argument's sake, that all those qualities were to 
be found in him, or that the heat of his temper 
alone could be a sufficient foundation to support 
such a suspicion, I shall endeavor to prove that he 
COULD NOT HAVE IMPOSED ON HIMSELF by any power of 
enthusiasm, either in regard to the miracle that 
caused his conversion, or to the consequential 
effects of it, or to some other circumstances which 
he bears testimony to in his epistles. 

The power of imagination in enthusiastical minds 
is no doubt very strong, but it always acts in con- 
formity to the opinions imprinted upon it at the 
time of its working, and can no more act against 
them, than a rapid river can carry a boat against 
the current of its own stream. Now, nothing can 
be more certain than that, when Saul set out for 
Damascus, with an authority from the chief priests 
"to bring the Christians which were there, bound 
to Jerusalem," Acts 9 : 2, an authority soHcited by 
himself, and granted to him at his own earnest de- 
sire, his mind was strongly possessed with opinions 
against Christ and liis followers. To give those 
opinions a more active force, his passions at that 
time concurred, being inflamed in the highest de- 
gree by the irritating consciousness of his past con- 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 201 

duct towards them, the pride of supporting a part 
he had voluntarily engaged in, and the credit he 
found it procured him among the chief priests and 
rulers, whose commission he bore. 

If in such a state and temper of mind, an enthu- 
siastical man had imagmed he saw a vision from 
heaven denouncing the anger of God against the 
Christians, and commanding him to persecute them 
without any mercy, it might be accounted for by 
the natural power of enthusiasm. But that, in the 
very instant of his being engaged in the fiercest 
and hottest persecution against them, no circum- 
stance having happened to change his opinions, or 
alter the bent of his disposition, he should at once 
imagine hunself called by a heavenly vision to be 
the apostle of Christ, whom but a moment before 
he deemed an impostor and a blasphemer, that had 
been justly put to death on the cross, is in itself 
wholly incredible, and so far from being a probable 
effect of enthusiasm, that just the contrary effect 
must have been naturally produced by that cause. 
The warmth of Jiis temper carried him violently 
another way ; and whatever delusions his imagina- 
tion could raise to impose on his reason, must have 
been raised at that time agreeable to the notions 
imprinted upon it, and by which it was heated to a 
degree of enthusiasm not in direct contradiction to all 
those notions, while they remained in their full force. 



202 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

This is so clear a proposition, that I might rest 
the whole argument entirely upon it ; but still 
further to show that this vision could not be a 
phantom of St. Paul's own creatmg, I beg leave to 
observe, that he was not alone when he saw it; 
there were many others in company^ whose minds 
were no better disposed than his to the Christian 
faith. Could it be possible, that the imaginations 
of all these men should at the same time be so 
strangely affected as to make them believe that 
they saw a great light shining about them, above the 
brightness of the sun at noonday, and heard the sound 
of a voice from heaven, though not the words which it 
spoke, Acts 9:3; 22 : 9 ; when in reality they neither 
saw nor heard any such thing ? Could they be so 
infatuated with this conceit of their fancy as to fall 
down together with Saul, and be speechless through 
fear. Acts 26 : 14 ; 9 : 1 ; when nothing had happened 
extraordinary either to them or to him ? Especially, 
considering that this apparition did not happen in 
the night, when the senses are more easily im- 
posed upon, but at mid-day. If. a sudden frenzy 
had seized upon Saul,' from any distemper of body 
or mind, can we suppose his whole company, men 
of different constitutions and understandings, to 
have been at' once affected in the same manner 
with him, so that not the distemper alone, but the 
effects of it should exactly agree ? If all had gone 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 203 

mad together, would not the frenzy of some have 
taken a different turn, and presented to them dif- 
ferent objects ? This supposition is so contrary to 
nature and all possibility, that unbelief must find 
some other solution, or give up the point. 

I shall suppose then, in order to try to account 
for this vision without a miracle, that as Saul and 
his company wxre journeying along hi their way 
to Damascus, an extraordinary meteor did really 
happen, which cast a great light, as some meteors 
will do, at which they, being affrighted, fell to the 
ground in the manner related. This might be pos- 
sible ; and fear, grounded on ignorance of such 
phenomena, might make them imagine it to be a 
vision of God. Nay, even the voice or sound they 
heard in the ah*, might be an explosion attending 
this meteor ; or at least there are those who would 
rather recur to such a supposition as this however 
incredible, than acknowledge the miracle. But how 
will this account for the distinct words heard by 
St. Paul, to which he made answer ? How will it 
account for what followed upon it when he came 
to Damascus, agreeably to the sense of those words 
which he heard? How came Ananias to go to 
him there, and say he was "chosen by God to 
know his will, and see that Just One, and hear 
the voice of his mouth?" Acts 22 : 14 ; 26 : 16. 
Or why did he propose to him to he baptized ? What 



204 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

connection was there between the meteor which 
Saul had seen, and these words of Ananias ? Will 
it be said that Ananias was skilful enough to take 
advantage of the fright he was in at that appear- 
ance, in order to make him a Christian? But 
could Ananias inspire him with the vision in which 
he saw him before he came? If that vision was 
the effect of imagination, how was it verified so 
exactly in fact? Acts 9. But allowing that he 
dreamt by chance of Ananias' coming, and that 
Ananias came by chance too ; or, if you please, 
that having heard of his dream, he came to take 
advantage of that as well as of the meteor which 
Saul had seen ; will this get over the difficulty ? 
No, there was more to be done. Saul was struck 
blind, and had been so for three days. Now, had 
this blindness been natural from the effects of a 
meteor or lightning upon him, it would not have 
been possible for Ananias to heal it, as we find 
that he did, merely by putting his hands on him 
and speaking a few words. Acts 9 : 17, 18; 22 : 13. 
This undoubtedly surpassed the power of nature ; 
and if this was a miracle, it proves the other to 
have been a miracle too, and a miracle done by the 
same Jesus Christ. For Ananias, when he healed 
Saul, spoke to him thus: "Brother Saul, the Lord, 
even Jesus, that appeared unto thep in the way 
as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 205 

receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy 
Ghost." Acts 9 : It. And that he saw Christ 
both now and after this time, appears not only ])y 
what he relates, Acts 22 : It, 18, but by other pas- 
sages in his epistles. 1 Cor. 9:1; 15 : 8. From 
liim, as he asserts m many places of his epistles, 
he learned the gospel by immediate revelation, and 
by him he was sent to the Gentiles. Acts 22 : 10, 
21. Among those Gentiles, "from Jerusalem, and 
round about to Illyricum, he preached the gospel 
of Christ, with mighty signs and wonders, wrought 
by the Spirit of God," to make them obedient to 
his preaching, as he himself testifies in his epistle 
to the Romans, Rom. 15:19; and of which a par- 
ticular account is given to us in the Acts of the 
Apostles : signs and wonders, indeed, above any 
power of nature to work, or of imposture to coun- 
terfeit, or of enthusiasm to imagine. Now, does 
not such a series of miraculous acts, all consequen- 
tial and dependent upon the first revelation, put 
tlie truth of that revelation beyond all possibility 
of doubt or deceit ? And if he could so have im- 
posed on himself as to think that he worked them 
when he did not — which supposition cannot be ad- 
mitted, if he was not at that time quite out of his 
senses — ^how could so distempered an enthusiast make 
such a progress, as we know that he did, in con- 
verting the gentile world ? If the difficulties which 



206 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

have been shown to have obstructed that work, 
were such as the ablest impostor could not over- 
come, how much more insurmountable were they 
to a madman? 

It is a much harder task for unbehevers to ac- 
count for the success of St. Paul, in preaching the 
gospel, upon the supposition of his having been an 
enthusiast, than of his having been an impostor. 
Neither of these suppositions can ever account for 
it ; but the impossibility is more glaringly strong 
in this case than in the other. I could enter into 
a particular examination of all the miracles record- 
ed in the Acts to have been done by St. Paul, and 
show that they were not of a nature in which en- 
thusiasm, either in him, or the persons he worked 
them upon, or the spectators, could have any part. 
I will mention only a few. When he told Elymas 
the sorcerer, at Paphos, before the Eoman deputy, 
that '' the hand of God was upon him, and he 
should be blind, not seeing the sun for a season ; 
and immediately there fell on him a mist and a 
darkness, and he went about seeking some to lead 
liim b}^ the hand," Acts 13 ; had enthusiasm in the 
doer or sufferer any share in this act? If Paul, as 
an enthusiast, had thrown out this menace, and 
the effect had not followed, instead of converting 
the deputy, as we are told that he did, he would 
have drawn on himself his rage and contempt. 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 207 

But the effect upon Elymas could not be caused by 
enthusiasm in Paul, much less can it be imputed 
to an enthusiastic belief in that person himself, of 
his being struck blind when he was not, by these 
words of a man whose preaching he strenuously 
and bitterly opposed. Nor can we ascribe the 
conversion of Sergius, which happened upon it, to 
any enthusiasm. A Roman proconsul was not 
very likely to be an enthusiast ; but had he been 
one, he must have been bigoted to his own gods, 
and so much the less inclined to believe any mirac- 
ulous power in St. Paul. When, at Troas, a young- 
man named Eutychus^ fell down, from a high win- 
dow, while Paul was preaching, and was taken up 
dead. Acts 20 : 9, could any enthusiasm, either in 
Paul or the congregation there present, make them 
believe, that by that apostle's faUing upon him, 
and embracing hun, he was restored to life ? Or 
could he who was so restored contribute any thing 
to himself, by any power of his own imagination ? 
When, in the isle of Melita, where St. Paul was 
shipwrecked, there came a viper and fastened on 
his hand, which he shook off, and felt no harm, 
Acts 28, was that an effect of enthusiasm ? An 
enthusiast might perhaps have been mad enough 
to hope for safety against the bite of a viper with- 
out any remedy being applied to it ; but would 
tliat hope have prevented his death? Or were 



208 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

me barbarous islanders, to whom this apostle was 
an absolute stranger, prepared by enthusiasm to 
expect and believe that any miracle would be 
worked to preserve him ? On the contrary, when 
they saw the viper hang to his hand, they said 
among themselves, " No doubt this man is a mur- 
derer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet 
vengeance suffereth not to live.'' I will add no 
more instances : these are sufficient to show that 
the miracles told of St. Paul can no more be as- 
cribed to enthusiasm than to imposture. 

But moreover, the power of working mu'acles 
was not confined to St. Paul ; it was also commu- 
nicated to the churches he planted in different 
parts of the world. In many parts of his first 
epistle he tells the Corinthians, 1 Cor. 12:4, 5, 
that they had among them many miraculous graces 
and gifts, and gives them directions for the more 
orderly use of them in their assemblies. Now, I 
ask whether all that he said upon that head is to be 
ascribed to enthusiasm ? If the Corinthians knew 
that they had among them no such miraculous 
powers, they must have regarded the author of 
that epistle as a man out of his senses, instead of 
revering him as an apostle of God. 

If, for instance, a Quaker should, in a meeting 
of his own sect, tell all the persons assembled 
there, that to some among them was given the 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 209 

gift of healing by the Spirit of God, to others the 
working of other miracles, to others divers kinds 
of tongues, they would undoubtedly account him a 
madman, because they pretend to no such gifts. 
If indeed they were only told by him that they 
were inspired by the Spirit of God in a certain in- 
effable manner, which they alone could understand, 
but which did not discover itself by any outward 
distinct operations or signs, they might mistake the 
impulse of enthusiasm for the inspiration of the 
Holy Ghost; but they could not believe, against 
the conviction of their own minds, that they spoke 
tongues they did not speak, or healed distempers 
they did not heal, or worked other miracles when 
they worked none. If it be said the Corinthians 
might pretend to these powers, though the Qua- 
kers do not, I ask whether, in that pretension, 
they were impostors, or only enthusiasts ? If they 
were impostors, and St. Paul was also such, how 
ridiculous was it for him to advise them, in an epis- 
tle writ only to them, and for their own use, not to 
value themselves too highly upon those gifts, to 
pray for one rather than another, and prefer charity 
to them all I Do associates in fraud talk such a 
language to one another ? But if we suppose their 
pretension to all those gifts was an effect of enthu- 
siasm, let us consider how it was possible that he 
and they could be so cheated by that enthusiasm, 

Infidelity. ] 4 



210 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

as to imagine they had such powers when they 
had not._ 

Suppose that enthusiasm could make a man 
think that he was able, by a word or a touch, to 
give sight to the blind, motion to the lame, or life 
to the dead ; would that conceit of his make the 
bUnd see, the lame walk, or the dead revive ? 
And if it did not, how could he persist in such an 
opinion ; or, upon his persisting, escape being shut 
up for a madman ? But such a madness could not 
infect so many at once, as St. Paul supposes at 
Corinth to have been endowed with the gift of 
healing or any other miraculous powers. One of 
the miracles which they pretended to was the 
speaking of languages they never had learned ; 
and St. Paul says he possessed this gift more than 
they all. 1 Cor, 14 : 18. If this had been a delu- 
sion of fancy, if they had spoke only gibberish, or 
unmeaning sounds, it would soon have appeared 
when they came to make use of it where it was 
necessary, namely, in the converting of those who 
understood not any language they ijaturally spoke. 
St. Paul particularly, who travelled so far upon 
that design, and had such occasion to use it, must 
soon have discovered that this imaginary gift of the 
Spirit was no gift at all, but a ridiculous instance 
of frenzy, which had possessed both him and them. 
But if those he spoke to in divers tongues under- 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUX. 211 

stood what lio said, and wore coiivertod to Christ 
Ity that means, how could it be a delusion? Of 
all the miracles recorded in Scrii)ture, none arc 
more clear from any possible imputation of Ijeini]^ 
the effect of an enthusiastic imagination than this ; 
for how could any man think that he had it, who 
liad it not ; or if he did think so, not Ije undeceived 
when he came to put his gift to the proof? 

If, then, St. Paul and the church of Corinth 
were not deceived, in ascribing to themselves this 
miraculous power, but really had it, there is the 
strongest reason to think that neither were they 
deceived in the other powers to which they pre- 
tended, as the same Spirit wdiicli gave them that 
equally, could and prol)ably would give them the 
others to serve the same holy ends for w'hich that 
was given. And by consecpience, St. Paul was 
no enthusiast in what he wrote upon that head to 
the Corinthians, nor in other similar instances 
where he ascribes to himself, or to the churches 
he founded, any supernatural graces and gifts. 
Indeed, they who w^ould impute to imagination 
effects such as those which St. Paul imputes to 
the power of God attending his mission, must as- 
cribe to imagination the same omnipotence which 
he ascribes to God. 



212 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

in. PAUL NOT DECEIVED BY THE FRAUD OF 
OTHERS. 

Having thus, I flatter myself, satisfactorily shown 
that St. Paul could not be an enthusiast, who, by 
the force of an overheated imagination, imposed on 
himself, I am next to inquire whether he was de- 
ceived by the fraud of others, and whether all that 
he said of himself can be imputed to the power of 
that deceit. But I need say httle to show the 
absurdity of this supposition. It was morally im- 
possible for the disciples of Christ to conceive such 
a thought as that of turning his persecutor into his 
apostle, and to do this by a fraud, in the very in- 
stant of his greatest fury against them and their 
Lord. But could they have been so extravagant 
as to conceive such a thought, it was physically 
impossible for them to execute it in the manner 
we find his conversion to have been eflfected. 
Could they produce a light in the air, w^hich at 
mid-day was brighter than the sun ? Could they 
make Saul hear words from out of that light. Acts 
22 : 9, wliich were not heard by the rest of the 
company ? Could they make him blind for three 
days after that vision, and then make scales fall 
from off his eyes, and restore him to his sight by a 
word ? Beyond dispute, no fraud could do these 
things ; but much less still, could the fraud of 
others produce those miracles, subsequent to his 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 213 

conversion, in which he was not passive, but 
active ; which he did himself, and appeals to in 
his epistles as proofs of his divine mission. 

CONCLUSION. 

I shall then take it for granted, that he was not 
deceived by the fraud of others, and that what he 
said of himself can no more be imputed to the 
power of that deceit, than to wilful imposture, or 
to enthusiasm ; and then it follows, that what he 
related to have been the cause of his conversion, 
and to have happened in consequence of it, did all 
really happen ; and therefore the Christian religion is 
a divine revelation. 

That this conclusion is fairly and undeniably 
drawn from the premises, I think must be owned, 
unless some probable cause can be assigned to 
account for those facts so authentically related in 
the Acts of the Apostles, and attested in his 
epistles by St. Paul himself, other than any of 
those which I have considered ; and this I am con- 
fident cannot be done. It must be therefore ac- 
counted for by the power of God. That God should 
work miracles for the establishment of a most holy 
religion, which, from the insuperable difficulties 
that stood in the way of it, could not have estab- 
lished itself without such assistance, is no way re- 
pugnant to human reason ; but that without any 



214 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

miracle, such things should have happened as no 
adequate natural causes can be assigned for, is 
what human reason cannot believe. 

To impute them to magic, or the power of de- 
mons — wliich was the resource of the heathens 
and Jews against the notoriety of the miracles per- 
formed by Christ and his disciples — is by no means 
agreeable to the notions of those who, in this age, 
disbelieve Christianity. It will therefore be need- 
less to show the weakness of that supposition ; but 
that supposition itself is no inconsiderable argument 
of the truth of the facts. Next to the apostles and 
evangehsts, the strongest witnesses of the undeni- 
able force of that truth are Celsus and Juhan, and 
other ancient opponents of the Christian religion, 
who were obliged to solve what they could not 
contradict, by such an irrational and absurd imag- 
ination. 

The dispute was not then between faith and 
reason, but between religion and superstition. 
Superstition ascribed to cabalistical names, or 
magical secrets, such operations as carried along 
with them evident marks of the divine power : re- 
ligion ascribed them to God, and reason declared 
itself on that side of the question. Upon what 
grounds then can we now overturn that decision ? 
Uj^on what grounds can we reject the unquestion- 
able testimony given by St. Paul, that he was 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 215 

called by God to be a disciple and apostle of Christ ? 
It has been shown, that we cannot impute it either 
to enthusiasm or fraud : how can we then resist 
the conviction of such a proof? Does the doctrine 
he preached contain any precepts against the law- 
of moraUty, that natural law written by God in the 
hearts of mankind ? If it did, I confess that none 
of the arguments I have made use of could prove 
such a doctrine to come from him. But this is so 
far from being the case, that even those who reject 
Christianity as a divine revelation, acknowledge 
thf> morals delivered by Christ and b^'- his apostles 
to be worthy of God. Is it then on account of the 
mysteries in the gospel that the facts are denied, 
though supported by evidence which in all other 
cases would be allowed to contain the clearest con- 
viction, and cannot in this be rejected without re- 
ducing the mind to a state of absolute scepticism, 
and overturning those rules by which we judge of 
all evidence, and of the truth or credibility of all 
other facts ? But this is plainly to give up the use 
of our understanding where we are able to use it 
most properly, in order to apply it to things of 
which it is not a competent judge. The motives 
and reasons upon which divine wisdom may think 
proper to act, as well as the manner in which it 
acts, must often he out of' the reach of our under- 
standing ; but the motives and reasons of human 



216 COITVEIISION OF ST. PAUL. 

actions, and the manner in which they are per- 
formed, are all in the sphere of human knowledge, 
and upon them we may judge, with a well-grounded 
confidence, when they are fairly proposed to our 
consideration. 

It is incomparably more probable that a revela- 
tion from God concerning the ways of his provi- 
dence, should contain in it matters above the ca- 
pacity of our minds to comprehend, than that St. 
Paul, or indeed any of the other apostles, should 
have acted, as we know that they did, upon any 
other foundations than certain knowledge of Christ's 
being risen from the dead ; or should have suc- 
ceeded in the work they undertook without the 
aid of miraculous powers. To the former of these 
propositions I may give my assent without any 
direct opposition of reason to my faith ; but in ad- 
mitting the latter, I must believe against all those 
probabilities that are the rational grounds of assent. 

Nor do they who reject the Christian religion 
because of the difficulties which occur in its mys- 
teries, consider how far that objection will go 
against other systems, both of religion and of phi- 
losophy, which they themselves profess to admit. 
There are in deism itself, the most simple of all re- 
ligious opinions, several difficulties, for which human 
reason can but ill account ; which may therefore be 
not improperly styled articles of faith. Such is the 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 217 

origin of evil under the government of an all-good 
and all-powerful God ; a question so hard, that the 
inability of solving it in a satisfactory manner to 
their apprehensions, has driven some of the greatest 
philosophers into the monstrous and senseless opin- 
ions of inanicheism and atheism. Such is the recon- 
ciling the prescience of God with the free-will of 
man, which, after much thought on the subject, 
Mr. Locke fairly confesses he could not do,* though 
he acknowledged both ; and what Mr. Locke could 
not do, in reasoning upon subjects of a metaphys- 
ical nature, I am apt to think few men, if any, can 
hope to perform. 

Such is also the creation of the world at any 
supposed time, or the eternal production of it from 
God : it being almost equally hard, according to 
mere philosophical notions, either to admit that the 
goodness of God could remain unexerted through 
all eternity before the time of such a creation, let 
it be set back ever so far, or to conceive an eternal 
production : which words, so applied, are inconsis- 
tent and contradictory terms — the solution com- 
monly given by a comparison to the emanation of 
light from the sun not being adequate to it, or just ; 
for Hght is a quality inherent in fire, emanating 
from it, whereas matter is not a quahty inherent 
in or emanating from the divine essence, but of a 

* See his letter to Mr. Molyneux, p. 509, vol. 3. 



218 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

different substance and nature ; and if not indepen- 
dent and self-existmg, must have been created by a 
mere act of the divine will; and if created, then 
not eternal, the idea of creation implying a time 
when the substance, created did not exist. But if, to get 
rid of this difficulty, we have recourse, as many of 
the ancient philosophers had, to the independent exis- 
tence of matter, then we must admit two self-existing 
principles, which is quite inconsistent with genuine 
theism or natural reason. Nay, could that be ad- 
mitted, it would not clear up the doubt, unless we 
suppose not only the eternal existence of matter, 
independent of God, but that it was from eternity 
in the order and beauty we see it in now, without 
any agency of the divine power ; otherwise the same 
difficulty will always occur, why it was not before 
put into that order, and state of perfectimi; or how 
the goodness of God could so long remain in a 
state of inaction, unexerted and unemployed. For 
were the tune of such an exertion of it put back 
ever so far, if instead of five or six thousand years, 
we were to suppose millions of millions of ages to 
have passed since the world* was reduced out of 
a chaos, to a harmonious and regular form, still a 
* By the world I do not mean this earth alone, but the 
whole material universe, with all its inhabitants. Even 
created spirits fall under the same reasoning ; for they must 
also have had a beginning, and before that beginning an 
eternity must have preceded. 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 219 

whole eternity must have preceded that date, dar- 
ing which the divine attributes did not exert them- 
selves in that beneficent work, so suitable to them 
that the conjectures of human reason can find no 
cause for its being delayed. 

But because of these difficulties or any other that 
may occur in the system of deism, no wise man 
will deny the being of God, or his infinite wisdom, 
goodness, and power, which are proved by such 
evidence as carries the clearest and strongest con- 
viction, and cannot be refused without involving 
the mind in far greater difficulties, even in down- 
right absurdities and impossibilities. The only 
part, therefore, that can be taken, is to account in 
the best manner that our weak reason is able to 
do, for such seeming objections; and where that 
fails, to acknowledge its weakness, and acquiesce 
under the certainty that our very imperfect know- 
ledge or judgment cannot be the measure of the 
divine wisdom, or the universal standard of truth. 
So likewise it is with respect to the Christian re- 
ligion. Some difficulties occur in that revelation 
which human reason can hardly clear ; but as the 
truth of it stands upon evidence so strong and con- 
vincing that it cannot be denied without much 
greater difficulties than those that attend the belief 
of it, as I have before endeavored to prove, wo 
ought not to reject it upon such objections, how- 



220 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

ever mortifying they may be to our pride. That 
indeed would have all things made plain to us, but 
God has thought proper to proportion our know- 
ledge to our wants, not our pride. All that con- 
cerns our duty is clear ; and as to other points, 
either of natural or revealed religion, if he has left 
some obscurities in them, is that any reasonable 
cause of complaint ? Not to rejoice in the benefit 
of what he has graciously allowed us to know, 
from a presumptuous disgust at our incapacity of 
knowing more, is as absurd as it would be to refuse 
to walk because we cannot fly. 

From the arrogant ignorance of metaphysical 
reasonings aiming at matters above our knowledge, 
arose all the speculative impiety, and many of the 
worst superstitions of the old heathen world, before 
the gospel was preached to bring men back again 
to the primitive faith ; and from the same source 
have since flowed some of the greatest corruptions 
of the evangelical truth, and the most inveterate 
prejudices against it : an effect just as natural as 
for our eyes to grow weak, and even blind, by 
being strained to look at objects too distant, or not 
made for them to see. 

Are then our intellectual faculties of no use in 
rehgion ? Yes, undoubtedly, of the most necessary 
use when rightly employed. The proper employ- 
ment of them is to distinguish its genuine doctrines 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 221 

from others erroneously or corruptly ascribed to it ; 
to consider the importance and purport of them, 
with the connection they bear to one another ; but, 
first of all, to examine, with the strictest attention, 
the evidence by which religion is proved, internal 
as well as external. If the external evidence be 
convincingly strong, and there is no internal proof 
of its falsehood, but much to support and confirm 
its truth, then surely no difficulties ought to pre- 
vent our giving a full assent and belief to it. It 
is our duty, indeed, to endeavor to find the best 
solutions we can to them : but where no satisfac- 
tory ones are to be found, it is no less our duty to 
acquiesce with humility, and believe that to be 
right which we know is above us, and belonging 
to a wisdom superior to ours. 

Nor let it be said that this will be an argument 
for admitting all doctrines, however absurd, that 
may have been grafted upon the Christian faith : 
those which can plainly be proved not to belong to 
it, fall not under the reasoning I have laid down ; 
and certainly none do belong to it which contradict 
'either our clear, intuitive knowledge, or the evident 
principles and dictates of reason. I speak only of 
difficulties which attend the belief of the gospel in 
some of its pure and essential doctrines, jjlainly 
and evidently delivered there, which being made 
known to us by a revelation supported by proofs 



222 CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 

that our reason ought to admit, and not being such 
things as it can certainly know to be false, must 
be received by it as objects of faith, though they 
are such as it could not have discovered by any 
natural means, and such as are difficult to be con- 
ceived, or satisfactorily explained by its limited 
powers. If the glorious light of the gospel be some- 
times overcast with clouds of doubt, so is the light 
of our reason too. But shall we deprive ourselves 
of the advantages of either, because those clouds 
cannot perhaps be entirely removed while we re- 
main in this mortal life ? Shall we obstinateiy and 
frowardly shut our eyes against that ''day-spring 
from on high that has visited us," because we are 
not, as yet, able to bear the full blaze of his beams ? 
Indeed, not even in heaven itself, not in the high- 
est state of perfection to which a finite being can 
ever attain, will all the counsels of Providence, all 
the hdght and the depth of the infinite wisdom of 
God, be ever disclosed or understood. Faith even 
then will be necessary, and there will be mysteries 
which cannot be penetrated by the most exalted 
archangel, and truths which cannot be known by' 
him otherwise than from revelation, or believed 
upon any other ground of assent than a suhmissive 
confidence in the. divine wisdom. What then, shall 
man presume that his weak and narrow under- 
standing is sufficient to guide him into all truth, 



CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. 223 

without any need of revelation or faithl Shall he 
complain that the ways of God are not like his ways, 
and 'past his finding out ? True philosophy, as 
well as true Christianity, would teach us a wiser 
and more modest part. It would teach us to 
be content within those bounds which God has 
assigned to us, "casting down imaginations, and 
every high thing that' exalteth itself against the 
knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity 
every thought to the obedience of Christ." 2 Cor. 
10 : 5. 



REPLY TO GIBBON; 

OR, 

AN APOLOGY FOR CHRISTIANITY; 

IN LETTERS 
TO EDWARD GIBBON, ESQ. 

AUTHOR OF THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE 
ROMAN EMPIRE. 

WITH 

AN APPEAL TO INFIDELS. 

BY R. WATSON, D.D.,F.R.S. 

BISHOP OF LANDAFF, AND PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE 
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. 



15 



REPLY TO GIBBON 



LETTER I. 



Sir — It would give me much uneasiness to be 
reputed an enemy to free inquiry in religious mat- 
ters, or as capable of being animated into any de- 
gree of personal malevolence against those who 
differ from me in opinion. On the contrary, I look 
upon the right of private judgment, in every con- 
cern respecting God and ourselves, as superior to 
the control of human authority ; and have ever 
regarded free disquisition as the best means of 
illustrating the doctrine and establishing the truth 
of Christianity. Let the followers of Mahomet, 
and the zealots of the church of Rome, support 
their several religious systems by damping every 
effort of the human intellect to pry into the foun- 
dations of their faith ; but never can it become a 
Christian to be afraid of being asked " a reason of 
the hope that is in him ;" nor a Protestant to be 
studious of enveloping his religion in mystery and 



228 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

ignorance ; or to abandon that moderation by which 
she permits every individual et sentire quce velif,, ei 
quce sentiat dicere — both to think what he will, and 
to speak what he thinks. 

It is not, sir, without some reluctance, that, 
under the influence of these opinions, I have pre- 
vailed upon myself to address these letters to you ; 
and you will attribute to the same motive my not 
having given you this trouble sooner. I had, 
moreover, an expectation that the task would have 
been undertaken by some person capable of doing 
greater justice to the subject, and more worth}^ of 
your attention. Perceiving, however, that the two 
last chapters, the fifteenth in particular, of your 
very laborious and classical history of the Decline 
and Fall of the Roman Empire, had made upon 
many an impression not at all advantageous to 
Christianity ; and that the silence of others, of the 
clergy esi>ecially, began to be looked upon as an 
acquiescence in what you had therein advanced, I 
have thought it my duty, with the utmost respect 
and good will towards you, to take the liberty of 
suggesting to your consideration a few remarks 
upon some of the passages which have been es- 
teemed — whether you meant that they should 
be so esteemed or not — as powerfully militating 
against that revelation w^hich still is, to many, 
what it formerly was " to the Greeks, fooUshness f 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 229 

but which "we deem to be true, to ''be the power 
of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." 

To the inquiry, by what means the Christian 
faith obtained so remarkable a victory over the 
established religions of the earth, you rightly an- 
swer, by the evidence of the doctrine itself, and 
the ruling providence of its author. But after- 
wards, in assigning to this astonishing event five 
secondary causes^ derived from the passions of the 
human heart, and the general circumstances of 
mankind, you seem to some to have insinuated 
that Christianity, like other impostures, might have 
made its way in the world, though its origin had 
been as human as the means by which you sup- 
pose it was spread. It is no wish or intention of 
mine to fasten the odium of this insinuation upon 
you ; I shall simply endeavor to show that the 
causes you produce are either inadequate to the 
attainment of the end proposed, or, that their effi- 
ciency, great as you imagine it, was derived from 
other principles than those you have thought prop- 
er to mention. 

Your first cause is, " the inflexible, and, if you 
may use the expression, the intolerant zeal of the 
Christians, derived, it is true, from the Jewish re- 
ligion, but purified from the narrow and unsocial' 
spirit which, instead of inviting, had deterred the 
Gentiles from embracing the law of Moses." Yes, 



230 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

sir, we are agreed that the zeal of the Christians 
was inflexible ; " neither death, nor life, nor prin- 
cipalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor 
things to come," could bend it into a separation 
" from the love of God which was in Christ Jesus 
their Lord." It was an inflexible obstinacy, in not 
blaspheming the name of Christ, whieh every- 
where exposed them to persecution ; and which 
even your amiable and philosophic Pliny thought 
proper, for want of other crimes, to punish with 
death in the Christians of his province. We are 
agreed, too, that the zeal of the Christians was in- 
tolerant ; for it denounced " tribulation and anguish 
upon every soul of man that did evil, of the Jew 
first, and also of the Gentile :" it would not toler- 
ate in Christian worship those who supplicated the 
image of Caesar, who bowed down at the altars of 
Paganism, who mixed with the votaries of Venus, 
or wallowed in the filth of Bacchanalian festivals. 

But though we are thus far agreed with respect 
to the inflexibility and mtolerance of Christian zeal, 
yet, as to the principle from which it was derived, 
we are toto codo divided in opinion. You deduce 
it from the Jewish religion ; I would refer it to a 
more adequate and a more obvious source — a full 
persuasion of the truth of Christianity. What, 
think you that it was a zeal derived from the un- 
social spirit of Judaism, which inspired Peter with 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 231 

courage to upbraid the whole people of the Jews, 
in the very capital of Judea, with having "deliv- 
ered up Jesus ; with having denied him in the pres- 
ence of Pilate ; with having desired a murderer to 
be granted them in his stead ; with having killed 
the Prince of life ?" Was it from this principle 
that the same apostle, in conjunction with John, 
when summoned, not before the dregs of the peo- 
ple — wRose judgment they might have been sup- 
posed capable of misleading, and whose resent- 
ment they might have despised — but before the 
rulers and the elders, and the scribes, the dread 
tribunal of the Jewish nation, and commanded by 
them to teach no more in the name of Jesus, boldly 
answered, that "they could not but speak the 
things which they had seen and heard ?" They 
had " seen with their eyes, they had handled with 
their hands the word of life ;" and no human juris- 
diction could deter them from being faithful wit- 
nesses of what they had seen and heard. Here, 
then, you may perceive the genuine and undoubted 
origin of that zeal which you ascribe to what ap- 
pears to me a very insufficient cause ; and which 
the Jewish rulers were so far from considering aa 
the ordinary effect of their religion, that they were 
exceedingly at a loss how to account for it. " Now, 
when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, 
and perceived that they were unlearned and igno- 



232 WATSON-S REPLY TO aiBBON. 

rant men, thej^ marvelled." The apostles, heed- 
less of consequences, and regardless of every thing 
but truth, openly everywhere professed them- 
selves witnesses of the resurrection of Christ ; 
and with a confidence which could proceed from 
nothing but conviction, and which pricked the Jews 
to the heart, bade " the house of Israel know as- 
suredly, that God had made that same Jesus, 
whom they had crucified, both Lord and Christ." 

I mean not to produce these instances of apostolic 
zeal as direct proofs of the truth of Christianity ; 
for every rehgion, nay, every absurd sect of every 
religion, has had its zealots, who have not scrupled 
to maintain their principles at the expense of their 
lives ; and we ought no more to infer the truth of 
Christianity from the mere zeal of its propagators, 
than the truth of Mahomedanism from that of a 
Turk. When a man suffers himself to be covered 
with infamy, pillaged of his property, and dragged 
at last to the block or the stake, rather than give 
up his opinion, the proper inference is, not that his 
opinion is true, but that he believes it to be true ; 
and a question of serious discussion immediately 
presents itself — upon what foundation has he built 
his belief? This is often an intricate inquiry, in- 
cluding in it a vast compass of human learning. A 
Brahmin or a Mandarin, who should observe a 
missionary attesting the truth of Christianity with 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 233 

his blood, would, notwithstanding, liave a right to 
ask many questions, before it could be expected 
that he should give an assent to our faith. In the 
case, indeed, of the apostles, the inquiry would be 
much less perplexed, since it would briefly resolve 
itself into this — whether they were credible report- 
ers of facts which they themselves professed to 
have seen ; and it would be an easy matter to 
show that their zeal in attesting what they were 
certainly competent to judge of, could not proceed 
from any alluring prospect of worldly interest or 
ambition, or from any other probable motive than 
a love of truth. 

But the credibility of the apostles' testimony, or 
their competency to judge of the facts which they 
relate, is now to be examined ; the question before 
us simply relates to the principle by which their 
zeal was excited ; and it is a matter of real aston- 
ishment to me, that any one conversant with the 
history of the first propagation of Christianity, ac- 
quainted with the opposition it everywhere met 
with from the people of the Jews, and aware of 
the repugnancy which must ever subsist between 
its tenets and those of Judaism, should ever think 
of deriving the zeal of the primitive Christians from 
the Jewish religion. 

Both Jew and Christian, indeed, believed in one 
God, and abominated idolatry ; but this detestation 



234 WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 

of idolatry, had it been unaccompanied ^itli tlie 
belief of the resurrection of Christ, would probably 
have been just as inefficacious in exciting the zeal 
of the Christian to undertake the conversion of the 
gentile world, as it had for ages been in exciting 
that of the Jew. But supposing, what I think you 
have not proved, and what I am certain cannot be 
admitted without proof, that a zeal derived from 
the Jewish religion inspired the first Christians 
with fortitude to oppose themselves to the institu- 
tions of Paganism ; what was it that encouraged 
them to attempt the conversion of their own coun- 
trymen? Among the Jews they met with no 
superstitious observances of idolatrous rites ; and 
therefore among them could have no opportunity 
of " declaring and confirming their zealous opposi- 
tion to Polytheism, or of fortifying, by frequent 
protestations, their attachment to the Christian 
faith." Here then, at least, the cause you have 
assigned for Christian zeal ceases to operate ; and 
we must look out for some other principle than a 
zeal against idolatry, or we shall never be able 
satisfactorily to explain the ardor with which the 
apostles pressed the disciples of Moses to become 
the disciples of Christ. 

Again, does a determined opposition to, and an 
open abhorrence of, even the minutest part of an 
old established religion, appear to you to be the 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 235 

most likely method of conciliating to another faitli 
those who profess* it ? The Christians, yoii con- 
tend, could neither mix with the heathens in their 
convivial entertainments, nor partake with them 
in the celebration of their solemn festivals ; they 
could neither associate with them in their hymeneal 
nor funeral rites ; they could not cultivate their 
arts, or be spectators of their shows : in short, in 
order to escape the rites of Polytheism, they were, 
in your opinion, obliged to renounce the commerce 
of mankind, and all the offices and amusements of 
life. Now, how such an extravagant and intem- 
perate zeal as you here describe can, humanly 
speaking, be considered as one of the chief causes 
of the quick propagation of Christianity, in opposi- 
tion to all the established powers of Paganism, is a 
circumstance I can by no means comprehend. The 
Jesuit missionaries, whose human prudence no one 
will question, were quite of a contrary way of 
thinking ; and brought a deserved censure upon 
themselves for not scrupling to propagate the faith 
of Christ by indulging to their Pagan converts a 
frequent use of idolatrous ceremonies. Upon the 
whole it appears to me that the Christians were in 
nowise indebted to the Jewish religion for the zeal 
with which they propagated the gospel among 
Jews as well as Gentiles ; and that such a zeal as 
you describe, let its principles be what you please. 



236 WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 

could never have been devised by any human un- 
derstanding as a probable means of promoting the 
progress of a reformation in religion ; much less 
could it have been thought of, or adopted by a few 
ignorant and uneducated men. 

In expatiating upon this subject you have taken 
an opportunity of remarking, that "the contem- 
poraries of Moses and Joshua had beheld with care- 
less indifference the most amazing miracles — and 
that, in contradiction to every known principle of 
the human mind, that singular people," the Jews, 
"seem to have yielded a stronger and more ready 
assent to the traditions of their remote ancestors, 
than to the evidence of their own senses." This 
observation bears hard upon the veracity of the 
Jewish Scriptures ; and, was it true, would force 
us either to reject them, or to admit a position as 
extraordinary as a miracle itself — that the testi- 
mony of others produced in the human mind a 
stronger degree of conviction, concerning a matter 
of fact, than the testimony of the senses them- 
selves. It happens however, in the present case, 
that we are under no necessity of either reject- 
ing the Jewish Scriptures, or of admitting such an 
absurd position ; for the fact is not true, that the 
contemporaries of Moses and Joshua beheld with 
careless indifference the miracles related in the 
Bible to have been performed in their favor. That 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 237 

these miracles were not sufficient to awe the Is- 
raelites into a uniform obedience to the Theocracy, 
cannot be denied ; but whatever reasons may be 
thought best adapted to account for the propensity 
of the Jews to idolatry, and their frequent de- 
fection from the worship of the one true God, a 
"stubborn incredulity" cannot be admitted as one 
of them. 

To men, indeed, whose understandings have 
been enlightened by the Christian revelation, and 
enlarged by all the aids of human learning ; who are 
under no temptations to idolatry from without, and 
whose reason from within would revolt at the idea 
of worshipping the infinite Author of the universe 
under any created symbol ; to men who are com- 
pelled by the utmost exertion of their reason to 
admit, as an irrefragable truth, what puzzles the 
first principles of all reasoning, the eternal exist- 
ence of an uncaused being, and who are conscious 
that they cannot give a full account of any one 
phenomenon in nature, from the rotation of the 
great orbs of the universe to the germination of a 
blade of grass, without having recourse to him as 
the primary incomprehensible cause of it ; and who, 
from seeing him everywhere, have, by a strange 
fatality — converting an excess of evidence into a 
principle of disbehef— at times doubted concerning 
his existence anywhere, and made the very uni- 



238 WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 

verse their god : to men of such a stamp it appears 
almost an incredible thing, that any human being 
which had seen the order of nature interrupted, or 
the uniformity of its course suspended, though but 
for a moment, should ever afterwards lose the im- 
pression of reverential awe which they apprehend 
would have been excited in their minds. But 
whatever effect the visible interposition of the 
Deity might have in removing the scepticism, or 
confirming the faith of a few philosophers, it is 
with me a very great doubt, whether the people in 
general of our days would be more strongly affected 
by it than they appear to have been in the days of 
Moses. 

Was any people under heaven to escape the 
certain destruction impending over them, from the 
close pursuit of an enraged and irresistible enemy, 
by seeing the waters of the ocean "becoming a 
wall to them on their right hand and on their left," 
they would, I apprehend, be agitated by the very 
same passions we are told the Israelites were, 
when they saw the sea returning to his strength, 
and swallowing up the host of Pharaoh ; they 
"would fear the Lord, they would believe the 
Lord," and they would express their faith and their 
fear by praising the Lord : they would not behold 
such a great work with " careless indifference," but 
with astonishment and terror ; nor would you be 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 239 

able to detect the slightest vestige of "stubborn in- 
creduHty'Mn their song of gratitude. No length 
of time would be able to blot from their minds the 
memory of such a transaction, or induce a doubt 
concerning its author ; though future hunger and 
thirst might make them call out for water and 
bread with a desponding and rebellious importunity. 

But it was not at the Red sea only that the Is- 
raelites regarded, with something more than a 
"careless indifference," the amazing miracles which 
God had wrought ; for when the law was declared 
to them from mount Sinai, "all the people saw the 
thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of 
the tempest, and the mountain smoking ; and when 
the people saw it, they removed and stood afar off : 
and they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and 
we will hear ; but let not God speak with us, lest 
we die." This again, sir, is the Scripture account 
of the language of the contemporaries of Moses and 
Joshua ; and I leave it to you to consider whether 
this is the language of "stubborn increduhty and 
careless indifference." 

We are told in Scripture, too, that while any 
of the "contemporaries" of Moses and Joshua 
were alive, the whole people served the Lord ; the 
impression which a sight of the miracles had made 
was never effaced ; nor the obedience, which might 
have been expected as a natural consequence, re-. 



240 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

fused, till Moses and Joshua, and all their contem- 
poraries, were gathered unto their fathers ; till 
" another generation after them arose, which knew 
not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done 
for Israel," But "the people served the Lord all 
the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders 
that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great 
works of the Lord that he did for Israel." 

I am far from thinking you, sir, unacquainted 
with Scripture, or desirous of sinking the weight 
of its testimony ; but as the words of the history 
from which you must have derived your observa- 
tion will not support you in imputing ''careless 
indifference" to the contemporaries of Moses, or 
"stubborn increduhty" to the forefathers of the 
Jews, I know not what can have induced you to 
pass so severe a censure upon them, except that 
you look upon a lapse into idolatry as a proof of 
infidelity. In answer to this I would remark, that 
with equal soundness of argument, we ought to 
infer that every one who transgresses a religion, 
disbelieves it ; and that every individual who in 
any community incurs civil pains and penalties, is 
a disbeliever of the existence' of the authority by 
which they are inflicted. The sanctions of the 
Mosaic law were, in your opinion, terminated 
within the narrow limits of this life ; in that par- 
ticular, then, they must have resembled the sane- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO G-IBBON. 241 

tions of all other civil laws : "transgress and die," 
is the language of every one of them, ^s well- as 
that of Moses ; and I know not what reason we 
have to expect that the Jews, who were animated 
by the same hopes of temporal rewards, impelled 
by the same fears of temporal punishments, with 
the rest of mankind, should have been so singular 
in their conduct as never to have hstened to the 
clamors of passion before the still voice of reason, 
as never to have preferred a present gratiJQcation 
of sense, in the lewd celebration of idolatrous rites, 
before the rigid observance of irksome ceremonies. 
Before. I release you from the trouble of this 
letter, I cannot help observing, that I could have 
wished you had furnished your reader with Lim- 
borch's answers to the objections of the Jew Oro- 
bio, concerning the perpetual obligation of the law 
of Moses. You have indeed mentioned Limborch 
with respect, in a short note ; but though you 
have studiously put into the mouths of the Judaiz- 
ing Christians in the apostolic days, and with great 
strength inserted into your text whatever has been 
said by Orobio, or others, against Christianity, from 
the supposed perpetuity of the Mosaic dispensa- 
tion, yet you have not favored us with any one of 
the numerous replies which have been made to 
these seemingly strong objections. You are pleas- 
ed, it is true, to say that "the industry of our 

Infidelity. 16 



242 WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 

learned divines has abundantly explained the am- 
biguous language of the Old Testament, and the 
ambiguous conduct of the apostolic teachers." It 
requires, sir, no learned industry to explain what 
is so obvious and so express, that he who runs 
may read it. The language of the Old Testament 
is this: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, 
that I will make a new covenant with the house of 
Israel, and with the house of Judah ; not according 
to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in 
the day that I took them by the hand to bring 
them out of the land of Egypt." This, methinks, 
is a clear and solemn declaration — there is no am- 
biguity at all in it — that the covenant with Moses 
was not to be perpetual, but was, in some future 
time, to give way to a " new covenant." I will not 
detain you with an explanation of what Moses him- 
self has said upon this subject ; but you may try, 
if you please, whether you can apply the follov/ing 
declaration, which Moses made to the Jews, to any 
prophet, or succession of prophets, with the same 
propriety that you can to Jesus Christ : "The Lord 
thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the 
midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto thee : unto 
him shall ye hearken." If you think this ambigu- 
ous or obscure, I answer, tliat it is not a history, but 
a prophecy ; and, as such, unavoidably hable to some 
degree of obscuritj^, till interpreted by tlie event. 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 243 

Nor was the conduct of the apostles more am- 
biguous than the language of the Old Testament : 
they did not, indeed, at first comprehend the whole 
of the nature of the new dispensation ; and when 
they did understand it better, they did not think 
proper, upon every occasion, to use their Christian 
liberty, but with true Christian charity accom- 
modated themselves in matters of indifference to 
the prejudices of their weaker brethren. But he 
who changes his conduct with a change of senti- 
ments proceeding from an increase of knowledge, 
is not ambiguous in his conduct ; nor should he be 
accused of a culpable duplicity, who, in a matter of 
the last importance, endeavors to conciliate the 
good-will of all by conforming, in a few innocent 
observances, to the particular persuasions of differ- 
ent men. 

One remark more, and I have done. In your 
account of the Gnostics, you have given us a very 
minute catalogue of the objections which they 
made to the authority of Moses, from his account 
of the creation, of the patriarchs, of the law, and 
of the attributes of the Deity. I have not leisure 
to examine whether the Gnostics of former ages 
really made all the objections you have mentioned ; 
I take it for granted, upon your authority, that 
they did : but I am certain, if they did, that the 
Gnostics of modern times have no reason to be 



244 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

puffed up with their knowledge, or to be held in 
admiration as men of subtle penetration or refined 
erudition ; they are all miserable copiers of their 
brethren of antiquity ; and neither Morgan, nor 
Tindal, nor Bolingbroke, nor Voltaire, have been 
able to produce scarce a single new objection. 
You think that the fathers have not properly an- 
swered the Gnostics. I make no question, sir, 
you are able to answer them to your own satisfac- 
tion, and informed of every, thing that has been 
said by. our "industrious divines" upon the sub- 
ject ; and we should have been glad if it had fallen 
in with your plan to have administered, together 
with the poison, its antidote. But since that is 
not the case, lest its malignity should spread too 
far, I must just mention it to my younger readers, 
that Leland and others, in their replies. to the mod- 
ern deists, have given very full, and, as many 
learned men apprehend, very satisfactory answers 
to every one of the objections which j^ou have de- 
rived from the Gnostic heresy. I am, etc. 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 245 



LETTER II. 

Sir — "The doctrine of a future life, improved 
by every additional circumstance which could give 
weight and efficacy to that important truth/' is the 
second of the causes to which you attribute the* 
quick increase of Christianity. Now, if we impar- 
tially consider the circumstances of the persons to 
whom the doctrine, not simply of a future life, but 
of a future life accompanied with punishments as 
well as rewards — not only of the immortality of the 
soul, but of the immortality of the soul accompanied 
with that of the resurrection, was delivered, I can- 
not be of opinion that, abstracted from the super- 
natural testimony by which it was enforced, it 
could have met with any very extensive reception 
among them. 

It was not that kind of future life which they ex- 
pected ; it did not hold out to them the punish- 
ments of the infernal regions as aniles fabulas — old 
wives' fables. To the question, Quid si post mortem 
maneant animi? — What if souls exist after death? 
they would not answer with Cicero and the phi- 
losophers, Beatos esse 'concedo — they are happy — 
because there was a great probability that it 
might be quite otherwise with them. I am not to 



246 WATSON'S HEPLY TO aiBBON. 

learn that there are passages to be picked up in 
the writings of the ancients, which might be pro- 
duced as proofs of their expecting a future state 
of punishment for the flagitious ; but this opinion 
was worn out of credit before the time of our 
Saviour : the whole disputation in the first book of 
the Tusculan Questions goes upon the other sup- 
position. Nor was the absurdity of the doctrine 
of future punishments confined to the writings of 
the philosophers, or the circles of the learned and 
polite ; for Cicero, to mention no others, makes no 
secret of it in his pubUc pleadings before the people 
at large. You yourself, sir, have referred to his 
oration for Cluentius. In this oration, you may 
remember, he makes great mention of a very aban- 
doned fellow who had forged I know not how 
many wills, murdered I know not how many wives, 
and perpetrated a thousand other villanies ; yet, 
even to this profligate, by name Oppianicus, he is 
persuaded that death was not the occasion of any 
evil. Hence, I think we may conclude, that such 
of the Romans as were not wholly infected with 
the annihilating notions of Epicurus, but enter- 
tained — whether from remote tradition or enlight- 
ened argumentation — hopes of a future life, had no 
manner of expectation of such a life as included in 
it the severity of punishment denounced . in the 
Christian scheme against the wicked. 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 247 

Nor was it that kind of future life which they 
wished : they would have been glad enough of an 
elysium which could have admitted into it men 
who had spent this life in the perpetration of every 
vice which can debase and pollute the human heart. 
To abandon every seducing gratification of sense, 
to pluck up every latent root of ambition, to sub- 
due every impulse of revenge, to divest them- 
selves of every inveterate habit in which their 
glory and their pleasure consisted — to do all this, 
and more, before they could look up to the doctrine 
of a future life without terror and amazement, was 
not, one would think, an easy undertaking ; nor 
was it likely that many would forsake the religious 
institutions of their ancestors, set at naught the 
gods under whose auspices the capital had been 
founded, and Rome made mistress of the world, 
and suffer themselves to be persuaded into the be- 
lief of a tenet the very mention of which made 
Felix tremble, by any thing less than a full con- 
viction of the supernatural authority of those who 
taught it. 

The several schools of gentile philosophy had dis- 
cussed, with no small subtlety, every argument 
which reason could suggest, for and against the 
immortality of the soul ; and those uncertain glim- 
merings of the light of nature would have prepared 
the minds of the learned for the reception of the 



248 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

full illustration of this subject by the gospel, had 
not the resurrection been a part of the doctrine 
therein advanced. But that this corporeal frame, 
which is hourly mouldering away, and resolved at 
last into the undistinguished mass of elements from 
which it was first derived, should ever be "clothed 
with immortality ; that this corruptible should ever 
put on in corruption," is a truth so far removed from 
the apprehension of philosophical research, so dis- 
sonant from the common conceptions of mankind, 
that among all ranks and persuasions of men it 
was esteemed an impossible thing. At Athens, 
the philosophers had listened with patience to St. 
Paul, while they conceived him but a ''setter forth 
of strange gods ;" but as soon as they compre- 
hended, that by the avaoTaoL^ he meant the resurrec- 
tion, they turned from him with contempt. It was 
principally the insisting upon the same topic which 
made Festus thmk that "much learning had made 
him mad." j\nd the questions, " How are the dead 
raised up ?" and, " With what body do they come ?" 
seem, by Paul's solicitude to answer them with 
fulness and precision, to have been not unfre- 
quently proposed to him by those who were de- 
sirous of becoming Clmstians. 

The doctrine of a future life, then, as promulged 
in the gospel, being neither agreeable to the ex- 
pectations, nor corresponding with the wishes, nor 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 249 

conformable to the reason of the Gentiles, I can 
discover no motive — setting aside the true one, the 
divine power of its first preachers — ^which could in- 
duce them to receive it, and in consequence of 
their belief, to conform their loose morals to the 
rigid standard of gospel purity, upon the mere au- 
thority of a few contemptible fishermen of Judea. 
And even you yourself, sir, seem to have changed 
your opinion concerning the efficacy of the expecta- 
tion of a future life in converting the heathen, when 
you observe in the following chapter, that *' the 
Pagan multitude, reserving their gratitude for tem- 
poral benefits alone, rejected the inestimable pres- 
ent of life and immortality which was offered to 
mankind by Jesus of Nazareth." 

Montesquieu is of opinion that it will ever be 
impossible for Christianity to establish itself in 
China and the East, from the circumstance that it 
prohibits a plurality of wives. How then could it 
have been possible for it to have pervaded the vo- 
luptuous capital, and traversed the utmost limits of 
the empire of Rome, by the feeble efforts of human 
industry or human knavery ? 

But the Gentiles, you are of opinion, were con- 
verted by their fears ; and you reckon the doctrine 
of Christ's speedy appearance, of the millennium, 
and of the general conflagration, among those- 
additional circumstances which gave weight to 



250 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

that concerning a future state. Before I proceed 
to the examination of the efficiency of these several 
circumstances in alarming the apprehensions of the 
Gentiles, what if I should grant your position? 
Still the main question recurs. From what source 
did they derive the fears which converted them ? 
Not surely from the mere human labors of men 
who were everywhere spoken against, made a 
spectacle of, and considered as the filth of the 
world, and the oflFscourmg of all things ; not surely 
from the human powers of him who professed 
himself "rude in speech, in bodily presence con- 
temptible," and a despiser of "the excellency of 
speech, and the enticing words of man's wisdom." 
No ; such wretched instruments were but ill fitted 
to inspire the haughty and the learned Romans 
with any other passions than those of pity or con- 
tempt. 

Now, sir, if you please, we will consider that uni- 
versal expectation of the approaching end of the world, 
which, you think, had such great influence in con- 
verting the Pagans to the profession of Christiani- 
ty. The near approach, you say, of this wonderful 
event had been predicted by the apostles, " though 
the revolution of seventeen centuries has instruct- 
ed us not to press too closely the mysterious lan- 
guage of prophecy and revelation." That this opin- 
ion, even in the times of the apostles, had made 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 251 

its way into the Christian church, I readily admit ; 
but that the apostles ever either predicted this 
event to others, or cherished the expectation of it 
in themselves, does not seem probable to me. As 
this is a point of some difficulty and importance, 
you will suffer me to explain it at some length. 

It must be owned that there are several pas- 
sages in the writings of the apostles which, at the 
first view, seem to countenance the opinion you 
have adopted. " Now," says St. Paul, in his epis- 
tle to the Romans, "it is high time to awake out 
of sleep ; for now is our salvation nearer than 
when we believed. The night is far spent, the 
day is at hand." And in his first epistle to the 
Thessalonians, he comforts such of them as were 
sorrowing for the loss of their friends, by assuring 
them that they were not lost for ever ; but that 
the Lord, when he came, would bring them with 
him ; and that they would not, in the participation 
of any blessings, be in anywise behind those who 
should happen then to be ahve : "We," says he — 
the Christians of whatever age or country, agreea- 
ble to a frequent use of the pronoun we — " which 
are alive, and remain unto the coming of the Lord, 
shall not prevent them which are asleep ; for the 
Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a 
shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with 
the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise 



252 WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 

first ; then we which are aUve, and remain, shall 
be caught up together with them in the clouds to 
meet the Lord." In his epistle to the Philippians 
he exhorts his Christian brethren not to disquiet 
themselves with carking cares about their temporal 
concerns, from this powerful consideration, that 
the Lord was at hand : " Let your moderation be 
known to all men ; the Lord is at hand ; be care- 
ful for nothing." In the epistle to the Hebrews 
he inculcates the same doctrine, admonishing his 
converts " to provoke one another to love, and to 
good works ; and so much the more, as thej saw 
the day approaching." The age in which the apos- 
tles lived is frequently called by them the end of 
the world, the last days, the last hour. I think it 
unnecessary, sir, to trouble you with an explica- 
tion of these and other similar texts of Scripture, 
which are usually adduced in support of your opin- 
ion, since I hope to be able to give you a direct 
proof that the apostles neither comforted them- 
selves, nor encouraged others with the delightful 
hope of seeing then* Master coming again into the 
world. 

It is evident, then, that St. John, who survived 
all the other apostles, could not have had any such 
expectation ; since, in the book of the Revelation, 
the future events of the Christian church, which 
were not to take place, many of them, till a long 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 253 

series of years after his death, and some of which 
have not yet been accompUshed, are there minute- 
ly described, St. Peter, in Uke manner, strongly 
intimates that the day of the Lord might be said 
to be at hand, though it was at the distance of a 
thousand years or more ; for in replying to the 
taunt of those who did then, or should in future 
ask, "Where is the promise of his coming?" he 
says, "Beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, 
that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, 
and a thousand j^ears as one day : the Lord is not 
slack concerning his promise, as some men count 
slackness," And he speaks of putting off his tab- 
ernacle, as the Lord had showed him ; and of his 
endeavor that the Christians after his decease 
might be able to have these things in remem- 
brance : so that it is past a doubt he could not be 
of opinion that the Lord would come in his time. 
As to St. Paul, upon a partial view of whose writ- 
ings the doctrine concerning the speedy coming of 
Christ is principally founded, it is manifest, that 
he was conscious he should not live to see it, not- 
withstanding the expression beforementioned, " we 
which are alive ;" for he foretells his own death in 
express terms : " The time of my departure is at 
hand ;" and he speaks of his reward, not as imme- 
diately to be conferred upon him, but as laid up, 
and reserved for him till some future da v. "I 



254 WATSON^S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

have fought a good fight, I have finished my 
course ; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown 
of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous 
Judge, shall give me at that day." There is, more- 
over, one passage in his writings which is so ex- 
press, and full to the purpose, that it will put the 
matter, I think, beyond all doubt ; it occurs in his 
second epistle to the Thessalonians. They, it 
seems, had, either by misinterpreting some parts 
of his former letter to them, or by the preaching of 
some who had not the spirit of truth, by some 
means or other they had been led to expect the 
speedy coming of Christ, and been greatly dis- 
turbed in mind upon that account. To remove 
this error, he writes to them in the following very 
solemn and affectionate manner : " We beseech 
you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, 
that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, 
neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as 
from us, as that the day of the Lord is at hand ; 
let no man deceive you by any means." He then 
goes on to describe a falling away, a great corrup- 
tion of the Christian church, which was to happen 
before the day of the Lord. Now, by this revela- 
tion of the man of sin, this mystery of iniquity, 
which is to be consumed with the spirit of his 
month, destroved by the brightness of his coming, 



vVATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 255 

we have every reason to believe, is to be under- 
stood the past and present abominations of the 
church of Rome. How tlien can it be said of Paul, 
who clearly foresaw this corruption above seven- 
teen hundred years ago, that he expected the com- 
ing of the Lord in his own day? Let us press, 
sir, the mysterious language of prophecy and reve- 
lation as closely as you please, but let us press it 
truly ; and we may perhaps find reason from 
thence to receive, with less reluctance, a religion 
which describes a corruption, the strangeness of 
which, had it not been foretold in unequivocal 
terms, might have amazed even a friend to Chris- 
tianity. 

I will produce you, sir, a prophecy which, the 
more closely you press it, the more reason you 
will have to believe that 'the speedy coming of 
Christ could never have been "predicted" by the 
apostles. Take it as translated by Bishop New- 
ton : '' But the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in 
the latter times, some shall apostatize from the 
faith ; giving heed to erroneous spirits, and doc- 
trines concerning demons, through the hypocrisy 
of liars ; having their conscience seared with a hot 
iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to ab- 
stain from meats." Here you have an express 
prophecy ; the Spirit hath spoken it, that in the 
latter times, not immediately, but at some distant 



256 V/ATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

period, some should apostatize from the faith ; 
some who had been Christians, should in truth 
be so no longer, but should give heed to erroneouar 
spirits, and doctrines concerning demons. Press 
this expression closely, and you may perhaps dis- 
cover in it the erroneous tenets, and the demon or 
saint worship of the church of Rome. '' Through 
the hypocrisy of liars :" you recognize, no doubt, 
the priesthood, and the martyrologists. " Having 
their conscience seared with a hot iron :" callous, 
indeed, must his conscience be who traffics in in- 
dulgence. " Forbidding to marry, and commanding 
to abstain from meats :" this language needs no 
pressing ; it discovers at once the unhappy vota- 
ries of monastic life, and the mortal sin of eating 
flesh on fast-days. 

If, notwithstanding what has been said, you 
should still be of opinion that the apostles expected 
Christ would come in their time, it will not follow 
that this their error ought in any wise to diminish 
their authority as preachers of the gospel. I ara 
sensible this position may alarm even some well- 
wishers to Christianit}", and supply its enemies 
with what they will think an irrefragable argu- 
ment. The apostles, they will say, were inspired 
with the Spirit of truth ; and yet they fell into a 
gross mistake concermng a matter of great impor- 
tance ; how is this to be reconciled ? Perhaps in 



WATSON-S EEPLY TO aiBBON. . 257 

the following manner : When the time of our Sav- 
iom^'s ministry was nearly at an end, he thought 
l^roper to raise the spirits of his disciples, who 
were quite cast down with what he had told them 
about his design of leaving them, by promising 
that he would send to them the Holy Ghost, the 
Comforter, the Spirit of truth, who should teach 
them all things, and lead them into all truth. And 
we know that this his promise was accomplished 
on the day of Pentecost, when they were all filled 
with the Holy Ghost ; and we know farther, that 
"rom that time forward they were enabled to speak 
with tongues, to work miracles, to preach the word 
with power, and to comprehend the mystery of the 
new dispensation which was committed unto them. 
But we have no reason from hence to conclude, 
that they were immediately inspired with the ap- 
prehension of whatever might be known — that 
they became acquainted v^ith all kinds of truth. 
They were undoubtedly led into such truths as it 
was necessary for them to know, in order to their 
converting the world to Christianity ; but in other 
things, they were probably left to the exercise of 
their understanding, as other men usually are. 
But surely they might be proper witnesses of the 
life and resurrection of Christ, though the^^ were 
not acquainted with every thing which might have 
been known ; though, in particular, they were 

Infidelity. 17 



258 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

ignorant of the precise time when our Lord would 
come to judge the world. It can be no impeach- 
ment either of their integrity as men, or their 
abiUty as historians, or their honesty as preachers 
of the gospel, that they were unacquainted with 
what had never been revealed to them ; that they 
followed their own understandings where they had 
no better light to guide them ; speaking from con- 
jecture, when thej could not speak from certainty ; 
of themselves, when they had no commandment of 
the Lord. They knew but in part, and they proph- 
esied but in part ; and concerning this particular 
point, Jesus himself had told them, just as he was 
about finally to leave them, that it was not for 
them to "know the times and the seasons which 
the Father had put in his own power." Nor is it 
to be wondered at, that the apostles were left in a 
state of uncertainty concerning the time in which 
Christ should appear ; since beings far more ex- 
alted, and more highly favored of heaven than 
they, were under an equal degree of ignorance : 
" Of that day," says our Saviour, '' and of that 
hour, knoweth no man ; no, not the angels which 
are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father 
only." I am afraid, sir, I have tired you with 
Scripture quotations ; but if I have been fortunate 
enough . to convince you either that the speedy '' 
coming of Christ was never expected, much less 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 259 

" predicted," by the apostles, or that their mistake 
in that particular expectation can in no degree 
diminish the general weight of their testimony as 
historians, I shall not be sorry for the ennui I may 
have occasioned you. 

The doctrine of the Millennium is the second of 
the <;ircumstances which you produce as giving 
weight to that of a future state ; and you repre- 
sent this doctrine as having been " carefully calcu- 
lated by a succession of the fathers, from Justin 
Martyr and Irenaeus, down to Lactantius ;" and 
observe, that when " the edifice of the church was 
almost completed, the temporary support was laid 
aside:" and in the. notes you refer us, as a proof 
of what you advance, to " Irenaeus, the disciple of 
Papias, who had seen the apostle John," and to the 
second dialogue of Justin with Trypho. 

J wish, sir, you had turned to Eusebius for the 
character of this Papias, who had seen the apostle 
John : you would there have found him represent- 
ed as little better than a credulous old woman ; 
very averse frorn reading, but mightily given to 
picking up stories and traditions next to fabulous ; 
among which, Eusebius reckons this of the millen- 
nium one. Nor is it, I apprehend, quite certain 
that Papias ever saw, much less discoursed, as 
seems to be ins-inuated, with the apostle John. 
.JEusebiu^ thinks ratjiei:, that it was John the pres- 



260 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

byter he had seen. But what if he had seen the 
apostle himself? Many a weak-headed man had 
undoubtedly seen him as well as Papias ; and it 
would be hard indeed upon Christians, if they were 
compelled to receive, as apostolical traditions, the 
wild reveries of ancient enthusiasm, or such crude 
conceptions of ignorant fanaticism as nothing but 
the rust of antiquity can render venerable. 

As to the works of Justin, the very dialogue you 
refer to contains a proof that the doctrine of the 
millennium had not, even in his time, the univer- 
sal reception you have supposed ; but that many 
Christians of pure and pious principles rejected it. 
I wonder how this passage escaped you ; but it 
may be that you followed Tillotson, who himself 
followed Mede, and read in the original ov instead 
of av; and thus unwarily violated the idiom of the 
language, the sense of the context, and the au- 
thority of the best editions. In the note you ob- 
serve that it is unnecessary for you to mention all 
the intermediate fathers between Justin and Lac- 
tantius, as the fact, you say, is not disputed. In 
a man who has read so many books, and to so 
good a purpose, he must be captious indeed who 
cannot excuse small mistakes. That unprejudiced 
regard to truth, however, which is the great char- 
acteristic of every distinguished historian, will, I 
am persuaded, make you thank me for recalUng to 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 261 

your memory that Origen, the most learned of all 
the fathers, and Dionysius bishop of Alexandria, 
usually, for his immense erudition, surnamed the 
great, were both of them prior to Lactantius, and 
both of them impugners of the millennium doctrine. 
Look, sir, into Mosheim, or almost any writer of 
ecclesiastical history, and you will find the opposi- 
tion of Origen and Dionysius to this system par- 
ticularly noticed : look into so common an author 
as AVhitby, and in his learned treatise upon this 
subject you will find that he has well proved these 
two propositions : first, that this opinion of the 
rnillennium was never generally received in the 
church of Christ ; secondly, that there is no just 
ground to think it was derived from the apostles. 
From hence, I think we may conclude that this 
millennium doctrine — which, by the by, though it 
be new-modelled, is not yet thrown aside — could 
not have been any very serviceable scaffold in the 
erection of that mighty edifice which has crushed 
by the weight of its materials, and debased by the 
elegance of its structure, the statehest temples of 
heathen superstition. With these remarks, I take 
leave of the millennium ; just observing that your 
third circumstance, the general conflagration, seems 
to be efl'ectuahy included in your first, the speedy 
coming of Christ. I am, etc. 



262 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON, 



LETTER III. 

Sir — You esteem "the miraculous powers as- 
<:ribed to the primitive church," as the third of the 
secondary causes of the rapid growth of Chris- 
tianity. I should be willing to account the mira- 
cles, not merely ascribed to the primitive church, 
but really performed by the apostles, as the one 
great primary cause of the conversion of the Gen- 
tiles. But waiving this consideration, let us see 
whether the miraculous powers which you ascribe 
to the primitive church, were in any eminent de- 
gree calculated to spread the belief of Christianity 
among a great and enlightened people. 

They consisted, you tell us, " of divine inspira- 
tions, conveyed sometimes in the form of a sleep- 
ing, sometimes of a waking vision ; and were lib- 
erally bestowed on all ranks of the faithful, on 
women as on elders, on boys as well as upon 
bishops." " The design of these visions," you say, 
"was for the most part either to disclose the fu- 
ture history, or to guide the present administration 
of the church." You speak of " the expulsion of 
demons as an ordinary triumph of religion, usually 
performed in a pubUc manner ; and when the J3a- 
tient was reheved by the skill or the power of the 
exorcist, the vanquished demon was heard to con- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 263 

fess that he was one of the fabled gods of antiqui- 
ty, who had impiously usurped the adoration of 
mankind ;" and you represent even the miracle of 
the resurrection of the dead as frequently perform- 
ed on necessary occasions. Cast your eye, sir, 
upon the church of Rome, and ask yourself — I put 
the question to your heart, and beg j'-ou will con- 
sult that for an answer^ — ask yourself whether 
her absurd pretensions to that very kind of mirac- 
ulous powers you have here displayed as operating 
to the increase of Christianity, have not converted 
half her numbers to Protestantism, and the other 
half to infidelity ? Neither the sword of the civil 
magistrate, nor the possession of the keys of heav- 
en, nor the terrors of her spiritual thunder, have 
been able to keep within her pale even those who 
have been bred up in her faith ; how then should 
you think, that the very cause which has almost 
extinguished Christianity among Christians, should 
have established it among pagans ? I beg I may 
not be misunderstood. I do not take upon me to 
say, that all the miracles recorded in the history 
of the primitive church after the apostolical age 
were forgeries : it is foreign to the present pur- 
pose to deliver any opinion upon that subject ; but 
I do beg leave to insist upon this, that such of 
them as were forgeries must, in that learned age, 
by their easy detection, have rather impeded than 



264 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

accelerated the progress of Christianity ; and it ap- 
pears very probable to me, that nothing but the 
recent prevailing evidence of real, unquestioned, 
apostolical miracles, could have secured the infant 
church from being destroyed by those which were 
falsely ascribed to it. 

It is not every man who can nicely separate the 
corruptions of religion from rehgion itself, or justly 
apportion the degrees of credit due to the diversi- 
ties of evidence ; and those who have ability for the 
task are usually ready enough to emancipate them- 
selves from gospel restraints — which thwart the 
propensities of sense, check the ebullitions of pas- 
sion, and combat the prejudices of the world at 
every turn^ — by blending its native simplicity with 
the superstitions which have been derived from it. 
No argument is so well suited to the indolence or 
the immorality of mankind, as that priests of all 
ages and religions are the same : we see the pre- 
tensions of the Romish priesthood to miraculous 
powers, and we know them to be false ; we are 
conscious that they, at least, must sacrifice their 
integrity to their interest or their ambition ; and 
being persuaded that there is a great sameness in 
the passions of mankind and in their incentives to 
action, and knowing that the history of past ages 
is abundantly stored with similar claims to super- 
natural authority, we traverse back in imagina- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO G-IBBON. 265 

tion the most distant regions of antiquity, and 
finding, from a superficial view, nothing to discrim- 
inate one set of men or one period of time from 
another, we hastily conclude that all revealed re- 
ligion is a cheat, and that the miracles attributed to 
the apostles themselves are supported by no better 
testimony, nor more worthy of our attention, than 
the prodigies of pagan story or the lying wonders 
of Papal artifice. I have no intention, in this place, 
to enlarge upon the many circumstances by which 
a candid inquirer after truth might be enabled to 
distinguish a pointed difference between the mira- 
cles of Christ and his apostles, and the tricks of 
ancient or modern superstition. One observation 
I would just suggest to you upon this subject : 
the miracles recorded in the Old and New Testa- 
ment are so intimately united with the narration 
of common events, and the ordinary transactions 
of life, that you cannot, as in profane history, sep- 
arate the one from the other. My meaning will 
be illustrated by an instance : Tacitus and Sueto- 
nius have handed down to us an account of many 
great actions performed by Vespasian ; and among 
the rest, they inform us of his having wrought 
some miracles — of his having cured a lame man, 
and restored sight to one that was blind. But 
what they tell us of these miracles is so uncon- 
nected with every thing that goes before and after. 



266 . WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBOIT. 

that you may reject the relation of them without 
injuring in any degree the consistency of the nar- 
ration of the other circumstances of his life : on 
the other hand, if you reject the relation of the 
miracles said to have been performed by Jesus 
Christ, you must necessarily reject the account of 
his whole life, and of several transactions, concern- 
ing which we have the undoubted testimony of other 
, writers besides the evangehsts. But if this argu- 
ment should not strike you, perhaps the following 
observation may tend to remove a little of the preju- 
dice usually conceived against gospel miracles by 
men of lively imaginations, on account of the gross . 
forgeries attributed to the first ages of the church. 
The phenomena of physics are sometimes happi- 
ly illustrated by an hypothesis, and the most re- 
condite truths of mathematical science not unfre- 
quently investigated from an absurd position. 
What if we try the same method of arguing the 
case before us ? Let us suppose, then, that a rew 
revelation was to be promulged to mankind ; and 
that twelve unlearned and unfriended men, inhab- 
itants of any country most odious and despicable 
in the eyes of Europe, should, by the power of 
God, be endowed with the faculty of speaking lan- 
guages they had never learned, and performing 
Avorks surpassing all human ability ; and that, be- 
ing strongly impressed with a particular truth, 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 267 

wliich they were commissioned to promulgate, 
the}' should travel not only through the barbarous 
regions of Africa, but through all the learned and 
polished states of Europe, preaching everywhere 
with unremitted sedulity a new religion, working 
stupendous miracles in attestation of their mission, 
and communicating to their first converts, as a seal 
of their conversion, a variety of spiritual gifts ; does 
it appear probable to you that, after the death of 
these men, and probably after the deaths of most 
of their immediate successors who had been zeal- 
ously attached to the faith they had seen so mirac- 
ulously confirmed, none would ever attempt to 
impose upon the credulous or the ignorant by a 
fictitious claim to supernatural powers ? Would 
none of them aspire to the gift of tongues ? would 
none of them mistake frenzy for illumination, and 
the delusions of a heated brain for the impulses of 
the Spirit ? would none undertake to cure inveter- 
ate disorders, to expel demons, or to raise the dead ? 
As far as I can apprehend, we ought, from such a 
position, to deduce, by every rule of probable rea- 
soning, the precise conclusion which was in fact 
verified in the case of the apostles : every species 
of miracles which heaven had enabled the first 
preachers to perform, would be counterfeited, ei- 
ther from misguided zeal or interested cunning — 
either through the imbecility or the iniquity of 



268 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

mankind ; and we miglit just as reasonably con- 
clude that there never was anj piety, charity, or 
chastity in the world, from seeing such plenty of 
pretenders to these virtues, as that there never 
were any real miracles performed, from considering 
the great store of those which have been forged. 

But I know not how it has happened, there are 
many in the present age — I am far from including 
3''0u, sir, in the number — whose prejudices against 
all miraculous events have arisen to that height, 
that it appears to them utterly impossible for any 
human testimony, however great, to estabUsh their 
credibility. I beg pardon for styling their reason- 
ing prejudice. I have no design to give offence 
by that word. They may, with equal right, throw 
the same imputation upon mine ; and I think it just 
as illiberal in divines to attribute the scepticism of 
every deist to wilful infidelity, as it is in the deists to 
refer the faith of every divine to professional bias. 
I have not had so little intercourse with mankind, 
nor shunned so much the delightful freedom of social 
converse, as to be ignorant that there are many 
men of upright morals and good understandings, to 
whom, as you express it, "a latent and even invol- 
untary scepticism adheres ;" and who would be glad 
to be persuaded to be Christians. For the sake of 
such men, if such should ever be induced to employ 
an hour in the perusal of these letters, suffer me to 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 269 

step for a moment out of my way, while I hazard 
an observation or two upon the subject. 

Knowledge is rightly divided by Mr. Locke into 
intuitive, sensitive, and demonstrative. It is clear, 
that a past miracle can neither be the object of 
sense nor of intuition, nor consequently of demon- 
stration : we cannot then, philosophically speaking, 
be said to know that a miracle has ever been per- 
formed. But in all the great concerns of life, we 
are influenced by probability rather than know- 
ledge : and of probability, the same great author 
establishes two foundations ; a conformity to our 
own experience, and the testimony of others. 
Now, it has been contended, that by the opposi- 
tion of these two principles probability is destroy- 
ed ; or, in other terms, that human testimony can 
never influence the mind to assent to a proposition 
repugnant to uniform experience. Whose expe- 
rience do you mean ? You will not say, your 
own, for the experience of an individual reaches 
but a little way ; and, no doubt, you daily assent 
to a thousand truths in politics, in physics, and in 
the business of common life, which you have never 
seen verified by experience. You will not produce 
the experience of your friends, for that can extend 
itself but a little way beyond your own. But by 
uniform experience, I conceive you are desirous of 
understanding the experience of all ages and na- 



270 WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 

tions since the foundation of the world. I answer 
first, how is it that you become acquainted with 
the experience of all ages and nations ? You will 
reply, from history. Be it so : peruse then by far 
the most ancient records of antiquity, and if you 
find no mention of miracles in them, I give up the 
point. Yes ; but every thing related therein re- 
specting miracles is to be reckoned fabulous. Why? 
Because miracles contradict the experience of all 
ages and nations. Do you not perceive, sir, that you 
beg the very question in debate ? for we affirm, that 
the great and learned nation of Egypt, that the 
heathen inhabiting the land of Canaan, that the nu- 
merous people of the Jews, and the nations which, 
for ages, surrounded them, have all had great ex- 
perience of miracles. You cannot otherwise obvi- 
ate this conclusion than by questioning the authen- 
ticity of that book, concerning which Newton, when 
he was writing liis commentary on Daniel, express- 
ed himself to the person* from whom I had the 
anecdote, and which deserves not to be lost, " I 
find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible 
than in any profane history whatsoever." 

However, I mean not to press you with the 

argument ad verccuncliam ; it is needless to solicit 

your modesty, when it may be possible, perhaps, to 

make an impression upon your judgment : I answer; 

* Dr. Smith, late Master of Trinity College. " • • 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 271 

therefore, in the second place, that the admission 
of the principle by which you reject miracles will 
lead us hito absurdity. The laws of gravitation 
are the most obvious of all the laws of nature ; 
every person in every part of the globe must of 
necessity have had experience of them. There 
was a time when no one was acquainted with the 
laws of magnetism : these suspend in many in- 
stances the laws of gravity : ncr can I see, upon 
the principle in question, how the rest of mankind 
could have credited the testimony of their first dis- 
coverer ; and yet to have rejected it would have 
been to reject the truth. But that a piece of iron 
should ascend gradually from the earth, and fly at 
last with an increasing rapidity through the air, and 
attaching itself to another piece of iron, or to a 
particular species of iron ore, should remain sus- 
pended, in opposition to the action of its gravity, 
it will be alleged, is consonant to the laws of na- 
ture. I grant it ; but there was a J;ime when it 
was contrary, I say not to the laws of nature, but 
to the uniform experience of all preceding ages and 
countries ; and at that particular point of time, the 
testimony of an individual, orof a dozen individuals, 
who should have reported themselves eye-wit- 
nesses of such a fact, ought, according to your argu- 
mentation, to have been received as fabulous. And 
what are those laws of nature which you think 



272 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

can never be suspended ? Are they not different to 
different men, according to the diversities of their 
comprehension and knowledge? And if any of 
them — that, for instance, which rules the opera- 
tions of magnetism or electricity — should have been 
known to you or to me alone, while all the rest of 
the world were unacquainted with it, the effects 
of it would have been new and unheard of in the 
annals, and contrary to the experience of mankind ; 
and therefore ought not, in your opinion, to have 
been believed ! Nor do I understand what differ- 
ence, as to credibility, there could be between the 
effects of such an unknown law of nature, and a 
miracle ; for it is a matter of no moment, in that 
view, whether the suspension of the known laws 
of nature be effected ; that is, whether a miracle be 
performed by the mediation of other laws that are 
unknown, or by the ministry of a person divinely 
commissioned ; since it is impossible for us to be 
certain that ii is contradictory to the constitution 
of the universe, that the laws of nature, which 
appear to us general, should be suspended, and 
their action overruled by others still more general 
though less known ; that is, that miracles should 
be performed before such a being as man at those 
times, in those places, and under those circum- 
stances which God, in his universal providence, 
had preordained. I am, etc. 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 273 



LETTER IV. 

Sir — I readily acknowledge the utility of your 
fourth cause, ''the virtues of the first Christians," 
as greatly conducing to the spreading of their re- 
ligion ; but then you seem to quite mar the compli- 
ment you pay them, by representing their virtues 
as proceeding either from their repentance for hav- 
ing been the most abandoned sinners, or from the 
laudable desire of supporting the reputation of the 
society in which they were engaged. 

That repentance is the first step to virtue is true 
enough ; but I see no reason for supposing, accord- 
ing to the calumnies of Celsus and Julian, that 
"the Christians allured into their party men who 
washed away in the waters of baptism the guilt 
for which the temples of the gods refused to grant 
them any expiation." The apostles, sir, did not, 
like Romulus, open an asylum for debtors, thieves, 
and murderers, for they had not the same sturdy 
means of securing their adherents from the grasp 
of civil power : they did not persuade them to aban- 
don the temples of the gods because they could 
there obtain no expiation for their guilt, but 
because every degree of guilt was expiated in 
them with too great faciUty, and every vice prac- 

Infidelity. 18 



274 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

tised not only without remorse of private con- 
science, but with the powerful sanction of public 
approbation. 

"After the example," you say, "of their divine 
Master, the missionaries of the gospel addressed 
themselves to men, and especially to women, op- 
pressed by the consciousness, and very often by 
the effects of then* vices." This, su-, I really think 
is not a fair representation of the matter ; it may 
catch the applause of the unlearned, embolden 
many a stripling to cast off for ever the sweet blush 
of modesty, confirm many a dissolute veteran in 
the practice of his impure habits, and suggest great 
occasion of merriment and wanton mockery to the 
flagitious of every denomination and every age ; 
but still, it will want that foundation of truth whicli 
alone can recommend it to the serious and judi- 
cious. The apostles, sir, were not like the Italian 
FratnceUi of the thirteenth, nor the French Turlu- 
pins of the fourteenth century : in all the dirt that 
has been raked up against Christianity, even by 
the worst of its enemies, not a speck of that kind 
have they been able to fix, either upon the apostles 
or then- divine Master. The gospel of Jesus Christ, 
sir, was not preached in single houses or obscure 
villages, not in subterraneous caves and impure 
brothels, not in lazars and in prisons ; but in the 
synagogues and in the temples, in the streets and 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 275 

the market-places of the great capitals of the Ro- 
man provinces : in Jerusalem, in Corinth, and in 
Antioch ; in Athens, in Ephesus, and in Rome. Nor 
do I anywhere find, that its missionaries were 
ordered particularly to address themselves to the 
shameless women you mention : I do indeed find the 
direct contrary ; for they were ordered to turn away 
from, to have no fellowship or intercourse with 
such as were wont "to creep into houses, and lead 
captive silly women laden with sins, led away with 
divers lusts." And what if a few women, who 
had either been seduced by their passions, or had 
fallen victims to the licentious manners of their 
age, should be found among those who were most 
ready to receive a religion that forbade all impu- 
rity ? I do not apprehend that this circumstance 
ought to bring an insinuation of discredit either 
upon the sex, or upon those who wrought their 
reformation. 

That the majority of the first converts to Chris- 
tianity were of an inferior condition in life, may 
readily be allowed ; and you yourself have, in an- 
other place, given a good reason for it : those who 
are distinguished by riches, honors, or knowledge, 
being so very inconsiderable in number when com- 
pared with the bulk of mankind. But though not 
many mighty, not many noble were called, yet 
some mighty, and some noble, some of as great 



276 WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 

reputation as any of the age in which they lived, 
were attached to the Christian faith. Short indeed 
are the accounts which have been transmitted to 
us of the first propagating of Christianity ; jet, even 
in these we meet with the names of many who 
would have done credit to any cause. I will not 
pretend to enumerate them all ; a few of them will 
be sufficient to make you recollect that there were, 
at least, some converts to Christianity, both from 
among the Jew^s and the Gentiles, whose lives 
were not stained with inexpiable crimes. Among 
these we reckon Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews ; 
Joseph of Arimathea, a man of fortune and a coun- 
sellor ; a nobleman and a centurion of Capernaum ; 
Jairus, Crispus, Sosthenes, rulers of synagogues ; 
Apollos, an eloquent and learned man ; Zenas, a 
Jewish lawyer ; the treasurer of Candace queen of 
Ethiopia ; Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian 
band ; Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus at 
Athens, and Sergius Paulus, a man of proconsular 
or prastdrian authority, of whom it may be re- 
marked, that if he resigned his high and lucrative 
office in consequence of his turnmg Christian, it is 
a strong presumption in its favor ; if he retained 
it, we may conclude that the profession of Christi- 
anity was not so utterly incompatible with the dis- 
charge of the offices of civil life as you sometimes 
represent it. 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 277 

This catalogue of men of rank, fortune, and know- 
ledge, who embraced Christianity, might, was it 
necessary, be much enlarged ; and probably an- 
other conversation with St. Paul would have en- 
abled us to grace it with the names of Festus, and 
king Agrippa himself — not that the writers of the 
books of the New Testament seem to have been 
at all solicitous in mentioning the great or the 
learned men who were converted to the faith. Had 
that been part of their design, they would, in the 
true style of impostors, have kept out of sight the 
publicans and sinners, the tanners and tent-makers 
with whom they conversed and dwelt, and intro- 
duced to our notice none but those who had been 
"brought up with Herod or the chief men of Asia," 
whom they had the honor to number among their 
friends. 

That the primitive Christians took great care to 
have an unsullied reputation by abstaining from 
the commission of whatever might tend to pollute 
it, is easily admitted ; but we do not so easily 
grant that this care is a ''circumstance which usu- 
ally attends small assembhes of men when they 
separate themselves from the body of a nation, or 
the religion to which they belonged." It did not 
attend the Nicolaitanes, the Simonians, the Menan- 
drians, and the Carpocratians, in the first ages of 
the church of which you are speaking ; and it can- 



278 WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 

not be unknown to you, sir, that the scandalous 
vices of these very early sectaries brought a gen- 
eral and undistinguished censure upon the Chris- 
tian name ; and so far from promoting the increase 
of the church, excited in the minds of the Pagans 
an abhorrence of whatever respected it. It can- 
not be unknown to you, sir, that several sectaries, 
both at home and abroad, might be mentioned, who 
have departed from the religion to wliich they be- 
longed ; and which, unhappily for themselves and 
the community, have taken as little care to pre- 
serve their reputation unspotted, as those of the 
first and second centuries. If, then, the first Chris- 
tians did take the care you mention — and I am 
wholly of your opinion in that point — their soHci- 
tude might as candidly, perhaps, and as reasonably 
be derived from a sense of their duty, and an 
honest endeavor to discharge it, as from the mere 
desire of increasing the honor of their confraternity 
by the illustrious integrity of its members. 

You are eloquent in describing the austere mo- 
rality of the primitive Christians as adverse to the 
propensities of sense, and abhorrent from all the 
innocent pleasures and amusements of life ; and 
you enlarge, with a studied minuteness, upon their 
censures of luxury, and their sentiments concern- 
ing marriage and chastity : but in this circumstan- 
tial enumeration of their errors or their faults — 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 279 

which I am under no necessity of denying or ex- 
cusing — ^you seem to forget the very purpose for 
which you profess to have introduced the mention 
of them ; for the picture you have drawn is so 
hideous, and the coloring so dismal, that instead of 
alluring to a closer inspection, it must have made 
every man of pleasure or of sense turn from it 
with horror or disgust ; and so far from contribut- 
ing to the rapid growth of Christianity^ by the aus- 
terity of their manners, it must be a wonder to 
any one how the first Christians ever made a 
single convert. It was first objected by Celsus, 
that Christianity was a mean religion, inculcating 
such a pusillanimity and patience under affronts, 
such a contempt of riches and worldly honors, as 
must weaken the nerves of civil government, and 
expose a society of Christians to the prey of the 
first invaders. This objection has been repeated 
by Bayle ; and though fully answered by Bernard 
and others, it is still the favorite theme of every 
esjtrit fort, freethinker, of our own age : even you, 
sir, think the aversion of Christians to the business 
of war and government, "a criminal disregard to 
the public welfare." To all that has been said 
upon this subject it may with justice, I think, be 
answered, that Christianity troubles not itself with 
ordering the constitutions of civil societies, but 
levels the weight of all its influence at the hearts 



280 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

of the individuals which compose them ; and, as 
Origen said to Celsus, was every individual in 
every nation a gospel Christian, there would be 
neither internal injustice, nor external war ; there 
would be none of those passions which imbitter 
the intercourse of civil life, and desolate the globe. 
What reproach then can it be to a religion, that it 
inculcates doctrines which, if universally practised, 
would introduce universal tranquillity, and the 
most exalted happiness among mankind ? 

It must proceed from a total misapprehension of 
the design of the Christian dispensation, or from a 
very ignorant interpretation of the particular in- 
junctions forbidding us to make riches or honors a 
primary pursuit, or the prompt gratification of re- 
venge a first principle of action, to infer that an 
individual Christian is obliged by his religion to 
offer his throat to an assassin, and his property to 
the first plunderer ; or that a society of Christians 
may not repel, in the best manner they are able, 
the unjust assaults of hostile invasion. 

I know of no precepts in the gospel which debar 
a man from the possession of domestic comforts, or 
deaden the activity of his private friendships, or 
prohibit the exertion of his utmost abihty in the 
service of the public : the nisi quietum nihil beatum — 
no happiness without rest — is no part of the Chris- 
tian's creed ; his virtue is an active virtue : and 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 281 

we justly refer to the school of Epicurus the doc- 
trines concerning abstinence from marriage, from 
the cultivation of friendsliip, from the management 
of piibhc affairs, as suited to that selfish indolence 
which was the favorite tenet of his philosophy. I 
am, etc. 



282 WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 



LETTER V. 

Sir — " The union and the discipline of the Chris- 
tian church," or, as you are pleased to style it, of 
the Christian republic, is the last of the five secon- 
dary causes to which you have referred the rapid 
and extensive spread of Christianity. It must be 
acknowledged that union essentially contributes to 
the strength of every association, civil, military, 
and religious ; but unfortunately for your argu- 
ment, and much to the reproach of Christians, 
nothing has been more wanting among them, from 
the apostolic age to your own, than union. " I am 
of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I 
of Christ," are expressions of disunion which we 
meet with in the earliest period of church history : 
and we cannot look into the writings of any, either 
friend or foe to Christianity, but we find the one of 
them lamenting and the other exulting in an im- 
mense catalogue of sectaries ; and both of them 
thereby furnishing us with great reason to believe 
that the divisions with respect to doctrine, wor- 
ship, and discipline, which have ever subsisted in 
the church, must have greatly tended to hurt the 
credit of Christianity, and to aUenate the minds of 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 283 

the Gentiles from the reception of such a various 
and discordant faith. 

I readily grant, that there was a certain commu- 
nity of doctrine, an intercourse of hospitality, and 
a confederacy of discipline established among the 
individuals of every church ; so that none could be 
admitted into any assembly of Christians without 
undergoing a previous examination into his man- 
ner of life — which shows, by the by, that every 
reprobate could not, as the fit seized him, or his 
interest induced him, become a Christian — and 
without protesting in the most solemn manner, 
that he would neither be guilty of murder, nor 
adultery, nor theft, nor perfidy ; and it may be 
granted also, that those who broke this compact 
were ejected by common consent from the confra- 
ternity into which they had been admitted. It 
may be farther granted, that this confederacy ex- 
tended itself to independent churches ; and that 
those who had, for their immorahties, been ex- 
cluded from Christian community in any one church, 
were rarely, if ever, admitted to it by another ; 
just as a member who has been expelled any one 
college in a university, is generally thought unwor- 
thy of being admitted by any other : but it is not 
admitted, that this severity and this union of dis- 
cipline could ever have induced the pagans to 
forsake the gods of their country, and to expose 



284 WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 

themselves to the contemptuous hatred of then' 
neighbors, and to all the severities of persecution 
exercised with unrelenting barbarity against- the 
Christians. 

The account you give of the origin and progress 
of episcopal jurisdiction, of the preeminence of the 
metropolitan churches, and of the ambition of the 
Eoman pontiff, I believe to be in general accurate 
and true ; and I am not in the least surprised at 
the bitterness which now and then escapes you in 
treating this subject : for to see the most benign 
religion that unagination can form becoming an 
instrument of oppression, and the most humble 
one administering to the pride, and the avarice, 
and the ambition of those who wished to be con- 
sidered as its guardians, and who avowed them- 
selves its professors, would extort a censure from 
men more attached probably to church authority 
than yourself. Not that I think it either a very 
candid, or a very useful undertaking, to be solely 
and industriously engaged in portraying the char- 
acters of the professors of Christianity in the worst 
colors : it is not candid, because " the great law of 
impartiality, which obliges a historian to reveal the 
imperfections of the uninspired teachers and be- 
lievers of the gospel," obliges him also not to con- 
ceal, or to pass over with niggard and reluctant 
mention, the illustrious virtues of those who gave 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 285 

up fortune and fame, all their comforts, and all 
their hopes in this life, nay, life itself, rather than 
violate any one of the precepts of that gospel 
which, from the testimony of inspired teachers, 
they conceived they had good reason to believe : 
it is not useful, because " to a careless observer" — 
that is, to the generality of mankind — " their faults 
may seem to cast a shade on the faith which they 
professed ;" and may really infect the minds of the 
young and unlearned especially, with prejudices 
against a religion, upon their rational reception or 
rejection of which, a matter of the utmost impor- 
tance may — believe me, sir, it may, for aught you 
or any person else can prove to the contrary — 
entirely depend. 

It is an easy matter to amuse ourselves and 
others with the immoralities of priests and the am- 
bition of prelates ; with the absurd virulence of 
synods and councils ; with the ridiculous doctrines 
which visionary enthusiasts or interested church- 
men have sanctified with the name of Christian ; 
l3ut a display of ingenuity or erudition upon such 
subjects is much misplaced, since it excites, almost 
in every person, an unavoidable suspicion of the 
purity of the source itself from which such polluted 
streams have been derived. Do not mistake my 
meaning. I am far from wishing that the clergy 
should be looked up to with a bhnd reverence, or 



286 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

their imperfections screened by the sanctity of their 
functions from the animadversion of the world; 
quite the contrary. Their conduct, I am of opin- 
ion, ought to be more nicely scrutinized, and their 
deviation from the rectitude of the gospel more 
severely censured, than that of other men ; but 
great care should be taken not to represent their 
vices, or their indiscretion, as originating in the 
principles of their religion. Do not mistake me. I 
am not here begging quarters for Christianity, or 
contending that even the principles of our religion 
should be received with implicit faith ; or that 
every objection to Christianity should be stifled by a 
representation of the mischief it might do if public- 
ly promulged ; on the contrary, we invite, nay, we 
challenge you to a direct and liberal attack, though 
oblique glances and disingenuous insinuations we 
are willing to avoid — well knowing that the char- 
acter of our religion, hke that of an honest man, is 
defended with greater difficulty against the sug- 
gestions of ridicule, and the secret malignity of pre- 
tended friends, than against positive accusations 
and the avowed malice of open enemies. 

In your account of the primitive church, you set 
forth that " the want of discipline and human learn- 
ing was supplied by the occasional assistance of 
the prophets, who were called to that function 
without distinction of age, sex, or natural abilities." 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 287 

That the gift of prophecy was one of the spiritual 
gifts by which some of the first Christians were 
enabled to cooperate with the apostles in the gen- 
eral design of preaching the gospel ; and that this 
gift, or rather, as Mr. Locke thinks, the gift of 
tongues — by the ostentation of which many of 
them were prompted to speak in their assemblies 
at the same time — was the occasion of some dis- 
order in the church of Corinth, which required the 
interposition of the apostle to compose, is confessed 
on all hands. But if you mean that the prophets 
were ever the sole pastors of the faithful, or that 
no provision was made by the apostles for the good 
government and edification of the church, except 
what might be accidentally derived from the occa- 
sional assistance of the prophets, you are much 
mistaken, and have undoubtedly forgot what is 
said of Paul and Barnabas having ordained elders 
in Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch ; and of Paul's 
commission to Titus, whom he had left in Crete, to 
ordain elders in every city ; and of his instructions 
both to him and Timothy concerning the qualifica- 
tions of those whom they were to appoint bishops ; 
one of which was, that a bishop should be able, by 
sound doctrine, to exhort and to convince the gain- 
sayer. Nor is it said, that this sound doctrine was 
to be communicated to the bishop by prophecy, or 
that all persons, without distinction, might be called 



288 WATSONS REPLY TO GIBBON. 

to that office ; but a bishop was to be " able to 
teach," not what he had learned by prophecy, but 
what Paul publicly preached : " The things that 
thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the 
same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able 
to teach others also." And in every place almost, 
where prophets are mentioned, they are joined 
with apostles and teachers, and other ministers of 
the gospel ; so that there is no reason for 3'our 
representing them as a distinct order of men, who 
were, by their occasional assistance, to supply 
the want of discipline and human learning in the 
church. It would be taking too large a field to 
inquire whether the prophets you speak of were 
endowed with ordinary or extraordinary gifts ; 
whether they always spoke by the immediate im- 
pulse of the Spirit, or according to "the analogy 
of faith ;" whether theii^ gift consisted in tlie fore- 
telling of future events, or in the interpreting of 
Scripture to the edification and exhortation and 
comfort of the church, or in both. I will content 
myself with observing, that he will judge very im- 
properly concerning the prophets of the apostolic 
church who takes his idea of their office or impor- 
tance from your description of them. 

In speaking of the community of goods, which 
you say was adopted for a short time in the primi- 
tive church, you hold as inconclusive the arguments 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 289 

of Mosheim, who has endeavored to prove that it 
was a community quite different from that recom- 
mended by Pythagoras or Plato, consisting princi- 
pally in a common use derived from an unbounded 
liberality, which induced the opulent to share their 
riches with their indigent brethren. There have 
been others, as well as Mosheim, who have enter- 
tained this opinion ; and it is not quite so indefen- 
sible as you represent it : but whether it be rea- 
sonable or absurd need not now be examined ; it 
is far more necessary to take notice of an expres- 
sion which you have used, and which may be apt 
to mislead unwary readers into a very injurious 
suspicion concerning the integrity of the apostles. 
In process of time, you observe, '* the converts 
who embraced the new religion were permitted to 
retain the possession of their patrimony." This 
expression, "permitted to retain," in ordinary ac- 
ceptation, implies an antecedent obligation to part 
with. Now, sir, I have not the shadow of a doubt 
in affirming that we have no account in Scripture 
of any such obligation being imposed upon the 
converts to Christianitj^ either by Christ himself, 
or by his apostles, or by any other authority ; nay, 
in the very place where this community of goods 
is treated of, there is an express proof— -I know not 
how your impartiality has happened to overlook it — 
to the contrary. When Peter was about to inflict 

Infidelity. 19 



290 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

an exemplary punishment upon Ananias — not for 
keeping back a part of the price, as some men are 
fond of representing it, but for his lying and 
hypocrisy in offering a part of the price of his land 
as the whole of it, he said to him, " While it re- 
mained unsold, was it not thine own ? and after it 
was sold, "^as it not in thine own power ?" From 
this account it is evident that Ananias was under 
no obligation to part with his patrimony ; and after 
he had parted with it, the price was in his own 
power. The apostle would have "permitted him 
to retain" the whole of it, if he had thought fit, 
though he would not permit his prevarication to 
go unpunished. 

You have remarked, that " the feasts of love, 
the agapa, as they were called, constituted a very 
pleasing and essential part of public worship." 
Lest any one should from hence be led to suspect 
that these feasts of love, this pleasing part of the 
public worship of the primitive church, resembled 
the unhallowed meetings of some impure sectaries 
of our own times, I will take the liberty to add to 
your account a short explication of the nature of 
these agapge. Tertullian, in the thirty-ninth chap- 
ter of his Apology, has done it to my hands. " The 
nature of our supper," says he, " is indicated by 
its name ; it is called by a word which, in the 
Greek language, signifies love. We are not anx- 



V/ATSON'S EEPLY TO aiBBON. 291 

ious about the expense of the entertainment, since 
we look upon that as gain which is expended, with 
a pious purpose, in the relief and refreshment of all 
our indigent. The occasion of our entertainment 
being so honorable, you may judge of the manner 
of its being conducted : it consists in the discharge 
of religious duties ; it admits nothing vile, nothing 
immodest. Before we sit down, prayer is made 
to Gk)d. The hungry eat as much as they desire, 
and every one drinks as much as can be useful to 
sober men. We so feast as men who have their 
minds impressed with the idea of spending the 
night in the worship of God ; we so converse as 
men who are conscious that the Lord heareth 
them," etc. Perhaps you may object to this testi- 
mony in favor of the innocence of Christian meet- 
ings as liable to a partiality, because it is the testi- 
mony of a Christian ; and you may perhaps be 
able to pick out, from the writings of this Christian, 
something that looks like a contradiction of this 
account ; however, I will rest the matter upon this 
testimony for the present — forbearing to quote any 
other Christian writer upon the subject, as I shall, 
in a future letter, produce you a testimony supe- 
rior to every objection. You speak too of the 
agapae as an essential part of the pubHc worship. 
This is not according to your usual accuracy ; for, 
had they been essential, the edict of a heathen 



292 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

magistrate would not have been able to put a stop 
to them ; yet Pliny, in his letter to Trajan, ex- 
pressly says, that the Christians left them off upon 
his publishing an edict prohibiting assemblies. We 
know that in the council of Carthage, in the fourth 
century, on account of the abuses which attended 
them, they began to be interdicted, and ceased, 
almost universally, in the fifth. 

I have but two observations to make upon what 
you have advanced concerning the severity of ec- 
clesiastical penance : the first is, that even you 
yourself do not deduce its institution from the 
Scriptures, but from the power which every volun- 
tary society has over its own members ; and there- 
fore, however extravagant, or however absurd — 
however opposite to the attributes of a commiser- 
ating God, or the feelings of a fallible man, it may 
be thought ; or upon whatever trivial occasion, 
such as that you mention, of calumniating a bish- 
op, a presbyter, or even a deacon, it may have 
been inflicted, Christ and his apostles are not an- 
swerable for it. The other is, that it was, of all 
possible expedients, the least fitted to accomplish 
the end for which 3'^ou think it was introduced, the 
propagation of Christianity. The sight of a peni- 
tent, humbled by a public confession, emaciated by 
fasting, clothed in sackcloth, prostrated at the door 
of the assembly, and imploring for years together 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 293 

the pardon of his oflfences,' and a readmission into 
the bosom of tlie cpjurch, was a much more hkely 
means of deterring the pagans from Christian com- 
munity, than the pious UberaUty you mention was 
of alluring them into it. This pious liberality, sir, 
would exhaust even your elegant powers of de- 
scription, before you could exhibit it in the amiable 
manner it deserves. It is derived from the "new 
commandment of loving one another ;" and it has 
ever been the distinguishing characteristic of Chris- 
tians, as opposed to every other denomination of 
men, Jews, M ahomedans, or pagans. In the times 
of the apostles, and in the first ages of the church, 
it showed itself in voluntary contributions for the 
relief of the poor and the persecuted, the infirm and 
the unfortunate. As soon as the church was per- 
mitted to have permanent possessions in land, and 
acquired the protection of the civil power, it exerted 
itself in the erection of hospitals of every kind : 
institutions like these, of charity and humanity, 
which were forgotten in the laws of Solon and 
Lycurgus ; and for even one example of which, 
you will,, I believe, in vain explore the boasted 
annals of pagan Rome. Indeed, sir, you will 
think too injuriously of this liberality, if you look 
upon its origin as superstitious, or upon its appli- 
cation as an artifice of the priesthood to seduce 
the indigent into the bosom of the church : it was 



294 WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 

the pure and imcorrupted fruit of genuine Chris- 
tianity. 

You are much surprised, and not a little concerned, 
that Tacitus and the younger Pliny have spoken 
so slightly of the Christian system ; and that Sen- 
eca and the elder Pliny have not vouchsafed to 
mention it at all. This difficulty seems to have 
struck others as W(ill as yourself; and I might 
refer you to the conclusion of the second volume 
of Dr. Lardner's Collection of Ancient, Jewish, and 
Heathen Testimonies to the Truth of the Christian 
Religion, for full satisfaction in this point ; but 
perhaps an observation or two may be sufficient to 
diminish your surprise. 

Obscure sectaries of upright morals, when they 
separate themselves from the religion of their coun- 
try, do not speedily acquire the attention of men 
of letters. The historians are apprehensive of de- 
preciating the dignity of their learned labor, and 
contaminating their splendid narration of illustri- 
ous events, by mixing with it a disgusting detail 
of religious combinations : and the philosophers are 
usually too deeply engaged in abstract spience^ or 
in exploring the infinite intricacy of natural appear- 
ances, to busy themselves with what they, per- 
haps hastily, esteem popular superstitions. His- 
torians and philosophers of no mean reputation 
might be mentioned, I believe, who were the con- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 295 

temporaries of Luther and the first reformers, and 
who have passed over, in neghgent or contemptu- 
ous silence, their daring and unpopular attempts 
to shake the stability of St. Peter's chair. Oppo- 
sition to the religion of a people must become gen- 
eral before it can deserve the notice of the civil 
magistrate ; and till it does that, it will mostly be 
thought below the animadversion of distinguished 
writers. This remark is peculiarly applicable to 
the case in point. The first Christians, as Christ 
had foretold, were " hated of all men for his name's 
sake :" it was the name itself, not any vices adher- 
ing to the name, which Pliny punished ; and they 
were everywhere held in exceeding contempt, till 
their numbers excited the apprehension of the 
ruling powers. The philosophers considered them 
as enthusiasts, and neglected them ; the priests op- 
posed them as innovators, and calumniated them ; 
th^ great overlooked them ; the learned despised 
them ; and the curious alone, who examined into 
the foundation of their faith, believed them. But 
the negligence of some half dozen of writers — 
most of them, however, bear incidental testimony 
to the- truth of several facts respecting Christian- 
ity — in not relating circumstantially the "origin, the 
progress, and the pretensions of a new sect, is a 
very insufficient reason for questioning either the 
evidence of the principles upon which it was built. 



296 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

or tlie supernatural power by which it was sup- 
ported. 

The Roman historians, moreover, were not only 
culpably incurious concerning the Christians, but 
unpardonably ignorant of what concerned either 
them or the Jews : I say, unpardonably ignorant, 
because the means of information were within their 
reach ; the writings of Moses were everywhere to 
be had in Greek ; and the works of Josephus were 
published before Tacitus wrote his history ; and 
yet even Tacitus has fallen into great absurdity 
and self-contradiction, in his account of the Jews ; 
and though Tertullian's zeal carried him much too 
far, when he called him Mendadorum loquadssi- 
mus — the most loquacious of liarS' — yet one cannot 
help regretting the little pains he took to acquire 
proper information upon that subject. He derives 
the name of the Jews, by a forced interpolation, 
from mount Ida in Crete ; and he represents them 
as abhorring all kinds of images in public worship, 
and yet accuses them of having placed the image 
of an ass in the holy of holies ; and presently after 
he tells us, that Pompey, when he profaned the 
temple, found the sanctuary entirely empty. Simi- 
lar inaccuracies might be noticed in Plutarch, and 
other writers who have spoken of the Jews ; and 
you 3^ourself have referred to an obscure passage 
in Suetonius, as offering a proof how strangely the 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 297 

Jews and Christians of Rome were confounded 
with each other. Why then should we think it 
remarkable, that a few celebrated writers, who 
looked upon the Christians as an obscure sect of 
the Jews, and upon the Jews as a barbarous and 
detested people whose history was not worth tlie 
perusal, and who were moreover engaged in the 
relation, of the great events which either occasioned 
or accompanied the ruin of their eternal empire — 
why should we be surprised that men occupied in 
such interesting subjects, and influenced by such 
inveterate prejudices, should have left us but short 
and imperfect descriptions of the Christian system ? 
"But how shall we excuse," you say, "the su- 
pine inattention of the pagan and philosophic world 
to those evidences which were presented by the 
hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to 
their senses?" "The laws of nature were per- 
petually suspended for the benefit of the church ; 
but the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside 
from the awful spectacle." To their shame be it 
spoken, that they did so ; " and pursuing the ordi- 
nary occupations of life and study, appeared uncon- 
scious of any alterations in the moral or physical 
government of the world." To this objection I 
answer, in the first place, that we have no reason 
to believe that miracles were performed as often 
as the philosophers deigned to give their attention 



293 WATSON'S E.EPLY TO GIBBON. 

to them ; or that, at the period of time you allude 
to, the laws of nature were "perpetually" sus- 
pended for the benefit of the church. It may be, 
that not one of the few heathen writers whose 
books have escaped the ravages of time, was ever 
present when a miracle was wrought ; but will it 
follow, because PMny, or Plutarch, or Galen, or 
Seneca, or Suetonius, or Tacitus, had never seen 
a miracle, that no miracles were ever performed ? 
They, indeed, were learned and observant men ; 
and it may be a matter of surprise to us, that mir- 
acles so celebrated as the friends of Christianity 
suppose the Christian ones to have been, should 
never have been mentioned by them, though they 
had not seen them. Had an Adrian or a Vespa- 
sian been the author of but a thousandth part of 
the miracles you have ascribed to the primitive 
church, more than one, probably, of these very 
historians, philosophers as they were, would have 
adorned his history with the narration of them ; 
for though they turned aside from the awful spec- 
tacle of the miracles of a poor despised apostle, yet 
they beheld, with exulting complacency, and have 
related, with unsuspecting credulity, the ostenta- 
tious tricks of a Roman emperor. It was not for 
want of faith in miraculous events that these sages 
neglected the Christian miracles, but for want of 
candor and impartial examination. 



WATSON'S REPLY TO QIBBON. 299 

I answer, in the second place, that in the Acts 
of the Apostles we have an account of a great 
multitude of pagans of every condition of Hfe, who 
were so far from being inattentive to the evidences 
which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence 
to their senses, that they contemplated them with 
reverence and wonder ; and forsaking the rehgion 
of their ancestors, and all the flattering hopes of 
worldly profit, reputation, and tranquillity, adhered 
with astonishing resolution to the profession of 
Christianity. From the conclusion of the Acts, 
till the time in which some of the sages you men- 
tion flourished, is a very obscure part of church 
history ; yet we are certain that many of the pa- 
gan, and we have some reason to beUeve, that 
not a few of the philosophic world, during that 
period, did not turn aside from the awful spectacle 
of miracles, but saw and believed j and that a few 
others should be found, who probably had never 
seen, and therefore would not believe, is surely no 
very extraordinary circumstance. Why should we 
not answer to objections such as these with the 
boldness of St. Jerome, and bid Celsus and Por- 
phyry, and Julian, and their followers, learn the 
illustrious characters of the men who founded^ 
built up, and adorned the Christian church ? Why 
should we not tell them, with Arnobius, of the 
orators, the grammarians, the rhetoricians, the law- 



300 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

yers, the physicians, the philosophers, "who ap- 
peared conscious of the alterations in the moral 
and physical government of the world ;" and from 
that consciousness, forsook the ordinary occupa- 
tions of life and study, and attached themselves to 
the Christian discipline ? 

I answer, in the last place, that the miracles of 
Christians were falsely attributed to magic ; and 
were, for that reason, thought unworthy the notice 
of the writers you have referred to. Suetonius, in 
his life of Nero, calls the Christians men of a new 
and a magical superstition. I am sensible that 
you laugh at those " sagacious commentators" who 
translate the original word by magical ; and adopt- 
ing the idea of Mosheim, you think it ought to be 
rendered mischievous or pernicious : unquestiona- 
bly it frequently has that meaning ; with due def- 
erence, however, to Mosheim and yourself, I can- 
not help being of opinion, that in this place, as 
descriptive of the Christian religion, it is rightly 
translated magical. The Theodosian Code must 
be my excuse for dissenting from such respectable 
authority ; and in it I conjecture you will find good 
reason for being of my opinion. Nor ought any 
friend to Christianity to be astonished or alarmed 
at Suetonius applying the word magical to the 
Christian religion, for the miracles wrought by 
Christ and his apostles principally consisted in 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 30I 

alleviating the distresses by curing the obstinate 
diseases of human kind ; and the proper meaning 
of magic, as understood by the ancients, is a higher 
and more holy branch of the art of healing. The 
elder Phny lost his life in an eruption of mount 
Vesuvius, about forty-seven years after the death 
of Christ : some fifteen years before the death of 
PHny, the Christians were persecuted at Rome for 
a crime of which every person knew them innocent ; 
but from the description which Tacitus gives of the 
low estimation they were held hi at that time — for 
w^hich, however, he assigns no cause, and therefore 
we may reasonably conjecture it was the same for 
which the Jews were everywhere become so 
odious, an opposition to Polytheism — and of the 
extreme sufferings they underwent, we cannot be 
much surprised that their name is not to be found 
in the works of Pliny or of Seneca : the sect itself 
must, by Nero's persecution, have been almost 
destroyed in Rome ; and it would have been un- 
courtly, not to say unsafe, to have noticed an order 
of men whose innocence an emperor had deter- 
mined to traduce, in order to divert the dangerous 
but deserved stream of popular censure from him- 
self. Notwithstanding this, there is a passage in 
the Natural History of Pliny which, how much so- 
ever it may have been overlooked, contains, I think, 
a very strong allusion to the Christians, and clearly 



302 WATSON'S REPLY TO G-IBBON. 

intimates he had heard of their miracles. In speak- 
ing concerning the origin of magic, he says there 
is also another faction of magic, derived from the 
Jews, Moses, and Lotopea, and subsisting at pres- 
ent. The word faction does not ill denote the opin- 
ion the Eomans entertained of the religious asso- 
ciations of the Christians ; and a magical faction 
implies their pretensions, at least, to the miraculous 
gifts of healing ; and its descending from Moses is 
according to the custom of the Romans, by which 
they confounded the Christians with the Jews ; and 
its being then subsisting seems to have a strong 
reference to the rumors Pliny had negligently heard 
reported of the Christians. 

Submitting each of these answers to your cool 
and candid consideration, I proceed to take notice 
of another diflBculty in your fifteenth chapter, which 
some have thought one of the most important in 
your whole book — the silence of profane historians 
concerning the preternatural darkness at the cruci- 
fixion of Christ. You know, sir, that several learned 
men are of opinion, that profane history is not silent 
upon this subject : I will neither trouble you with 
the testimony of Phlegon, nor with the appeal of 
Tertullian to the public registers of the Romans ; 
but meeting you upon your own ground, and 
granting you every thing you desire, I will en- 
deavor, from a fair and candid examination of the 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 303 

liistoiy of this event, to suggest a doubt, at least 
to your mind, whether this was "the greatest phe- 
nomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness 
since the creation of the globe." 

This darkness is mentioned by three of the four 
evangelists. St. Matthew thus expresses himself: 
"Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over 
all the land until the ninth hour ;" St. Mark says, 
"And when the sixth hour was come there was 
darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour ;" 
St. Luke, "And it was about the sixth hour, and 
there was darkness over all the earth until the 
ninth hour ; and the sun was darkened." The three 
evangehsts agree that there was darkness ; and 
they agree in the extent of the dari^ness : for it is 
the same expression in the original which our 
translators have rendered earth in Luke, and land 
in the . two other accounts ; and they agree in the 
duration of the darkness — it lasted three hours. 
Luke adds a particular circumstance, that " the sun 
was darkened." I do not know whether this event 
be anywhere else mentioned in Scripture, so that 
our inquiry can neither be extensive nor difficult. 

In philosopliical propriety of speech, darkness 
consists in the total absence of light, and admits of 
no degrees : however, in the more common accepta- 
tion of the word, there are degrees of darkness as 
well as of light ; and as the evangehsts have said 



304 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

nothing by which the particular degree of darkness 
can be determined, we have as much reason to 
suppose it was slight, as you have that it was ex- 
cessive ; but if it was slight, though it had extended 
itself over the surface of the whole globe, the diffi- 
culty of its not being recorded by Pliny or Seneca 
vanishes at once. Do you not perceire, sir, upon 
what a slender foundation this mighty objection is 
grounded, when we have only to put you upon 
proving that the darkness at the crucifixion was of 
so unusual a nature as to have excited the par- 
ticular attention of all mankind, or even of those 
who were witnesses to it ? But I do not mean to 
deal so logically with you ; rather give me leave to 
spare you the trouble of your proof, by proving, or 
showing the probability at least, of the direct con- 
trary. There is a circumstance mentioned by St. 
John which seems to indicate that the darkness 
was not so excessive as is generally supposed ; for 
it is probable that during the continuance of the 
darkness, Jesus spoke both to his mother and to 
his beloved disciple, whom he saw from the cross : 
they were near the cross ; but the soldiers which 
surrounded it must have kept them at too great a 
distance for Jesus to have seen them and known 
them, had the darkness at the crucifixion been ex- 
cessive, like the preternatural darkness which God 
brought upon the land of Egypt ; for it is not ex- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 305 

pressly said, that during the continuance of that 
darkness, "they saw not one another." The ex- 
pression in St. Luke, "the sun was darkened," 
tends rather to confirm than to overthrow this rea- 
soning. I am sensible this expression is generally 
equivalent to another, the sun was eclipsed ; but 
the Bible is open to us all, and there can be no 
presumption in endeavoring to investigate the 
meaning of Scripture for ourselves. Happily for 
the present argumentation, the very phrase of the 
sun's being darkened occurs, in so many words, in 
one other place, and in only one, of the New Tes- 
tament ; and from that place you may possibly see 
reason to imagine that the darkness might not per- 
haps have been so intense as to deserve the par- 
ticular notice of the Roman naturalists : " And he 
opened the bottomless pit, and there arose a smoke 
out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace ; and 
the sun was darkened, and the air, by reason of 
the smoke of the pit." If we should say that the 
sun at the crucifixion was obnubilated and dark- 
ened by the intervention of clouds, as it is here 
represented to be by the intervention of a smoke 
like the smoke of a furnace, I do not see what you 
could object to our account ; but such a phenomenon 
has surely no right to be esteemed the greatest 
that mortal eye has ever beheld. I may be mis- 
taken in this interpretation, but I have no design 

Infidelity. 20 



306 ' WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

to misrepresent the fact in order to get rid of a 
difficulty : the darkness may have been as intense 
as many commentators have supposed it, but 
neither they nor you can prove it was so ; and I 
am surely under no necessity, upon this occasion, 
of granting you, out of deference to any commen- 
tator, what you can neither prove nor render prob- 
able. 

But you still, perhaps, may think that the dark- 
ness, by its extent, made up for this deficiency in 
point of intenseness. The original word expres- 
sive of its extent, is sometimes interpreted by the 
whole earth ; more frequently, in the New Testa- 
ment, of any little portion of the earth, for we read 
of the land of Judah, of the land of Israel, of the 
land of Zabulon, and of the land of Nephthalim ; 
and it may very properly, I conceive, be translated 
in the place in question by region. But why should 
all the world take notice of a darkness which ex- 
tended itself for a few miles about Jerusalem, and 
lasted but three hours? The Italians, especially, 
had no reason to remark the event as singular; 
since they were accustomed at that time, as they 
are at present, to see the neighboring regions so 
darkened for days together by the eruptions of 
Etna and Vesuvius, that no man could know his 
neighbor. We learn from the scripture account, 
that an earthquake accompanied this darkness ; and 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 307 

a dark, clouded sky, I apprehend, very frequently 
precedes an earthquake ; but its extent is not great, 
nor is its intenseness excessive, nor is the phe- 
nomenon itself so unusual as not commonly to pass 
unnoticed in ages of science and history. I fear 
I may be liable to misrepresentation in this place ; 
but I beg it may be observed, that however slight 
in degree, or however confined in extent the dark- 
ness at the crucifixion may have been, I am of 
opinion that the power of God was as supcrnatu- 
rally exerted in its production, and in that of the 
earthquake which accompanied it, as in the opcnhig 
of the graves, and the resurrection of the saints, 
which followed the resurrection of Christ. 

In another place, you seem not to believe "that 
Pontius Pilate informed the emperor of the unjust 
sentence of death v,hich he had pronounced against 
an innocent person." And the same reason which 
made him silent as to the death, ought, one would sup- 
pose, to have made him silent as to the miraculous 
events which accompanied it ; and if Pilate, in his 
dispatches to the emperor, transmitted no account 
of the darkness — how great soever you suppose it 
to have been — which happened in a distant prov- 
ince, I cannot apprehend that the report of it could 
have ever gained such credit at Rome as to induce 
either Pliny or Seneca to mention it as an authen- 
tic fact. I am, etc. 



308 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 



LETTER YI. 

Sir — I mean not to detain you long with my re- 
marks upon your sixteenth chapter ; for in a short 
Apology for Christianity, it cannot be expected that 
I should apologize at length for the indiscretions of 
the first Christians. Nor have I any disposition to 
reap a malicious pleasure from exaggerating, which 
you have had so much good-natured pleasure in 
extenuating, the truculent barbarity of their Roman 
persecutors. 

M. de Yoltaire has embraced every opportunity 
of contrasting the persecuting temper of the Chris- 
tians with the mild tolerance of the ancient hea- 
thens ; and I never read a page of his upon this 
subject without thinking Christianity materially, if 
not intentionally, obliged to him, for his endeavor 
to depress the lofty spirit of religious bigotry. I 
may with justice pay the same compliment to you, 
and I do it with sincerity ; heartily wishing that, in 
the prosecution of your work, you may render 
every species of intolerance universally detestable. 
There is no reason why you should abate the as- 
perity of your invective, since no one can suspect 
you of a design to traduce Christianity under the 
guise of a zeal against persecution ; or if any one 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 309 

should be so simple, he need but open the gospel 
to be convinced that such a scheme is too palpably 
absurd to have ever entered the head of any sen- 
sible and impartial man.. 

I wish, for the credit of human nature, that I 
could find reason to agree with you in what you 
have said of the " universal toleration of Polythe- 
ism ; of the mild indifference of antiquity ; of the 
Roman prhices beholding without concern a thou- 
sand forms of religion subsisting in peace under 
their gentle sway." But there are some passages 
in the Roman history which make me hesitate at 
least in this point, and almost induce me to believe 
that the Romans were exceedingly jealous of all 
foreign religions, whether they were accompanied 
with immoral manners or not. 

It was the Roman custom, indeed, to invite the 
tutelary gods of the nations which they intended 
to subdue, to abandon their charge, and to promise 
them the same, or even a more august worship, in 
the city of Rome ; and their triumphs were graced 
as much with the exhibition of their captive gods, 
as with the less humane one of their captive kings. 
But this custom, though it filled the city with hun- 
dreds of gods of every country, denomination, and 
quality, cannot be brought as a proof of Roman 
toleration ; it may indicate the excess of their van- 
ity, the extent of their superstition, or the refine- 



310 WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 

ment of their policy ; but it can never show that 
the rehgion of individuals, when it differed from 
pubhc wisdom, was either connived at as a matter 
of indifference, or tolerated as an inalienable right 
of human nature. 

Upon another occasion, you, sir, have referred to 
Llvy as relating the introduction and suppression 
of the rites of Bacchus ; and in that ver^'- place we 
find him confessing that the prohibiting of all for- 
eign religions, and abolishing every mode of sacri- 
fice which differed from the Roman mode, was a 
business frequently intrusted by their ancestors 
to the care of the proper magistrates ; and he gives 
this reason for the procedure, that nothing could 
contribute more effectually to the ruin of religion 
than the sacrificing after an external rite, and not 
after the manner instituted by their fathers. 

Not thirty years before this event, the Praetor, 
in conformity to a decree of the senate, had issued 
an edict, that no one should presume to sacrifice in 
any public place after a new or foreign manner. 
And in a still more early period, the sediles had 
been commanded to take care that no gods were 
worshipped except the Roman gods ; and that the 
Roman gods were worshipped after no manner but 
the established manner of the country. 

But to come nearer to the times of which you are 
writing. In Dion Cassius you may meet with a 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 311 

great courtier, one of the interior cabinet, and a 
polished statesman, in a set speech upon the most 
momentous subject, expressing himself to the em- 
peror in a manner agreeable enough to the practice 
of antiquity, but utterly inconsistent with the most 
remote idea of religious toleration. The speech 
alluded to contains, I confess, nothing more than 
the advice of an individual ; but it ought to be re- 
membered that that individual was Maecenas, that 
the advice was given to Augustus, and that the 
occasion of giving it was no less important than 
settling the form of the Roman government. He 
recommends it to Caesar to worship the gods him- 
self according to the established form, and to force 
all others to do the same, and to hate and to punish 
all those who should attempt to introduce foreign 
religions ; nay, he bids him, in the same place, have 
an eye upon the philosophers also ; so that free 
thinking, free speaking at least, upon religious mat- 
ters, was not quite so safe under the gentle sway 
of the Roman princes as, thank God, it is under the 
much more gentle government of our own. 

In the Edict of Toleration published by Galerius, 
after six years unremitted persecution of the Chris- 
tians, we perceive his motive for persecution to 
have been the same with that which had influenced 
the conduct of the more ancient Romans, an ab- 
horrence of all innovations in religion. You have 



312 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

favored us with the translation of this edict, in 
which he says, "We were particularly desirous of 
reclaiming into the way of reason and nature," ad 
bonas vientes — a good pretence this for a polytheistic 
persecutor — "the deluded Christians, who had re- 
nounced the rehgion and ceremonies instituted by 
their fathers ;" this is the precise language of Livy, 
describing a persecution of a foreign religion three 
hundred years before : " Turba erat nee sacrificantium 
ncc precantium deos patrio more." And the very 
expedient of forcing the Christians to deliver up 
their religious books, which was practised in this 
persecution, and which Mosheim attributes to the 
advice of Hierocles, and you to that of the philos- 
ophers of those times, seems clear to me, from the 
places in Livy before quoted, to have been nothing 
but an old piece of state policy, to which the Ro- 
mans had recourse as often as they apprehended 
their established religion to be in any danger. 

In the preamble of the letter of toleration which 
the emperor Maximin reluctantly wrote to Sabinus 
about a year after the publication of Galerius's 
edict, there is a plain avowal of the reasons which 
induced Galerius and Diocletian to commence their 
persecution : they had seen the temples of the gods 
forsaken, and were determined by the severity of 
punishment to reclaim men to their worship. 

In short, the system recommended by Maecenas, 



WATSON'S REPLY TO G-IBBON. 313 

of forcing every person to be of the emperor's re- 
ligion, and of bating and punishing ever^^ innovator, 
contained no new doctrine : it was correspondent 
to the practice of the Roman senate in the most 
iUustrious times of the repubhc, and seems to have 
been generally adopted by the emperors in tlieir 
treatment of Christians while they themselves 
were pagans, and in their treatment of pagans 
after they themselves became Christians ; and if 
any one should be willing to derive those laws 
against heretics — which are so abhoiTent from the 
mild spirit of the gospel, and so reproachful to the 
Roman code — from the Wind adherence of the Chris- 
tian emperors to the intolerant policy of their pa- 
gan predecessors, something, I think, might be 
produced in support of his conjecture. 

But I am sorry to have said so much upon such 
a subject. In endeavoring to palliate the severity 
of the Romans towards the Christians, you have 
remarked, " It was in vain that the oppressed be- 
hever asserted the inalienable rights of conscience 
and private judgment." ''Though his situation 
might excite the pity, his arguments could never 
reach the understanding, either of the philosopliic, 
or of the believing part of the pagan world." How 
is this, sir ? Are the arguments for liberty of con- 
science so exceedingly inconclusive that you think 
them incapable of reaching the understanding even 



314 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

of philosophers ? A captious adversary would em- 
brace with avidity the opportunity this passage 
affords liim, of blotting your character with the 
odious stain of being a persecutor — a stain which 
no learning can wipe out, which no genius or ability 
can render amiable. I am far from entertaining 
such an opinion of j'our principles ; but this conclu- 
sion seems fairly deducible from what you have 
said, that the minds of the pagans were so preoc- 
cupied with the notions of forcing and hating and 
punishing those who differed from them in rehgion, 
that arguments for the inalienable rights of con- 
science which would have convinced yourself and 
everj'- philosopher in Europe, and staggered the res- 
olution of an inquisitor, were incapable of reaching 
their understandings, or making any impression on 
their hearts ; and you might perhaps have spared 
yourself some perplexity in the investigation of the 
motives which induced the Roman emperors to 
persecute, and the Roman people to hate the Chris- 
tians, if you had not overlooked the true one, and 
adopted with too great facility the erroneous idea 
of the extreme tolerance of pagan Rome. 

The Christians, you observe, were accused of 
atheism : and it must be owned that they were the 
greatest of all atheists, in the opinion of the poly- 
theists ; for instead of Hesiod's thirty thousand 
gods,, they could not be brought to acknowledge 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 315 

above one ; and even that one they refused, at tlie 
hazard of their lives, to blaspheme v^ith the appel- 
lation of Jupiter. But is it not somewhat singular, 
that the pretensions of the Christians to a constant 
intercourse with superior beings in the working of 
miracles, should have been a principal cause of con- 
verting to their faith those who branded them with 
the imputation of atheism ? 

They were accused, too, of forming dangerous 
conspiracies against the state. This accusation, you 
own, was as unjust as the preceding ; but there 
seems to have been a peculiar hardship in the situ- 
ation of the Christians, since the very same men 
who thought them dangerous to the state on ac- 
count of their conspiracies, condemned them, as 
you have observed, for not interfering in its con- 
cerns, for their criminal disregard to the business 
of war and government, and for their entertaining 
doctrines which were supposed "to prohibit them 
from assuming the character of soldiers, of magis- 
trates, and of princes ;" men such as these would 
have made but poor conspirators. 

They were accused, lastly, of the^most horrid 
crimes. This accusation, it is confessed, was mere 
calumny ; yet as calumny is generally more exten- 
sive in its influence than truth, perhaps this cal- 
umny might be more powerful in stopping the prog- 
ress of Christianity than the virtues of the Chris- 



316 WATSON^S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

tians were in promoting it ; and in truth, Origen 
observes that the Christians, on account of the 
crimes which were mahciously laid to their charge, 
were held in such abhorrence that no one would so 
much as speak to them. It may be worth while 
to remark from him, that the Jews, in the very 
beginning of Christianity, were the authors of all 
those calumnies which Celsus afterwards took such 
great delight in urging against the Christians, and 
which you have mentioned with such great pre- 
cision. 

It is no improbable supposition, that the clan- 
destine manner in which the persecuting spirit of 
the Jews and Gentiles obliged the Christians to 
celebrate their eucharist, together with the expres- 
sions of eating the body and drinking the blood of 
Christ, which were used in its institution, and the 
custom of imparting a kiss of charity to each other, 
and of calling each other by the appellations of 
brother and sister — which the Romans often used 
in an impure sense — gave occasions to then* ene- 
mies to invent, and induced careless observers to 
believe, all the odious things which were said 
against the Christians. 

You have displayed at length, in expressive dic- 
tion, the accusations of the enemies of Christianity ; 
and you have told us of the imprudent defence by 
which the Christians vindicated the purity of theii' 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 317 

morals ; and you have huddled up in a short note — 
which many a reader will never see — the testimony 
of Pliny to their innocence. Permit me to do the 
Christians a little justice, by producing in their 
cause the whole truth. 

Between seventy and eighty years after the 
death of Christ, Phny had occasion to consult the 
emperor Trajan concerning the manner in which 
he should treat the Christians : it seems as if there 
had been judicial proceedings against them, though 
Pliny had never happened to attend any of them. 
He knew, indeed, that men were to be punished 
for being Christians, or he would not, as a sensible 
magistrate, have received the accusations of legal, 
much less of illegal, anonymous informers against 
them ; nor would he, before he wrote to the em- 
peror, have put to death those whom his threats 
could not hinder from persevering in their confes- 
sion that they were Christians. His harsh manner 
of proceeding "in an office the most repugnant to 
his humanity," had made many apostatize from 
their profession. Persons of this complexion were 
well fitted to inform him of every thing they knew 
concerning the Christians ; accordingly he exam- 
ined them, but not one of them accused the Chris- 
tians of any other crime than of praying to Christ 
as to some God, and of binding themselves by an 
oath not to be guilty of any wickedness. Not con- 



318 ^YATSOK'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 

tented with this information, he put two maid-ser- 
vants, which were called ministers, to the torture ; 
but even the rack could not extort from the imbe- 
ciUty of the sex a confession of any crime, any ac- 
count different from that which the apostates had 
Voluntarily given ; not a word do we find of their 
feasting upon murdered infants, or of their mixing 
in incestuous commerce. After all his pains, Pliny 
pronounced the meal of the Christians to be pro- 
miscuous and innocent ; persons of both sexes, of 
all ages, and of every condition, assembled promis- 
cuously together ; there was nothing for chastity 
to blush at, or for humanity to shudder at, in these 
meetings ; there was no secret initiation of prose- 
lytes by abhorred rites, but they ate a promiscuous 
meal in Christian charity, and with the most per- 
fect innocence. Plin. Epis. 97 : lib. 10. 

Whatever faults, then, the Christians may have 
been guilty of in after-times — though you could 
produce to us a thousand ambitious prelates of 
Carthage, or sensual ones of Antioch, and blot ten 
thousand pages with the impurities of the Christian 
clergy, yet, at this period, while the memory of 
Christ and his apostles was fresh in their minds — 
or, in the more emphatic language of Jerome, 
"while the blood of our Lord was warm, and re- 
cent faith was fervent in the behevers," we have 
the greatest reason to conclude that they were em- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 319 

inently distinguished for the probity and the puritj^ 
of their lives. Had there been but a shadow of a 
crime in their assemblies, it must have been de- 
tected by the industrious search of the intelligent 
Pliny ; and it is a matter of real surprise that no 
one of the apostates thought of paying court to the 
governor by a false testimony, especially as the 
apostasy seems to have been exceeding general ; 
since the temples, which had been almost deserted, 
began again to be frequented ; and the victims, for 
which a little time before scarce a purchaser was 
to be found, began again everywhere to be bought 
up. This, sir, is a valuable testimony in our favor : 
it is not that of a declaiming apologist, of a deluding 
priest, or of a deluded martyr, of an orthodox bishop, 
or of any "of the most pious of men,'' the Chris- 
tians ; but it is that of a Roman magistrate, phi- 
losopher, and lawyer, who cannot be supposed to 
have wanted inchnation to detect the immoralities 
or the conspiracies of the Christians, since, in his 
treatment of them, he had stretched the authority 
of his office, and violated alike the laws of his coun- 
tvj and of humanity. 

With this testimony I will conclude my remarks, 
for I have no disposition to blacken the character 
you have given of Nero, or to lessen the humanity 
of the Roman magistrates, or to magnify the num- 
ber of Christians or of martyrs, or to undertake the 



320 WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 

defence of a few fanatics, who by their injudicious 
zeal brought ruin upon themselves and disgrace 
upon their profession. I may not, probably, have 
convinced you that you are wrong in any thing 
which you have advanced, or that the authors jou 
have quoted will not support you in the inferences 
you have drawn from their works ; or that Chris- 
tianity ought to be distinguished from its corru}> 
tions ; yet I may, perhaps, have had the good for- 
tune to lessen, in the minds of others, some of that 
dislike to the Christian religion which the perusal 
of your book had unhappily excited. I have 
touched but upon general topics, fo;* I should have 
wearied out your patience, to say notliing of my 
reader's or my own, had I enlarged upon every 
thing in which I dissent from you ; and a minute 
examination of your work would, moreover, have 
had the appearance of a captious disposition to de- 
scend into ilhberal personalities, and might have 
produced a certain acrimony of sentiment or ex- 
pression which may be serviceable in supplying the 
place of argument, or adding a zest to a dull com- 
position, but has nothing to do with the investiga- 
tion of truth. Sorry shall I be if what I have 
written should give the least interruption to the 
prosecution of the great work in which you are 
engaged. The world is now possessed of the opin- 
ion of us both upon the subject in question, and it 



WATSON'S REPLY TO &IBBON. 321 

ma}^, perhaps, be proper for us both to leave it in 
this state. I say this not from any backwardness 
to acknowledge my mistakes when-I am convinced 
that I am in an error, but to express the almost 
insuperable reluctance which I feel to the bandy- 
ing abusive argument in public controversy. It is 
not in good truth, a difficult task to chastise the 
froward petulance of those who mistake personal 
invective for reasoning, and clumsy banter for 
ingenuity ; but it is a dirty business at best, and 
should never be undertaken by a man of any tem- 
per except when the interests of truth may suffer 
by his neglect. Nothing of this nature, I am sen- 
sible, is to be expected from you ; and if any thing 
of the kind has happened to escape myself, I hereby 
disclaim the intention of saying it, and heartily wish 
it unsaid. 

Will you permit me, sir, through this channel — 
I may not perhaps have another so good an oppor- 
tunity of doing it — to address a few words, not to 
yourself, but to a set of men who disturb all seri- 
ous company with their profane declamation against 
Christianity ; and who, having picked up in their 
travels, or in the writings of the Deists, a few 
flimsy objections, infect, with their ignorant and 
irreverent ridicule, the ingenuous minds of the 
I'isiTig generation ? 



21 



322 WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 

APPEAL TO INFIDELS. 

Gentlemen — Suppose the mighty work accom- 
phshccl, the cross trampled upon, Christianity every- 
where proscribed, and the rehgion of nature once 
more become the religion of Christendom ; what 
advantage will you have derived to your country, 
or to 3"ourselves, from the exchange ? I know your 
answer : jo\i will have freed the world from the 
hypocrisy of priests, and the tyranny of supersti- 
tion. No ; you forget that Lycurgus and Numa 
and Odin and Mango-Copac, and all the great leg- 
islators of ancient and modern story, have been of 
opinion that the affairs of civil society could not 
well be conducted without sovie religion : you must 
of necessity introduce a priesthood, with probably 
as much hypocrisy — a religion with assuredly more 
superstition, than that which you now reprobate 
with such indecent and ill-grounded contempt. 
But I will tell you from what you will have freed 
the world : you will have freed it from its abhor- 
rence of vice, and from every powerful incentive 
to virtue ; you will with the religion have braught 
back the depraved morality of paganism ; you will 
have robbed mankind of their firm assurance of 
another life, and thereby you will have despoiled 
them of their patience, of their humility, of their 
charity, of their chastity, of all those mild and 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 323 

silent virtues, which, however despicable they 
may appear in your eyes, are the only ones which 
meliorate and sublime our nature ; which paganism 
never knew, which spring from Christianity alone, 
which do or might constitute our comfort in this 
life, and without the possession of which, another 
life, if after all there should happen to be one, 
must, unless a miracle be exerted in the alteration 
of our disposition, be more vicious and more miser- 
able than this is. 

Perhaps you will contend that the universal light 
of reason, that the truth and fitness of things, are 
of themselves sufficient to exalt the nature, and 
regulate the manners of mankind. Shall we never 
have done with this groundless commendation of 
natural law ? Look into the first chapter of Paul's 
epistle to the Romans, and you will see the extent 
of its influence over the Gentiles of those days ; or 
if you dishke Paul's authority, and the manners of 
antiquity, look into the more admired accounts of 
modern voyagers ; and examine its influence over 
the pagans of our own times, over the sensual in- 
habitants of Otaheite, over the cannibals of New 
Zealand, or the remorseless savages of America, 
"But these men are barbarians." Your law of 
nature, notwithstanding, extends even to them. 
" But they have misused their reason ;" they have 
then the more need of, and would be the more 



324 WATSONS REPLY TO GIEBON. 

thankful for, that revelation which you, with an 
ignorant and fastidious self-sufficiency, deem use- 
less. "But they might of themselves, if they 
thought fit, become wise and virtuous." I answer 
with Cicero, " Ut nihil interest, utrum nemo valeat, 
an nemo valere possit ; sic non intelligo quid in- 
tersit, utnim nemo, sit sapiens, an nemo esse pos- 
sit :" that is, if they in fact continue in ignorance 
and- vice, the evil is as great as if they had no 
means of learning a better way. 

These however, you will think, are extraordina- 
ry instances ; and that we ought not from these 
to take our measure of the excellency of the law 
of nature, but rather from the civilized states of 
China and Japan, or from the nations which flour- 
ished in learning and in arts before Christianity 
was heard of in the world. You mean to say, that 
by the law of nature, which you are desirous of 
substituting in the room of the gospel, you do not 
understand those rules of conduct which an indi- 
vidual, abstracted from the community, and de- 
prived of the institution of mankind, could excogi- 
tate for himself ; but such a system of precepts as 
the most enlightened men of the most enlightened 
ages liave recommended to our observance. Where 
do 3^ou find this system ? We cannot meet with 
it in the works of Stobsus, or the Scythian Ana- 
charsis ; nor in those of Plato, or of Cicero ; nor in 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 325 

those of the Emperor Antoninus, or the slave 
Epictetus ; for we are persuaded that the most 
animated considerations of the npemv, and the ho- 
nesium, of the beauty of virtue, and the fitness of 
things, are not able to furnish even a Brutus him- 
self with permanent principles of action ; much less 
are they able to purify the polluted recesses of a 
vitiated heart, to curb the irregularity of appetite, 
or restrain the impetuosity of passion in common 
men. If you order us to examine the works of 
Grotius, or Pufifendorf, or Burlamaqui, or Hutchin- 
son, for what you understand by the law of nature, 
we apprehend that you are in a great error, in 
taking your notions of natural law, as discoverable 
by natural reason, from the elegant systems of it 
which have been drawn up by Christian philoso- 
phers ; since they have all laid their foundations, 
either tacitly or expressly, upon a principle derived 
from revelation, a thorough knowledge of the be- 
ing and attributes of God : and even those among 
yourselves who, rejecting Christianity, still con- 
tinue theists, are indebted to revelation — whether 
you are either aware of, or disposed to acknow- 
ledge the debt, or not — for those sublime specula- 
tions concerning the Deity which you have fondly 
attributed to the .excellency of your own unassisted 
reason. If you would know the real genius of 
natural law, and how far it can proceed in the in- 



326 WATSON-S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

vestigation or enforcement of moral duties, you 
must consult the manners and the writings of those 
who have never heard of either the Jewish or the 
Christian dispensation, or of those other manifesta- 
tions of himself which God vouchsafed to Adam, 
and to the patriarchs before and after the flood. 
It would be difficult, perhaps, anywhere to find a 
people entirely destitute of traditionary notices 
concerning the Deity, and of traditionary fears or 
expectations of another life ; and the morals of 
mankind may have, perhaps, been nowhere quite 
so abandoned as they vrould have been, had they 
been left wholly to themselves in these points : 
however, it is a truth which cannot be denied, how 
much soever it may be lamented, that though the 
generahty of mankind have always had some faint 
conceptions of God and his providence, yet they 
have been always greatly inefficacious in the pro- 
duction of good morality, and highly derogatory to 
his nature, among all the people of the earth, ex- 
cept the Jews and Christians ; and some may per- 
haps be desirous of excepting the Mahomedans, 
who derive all that is good in their Koran from 
Christianity. 

The laws concerning justice, and the reparation 
of damages ; concerning the security of property, 
and the performance of contracts ; concerning, in 
short, whatever affects the well-being of civil so- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 327 

cicty, have been everywhere understood with suffi- 
cient precision ; and if you choose to style Justin- 
ian's code a code of natural law, though you will 
err against propriety of speech, yet you are so far 
in the right, that natural reason discovered, and 
the depravity of human nature compelled human 
kind to establish, by proper sanctions, the laws 
therein contained ; and you will have, moreover, 
Carneades, no mean philosopher, on your side, 
who knew of no law of nature different from that 
which men had instituted for their common utility, 
and which was various according to the manners 
of men in different climates, and changeable with 
a change of times in the same. And in truth, in 
all countries where paganism has been the estab- 
lished religion, though a philosopher may now and 
then have stepped beyond the paltry prescript of 
civil jurisprudence in his pursuit of virtue, yet the 
bulk of mankind have ever been contented with 
that scanty pittance of morality which enabled 
them to escape the lash of civil punishment : I call 
it a scanty pittance, because a man may be intem- 
perate, iniquitous, impious, a thousand ways a prof- 
ligate and a villain, and j^et elude the cognizance 
and avoid the punishment of civil laws. 

I am sensible you will be ready to say, " What 
is all this to the purpose ? Though the bulk of 
mankind may never be able to investigate the 



328 WATSON'S REPLY TO GlEBON. 

laws of natural religion, nor disposed to reverence 
their sanctions when investigated by others, nor 
solicitous about any other standard of moral recti- 
tude than civil legislation ; yet the inconveniences 
which may attend the extirpation of Christianity 
can be no proof of its truth," I have not produced 
them as a proof of its truth ; but they are a strong 
and conclusive proof, if not of its truth, at least of 
its utility ; and the consideration of its utility may 
be a motive to yourselves for examining whether 
it may not chance to be true ; and it ought to be a 
reason with every good citizen, and with every 
man of sound judgment, to keep his opinions to 
himself, if from any particular circumstances in his 
studies or in his education he should have the mis- 
fortune to think that it is not true. If you can 
discover to the rising generation a better religion 
than the Christian, one that will more effectually 
animate their hopes and subdue their passions, 
make them better men or better members of so- 
ciety, we importune you to publish it for their 
advantage ; but till you can do that, we beg of you 
not to give the reins to their passions, by instilling 
into their unsuspicious minds your pernicious prej- 
udices. Even now, men scruple not, by their law- 
less lust, to ruin the repose of private families, and 
to fix a stain of infamy upon the noblest ; even 
now, they hesitate not in lifting up a murderous 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 329 

arm against the life of their friend, or against their 
own, as often as the fever of intemperance stimn- 
lates their resentment, or the satiety of a useless 
life excites their despondency : even now, while 
we are persuaded of a resurrection from the dead, 
and of a judgment to come, we find it difficult enough 
to resist the solicitations of sense, and to escape 
unspotted from the licentious manners of the world : 
but what will become of our virtue, what of the 
consequent peace and happiness of society, if you 
persuade us that there are no such things ? In 
two words, you may ruin yourselves by your 
attempt, and you will certainly ruin your country 
by your success. 

But the consideration of the inutihty of your 
design is not the only one which should induce 
you to abandon it ; the argument a tuto — from 
safety — ought to be warily managed, or it may 
tend to the silencing of our opposition to any sys- 
tem of superstition which has had the good fortune 
to be sanctified by public authority : it is, indeed, 
liable to no objection in the present case : we do 
not, however, wholly rely upon its cogency. It is 
not contended that Christianity is to be received 
merely because it is useful, but because it is true. 
This you deny, and think your objections well 
grounded : we conceive them originating in your 
vanity, your immorality, or your misapprehension. 



330 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

There are many worthless doctrines, many super- 
stitious observances, which the fraud or folly of 
mankind have everywhere annexed to Christianity, 
especially in the church of Rome, as essential parts 
of it : if you take these sorry appendages to Chris- 
tianity for Christianity itself, as preached by Christ, 
and by the apostles — if you confound the Roman 
with the Christian religion, you quite misapprehend 
its nature, and are in a state similar to that of men 
mentioned by Plutarch, in his Treatise of Supersti- 
tion, who, flying from superstition, leaped over 
religion, and sunk into downright atheism, Chris- 
tianity is not a religion very palatable to a volup- 
tuous age ; it will not conform its precepts to the 
standard of fashion — it will not lessen the deformity 
of vice by lenient appellations ; but calls keeping, 
whoredom ; intrigue, adultery ; and duelling, mur- 
der : it will not pander to lust, it will not license 
the intemperance of mankind ; it is a troublesome 
monitor to a man of pleasure, and your way of 
life may have made you quarrel with j^our religion. 
As to your vanity, as a cause of your infidelity, 
suffer me to produce the sentiments of M. Bayle 
upon that head : if the description does not suit 
your character, you will not be offended at it ; and 
if you are offended with its freedom, it will do you 
good. " This inclines me to believe that libertines, 
like Dcs-Barreaux, are not greatly persuaded of the 



■ WATSON'S REPLY TO CtIBBON. 331 

truth of what they say. They have made no deep 
examination ; they have learned some few objec- 
tions, which they are perpetually making a noise 
with ; they speak from a principle of ostentation, 
and give themselves the lie in the time of danger. 
Vanity has a greater share in their disputes than 
conscience ; they imagine that the singularity 
and boldness of the opinions which they maintain, 
will give them the reputation of men of parts : by 
degrees, they get a habit of holding impious dis- 
courses ; and if their vanity be accompanied by a 
voluptuous life, their progress in that road is the 
swifter." 

The main stress of your objections rests not 
upon the insufficiency of the external evidence to 
the truth of Christianity — for few of you, though 
you may become the future ornaments of the sen- 
ate, or of the bar, have ever employed an hour in 
its examination — but upon the difficulty of the 
doctrines contained in the New Testament : they 
exceed, you say, your comprehension ; and you 
felicitate yourselves that you are not arrived at 
the true standard of orthodox faith — credo quia im- 
possibile: I believe it, because it is impossil)le. You 
think it would be taking a superfluous trouble to 
inquire into the nature of the external proofs by 
which Christianity is estabhshed, since, in your 
opinion, the book itself carries with it its own refu- 



332 WATSON'S UEPLY TO GIBBON. 

tation. A gentleman as acute, probably, as any of 
you, and who once believed, perhaps, as little as 
any of you, has drawn a quite different conclusion 
from the perusal of the New Testament ; his trea- 
tise exhibits not only a distinguished triumph of 
reason over prejudice, of Christianity over deism, 
but it exhibits what is infinitelj^ more rare, the 
character of a man who has had courage and can- 
dor enough to acknowledge it.* 

But what if there should be some incomprehen- 
sible doctrines in the Christian religion — some cir- 
cumstances which, in their causes, or their conse- 
quences, surpass the reach of human reason ; are 
they to be rejected on that account ? You are, or 
would be thought, men of reading and knowledge 
and enlarged understandings ; weigh the matter 
fairly, and consider whether revealed religion be 
not, in this respect, just upon the same footing 
with every other object of your contemplation. 
Even in mathematics, the science of demonstration 
itself, though you get over its first principles, and 
learn to digest the idea of a point without parts, a 
line without breadth, and a surface without thick- 
ness, yet you will find yourself at a loss to com- 
prehend the perpetual approximation of lines which 
can never meet, the doctrine of incommensurables, 

* See the View of the Internal Evidence, by Soame Jen- 

yns. 



WATSON'S REPLY TO G-IBBON. 333 

and of an infinity of infinites, each infinitely greater 
or infinitely less not only than any finite quantity, 
but than each other. In physics, you cannot com- 
prehend the primary cause of any thing — not of 
the light by which you see, nor of the elasticity 
of the air by which you hear, nor of the fire by 
which you are warmed. In physiology, you can- 
not tell what first gave motion to the heart, nor 
what continues it, nor why its motion is less vol- 
untary than that of the lungs ; nor why you are 
able to move your arm to the right or left by a 
simple volition : you cannot explain the cause of 
animal heat, nor comprehend the principle by which 
your body was at first formed, nor by which it is 
sustained, nor by which it will be reduced to 
earth. In natural religion, you cannot compre- 
hend the eternity or omnipresence of the Deity ; 
nor easily understand how his prescience can be 
consistent with your freedom, or his immutability 
with his government of moral agents ; nor why 
he did not make all his creatures equally perfect ; 
nor why he did not create them sooner : in short, 
you cannot look into any branch of knowledge but 
3'ou will meet with subjects above your compre- 
hension. The fall and the redemption of human 
kind are not more incomprehensible than the crea- 
tion and the conservation of the universe ; the 
infinite Author of the works of providence and of 



334 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

nature, is equally inscrutable — equally past our 
finding out in them both. And it is somewhat 
remarkable, that the deepest inquirers into na- 
ture have ever thought with most reverence, and 
•spoken with most dif&dence concerning tliose 
things which, in revealed religion, may seem hard 
to be understood ; they have ever avoided that 
self-sufficiency of knowledge which springs from 
ignorance, produces indifference, and ends in in- 
fidelity. Admirable to this purpose is the reflec- 
tion of the greatest mathematician of the present 
age, when he is combating an opinion of Newton's 
by an hypothesis of his own still less defensible 
than that which he opposes : " Tous les jours que 
je vols de ces esprits forts, qui critique les verites 
de notre religion, et s'en mocquent memo avec la 
plus impertinente suffisance, je pense, chetifs mor- 
tels I combien et combien des choses sur lesquelles 
vous raissonez si legerement, sent elles plus sub- 
limes, et plus eleves, que celles sur lesquelles le 
grand Newton s'egare si grossierement !" " When 
I see these pretended free-thinkers cavilling at the 
truths of our religion, and scoffing at them with 
the most impertinent self-sufficiency, I think, Poor 
mortals ! how many things on which you argue 
60 flippantly are more sublime and elevated than 
those on which the great Newton so much erred !" 
Euler. 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 335 

Plato mentions a set of men who were very ig- 
norant, and thought themselves supremely wise, 
and who rejected the arguments for the being of a 
God, derived from the harmony and order of the 
universe, as old and trite. There have been men 
it seems in all ages, who, in affecting singularity, 
have overlooked truth : an argument, however, is 
not the worse for being old ; and surely it would 
have been a more just mode of reasoning, if you 
had examined the external evidence for the truth 
of Christianity, weighed the old arguments from 
miracles, and from prophecies, before you had re- 
jected the whole account from the difficulties you 
met with in it. You would laugh at an Indian, 
who, in peeping into a history of England, and 
meeting with the mention of the Thames being 
frozen, or of a shower of hail, or of snow, should 
throw the book aside as unworthy of his farther 
notice, from his want of ability to comprehend 
these phenomena. 

In considering the argument from miracles, you 
will soon be convinced that it is possible for God 
to work miracles ; and you will be convinced that 
it is as possible for human testimony to estabhsh 
the truth of miraculous, as of physical or historical 
events ; but before you can be convinced that the 
miracles in question are supported by such testi- 
mony as deserves to be credited, you must inquire 



336 WATSON'S REPLY TO 'GIBBON. 

at what period, and by what persons, the books 
of the Old and New Testament were composed. 
If you reject the account without making this 
examination, you reject it from prejudice, not from 
reason. 

There is, however, a short method of examining 
this argument, which may perhaps make as great 
an impression on your minds as any other. Three 
men of distinguished abilities rose up at different 
times, and attacked Christianity with every objec- 
tion which their malice could suggest or their learn- 
ing could devise ; but neither Celsus in the second 
century, nor Porphyry in the third, nor the empe- 
ror Julian himself in the fourth century, ever ques- 
tioned the reality of the miracles related in the 
gospels. Do but you grant us what these men, 
who were more likely to know the truth of the 
matter than you can be, granted to their adversa- 
ries, and we will very readily let you make the 
most of the magic, to which, as the last wretched 
shift, they were forced to attribute them. We can 
find you men in our days, who, from the mixture 
of two colorless liquors, will produce you a third 
as red as blood, or of any other color you desire ; 
et dido citius — quicker than a word — by a drop re- 
sembling water, will restore the transparency ; 
they will make two fluids coalesce into a solid 
body ; and from the mixture of liquors colder than 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 337 

ice, will instantly raise you a horrid explosion and 
a tremendous flame. These, and twenty other 
tricks, they will perform, without having been 
sent with our Saviour to Egypt to learn magic ; 
nay, with a bottle or two of oil they will compose 
the undulations of a lake ; and by a little art, they 
will restore the functions of life to a man who has 
been an hour or two under water, or a day or two 
buried in the snow. But in vain will these men, 
or the greatest magician that Egypt ever saw, say 
to a boisterous sea, " Peace, be still ;" in vain will 
they say to a carcass rotting in the grave, "Come 
forth ;" the winds and the sea will not obey them, 
and the putrid carcass will not hear them. You 
need not suffer yourselves to be deprived of the 
weight of this argument from its having been ob- 
served that the fathers have acknowledged the 
supernatural part of paganism, since the fathers 
were in no condition to detect a cheat which was 
supported both by the disposition of the people 
and the power of the civil magistrate ; and they 
were, from that inability, forced to attribute to in- 
fernal agency what was too cunningly contrived to 
be detected, and contrived for too impious a pur- 
pose to be credited as the work of God. 

With respect to prophecy, you may perhaps have 
accustomed yourselves to consider it as originating 
in Asiatic enthusiasm, in Chaldean mystery, or the 



338 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. ' 

subtle stratagem of interested priests, and have 
given yourselves no more trouble concerning the 
predictions of sacred, than concerning the oracles 
of pagan history. Or, if you have ever cast a 
glance upon this subject, the dissensions of learn- 
ed men concerning the proper interpretation of the 
Revelation, and other difficult prophecies, may 
have made you rashly conclude that all prophecies 
were equally unintelligible, and more indebted for 
their accomplishment to a fortunate concurrence 
of events, and the pliant ingenuity of the exposi- 
tor, than to the inspired foresight of the prophet. 
In all that the prophets of the Old Testament have 
delivered concerning the destruction of particular 
cities, and the desolation of particular kingdoms, 
you may see nothing but shrewd conjectures, 
which any one acquainted with the history of the 
rise and fall of empires might certainly have made ; 
and as j^ou would not hold him for a prophet who 
should now affirm that London or Paris would 
afford to future ages a spectacle just as melan- 
choly as that which we now contemplate, with a 
sigh, in the ruins of Agrigentum or Palmyra, so 
you cannot persuade yourselves to believe that the 
denunciations of the prophets against the haughty 
cities of Tyre or Babylon, for instance, proceeded 
from the inspiration of the Deity. There is no 
doubt, that by some such general kind of reason- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 339 

ing, many are influenced to pay no attention to an 
argument which, if properly considered, carries 
with it the strongest conviction. 

Spinoza said that he would have broken his athe- 
istic system to pieces, and embraced, without re- 
pugnance, the ordinary faith of Christians, if he 
could have persuaded himself of the resurrection 
of Lazarus from the dead ; and I question not that 
there are many unbelievers who would relinquish 
their deistical tenets, and receive the gospel, if they 
could persuade themselves that God had ever so 
far interfered in the moral government of the world 
as to illumine the mind of any one man with the 
knowledge of future events. A miracle strikes the 
senses of the persons who see it ; a prophecy ad- 
dresses itself to the understandings of those who 
behold its completion ; and it requires, in many 
cases, some learning, in all some attention, to 
judge of the correspondence of events with the 
predictions concerning them. No one can be con- 
vinced that what Jeremiah and the other prophets 
foretold of the fate of Babylon — that it should be 
besieged by the Modes ; that it should be taken 
when her mighty men were drunken, when her 
springs were dried up ; and that it should become 
a pool of water, and should remain desolate for 
ever : no one, I say, can be convinced that all 
these and other parts of the prophetic denunciation 



340 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

have been minutely fulfilled, without spending 
some time in reading the accounts which profane 
historians have delivered down to us concerning 
its being taken by C^a'us ; and which modern trav- 
ellers have given us of its present situation. 

Porphyry was so persuaded of the coincidence 
between the prophecies of Daniel and the events, 
that he was forced to affirm the prophecies were 
written after the things prophesied had happened. 
Another Porphyry has, in our days, been so aston- 
ished at the correspondence between the prophecy 
concerning the destruction of Jerusalem as related 
by St. Matthew, and the history of that event as 
recorded by Josephus, that, rather than embrace 
Christianity, he has ventured — contrary to the faith 
of all ecclesiastical history, the opinion of the learn- 
ed of all ages, and all the rules of good criticism — 
to assert that St. Matthew wrote his gospel after 
Jerusalem had been taken and destroyed by the 
Romans. You may, from these instances, perceive 
the strength of the argument from prophecy : it has 
not been able indeed to vanquish the prejudices of 
either the ancient or the modern Porphyry ; but it 
has been able to compel them both to be guilty of 
obvious falsehoods, which have nothing but impu- 
dent assertions to sup})ort them. Some ovcrzeal- 
ous interpreters of Scripture have found prophecies 
in simple narrations, extended real predictions be- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 341 

yoiid the times and circumstances to which they 
naturally were applied, and perplexed their readers 
with a thousand quaint allusions and allegorical 
conceits : this proceeding has made men of sense 
pay less regard to prophecy in general. There are 
some predictions, however, such as those concern- 
ing the present state of the Jewish people, and the 
corruptions of Christianity, which are now fulfilling 
in the world ; and which, if you will take the trou- 
ble to examine them, you will find of such an ex- 
traordinary nature that you will not perhaps hesi- 
tate to refer them to God as their author ; and if 
you once l3ecome persuaded of the truth of any 
one miracle, or of the completion of any one proph- 
ecy, you will resolve all your difficulties — con- 
cerning the manner of God's interposition in the 
moral government of our species, and the nature 
of the doctrines contained in revelation — into your 
own inability fully to comprehend the whole scheme 
of divine Providence. 

We are told, however, that the strangeness of 
the narration, and the difficulty of the doctrines 
contained in the New Testament, are not the only 
circumstances which induce you to reject it ; you 
have discovered, you think, so many contradictions 
in the accounts which the evangelists have given 
of the life of Christ, that you are compelled to con- 
sider the whole as an ill-digested and improbable 



342 T^ATSOX'S REPLY TO CtIBBON. 

story. You would not reason thus upon any other 
occasion ; you would not reject, as fabulous, the ac- 
counts given by Livy and Polybius of Hannibal 
and the Carthaginians, though you should discover 
a difference between them in several points of little 
importance. You cannot compare the history of 
the same events as dehvered by any two histori- 
ans, hut you will meet with many circumstances 
which, though mentioned by one, are either wholly 
omitted or differently related by the other ; and 
this observation is peculiarly applicable to bio- 
graphical writings : but no one ever thought of 
disbelieving the leading circumstances of the lives 
of Yitellius or Yespasian, because Tacitus and Sue- 
tonius did not in every thing con'espond in their 
accounts of these emperors. And if the memoirs 
of the life and doctrines of M. de Yoltau-e himself 
were, some twenty or thirty years after his death, 
to be dehvered to the world by four of his most 
intimate acquaintance, I do not apprehend that we 
should discredit the whole account of such an ex- 
traordinary man, by reason of some slight inconsis- 
tencies and contradictions, which the avowed ene- 
mies of his name might chance to discover in the 
several narrations. Though we should grant you, 
then, that tlie evangelists had fallen into some 
trivial contradictions in what they have related 
concerning the life of Christ, yet you ought not to 



WATSON'S REPLY TO G-IBBON. 343 

draw any other inference from our concession than 
that they had not plotted together, as cheats would 
have done, in order to give an unexceptionable con- 
sistency to their fraud. We are not, however, dis- 
posed to make you any such concession ; we will 
rather show you the futility of your general argu- 
ment, by touching upon a few of the places which 
you think are most liable to your censure. 

You observe that neither Luke, nor Mark, nor 
John, have mentioned the cruelty of Herod in mur- 
dering the infants of Bethlehem ; and that no ac- 
count is to be found of this matter in Josephus, 
who wrote the life of Herod ; and therefore the fact 
recorded by Matthew is not true. The concurrent 
testimonj^ of many independent writers concerning 
a matter of fact, unquestionably adds to its proba- 
bility ; but if nothing is to be received as true upon 
the testimony of a single author, we must give up 
some of the best writers, and disbelieve some of 
the most interesting facts of ancient history. 

According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there was 
only an interval of three months, you say, between 
the baptism and crucifixion of Jesus ; from which 
time, taking away the forty days of the temptation, 
tliere will only remain about six weeks for the 
whole period of his public ministry ; which lasted, 
however, according to St. John, at the least, above 
three years. Your objection, fairly stated, stands 



344 WATSON'S REPLY TO G-IBBON. 

thus : Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in writing the his- 
tory of Jesus Christ, mention the several events 
of his life as following one another in continued 
succession, without taking notice of the times in 
which they happened. But is it a just conclusion, 
from their silence, to infer that there were really 
no intervals of time between the transactions which 
they seem to have connected? Many instances 
might be produced, from the most admired biog- 
raphers of antiquity, in which events are related 
as immediately consequent to each other, which 
did happen at very distant periods : we have an 
obvious example of this manner of writing in St. 
Matthew, who connects the preaching of John the 
Baptist with the return of Joseph from Egypt, 
though we are certain that the latter event pre- 
ceded the former by a great many years, 

John has said nothing of the institution of the 
Lord's supper ; the other evangelists have said 
nothing of the washing of the disciples' feet. What 
then ? are you not ashamed to produce these facts 
as instances of contradiction? If omissions are 
contradictions, look into the history of the age of 
Louis XIV,, or into the general history of M. de 
Voltaire, and j^ou will meet with a great abundance 
of contradictions. 

John, in mentioning the discourses which Jesus 
had with his mother and his beloved disciple, at 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 345 

the time of his crucifixion, says that she, with Mary 
Magdalene, stood near the cross, Matthew, on the 
other hand, says that Mary Magdalene and the 
other women were there, beholding afar off. This 
you think a manifest contradiction ; and scoffingly 
inquire whether the women and the beloved dis- 
ciple, which were near the cross, could be the same 
with those wha stood far from the cross ? It is 
difficult not to transgress the bounds of moderation 
and good manners in answering such sophistry. 
What, have you to learn that though the evan- 
gelists speak of the crucifixion as of one event, it 
was not accomphshed in one instant, but lasted 
several hours ? And why the women who were 
at- a distance from the cross, might not, during its 
continuance, draw near the cross ; or, from being 
near the cross, might not move from the cross, is 
more than you can explain to either us or your- 
selves. And we take from you your only refuge, 
by denying expressly that the different evangelists, 
in their mention of the women, speak of the same 
point of time. 

The evangehsts, you affirm, have fallen into gross 
contradictions in their accounts of the appearances 
by which Jesus manifested himself to his disciples, 
after his resurrection from the dead ; for Matthew 
speaks of two, Mark of three, Luke of two, and 
John of four. That contradictory propositions can- 



346 WATSON'S EEPLY TO GIBBON. 

not be true, is readily granted ; and if you will pro- 
duce the place in which Matthew says that Jesus 
Christ appeared twice, and tw oftener, it will be 
further granted that he is contradicted by John in 
a very material part of his narration ; but till you 
do that, 3'ou must excuse me if I cannot grant that 
the evangelists have contradicted each other in this 
point ; for to common understandings, it is pretty 
evident that if Christ appeared four times according 
to John's account, he must have appeared twice 
according to that of Matthew and Luke, and thrice 
according to that of Mark. 

The different evangelists are not only accused of 
contradicting each other, but Luke is said to have 
contradicted himself; for in his gospel he tells us 
that Jesus ascended into heaven from Bethan3^; 
and in the Acts of the Apostles, of which he is the 
reputed author, he informs us that he ascended from 
mount Olivet. Your objection proceeds either from 
your ignorance of geography, or your ill-will to 
Christianity ; and upon either supposition deserves 
our contempt : be pleased, however, to remember 
for the future, that Bethany was not only the name 
of a town, but of a district of mount Olivet adjoin- 
ing to the town. 

From this specimen of the contradictions ascribed 
to the historians of the life of Christ, you may judge 
for yourselves what little reason there is to reject 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 347 

Christianity upon their account ; and how sadly 
3^011 will he imposed upon in a matter of more con- 
sequence to you than any other, if you take every 
thing for a contradiction which the uncandid adver- 
saries of Christianity think proper to call one. 

Before I put an end to this address, I cannot 
help taking notice of an argument by which some 
philosophers have of late endeavored to overturn 
the whole system of revelation ; and it is the more 
necessary to give an answer to their objection, as 
it is become a common subject of philosophical con- 
versation, especially among those who have visited 
the continent. The objection tends to invalidate, 
as is supposed, the authority of Moses, by showing 
that the earth is much older than it can be proved 
to be from his account of the creation, and the 
Scripture chronology. We contend that six thou- 
sand years have not yet elapsed since the creation ; 
and these philosophers contend that they have 
indubitable proof of the earth's being at the least 
fourteen thousand years old ; and they complain 
that Moses hangs as a dead weight upon them, and 
blunts all their zeal for inquir3^ 

The Canonico Recupero, who it seems is en- 
gaged in writing the history of mount ^tna, has 
discovered a stratum of lava which flowed from 
that mountain, according to his opinion, in the time 
of the second Punic war, or about two thousand 



348 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

years ago ; this stratum is not yet covered with 
soil sufficient for the production of either corn or 
vines ; it requires, then, says the Canon, two thou- 
sand years at least to convert a stratum of lava 
into a fertile field. In sinking a pit near Jaci, in 
the neighborhood of ^tna, they have discovered 
evident marks of seven distinct lavas, one under 
the other, the surfaces of which are parallel, and 
most of them covered with a thick bed of rich earth. 
Now, the eruption which formed the lowest part 
of these lavas — if we may be allowed to reason, 
says the Canon, from analogy — flowed from the 
mountain at least fourteen thousand years ago. 
It might be briefly answered to this objection, by 
denying that there is any thing in the history of 
Moses repugnant to this opinion concerning the 
great antiquity of the earth ; for though the rise 
and progress of arts and sciences, and the small 
multiplication of the human species, render it al- 
most to a demonstration probable that man has not 
existed longer upon the surface of this earth than 
according to the Mosaic account, yet that the earth 
itself was then created out of nothing, when man 
was placed upon it, is not, according to the senti- 
ments of some philosophers, to be proved from the 
original text of sacred Scripture : we might, I say, 
reply with these philosophers to this formidable 
objection of the Canon, by granting it in its fullest 



WATSON'S REPLY TO aiBBON. 349 

extent ; we are under no necessity, however, of 
adopting their opinion, in order to show the weaii- 
ness of the Canon's reasoning. For in the first 
place, the Canon has not satisfactorily established 
his main fact, that the lava in question is the iden- 
tical lava which Diodorus Siculus mentions to 
have flowed from ^tna in the second Carthaginian 
war ; and in the second place, it may be observed, 
that the time necessary for converting lava into 
fertile fields must be very different, according to the 
different consistencies of the lavas, and their differ- 
ent situations with respect to elevation or depres- 
sion — to their being exposed to winds, rains, and 
to other circumstances ; just as the time in which 
tlie heaps of iron slag — which resembles lava — are 
covered with verdure, is different at different fur- 
naces, according to the nature of the slag, and sit- 
uation of the furnace ; and something of this kind 
is deducible from the account of the Canon himself, 
since the crevices of this famous stratum are really 
full of rich, good soil, and have pretty large trees 
growing hi them. 

But if all this should be thought not sufficient to 
remove the objection, I will produce the Canoii an 
analogy in opposition to his analogy, and which is 
founded on more certain facts, ^tna and Vesuvius 
resemble each other in the causes which produce 
their eruptions, and in the nature of their lavas, 



350 WATSON'S REPLY TO QIBBON. 

and in the time necessary to mellow them into soil 
fit for vegetation ; or if there be any slight diflference 
in this respect, it is probably not greater than what 
subsists between different lavas of the same moun- 
tain. This being admitted, which no philosopher 
w^ill deny, the Canon's analogy will prove just noth- 
ing at all, if we can produce an instance of seven 
different lavas — with interjacent strata of vegetable 
earth — which have flowed from mount Vesuvius 
within the space, not of fourteen thousand, but of 
somewhat less than seventeen hundred years ; for . 
then, according to our analogy, a stratum of lava 
may be covered with vegetable soil in about two 
hundred and fifty years, instead of requiring two 
thousand for the purpose. The eruption of Vesu- 
vius which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii, is 
rendered still more famous by the death of Plin}^ 
recorded by his nephew in his letter to Tacitus. 
This event happened in the year 19. It is not then 
quite seventeen hundred years since Herculaneum 
was swallowed up ; but we are informed by un- 
questionable authorit}'-, that "the matter which 
covers the ancient town of Herculaneum is not the 
produce of one eruption only ; for there are evident 
marks that the matter of six eruptions has taken 
its course over that which lies immediately above 
tlie town, and was the cause of its destruction. 
These strata are either of lava or burnt matter, 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 351 

with veins of good soil heticeen thc.jn."^ I will not acid 
another word upon this subject, except that the 
bishop of the diocese was not much out in his ad- 
vice to Canonico Recupero, to take care not to 
make his mountain older than Moses ; though it 
would have been full as well to have shut his 
mouth w^th a reason, as to have stopped it with 
the dread of an ecclesiastical censure. 

You perceive with what ease a little attention 
will remove a great difficulty ; but had we been 
able to say nothing in explanation of this phenom- 
enon, we should not have acted a very rational 
part in making our ignorance the foundation of our 
infidelity, or suffering a minute philosopher to rob 
us of our religion. 

Your objections to revelation may be numerous ; 
you may find fault with the account which Moses 
has given of the creation and the fall ; you may 
not be able to get water enough for a universal 
deluge, nor room enough in the ark of Noah for 
all the different kinds of aerial and terrestrial ani- 
mals ; you may be dissatisfied with the command 
for sacrificing Isaac, for plundering the Egyptians, 
and for extirpating the Canaanites ; you may find 
fault with the Jewish economy for its ceremonies, 

* See Sir William Hamilton's Remarks upon the Nature 
of the Soil of Naples and its Neighborhood, in the Philos. 
Trans, vol. 61, p. 7. 



352 WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 

its sacrifices, and its multiplicity of priests ; you 
may object to the imprecations in the Psalms, and 
think the immoralities of David a fit subject for 
dramatic ridicule ; you may look upon the partial 
promulgation of Christianity as an insuperable ob- 
jection to its truth, and waywardly reject the good- 
ness of God towards yourselves, because you do 
not comprehend how you have deserved it more 
than others ; you may know nothing of the en- 
trance of sin and death into the world by one 
man's transgression, nor be able to comprehend 
the doctrine of the cross, and of redemption by 
Jesus Christ : in short, if your mind is so dis- 
posed, you may find food for your scepticism in 
every page of the Bil3le, as well as in every ap- 
pearance of nature ; and it is not in the power of 
any person but yourselves to clear up your doubts. 
You must read, and you must think for your- 
selves ; and you must do both with temper, with 
candor, and with care. Infidelity is a rank weed ; 
it is nurtured by our vices, and cannot be plucked 
up as easily as it may be planted. Your difficul- 
ties with respect to revelation may have first 
arisen from your own reflection on the religious 
indifference of those whom, from your earliest in- 
fancy, you have been accustomed to revere and 
imitate : domestic irreligion may have made you a 
willing hearer of libertine conversation; and the 



WATSON'S REPLY TO GIBBON. 353 

• 

uniform prejudices of the world may liavc finished 
the business at a very early age, and left you to 
wander through life without a principle to direct 
your conduct, and to die without hope. We are 
far from wishing you to trust the word of the clergy 
for the truth of your religion ; wo beg of you to 
examine it to the bottom, to try it, to prove it, and 
not to hold it fast unless you find it good. Till you 
are disposed to undertake this task, it becomes you 
to consider with great seriousness and attention, 
whether it can be for your interest to esteem a few 
witty sarcasms, or metaphysic subtleties, or igno- 
rant misrepresentations, or unwarranted assertions, 
as unanswerable arguments against revelation ; 
and a very slight reflection will convince you that 
it will certainly be for your reputation to employ 
the flippancy of your rhetoric, and the poignancy 
of your ridicule, upon any subject rather than upon 
the subject of religion. 

I take my leave with recommending to your 
notice the advice which Mr. Locke gave to a young 
man who was desirous of becoming acquainted with 
the doctrines of the Christian religion : " Study the 
holy Scripture, especially the New Testament : 
therein are contained the words of eternal life. It 
has God for its author, salvation for its end, and 
truth without ai^ mixture of error for its matter." 
I am, etc. . ' 

Infidelity. 23 ' 



REPLY TO PAINE; 

OR, 

AN APOLOGY FOR THE BIBLE 



LETTERS TO THOMAS PAINE, 



AUTHOR OF 



THE " AGE OF REASON," PART SECOND. 



BY R. WATSON, D.D.,F.R.S. 

BISHOP OF LANDAFF, AND PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE 
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. 



REPLY TO PAINE. 



LETTER T. 

Sir — I have lately met with a book of yours en- 
titled, " The Age of Reason, Part the Second ; be- 
ing an Investigation of True and of Fabulous The- 
ology ;" and I think it not inconsistent with my 
station, and the duty I owe to society, to trouble 
you and the world with some observations on so 
extraordinary a performance. Extraordinary I es- 
teem it, not from any novelty in the objections 
which you have produced against revealed relig- 
ion — for I find little or no novelty in them — but 
from the zeal with which you labor to disseminate 
your opinions, and from the confidence with which 
you esteem them true. You perceive by this that 
I give you credit for your sincerity, how much- 
soever I may question your wisdom, in writing in 
such a manner, on such a subject ; and I have no 
reluctance in acknowledging that you possess a 
considerable share of energy of language, and 
acuteness of investigation ; though I must be al- 



358 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

lowed to lament that these talents have not been 
applied in a manner more useful to human kind, 
and more creditable to yourself. 

I begin with your preface. You therein state 
that you had long had an intention of publishing 
your thoughts upon religion, but that you had 
originally reserved it to a later period in life — I 
hope there is no want of charity in saying, that it 
would have been fortunate for the Christian world 
had your life been terminated before you had ful- 
filled your intention. In accomplishing your pur- 
pose, you will have unsettled the faith of thou- 
sands ; rooted from the minds of the unhappy 
virtuous all their comfortable assurances of a fu- 
ture recompense ; have annihilated in the minds of 
the flagitious all their fears of future punishment ; 
you will have given the reins to the domination of 
every passion, and have thereby contributed to the 
introduction of the public insecurity, and of the 
private unhappiness usually and almost necessa- 
rily accompanying a state of corrupt morals. 

No one can think worse of confession to a priest 
and subsequent absolution, as practised in the 
church of Rome, than I do ; but I cannot, with 
you, attribute the guillotine massacres to that 
cause. Men's minds were not prepared, as you 
suppose, for the commission of all manner of crimes, 
by any doctrines of the church of Rome, corrupted 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 359 

as I esteem it, but by their not thoroughly behev- 
ing even that religion. What may not society 
expect from those who shall imbibe the principles 
of your book ? 

A fever, which you and those about you expect- 
ed would prove mortal, made you remember, with 
renewed satisfaction, that you had written the 
former part of your Age of Reason — and you know, 
therefore, you say, by experience, the conscientious 
trial of your own principles. I admit this declara- 
tion to be a proof of the sincerity of your persua- 
sion, but I cannot admit it to be any proof of the 
truth of your principles. What is conscience ? Is 
it, as has been thought, an internal monitor im- 
planted in us by the Supreme Being, and dictating 
to us, on all occasions, what is right or wrong? 
Or is it merely our own judgment of the moral 
rectitude or turpitude of our own actions ? I take 
the word, with Mr. Locke, in the latter, as the only 
inteUigible sense. Now, who sees jiot that our 
judgments of virtue and vice, right and wrong, are 
not always forn'ied from an enhghtened and dis- 
passionate use of our reason, in the investigation 
of truth ? They are more generally formed from 
the nature of the religion we profess ; from the 
quality of the civil government under which we 
live ; from the general manners of the age, or the 
particular manners of the persons with whom we 



360 WATSON'S EEPLY TO PAINE. 

associate ; from the education we have had in our 
youth ; from the books we have read at a more 
advanced period ; and from other accidental causes. 
Who sees not that, on this account, conscience 
may be conformable or repugnant to the law of 
nature — may be certain, or doubtful ; and that it 
can ]3e no criterion of moral rectitude, even when 
it is certain, because the certainty of an opinion is 
no proof of its being a right opinion ? A man may- 
be certainly persuaded of an error in reasoning, or 
an untruth in matters of fact. It is a maxim of 
every law, human and divine, that a man ought 
never to act in opposition to his conscience, but it 
will not from thence follow that he will, in obeying 
the dictates of his conscience on all occasions, act 
right. An inquisitor, who burns Jews and here- 
tics ; a Robespierre, who massacres' innocent and 
harmless women; a robber, who thinks that all 
things ought to be in common, and that a state 
of property is an unjust infringement of natural 
liberty — these, and a thousand perpetrators of dif- 
ferent crimes, may all follow the* dictates of con- 
science ; and may, at the real or supposed approach 
of death, remember, " with renewed satisfaction," 
the worst of their transactions, and experience 
without dismay " a conscientious trial of their prin- 
ciples." But this, their conscientious composure, 
can be no proof to others of the rectitude of their 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 361 

principles, and ought to be no pledge to themselves 
of their innocence in adhering to them. 

I have thought fit to make this remark, with a 
view of suggesting to you a consideration of great 
importance — whether you have examined calmly, 
and according to the best of your ability, the argu- 
ments by which tlie truth of revealcri religion may, 
in the judgment of learned and impartial men, be 
established ? You will allow that thousands of 
learned and impartial men — I speak not of priests, 
who however are, 1 trust, as learned and impartial 
as yourself, but of laymen of the most splendid 
talents — you will allow that thousands of these, 
in- all ages, have embraced revealed religion as 
true. Whether these men have all been in an 
error, enveloped in the darkness of ignorance, 
shackled by the chains of superstition, while you 
and a few others have enjoyed light and liberty, is 
a question I submit to the decision of your readers. 

If you have made the best examination you can, 
and yet reject revealed religion as an imposture, I 
pray that God may pardon what I esteem your 
error. And whether you have made this examina- 
tion or not, does not become me or any man to 
determine. That gospel which you despise, has 
taught me this moderation ; it has said to me, 
"Who art thou that judgest another man's ser- 
vant? To his own master he standeth or falleth." 



362 "WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

I think that you are in an error ; but whether that 
error be to you a vincible or an invincible error, I 
presume not to determine. I know indeed where 
it is said, that '' the preaching of the cross is to 
them that perish foolishness, and that if the gospel 
be hid, it is hid to them that are lost." The con- 
sequence of your unbelief must be left to the just 
and merciful judgment of Him who alone knoweth 
the mechanism and the liberty of our understand- 
ings, the origin of our opinions, the strength of our 
prejudices, the excellences and the defects of our 
reasoning faculties. 

I shall designedly write this and the following 
letters in a popular manner ; hoping that thereby 
they may stand a chance of being perused by that 
class of readers for whom your work seems to be 
particularly calculated, and who are the most likely 
to be injured by it. The really learned are in no 
danger of being infected by the poison of infidelity ; 
they will excuse me, therefore, for having entered 
as little as possible into deep disquisitions concern- 
ing the authenticity of the Bible. The subject has 
been so learnedly and so frequently handled by 
other writers, that it does not want — I had almost 
said, it does not admit — any further proof. And 
it is the more necessary to adopt this mode of an- 
swering your book, because you disclaim all learn- 
ed appeals to other books, and undertake to prove, 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 363 

from the Bible itself, that it is unworthy of credit. 
I hope to show, from the Bible itself, the direct 
contrary. But in case any of your readers should 
think that you had not put forth all your strength, 
by not referring for proof of your opinion to ancient 
authors — lest they should expect that all ancient 
authors are in 3'our favor, I will venture to affirm, 
that had you made a learned appeal to all the an- 
cient books in the world, sacred or profane, Chris- 
tian, Jewish, or pagan, instead of lessening, they 
would have established the credit and authority of 
the Bible as the word of God. 

Quitting your preface, let us proceed to the work 
itself, in which there is much repetition, and a de- 
fect of proper arrangement. I will follow jout 
track, however, as nearly as I can. The first ques- 
tion you propose for consideration is, "Whether 
there is sufficient authority for believing the Bible 
to be the word of God, or whether there is not ?" 
You determine this question in the negative, upon 
what you are pleased to call moral evidence. You 
hold it impossible that the Bible can be the word 
of God, because it is therein said that the Israel- 
ites destroyed the Canaanites by the express com- 
mand of God ; and to believe the Bible to be true, 
we must, you affirm, unbelieve all our belief of the 
moral justice of God ; for wherein, you ask, could 
crying or smihng infants offend ? I am astonished 



364 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

that so acute a reasoner should attempt to dispar- 
age the Bible by bringing forward this exploded and 
frequently refuted objection of Morgan, Tindal, and 
Bolingbroke. You profess yourself to be a deist, 
and to believe that there is a God, who created 
the universe, and established the laws of nature 
by which it is sustained in existence. You pro- 
fess that, from the contemplation of the works of 
God, you derive a knowledge of his attributes ; 
and you reject the Bible because it ascribes to 
God things inconsistent, as you suppose, with the 
attributes which you have discovered to belong to 
him ; in particular, you think it repugnant to his 
moral justice that he should doom to destruction 
the crying or smiling infants of the Canaanites. 
Why do you not maintain it to be repugnant to 
his moral justice that he should suffer cr^^ing or 
smiling infants to be swallowed up by an earth- 
quake, di'owned by an inundation, consumed by fire, 
starved by a famine, or destroyed by pestilence? 
The word of God is in perfect harmony .with his 
work ; crying or smiling infants are subjected to 
death in both. We believe that the earth, at the 
express command of God, opened her mouth, and 
swallowed up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, with 
their wives, their sons, and their little ones. This 
you esteem so repugnant to God's moral justice, 
that you spui'n, as spurious, the book in which the 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 365 

circumstance is related. When Catania, Lima, and 
Lisbon, were severally destroyed by earthquakes, 
men, with their wives, their sons, and their little 
ones, were swallowed up alive — why do you not 
spurn as spurious the book of nature, in which this 
fact is certainly written, and from the perusal of 
which you infer the moral justice of God ? You 
will probably reply, that the evils which the Ca- 
naanites suffered from the express command of 
God, were different from those which were brought 
on mankhid by the operation of the laws of nature. 
Different in what ? Not in the magnitude of the 
evil — not in the subjects of sufferance — not in the 
author of it ; for my philosophy, at least, instructs 
me to believe that God not only primarily formed, 
but that he has, through all ages, executed the laws 
of nature ; and that he will, through all eternity, 
administer them for the general happiness of his 
creatures, whether we can on every occasion dis- 
cern that end or not. 

I am far from being guilty of the impiety of ques- 
tioning the existence of the moral justice of God, 
as proved either by natural or revealed religion ; 
what I contend for is briefly this, that you have 
no right, in fairness of reasoning, to urge any ap- 
parent deviation from moral justice as an argument 
against revealed religion, because you do not urge 
an equally apparent deviation from it, as an argu- 



366 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

ment against natural religion : you reject the for- 
mer, and admit the latter, without adverting that, as 
to your objection, they must stand or fall together. 
As to the Canaanites, it is needless to enter into 
any proof of the depraved state of their morals ; 
they were a wicked people in the time of Abraham, 
and they, even then, were devoted to destruction 
by God ; but their iniquity was not then full. In 
the time of Moses they were idolaters, sacriScers 
of their own crying or smiling infants ; devourers 
of human flesh ; addicted to unnatural lusts ; im- 
mersed in the filthiness of all manner of vice. 
Now, I think it will be impossible to prove that it 
was a proceeding contrary to God's moral justice, 
to exterminate so wicked a people. He made the 
Israelites the executors of his vengeance ; and in 
doing this, he gave such an evident and terrible 
proof of his abomination to vice* as could not fail 
to strike the surrounding nations with astonish- 
ment and terror, and to impress on the minds of 
the Israelites what they were to expect if they 
followed the example of the nations whom he com- 
manded them to cut ofiT. "Ye shall not commit 
any of these abominations — that the land spue not 
you out also, as it spued out the nations before 
you." How strong and descriptive this language 1 
the vices of the inhabitants were so abominable, 
that the very land was sick of them, and forced to 



.WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 367 

vomit them forth, as the stomach disgorges a dead- 
ly poison. 

I have often wondered what could he the reason 
that men, not destitute of talents, should be desir- 
ous of undermining the authority of revealed re- 
ligion, and studious in exposing, with a malignant 
and ilUberal exultation, every little difficulty attend- 
ing the Scriptures to popular animadversion and 
contempt. I am not willing to attribute this 
strange propensity to what Plato attributed the 
atheism of his time — to profligacy of manners — to 
affectation of singularity — to gross ignorance as- 
suming the semblance of deep research and supe- 
rior sagacity. I had rather refer it to an impro- 
priety of judgment respecting the manners and 
mental acquirements of human kind in the first 
ages of the world. Most unbelievers argue as if 
they thought that man, in remote and rude anti- 
quity, in the very birth and infancy of our species, 
had the same distinct conceptions of one, eternal, 
invisible, incorporeal, infinitely wise, powerful, and 
good God, which they themselves have now. This 
I look upon as a great mistake, and a pregnant 
source of infidelity. Human kind, by long expe- 
rience ; by the institutions of civil society ; by the 
cultivation of arts and science ; by, as I beUeve, 
divine instruction actually given to some, and tra- 
ditionally communicated to all, is in a far more dis- 



368 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

tinguished situation, as to the powers of the mind, 
than it was in the childhood of the world. The 
history of man is the history of the providence of 
God ; who, willing the supreme felicity of all his 
creatures, has adapted his government to the capac- 
ity of those who, in different ages, were the sub- 
jects of it. The history of any one nation through- 
out all ages, and that of all nations in the same 
age, are but separate parts of one great plan which 
God is carrying on for the moral melioration of 
mankhid. But who can comprehend the whole of 
this immense design ? The shortness of life, the 
weakness of our faculties, the inadequacy of our 
means of information, conspire to make it impossi- 
ble for us, worms of the earth, insects of an hour, 
completely to understand any one of its parts. 
No man, who well weighs the subject, ought to 
be surprised, that in the histories of ancient times 
many things should occur foreign to our manners, 
the propriety and necessity of which we cannot 
clearly apprehend. 

It appears incredible to many, that God Almighty 
should have had colloquial intercourse with our first 
parents ; that he should have contracted a kind of' 
friendship for the patriarchs, and entered into cove- 
nants with them ; that he should have suspended 
the laws of nature in Egypt ; should haver been so 
apparently partial as to become the God and gov- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 369 

ernor of one particular nation ; and should have so 
far demeaned himself, as to give to that people a 
burdensome ritual of worship, statutes, and ordi- 
nances, many of which seem to be beneath the 
dignity of his attention, unimportant, and impolitic. 
I have conversed with many deists, and have 
always found that the strangeness of these things 
was the only reason for their disbelief of them : 
nothing similar has happened in their time; they 
will not, therefore, admit that these events have 
really taken place at any time. As well might a 
child, when arrived at a state of manhood, contend 
that he never either stood in need of, or experi- 
enced the fostering care of a mother's kindness, 
the wearisome attention of his nurse, or the in- 
struction and discipline of his schoolmaster. The 
Supreme Being selected one family from an idola- 
trous world ; nursed it up, by various acts of his 
providence, into a great nation ; communicated to 
that nation a knowledge of his holiness, justice, 
mercy, power, and wisdom ; disseminated them 
at various times through every part of the earth, 
that they might be a " leaven to leaven the whole 
lump" — that they might assure all other nations of 
the existence of one supreme God, the creator and 
preserver of the world, the only proper object of 
adoration. With what reason can we expect, that 
what was done to one nation, not out of any par- 

Infidelity. 2 t 



370 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

tiality to them, hut for the general good, should he 
done to all ? That the mode of instruction which 
was suited to the infancy of the world, should be 
extended to the maturity of its manhood, or to the 
imbecility of its old age ? I own to you, that when 
I consider how nearly man, in a savage state, ap- 
proaches to the brute creation, as to intellectual 
excellence, and when I contemplate his miserable 
attainments, as to the knowledge of God, in a civ- 
ilized state, when he has had no divine instruction 
on the subject, or when that instruction has been 
forgotten — for all men have known something of 
God from tradition — I cannot but admire the wis- 
dom and goodness of the Supreme Being, in hav- 
ing let himself down to our apprehensions ; in 
having given to mankind, in the earliest ages,- sen- 
sible and extraordinary proofs of his existence and 
attributes ; in having made the Jewish and Chris- 
tian dispensations mediums to convey to all men, 
through all ages, that knowledge concerning him- 
self which he has vouchsafed to give immediately 
to the first. I own it is strange, very strange, 
that he should have made an immediate manifesta- 
tion of himself in the first ages of the world ; but 
what is there that is not strange ? It is strange 
that you and I are here — that there is water and 
earth and air and fire — that there is a sun and 
moon and stars — that there is generation, corrup- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 371 

tion, reproduction. I can account ultimately for none 
of these things, without recurring to Him who made 
every thing. I also am his workmanship, and look 
up to him with hope of preservation through all 
eternity ; I adore him for his word as well as for his 
work : his work I cannot comprehend, but his word 
has assured me of all that I am concerned to know — 
that he has prepared everlasting happiness for 
those who love and obey him. This you will call 
preachment — I will have done with it ; but the 
subject is so vast, and the plan of Providence, in 
my opinion, so obviously wise and good, tltat I can 
never think of it without having my mind filled 
with reverence, admiration, and gratitude. 

In addition to the moral evidence, as you are 
pleased to think it, against the Bible, you threaten, 
in the progress of your work, to produce such other 
evidence as even a priest cannot deny. A philoso- 
pher in search of truth forfeits with me all claim to 
candor and impartiality, when he introduces railing 
for reasoning, vulgar and illiberal sarcasm in the 
room of argument. I will not imitate the example 
you set me ; but examine what you shall produce 
with as much coolness and respect as if you had 
given the priests no provocation ; as if you were a 
man of the most unblemished character, subject to 
no prejudices, actuated by no bad designs, nor lia- 
ble to have abuse retorted upon you with success. 



372 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 



LETTER II. 

Before you commence your grand attack upon 
the Bible, you wish to establish a difference be- 
tween the evidence necessary to prove the authen- 
ticity of the Bible, and that of any other ancient 
book. I am not surprised at your anxiety on this 
head ; for all writers on the subject have agreed in 
thinking that St. Austin reasoned well, when, in 
vindicating the genuineness of the Bible, he asked, 
" What proofs have we that the works of Plato, 
Aristotle, Cicero, Varro, and other profane authors, 
were written by those whose name they bear ; 
unless it be that this has been an opinion gener- 
ally received at all tirties, and by all those who 
have lived since the authors ?" This writer was 
convinced that the evidence which established the 
genuineness of any profane book, would establish 
that of the sacred book ; and I profess myself to 
be of the same opinion, notwithstanding what you 
have advanced to the contrary. 

In this part your ideas seem to me to be con- 
fused : I do not say that you designedly jumble 
together mathematical science and historical evi- 
dence, the knowledge acquired by demonstration and 
the probability derived from testimony. You know 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 373 

but one ancient book that authoritatively challenges 
universal consent and belief, and that is Euclid's 
Elements. If I were disposed to make frivolous 
objections, . I should say that even Euclid's Ele- 
ments had not met with universal consent ; that 
there had been men, both in ancient and modern 
times, who had questioned the intuitive evidence 
of some of his axioms, and denied the justness of 
some of his demonstrations ; but, admitting the 
truth, I do not see the pertinency of your observa- 
tion. You are attempting to subvert the authen- 
ticity of the Bible, and you tell us that Euclid's 
Elements are certainly true. Wliat then ? Does it 
follow that the Bible is certainly false ? The most 
illiterate scrivener does not want to be informed 
that the examples in his Arithmetic are proved by 
a different kind of reasoning from that by which he 
persuades himself to believe that there was such a 
person as Henry VIII, or that there is such a city 
as Paris. 

It may be of use, to remove this confusion in 
your argument, to state distinctly the difference be- 
tween the genuineness and the authenticity of a 
book. A genuine book, is that which was written 
by the person whose name it bears as the author 
of it. An autlicntic book, is that which relates mat- 
ters of fact as they really happened. A book may 
be genuine without being authentic ; and a book 



374 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

may be authentic without being genuine. The 
books written by Richardson and Fielding are gen- 
uine books, though the histories of Clarissa and 
Tom Jones are fables. The liistory of the Island 
of Formosa is a genuine book ; it was written by 
Psalmanazar, but it is not an authentic book — 
though it was long esteemed as such, and trans- 
lated into different languages — for the author, in 
the latter part of his life, took shame to himself for 
having imposed on the world, and confessed that 
it was a mere romance. Anson's Voyage may be 
considered as an authentic book ; it probably con- 
tains a true narration of the principal events re- 
corded in it, but it is not a genuine book, having 
not been written by Walters, to whom it is ascribed, 
but by Robins. 

The distinction between the genuineness and 
authenticity of a book, will assist us in detecting 
the fallacy of an argument which you state with 
great confidence in the part of j^our work now 
under consideration, and which you frequently 
allude to in other parts as conclusive evidence 
against the truth of the Bible. Your arguments 
stand thus : If it be found that the books ascribed 
to Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, were not written 
by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, every part of the 
authority and authenticity of these books is gone 
at once. I presume to think otherwise. The gen- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 375 

uineness of those books — in the judgment of those 
who say that they were written by these authors — 
will certainly be gone, but their authenticity may 
remain ; they may still contain a true account of 
real transactions, though the names of the writers 
of them should be found to be different from what 
they are generally esteemed to be. 

Had indeed Moses said that he wrote the first 
fiv^e books of the Bible ; and had Joshua and Samuel 
said that they wrote the /books which are respec- 
tively attributed to them ; and had it been found 
that Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, did not write 
these books, then, I grant, the authority of the 
whole would have been gone at once : these men 
would have been found liars as to the genuineness 
of these books ; and this proof of their want of ve- 
racity in one point, would have invalidated their 
testimony in every other ; these books would have 
been justly stigmatized as neither genuine nor 
authentic. 

A history may be true, though it should not 
only be ascribed to a wrong author, but though the 
author of it should not be known ; anonymous testi- 
mony does not destroy the reality of facts, whether 
natural or miraculous. Had lord Clarendon pub- 
lished his History of the Rebellion without prefix- 
ing his name to it ; or had the History of Titus 
Livius come down to us under the name of Vale- 



376' WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

rius Flaccus, or Valerius Maximus, the facts men- 
tioned in these histories would have been equally 
certain. 

As to your assertion, that the miracles recorded 
in Tacitus, and in other profane historians, are quite 
as well authenticated as those of the Bible, it 
being a mere assertion, destitute of proof, may be 
properly answered by a contrary assertion, I take 
the liberty then to say, that the evidence for the 
miracles recorded in the Bible is, both in kind and 
in degree, so greatly superior to that for the prod- 
igies mentioned by Livy, or the miracles related by 
Tacitus, as to justify us in giving credit to the one 
■ as the work of God, and in withholding it from the 
other as the effect of superstition and imposture. 
This method of derogating from the credibility of 
Christianity, ' by opposing to the miracles of our 
Saviour the tricks of ancient impostors, seems to 
have originated with Hierocles in the fourth cen- 
tury ; and it has been adopted by unbehevers from 
that time to this — with this difference, indeed, that 
the heathens of the third and fourth century ad- 
mitted that Jesus wrought miracles ; but lest that 
admission should have compelled them to abandon 
their gods and become Christians, they said that 
their Apolonius, their Apukius, their Aristeas, did as 
great : while modern deists deny the fact of Jesus 
having ever wrought a miracle. And they have 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 377 . 

some reasQn for this proceeding ; they are sensible 
that the gospel miracles are so different, in all their 
circumstances, from those related in pagan story, 
that if they admit them to have *een performed, 
they must admit Christianity to be true ; hence 
they have fabricated a kind of deistical axiom, that 
no human testimony can establish the credibility 
of a miracle. This, though it has been a hundred 
times refuted, is still insisted upon, as if its truth 
had never been questioned, and could not be dis-. 
proved. 

You "proceed to examine the authenticity of the 
Bible ; and you begin, you say, with what are called 
the five books of Moses — Genesis, Exodus, Leviti- 
cus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Your intention, 
you profess, is to show that these books are spurious, 
and that Moses is not the author of them ; and still 
farther, that they were not written in the time of 
Moses, nor till several hundred years afterwards ; 
that they are no other than an attempted history 
of the Hfe of Moses, and of the times in which he 
is said to have lived, and also of times prior thereto, 
written by some very ignorant and stupid pretender 
to authorship, several hundred years after the death 
of Moses." In this passage the utmost force of 
your attack on the authority of the five books of 
Moses is clearly stated. You are not the first who 
has started this difficulty ; it is a difficulty, indeed, 



378 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

of modern date, having not been heard of, either in 
synagogue or out of it, till the twelfth century. 
About that time Aben Ezra, a Jew of great erudi- 
tion, noticed S(?hie passages — the same that you 
have brought forward — ^in the first five books of the 
Bible, which he thought had not been written b}'- 
Moses, but inserted by some person after the death 
of Moses. But he was far from maintaining, as 
you do, that these books were written by some 
ignorant and stupid pretender to authorship, many 
hundred years after the death of Moses. Hohhes 
contends that the books of Moses are so called, 
not froni their having been written by Moses, but 
from their containing an account of Moses. Spinoza 
supported the same opinion ; and Le Clerc, a very 
able theological critic of the last and present cen- 
tury, once entertained the same notion. You see 
that this fancy has had some patrons before you ; 
the merit or the demerit, the sagacity or the temer- 
ity of having asserted that Moses is not the author 
of the Pentateuch, is not entirely yours. Le Clerc, 
indeed, you must not boast of. When his judg- 
ment was matured by age, he was ashamed of 
what he had written on the subject in his younger 
years ; he made a public recantation of his error, 
by annexing to his commentary on Genesis a Latin 
dissertation concerning Moses, the author of the 
Pentateuch, and his design in composing it. If in 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 379 

your future life you should chance to change 
your opinion on the subject, it will be an honor to 
your character to emulate the integrity and to imi- 
tate the example of Le Clerc. The Bible is not the 
only book which has undergone the fate of being 
reprobated as spurious, after it had been received 
as genuine and authentic for many ages. It has 
been maintained that the history of Herodotus was 
written in the time of Constantine ; and that the 
Classics are forgeries of the thirteenth or fourteenth 
century. These extravagant reveries amused the 
world at the time of their publication, and have 
long since sunk into oblivion. You esteem all 
prophets to be such lying rascals, that I dare not 
predict the fate of your book. 

Before you produce your main objections to the 
genuineness of the books of Moses, you assert 
that "there is no affirmative evidence that Moses 
is the author of them." What, no affirmative evi- 
dence ? In the eleventh century, Maimomdes drew 
up a confession of faith for the Jews, which all of 
them at this day admit : it consists only of thirteen 
articles, and two of them have respect to Moses ; 
one affirming the authenticity, the other the gen- 
uineness of his books. The doctrine and prophecy 
of Moses is true. The law that we have was 
given by Moses. This is the faith of the Jews at 
present, and has been their faith ever since the de- 



380 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

struction of their city and temple ; it was their faith 
at the time when the authors of the New Testament 
wrote ; it was their faith during their captivity in 
Babylon — in the time of their kings and judges ; 
and no period can be shown, from the age of Moses 
to the present hour, in which it was not their faith. 
Is this no affirmative evidence ? I cannot desire a 
stronger. Josephus^ in his book against Appmi, 
writes thus, "We have only two and twenty books 
which are to be beUeved as of divine authority, and 
which comprehend the history of all ages ; five be- 
long to Moses, which contain the original of man 
and the tradition of the succession of generations, 
down to his death, which takes in a compass of 
about three thousand years." Do you consider this 
as no -affirmative evidence? Why should I men- 
tion Juvenal speaking of the volume which Moses 
had written ? Why enumerate a long list of pro- 
fane authors, all bearing testimony to the fact of 
Moses being the leader and the lawgiver of the 
Jewish nation ? And if a lawgiver, surely a writer 
of the laws. But what says the Bible ? In Exodus 
it says, "Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, 
and took the book of the covenant, and read in the 
audience of the people." In Deuteronomy it says, 
"And it came to pass, when Moses had made an 
end of writing the words of this law in a book, un- 
til they were finished" — this surely imports the 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 381 

finishing of a laborious work — ''that Moses com- 
manded the Levites, which bear the ark of tlie 
covenant of the Lord, saying, Take this book of 
the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the 
covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be 
there for a witness against thee." This is said in 
Deuteronomy, which is a kind of repetition or 
abridgment of the four preceding books ; and it is 
well known that the Jews gave the name of the 
Law to the first five books of the Old Testament. 
What possible doubt can there be that Moses wrote 
the books in question ? I could accumulate many 
other passages from the Scriptures to this purpose ; 
but if what I have advanced will not convince 
you that there is affirmative evidence, and of the 
strongest kind, for Moses being the author of these 
books, nothing that I can advance will convince 
you. 

What if I should grant all j'ou undertake to 
prove — the stupidity and ignorance of the writer 
excepted ? What if I should admit that Savmel or 
Ezra, or some other learned Jew, composed those 
books from public records, many years after the 
death of Moses ? Will it follow that there was no 
truth in them ? According to my logic, it will only 
follow that they are not genuine books ; every fact 
recorded in them may be true, whenever or by 
whomsoever they were written. It cannot be said 



382 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

that the Jews had no pubhc records ; the Bible fur- 
nishes abundance of j^roof to the contrary. I by- 
no means admit 'that these books, as to the main 
part of them, were not written by Moses ; but I 
do contend, that a book may contain a true history, 
though we know not the author of it, or though we 
may be mistaken in ascribing it to a wrong author 
The first argument you produce against Moses' 
being the author of these books is so old, that I do 
not know its original author ; and it is so miserable 
a one, that I wonder you should adoj^t it. " These 
books cannot be written by Moses, because they 
are wrote in the third person — it is always, 'The 
Lord said unto Moses, or Moses said unto the Lord.' 
This," you say, *'is the style and manner that his- 
torians use in speaking of the persons whose Hves 
and actions they are writing." This observation is 
true, but it does not extend far enough ; for this is 
the sj^4e and manner not only of historians writing 
of other persons, but of eminent men, such as 
Xenophon and Josephus, writing of themselves. If 
General Washington should write the history of the 
American war, and should, from his great modesty, 
speak of himself in the third person, would you 
think it reasonable that, two or three thousand 
years hence, any person should, on that account, 
contend that the history was not true ? Cresar 
writes of himself in the third person. It is always, 



WATSON'.S REPLY TO PAINE. 383 

Caesar made a speech, or a speech was made to 
Csesar, Caesar crossed the Rhine, Caesar invaded 
Britain ; but every school-boy knows that this cir- 
cumstance cannot be adduced as a serious argu- 
ment against Caesar's being the author of his own 
Commentaries. 

But Moses, you urge, cannot be the author of 
the book of Numbers, because he says of himself, 
that " Moses was a very meek man, above all the 
men that were on the face of the earth." If he 
said this of himself, he was, as you say, " a vain and 
arrogant coxcomb" — such is your phrase — "and 
unworthy of credit ; and if he did not say it, the 
hooks are without authority." This your dilemma 
is perfectly harmless ; it has not a horn to hurt the 
weakest logician. If Moses did not write this little 
verse — if it was inserted by Samuel, or any of his 
countrymen, who knew his character and revered 
his memory, will it follow that he did not write any 
other part of the book of Numbers ? Or if he did 
not write any part of the book of Numbers, will it 
follow that he did not write any of the other books 
of which he is usually reputed the author? And 
if he did write this of himself, he was justified by 
the occasion which extorted from him this com- 
mendation. Had this expression been written in a 
modern style and manner it would probably have 
given you no offence. For who would be so fastid- 



384 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

ious as to find fault with an illustrious man, who, 
being calumniated by his nearest relations, as guilty 
of pride and fond of power, should vindicate his 
character hy saying. My temper was naturally as 
meek and unassuming as that of any man upon 
earth? There are occasions in which a modest 
man, who speaks truly, may speak proudly of him- 
self, without forfeiting his general character ; and 
there is no occasion w^iich either more requires, or 
more excuses this conduct, than when he is repel- 
ling the foul and envious aspersions of those who 
both knew his character and had experienced his 
kindness ; and in that predicament stood Aaron and 
Miriam, \he accusers of Moses. You yourself have 
probably felt the sting of calumny, and have been 
anxious to remove the impression. I do not call 
you a vain and arrogant coxcomb for vindicating ' 
your character, when in the latter part of this very 
work you boast, I hope truly, "The man does not 
exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any 
man, or any set of men, in the American revolu- 
tion, or in the French revolution ; or that I have in 
any case returned evil for evil." I know not what 
kings and priests may say to this : 3'ou may not 
have returned to them evil for evil, because they 
never, I believe, did you any harm j but you have 
done them all the harm you could, and that with- 
out provocation. 



WATSON'S HEPLY TO PAINE. 385 

I think it needless to notice your observation 
upon what you call the dramatic style of Deuteron- 
omy ; it is an ill-founded hypothesis. You might 
as well ask where the author of Caesar's Commen- 
taries got the speeches of Caesar, as where the 
author of Deuteronomy got the speeches of Moses. 
But your argument, that Moses was not the author 
of Deuteronomy, because the reason given in that 
book for the observation of the Sabbath is different 
from that given in Exodus, merits a reply. 

You need not be told that the very name of this 
book imports, in Greek, a repetition of a law ; and 
that the Hebrew doctors have called it by a word 
of the same meaning. In the fifth verse of the first 
chapter it is said in our Bibles, "Moses began to 
declare this law ;" but the Hebrew words, more 
properly translated, import that ''Moses began, or 
determined to explain the law." This is no shift 
of mine to get over a difficulty ; the words are so 
rendered in most of the ancient versions, and by 
Fagius, Vatablus, and Le Clerc, men eminently 
skilled in the Hebrew language. This repetition 
and explanation of the law was a wise and benev- 
olent proceeding in Moses, that those who were 
either not born, or were mere infants, when it was 
first — forty years before — delivered in Horeb, might 
have an opportunity of knowing it ; especially as 
Moses their leader was so soon to be taken from 

lufidehty. 25 



386 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE.: 

them, and they were about to be settled in the 
midst of nations given to idolatry and sunk in vice. 
Now, where is the wonder that some variations 
and some additions should be made to a law, when 
a legislator thinks fit to republish it many years 
after its first promulgation ? 

With respect to the Sabbath, the learned are 
divided in opinion concernmg its origin — some con- 
tending that it was sanctified from the creation of 
the world ; that it was observed by the patriarchs 
before the flood ; that it was neglected by the Is- 
raelites during their bondage in Egypt, revived on 
the falling of manna in the wilderness, and enjoined 
as a positive law at Sinai. Others esteem its in- 
stitution to have been no older than the age of 
Moses ; and argue, that what is said of the sancti- 
fication of the Sabbath in the book of Genesis, is 
said by way of anticipation. There may be truth 
in both these accounts. To me it is probable that 
the memory of the creation was handed down from 
Adam to all his posterity ; and that the seventh 
day was for a long time held sacred by all nations, 
in commemoration of that event ; but that the pe- 
ciiliar rigidness of its observance was enjoined by 
Moses to the Israelites alone. As to there being 
two reasons given for its being kept holy — one, 
that on that day God rested from the work of cre- 
ation ; the other, that on that day God had given 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 387 

them rest from the servitude of Egypt — I see no 
contradiction in the accounts. If a man, in writing 
the histor}'' of England, should inform his readers 
that the parliament had ordered the fifth day of 
November to be kept holy, because on that day 
God delivered the nation from a bloody intended 
massacre b}^ gunpowder ; and if, in another part of 
his history, he should assign the deliverance of our 
church and nation from popery and arbitrary power, 
by the arrival of king William, as a reason for its 
being kept holy ; would any one contend that he 
was not justified in both these ways of expression, 
or that we ought from thence to conclude that he 
was not the author of them both ? 

You think "that law in Deuteronomy inhuman 
and brutal, which authorizes parents, the father and 
the mother, to bring their own children to have 
them stoned to death for what it is pleased to call 
stubbornness." You are aware, I suppose, that 
paternal power among the Romans, the Gauls, the 
Persians, and other nations, was of the most arbi- 
trary kind ; that it extended to the taking away of 
the life of the child. I do not know whether the 
Israelites in the time of Moses exercised this pa- 
ternal power ; it was not a custom adopted by all 
nations, but it was by many, and in the infancy of 
society, before individual families had coalesced into 
communities, it was probably very general. Now 



388 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

Moses, by this law, which you esteem brutal and 
inhuman, hindered such an extravagant power from 
being either introduced or exercised among the Is- 
raelites. This law is so far from countenancing the 
arbitrary power of a father over the life of his child, 
that it takes from him the power of accusing the 
child before a magistrate : the father and mother 
of the child must agree in bringing the child to 
judgment ; and it is not by their united will that 
the child Avas to be condemned to death — the elders 
of the city were to judge whether the accusation 
was true ; and the accusation was to be not merely, 
as you insinuate, that the child was stubborn, but 
that he was "stubborn and rebellious, a glutton 
and a drunkard." Considered in this light, you 
must allow the law to have been a humane re- 
striction of a power improper to be lodged with any 
parent. 

That you may abuse the priests, you abandon 
your subject. " Priests," you say, *' preach up Deu- 
teronomy, for Deuteronomy preaches up tithes." 
I do not know that priests preach up Deuteronomy 
more than they preach up other books of Scripture ; 
but I do know that tithes are not preached up in 
Deuteronomy more than in Leviticus, in Numbers, 
in Chronicles, in Malachi, in the law, the history, 
and the prophets of the Jewish nation. You go on : 
"It is from this book, chap, 25, ver. 4, they have 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 389 

taken the phrase, and applied it to tithing, 'Thou 
shalt not muzzle the ox wlien he treadeth out the 
corn ;' and that this might not escape observation, 
they have noted it in the table of the contents at 
the head of the chapter, though it is only a single 
verse of less than two hues. priests, priests, 
ye are willing to be compared to an ox, for the sake 
of tithes !" I cannot call this reasoning, and I will 
not pollute my page by giving it a proper appella- 
tion. Had the table of contents, instead of simply 
saying. The ox is not to be muzzled, said. Tithes 
enjoined, or priests to be maintained, there would 
have been a little ground for your censure. AVho- 
ever noted this phrase at the head of the chapter, 
had better reason for doing it than you have attrib- 
uted to them. They did it, because St. Paul had 
quoted it when he was proving to the Corinthians 
that they who preached the gospel had a right to 
live by the gospel ; it was Paul, and not the priests, 
who first applied this phrase to tithing. St. Paul, 
indeed, did not avail himself of the right he con- 
tended for ; he was not, therefore, interested in 
what he said. The reason on which he grounds 
the right is not merely this quotation, which you 
ridicule ; nor the appointment of the law of Moses, 
which you think fabulous ; nor the injunction of 
Jesus, which you despise : no, it is a reason founded 
in the nature of things, and which no philosopher, 



390 WATSON'S EEPLY TO PAINE. 

no unbeliever, no man of common-sense, can deny 
to be a solid reason : it amounts to this, that "the 
laborer is worthy of his hire." Nothing is so much 
a man's own as his labor and ingenuity ; and it is 
entirely consonant to the law of nature, that by 
the innocent use of these he should provide for his 
subsistence. Husbandmen, artists, soldiers, phy- 
sicians, lawyers, all let out their labor and talents 
for a stipulated reward ; why may not a priest do 
the same ? Some accounts of you have been pub- 
lished in England ; but conceiving them to have 
proceeded from a design to injure your character, 
I never read them. I know nothing of your par- 
entage, your education, or condition of life. You 
may have been elevated, by your birth, above the 
necessity of acquiring the means of sustaining life 
by the labor of either hand or head ; if this be the 
case, you ought not to despise those who have come 
into the world in less favorable circumstances. If 
your origin has been less fortunate, you must have 
supported yourself either by manual labor or the 
exercise of your genius. Why "should you think 
that conduct disreputable in priests, which you prob- 
ably consider as laudable in yourself? I will just 
mention, that the payment of tithes is no new 
institution, but that they were paid in the most 
ancient times, not to priests only, but to kings. 
I could give a hundred instances of tliis j two may 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 391 

be sufficient. Abraham paid tithes to the king of 
Salem, four hundred years before the law of Moses 
was given. The king of Salem was priest also of 
the most high God. Priests, you see, existed in 
the world, and were held in high estimation — for 
kings were priests — long before the impostures, as 
you esteem them, of the Jewish and Christian dis- 
pensations were heard of. But as this instance is 
taken from a book which you call "a book of con- 
tradictions and lies" — the Bible— I will give you 
another, from a book, to the authority of which, as 
it is written by a profane author, you probably will 
not object. Diogenes Laertius, in his life of Solon, 
cites a letter of Pisistratus to that lawgiver, in 
which he says, "I Pisistratus, the Tyrant, am con- 
tented with the stipends which were paid to those 
who reigned before me ; the people of Athens set 
apart a tenth of the fruits of their land, not for my 
private use, but to be expended in the public sacri- 
fices, and for ^e general good." 



392 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 



LETTER III. 

Haying done with what you call the grammatical 
evidence that Moses was not the author of the 
books attributed to him, you come to your historical 
and chronological evidence, and you begin with 
Genesis. Your first argument is taken from the 
single word, Dan, being found in Genesis, when it 
appears, from the book of Judges, that the town 
Laish was not called Dan till above three hundred 
and thirty years after the death of Moses ; there- 
fore the writer of Genesis, you conclude, must have 
lived after the town of Laish had the name of Dan 
given it. Lest this objection should not be obvious 
enough to a common capacity, you illustrate in the 
following manner : " Havre-de-Grace was called 
Havre-Marat in 1793; should then any dateless 
writing be found, in after-times, with the name of 
Havre-Marat, it would be certain evidence that such 
a writing could not have been written till after the 
year It 93." This is a wrong conclusion. Suppose 
some hot republican should at this day publish a 
new edition of any old history of France, and in- 
stead of Havre-de-Grace should write Havre-Marat ; 
and that, two or three thousand years hence, a 
man like yourself should, on that account, reject 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 393 

the whole history as spurious, would he be justi- 
fied in so doing? Would it not be reasonable to 
tell him that the name of Havre-Marat had been 
inserted, not by the original author of the history, 
but' by a subsequent editor of it ; and to refer him, 
for a proof of the genuineness of the book, to the 
testimony of the whole French nation ? This sup- 
position so obviously applies to your difficulty, that 
I cannot but recommend it to your impartial atten- 
tion. But if this solution does not please you, I 
desire it may be proved that the Dan mentioned in 
Genesis was the same town as the Dan mentioned 
in Judges ; I desire, further, to have it proved that 
the Dan mentioned in Genesis was the name of 
a town, and not of a river. It is merely said, 
Abram pursued them, the enemies of Lot, to Dan. 
Now, a river was full as likely as a town to stop 
a pursuit. Lot, we know, w^as settled in the plain 
of Jordan; and Jordan, we know, was composed 
of the united streams of two rivers called Jor and 
Dan. 

Your next difficulty respects its being said in 
Genesis, " These are the kings that reigned in Edom 
before there reigned any king over the children of 
Israel." "This passage could only have been writ- 
ten," you say, and I think you say rightly, " after the 
first king began to reign over Israel : so far from 
being written by Moses, it could not have been 



394 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

written till the time of Saul at the least." I admit 
this inference, but I deny its application. A small 
addition to a book does not destroy either the gen- 
uineness or the authenticity of the whole book. I 
am not ignorant of the manner in which commen- 
tators have answered this objection of Spinoza, 
without making tlie concession which I have made ; 
but I have no scruple in admitting that the passage 
in question, consisting of nine verses, containing 
the genealogy of some kings of Edom, might have 
been inserted in the book of Genesis after the book 
of Chronicles — which was called, in Greek, by a 
name importing that it contained things left out 
in other books — was written. The learned have 
shown that interpolations have hajDpened to other 
books ; but these insertions by other hands have 
never been considered as invalidating the authority 
of the books. 

"Take away from Genesis," you say, "the belief 
that Moses was the author, on which only the 
strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, 
and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anon- 
ymous book of stories, fables, traditionary or in- 
vented absurdities, or of downright lies." What, 
is it a story, then, that the world had a beginning, 
and that the author of it was God ? If you deem 
this a story, I am not disputing with a deistical 
philosopher, but with an atheistic madman. Is it 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 395 

a story, that our first parents fell from a paradisiacal 
state — that this earth was destroyed by a deluge — 
that Noah and his family were preserved in the 
ark — and that the world has been repeopled by his 
descendants? Look into a book so common that 
almost every body has it, and so excellent that no 
person ought to be without it — Grotius on the Truth 
of the Christian Religion — and you will there meet 
with abundant testimony to the truth of all the 
principal facts recorded in Genesis. The testimony 
is not that of Jews, Christians, and priests ; it is 
the testimony of the philosophers, historians, and 
poets of antiquity. The oldest book in the world 
is Genesis ; and it is remarkable that those books 
which come nearest to it in age, are those which 
make either the most distinct mention, or the most 
evident allusion to the facts related in Genesis con- 
cerning the formation of the world from a chaotic 
mass, the primeval innocence and subsequent fall 
of man, the longevity of mankind in the first ages 
of the world, the depravity of the antediluvians, 
and the destruction of the world. Read the tenth 
chapter of Genesis. It may appear to you to con- 
tain nothing but an uninteresting narration of the 
descendants of Shem, Ham, and Jajpheth — a mere 
fable, an invented absurdity, a downright lie. No, 
sir, it is one of the most valuable and the most 
venerable records of antiquity. It explains what all 



396 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

profane historians were ignorant of — the origin of 
nations. Had it told us, as other books do, that 
one nation had sprung out of the earth they inhab- 
ited ; another from a cricket or a grasshopper ; an- 
other from an oak ; another from a mushroom ; an- 
other from a dragon's tooth ; then indeed it would 
have merited the appellation you, with so much 
temerity, bestow upon it. Instead 0/ these ab- 
surdities, it gives such an account of peopling the 
earth after the deluge, as no other book in the 
world ever did give ; and the truth of which, all 
other books in the world, which contain any thing 
on the subject, confirm. The last verse of the chap- 
ter says, "These are the families of the sons of 
Noah, after their generations, in their nations ; and 
by these were the nations divided in the earth after 
the flood." It would require great learning to trace 
out precisely, either the actual situation of all the 
countries in which these founders of empires settled, 
or to ascertain the extent of their dominions. This, 
however, has been done by various authors, to the 
satisfaction of all competent judges ; so much at 
least to my satisfaction, that, had I no other proof 
of the authenticity of Genesis, I should consider 
this as sufficient. But without the aid of learning, 
any man who can barely read his Bible, and has 
but heard of such people as the Assyrians, the 
Elaviites, the Lydians, the Medes, the lonians, the 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 397 

Thradans^ will readily acknowledge that they had 
Asur, and Elavi, and Lud, and Madia, and Javan, 
and Tiras, grandsons of Noah, for their respective 
founders ; and knowing this, he will not, I hope, 
part with his Bible as a system of fables. I am 
no enemy to philosophy, but when philosophy 
would rob me of my Bible, I must say of it, as 
Cicero said of the twelve tables, ''This little book 
alone exceeds the libraries of all the philosophers, 
in the weight of its authority, and in the extent of 
its utility." 

From the abuse of the Bible you proceed to that 
of Moses, and again bring forward the subject of 
his wars in the land of Canaani There are many 
men who look upon all war — would to God that 
all men saw it in the same light — with extreme ab- 
horrence, as afflicting mankind with calamities not 
necessary, shocking to humanity, and repugnant 
to reason. But is it repugnant to reason that God 
should, by an express act of his providence, destroy 
a wicked nation? I am fond of considering the 
goodness of God as the leading principle of his con- 
duct towards mankind, of considering his justice as 
subservient to his mercy. He punishes individuals 
and nations with the rod of his wrath ; but I am 
persuaded that all his punishments originate in his 
abhorrence of sin, are calculated to lessen its in- 
fluence, and are proofs of his goodness ; inasmuch 



398 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

as it may not be possible for Omnipotence itself to 
communicate supreme happiness to the human race 
while they continue servants of sin. The destruc- 
tion of the Canaanites exhibits to all nations, in all 
ages, a signal proof of God's displeasure against 
sin : it has been to others, and it is to ourselves, a 
benevolent warning. Moses would have been the 
wretch you represent him, had he acted by his own 
authority alone ; but you may as reasonably attrib- 
ute cruelty and murder to the judge of the land 
in condemning criminals to death, as butchery and 
massacre to Moses in executing the command of 
God. 

The Midianites, through the counsel of Balaam, 
and by the vicious instrumentality of their women, 
had' seduced a part of the Israelites to idolatry, to 
the impure worship of their infamous god Baal-peor : 
for this offence, twenty-four thousand Israelites had 
perished in a plague from heaven, and Moses re- 
ceived a command from God "to smite the Midi- 
anites who had beguiled the people." An army 
was equipped, and sent against Midian. When the 
army returned victorious, Moses and the princes 
of the congregation went to meet it ; and " Moses 
was wroth with the officers." He observed the 
women captives, and he asked with astonishment, 
"Have ye saved all the women aUve? Behold, 
these caused the childi'en of Israel, through the 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 399 

counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the 
Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague 
among the congregation." He then gave an order 
that the boys and the women should be put to 
death, but that the young maidens should be kept 
alive for themselves. I see nothing in this proceed- 
ing, but good policy combined with mercy. The 
young men might have become dangerous avengers 
of what they would esteem their country's wrongs ; 
the mothers might have again allured the Israelites 
to love licentious pleasures and the practice of idol- 
atry, and brought another plague upon the con- 
gregation ; but the young maidens, not being pol- 
luted by the flagitious habits of their mothers, nor 
likely to create disturbance by rebellion, were kept 
alive. You give a different turn to the matter ; 
you say, that "thirty-two thousand women-children 
were consigned to debauchery by the order of 
Moses." Prove this, and I will allow that Moses 
was the horrid monster you make him ; prove this, 
and I will allow that the Bible is what you call it, 
'' a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy;" prove 
this, or excuse my warmth if I say to you, as Paul 
said to Ely mas the sorcerer, who sought to turn 
away Sergius Paulus from the faith, "0 full of all 
subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, 
thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not 
cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord ?" I 



400 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

did not, when I began these letters, think that I 
should have been moved to this severity of rebuke 
by any thing j^ou could have written ; but when 
so gross a misrepresentation is made of God's pro- 
ceedings, coolness would be a crime. The women- 
children were not reserved for the purposes of de- 
bauchery, but of slavery — a custom abhorrent from 
our manners, but everywhere practised in former 
times, and still practised in countries where the 
benignity of the Christian religion has not softened 
the ferocit}^ of human nature. You here admit a 
part of the account given in tlie Bible respecting 
the expedition against Midian to be a true account : 
it is not unreasonable to desire that you will ad- 
mit the whole, or show sufficient reason why you 
admit one part and reject the other. I will mention 
the part to which you have paid no attention. The 
Israelitish army consisted but of twelve thousand 
men, a mere handful when opposed to the people 
of Midian ; yet, when the officers made a muster 
of their troops after their return from the war, 
they found that they had not lost a single man I 
This circumstance struck them as so decisive an 
evidence of God's interposition, that out of the 
spoils they had taken they offered " an oblation to 
the Lord, an atonement for their souls." Do but 
believe what the captains of thousands and the cap- 
tains of hundi'eds believed at the time when these 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 4Q1 

things happened, and we shall never more hear of 
your objections to the Bible from its account of the 
wars of Moses. 

You produce two or three other objections re- 
specting the genuineness of the first five books of 
the Bible. I cannot stop to notice them : every 
commentator answers them in a manner suited to 
the apprehension of even a mere English reader. 
You calculate to the thousandth part of an inch, 
the length of the iron bed of Og the king of Bashan ; 
but you do not prove that the bed was too big for 
the body, or that a Patagonian would have been 
lost in it. You make no allowance for the size of 
a royal bed, nor ever suspect that king Og might 
have been possessed with the same kind of vanity 
which occupied the mind of king Alexander when 
he ordered his soldiers to enlarge the size of their 
beds, that they might give the Indians, in succeed- 
ing ages, a great idea of the prodigious stature of a 
Macedonian. In many parts of your work you 
speak much in commendation of science. I join 
with you in every commendation you can give it ; 
but you speak of it in such a manner as to give room 
to believe that you are a great proficient in it : if 
this be the case, I would recommend a problem to 
your attention, the solution of which you will readily 
allow to be far above the powers of a man con- 
versant only, as you represent priests and bishops 

Infidelity. 26 



402. "WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

to be, in hie, hctc, hoc. The problem is this^-to de- 
termine the height to which a human body, pre- 
serving its similarity of figure, may be augmented, 
before it will perish by its own weight. When 
you have solved this problem, we shall know 
whether the bed of the king of Bashan was too 
big for any giant ; whether the existence of a man 
twelve or fifteen feet high is in the nature of things 
impossible. My philosophy teaches me to doubt 
of many things, but it does not teach me to reject 
€very testimony which is opposite to my experi- 
ence : had I been in Shetland, I could, on proper 
testimony, have believed in the existence of the 
Lincolnshire ox, or of the largest dray-horse in 
London, though the oxen and horses in Shetland 
had not been bigger than mastiffs. 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 403 



LETTER IV. 

Having finished your objections to the genuine- 
ness of the books of Moses, you proceed to your 
remarks on the book of Joshua ; and from its in- 
ternal evidence you endeavor to prove that this 
book was not written by Joshua. What then ? 
what is your conclusion ? " That it is anonymous, 
and without authority." Stop a little : your con- 
clusion is not connected with your premises ; your 
friend Euclid would have been ashamed of it. 
" Anonymous, and therefore without authority I" 
I have noticed this solecism before ; but as you 
frequently bring it forward — and indeed your book 
stands much in need of it — I will submit to your 
consideration another observation on the subject. 
The book called Fleta is anonymous ; but it is not 
on that account without authority.. Doomsday- 
book is anonymous, and was written above seven 
hundred years ago ; yet our courts of law do not 
hold it to be without authority as to the facts re- 
lated in it. Yes, you will say, but this book has 
been preserved with peculiar care among the rec- 
ords of the nation. And who told you that the 
Jews had no records, or that thej^ did not preserve 
them with singular care ? Josephus says the con- 
trary ; and in the Bible itself an appeal is made to 



404 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

many books which have perished, such as the 
book of Jasher, the book of Nathan, of Abijah, of 
Iddo, of Jehu, of natural history by Solomon, of the 
acts of Manasseh, and others which might be men- 
tioned. If any one having access to the journals 
of the lords and commons, to the books of the trea- 
sury, war-office, privy council, and other public 
documents, should at this day write a history of 
the reigns of George the First and Second, and 
should publish it without his name, would any 
man, three or four hundreds or thousands of years 
hence, question the authority of that book, when 
he knew that the whole British nation had received 
it as an authentic book from the time of its first 
publication to the age in which he lived ? This 
supposition is in point. The books of the Old Tes- 
tament were composed from the records of the 
Jewish nation, and they have been received as 
true by that nation, from the time in which they 
were written to the present day. Dodsley's An- 
nual Register is an anonymous book, we only 
know the name of its editor ; the New Annual 
Register is an anonymous book ; the Reviews are 
anonymous books ; but do we, or will our posterity 
esteem those books of no authority ? On the con- 
trary, they are admitted at present, and will be 
received in after-ages, as authoritative records of 
the civil and military and literary history of Eng- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 405 

land and of Europe. So little foundation is there 
for our being startled by your assertion, "It is 
anonjmious, and without authority." 

If I am right in this reasoning — and I protest to 
you that I do not see any error in it — all the argu- 
ments you adduce in proof that the book of Joshua 
was not written by Joshua, nor that of Samuel by 
Samuel, are nothing to the purpose for which you 
have brought them forward : these books may be 
books of authority, though all you advance against 
the genuineness of them should be granted. No 
article of faith is injured by allowing that there is 
no such positive proof, when or by whom these 
and some other books of holy Scripture were writ- 
ten, as to exclude all possibility of doubt and cavil. 
There is no necessity, indeed, to allow this. The 
chronological and historical difficulties, which others 
before you have produced, have been answered, 
and as to the greatest part of them so well an- 
swered, that I will not waste the reader's time by 
entering into a particular examination of them. 

You make yourself merry with what you call 
the tale of the sun standing still upon mount Gib- 
eon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon ; and 
you say that '' the story detects itself, because 
there is not a nation in the world that knows any 
thing about it." How can you expect that there 
should, when there is not a nation in the world 



406 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

whose annals reach this era by many hundred 
years ? It happens, however, that you are proba- 
bly mistaken as to the fact ; a confused tradition 
concerning this miracle, and a similar one in the 
time of Ahaz, when the sun went back ten degrees, 
has been preserved among one of the most ancient 
nations, as we are informed by one of the most 
ancient historians. Herodotus, in his Euterpe, 
speaking of the Egyptian priests, says, " They told 
me that the sun had four times deviated from his 
course, having twice risen where he uniformly 
goes down, and twice gone down where he uni- 
formly rises. This however had produced no al- 
teration in the climate of Egypt ; the fruits of the 
earth and the phenomena of the Nile had always 
been the same." Beloe's Translation. The last 
part of this observation confirms the conjecture, 
that this account of the Egyptian priests had a 
reference to the two miracles respecting the sun 
mentioned in Scripture ; for they were not of that 
kind which could introduce any change in climates 
or seasons. You would have been contented to 
admit the account of this miracle as a fine piece of 
poetical imagery : you may have seen some Jew- 
ish doctors, and some Christian commentators, who 
consider it as such, but improperly, in my opinion. 
I think it idle at least, if not impious, to undertake 
to explain how the miracle was performed; but 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 407 

one who is not able to explain the mode of doing 
a thing, argues ill if he hence infers that the thing 
was not done. "VVe are perfectl}^ ignorant how the 
sun was formed, how the planets were projected 
at the creation, how they are still retained in their 
orbits by the power of gravity ; but we admit, not- 
withstanding, that the sun was formed, that the 
planets were then projected, and that they are still 
retained in their orbits. The machine of the uni- 
verse is in the hand of God ; he can stop the motion 
of any part, or of the whole of it, with less trouble 
and less danger of injuring it than you can stop your 
watch. In testimony of the realit}^ of the miracle, 
the author of the book says, '' Is not this written 
in the book' of Jasher?" No author in his senses 
would have appealed, in proof of his veracity, to a 
book which did not exist, or in attestation of a fact 
which, though it did exist, was not recorded in it ; 
we may safely therefore conclude, that, at the time 
the book of Joshua was written, there was such a 
book as the book of Jasher, and that the miracle of 
the sun's standing still was recorded in that book. 
But this observation, you will say, does not prove 
the fact of the sun's having stood still. I have not 
produced it as a proof of that fact ; but it proves 
that the author of the book of Joshua beheved the 
fact, that the people of Israel admitted the authority 
of the book of Jasher. An appeal to a fabulous 



408 WATSON'S EEPLY TO PAINE. 

book would have been as senseless an insult upon 
their understanding, as it would have been upon 
ours had Rapin appealed to the Arabian Nights' 
Entertainments as a proof of the battle of Hast- 
ings. 

I cannot attribute much weight to your argu- 
ment against the genuineness of the book of Josh- 
ua, from its being said that "Joshua burned Ai, 
and made it a heap for ever, even a desolation 
unto this day.''^ Joshua lived twenty-four years 
after the burning of Ai ; and if he wrote his history 
in the latter part of his life, what absurdity is there 
in saying, Ai is still in ruins, or Ai is in ruins to 
this very day ? A young man, who had seen the 
heads of the rebels in forty-five, when they were 
first stuck upon the poles at Temple-Bar, might, 
twenty years afterwards, in attestation of his 
veracity in speaking of the fact, have justly said, 
And they are there to this very day. Whoever 
wrote the gospel of St. Matthew, it was written not 
many centuries, probably — I had almost said cer- 
tainly — not a quarter of one century after the death 
of Jesus ; yet the author, speaking of the potter's 
field which had been purchased by the chief priests 
with the money they had given to Judas to betray 
his Master, says that it was therefore called the 
field of blood unto this day; and in another place 
he says that the story of the body of Jesus being 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 409 

stolen out of the sepulchre was commonly reported 
among the Jews until this day. Moses, in his old 
age, had made use of a similar expression, when 
he put the Israelites in mind of what the Lord had 
done to the Egyptians in the Red sea : " The Lord 
hath destroyed them unto this day." Deut. 11:4. 
In the last chapter of the book of Joshua it is 
related that Joshua assembled all the tribes of Is- 
rael to Shechem, and there, in the presence of the 
elders and principal men of Israel, he recapitulated, 
in a short speech, all that God had done for their 
nation from the calling of Abraham to that time, 
when they were settled in the land which God 
had promised to their forefathers. In finishing his 
speech, he said to them, *' Choose you this day 
whom you will serve ; whether the gods which 
your fathers served, that were on the other side 
of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose 
land ye dwell : but as for me and my house, we 
will serve the Lord." And the people answered 
and said, " God forbid that we should forsake the 
Lord to serve other gods." Joshua urged farther, 
that God would not suffer them to worship other 
gods in fellowship with him. They answered that 
'' they would serve the Lord." Joshua then said 
to them, " Ye are witnesses against yourselves 
that ye have chosen you the Lord to serve him." 
And they said, " We are witnesses." Here was a 



410 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

solemn covenant between Joshua, on the part of 
the Lord, and all the men of Israel, on their own 
part. The text then says, " So Joshua made a 
covenant with the people that day, and set them a 
statute and an ordinance in Shechem ; ami Joshxia 
wrote these words in the hook of the law of God." 
Here is a proof of two things : first, that there 
was then, a few years after the death of Moses, 
existing a book called the Book of the Law of God ; 
the same, without doubt, which Moses had written, 
and committed to the custody of tlie Levites, that 
it might be kept in the ark of the covenant of the 
Lord, that it might be a witness against them ; 
secondl}^, that Joshua wrote a part at least of his 
own transactions in that very book, as an addition 
to it. It is not a proof that he wrote all his own 
transactions in any book ; but I submit entirely to 
the judgment of every candid man, whether this 
proof of his having recorded a very material trans- 
action does not make it probable that he recorded 
other material transactions — that he wrote the 
chief part of the book of Joshua — and that such 
things as happened after his death have been in- 
serted in it by others, in order to render the his- 
tory more complete. 

The book of Joshua, chap. 6, ver. 26, is quoted 
in the first book of Kings, chap. 16 : 34. " In his," 
Ahab's, ''days did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho ; 



WATSON'S UEPLY TO PAINE. 411 

he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his first- 
born, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest 
son Segub, according to the word of the Lord which 
ho spake by Joshua the son of Nun." Here is a 
proof that the book of Joshua is older than the first 
book of Kings : but that is not all which may rea- 
sonably be inferred, I do not say proved, from this 
quotation. It may be inferred from the phrase, 
" according to the word of the Lord which he spake 
by Joshua the son of Nun," that Joshua wrote 
down the word which the Lord had spoken. In 
Baruch — which, though an apocryphal book, is au- 
thority for this purpose — there is a similar phrase : 
as thou spakest by thy servant Moses in the day 
when thou didst command him to write thy law. 

I think it unnecessary to make any observations 
on what you say relative to the book of Judges ; 
but I cannot pass unnoticed your censure of the 
book of Ruth, which you call " an idle bungling 
story, foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about 
a strolling country girl creeping slyly to-bed to her 
cousin Boaz : pretty stuff indeed," you exclaim, 
" to be called the word of God !" It seems to me 
that you do not perfectly comprehend what is 
meant by the expression, the word of God, or the 
divine authority of the Scriptures : I will explain 
it to you in the words of Dr. Law, late Bishop of 
Carlisle, and in those of St. Austin. My first quo- 



413 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

tation is from Bishoi? Law's Theory of Religion, a, 
book not undeserving your notice. " The true 
sense then of the divim authority of the books of 
the Old Testament, and which perhaps is enough 
to denominate them in general divinely inspired, 
seems to be this : that as in those times God has 
all along, besides the inspection or superintendency 
of liis general providence, interfered upon particu- 
lar occasions, by giving express commissions to 
some persons, thence called prophets, to declare his 
will in various manners and degrees of evidence, 
as best suited the occasion, time, and nature of 
the subject, and in all other cases left them wholly 
to themselves : in like manner he has interposed 
his more immediate assistance — and notified it to 
them, as they did to the world — ^in the recording of 
these revelations, so far as that was necessary, 
amidst the common, but from hence termed sacred, 
history of those times ; and mixed with various 
other occurrences, in which the historian's own 
natural qualifications were sufficient to enable him 
to relate things with all the accuracy they requir- 
ed." The passage from St. Austin is this : "I am 
of opinion that those men to whom the Holy Ghost 
revealed what ought to be received as authorita- 
tive in religion, might write some things as men, 
with historical diligence, and other things as proph- 
ets, by divine inspiration ; and that these things 



"WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 413 

are so distinct, that the former may be attributed 
to themselves as contributing to the increase of 
knowledge, and the latter to God speaking by 
them things appertaining to the authority of re- 
ligion." Whether this opinion be right or wrong, 
I do not here inquire ; it is the opinion of many 
learned men and good Christians ; and if you will 
adopt it as your opinion, you will see cause, per- 
haps, to become a Christian yourself — you will 
see cause to consider chronological, geographical, 
or genealogical errors, apparent mistakes or real 
contradictions as to historical facts, needless repe- 
titions and trifling interpolations — indeed, you will 
see cause to consider all the principal objections of 
your book to be absolutely without foundation. 
Only receive the Bible as composed by upright 
and well informed, though, in some points, fallible 
men — for I exclude all fallibility when they profess 
to deliver the word of God — and you must receive 
it as a book revealing to you, in many parts, the 
express will of God ; and in other parts, relating 
to 3"0u the ordinary histor}^ of the times. Give 
but the authors of the Bible that credit which you 
give to other historians : believe them to deliver 
the word of God, when they tell you that they do 
so ; believe, when they relate other things as of 
themselves and not of the Lord, that they wrote 
to the best of their knowledge and capacity, and 



414 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

you will be in your belief something very different 
from a deist : you may not be allowed to aspire to 
the character of an orthodox believer, but you will 
not be an unbeliever in the divine authority of the 
Bible, though you should admit human mistakes 
and human opinions to exist in some parts of it. 
This I take to be the first step towards the removal 
of the doubts of many sceptical men ; and when 
they are advanced thus far, the grace of God as- 
sisting, a teachable disposition and a pious inten- 
tion may carry them on to perfection. 

As to Ruth, you do an injury to her character. 
She was not a strolling country girl. She had 
been married ten years ; and being left a widow 
without children, she accompanied her mother-in- 
law, returning into her native country, out of 
which, with her husband and her two sons, she 
had been driven by a famine. The disturbances 
in France have driven many men with their fami- 
lies to America ; if, ten years hence, a woman, 
having lost her husband and her children, should 
return to France with a daughter-in-law, would 
you be justified in calling the daughter-in-law a 
strolling country girl ? '^ But she crept slyly to-bed 
to her cousin Boaz." I do not find it so in the 
history : as a person imploring protection, she laid 
herself down at the foot of an aged kinsman's bed, 
and she rose up with as much innocence as she had 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 415 

laid herself down. She was afterwards married to 
Boaz, and reputed by all her neighbors a virtuous 
woman ; and they were more likely to know her 
character than you are. Whoever reads the book 
of Ruth, bearing in mind the simplicity of ancient 
manners, will find it an interesting story of a poor 
young woman, following in a strange land the ad- 
vice, and affectionately attaching herself to the for- 
tunes of the mother of her deceased husband. 

The two books of Samuel come next under your 
review. You proceed to show that these books 
were not written by Samuel, that they are anony- 
mous, and thence you conclude, without authority. 
I need not here repeat what I have said upon the 
fallacy of your conclusion ; and as to your proving 
that the books were not wi'itten by Samuel, you 
might have spared yourself some trouble if you 
had recollected that it is generally admitted that 
Samuel did not write any part of the second book 
which bears his name, and only a part of the first. 
It would indeed have been an inquiry not unde- 
serving your notice, in many parts of your work, 
to have examined what was the opinion of learned 
men respecting the authors of the several books of 
the Bible ; you would have found that you were 
in many places fighting a phantom of your own 
raising, and proving what was generally admitted. 
Very little certainty, I think, can at this time be 



416 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

obtained on this subject ; but tliat you may have 
some knowledge of what has been conjectured by 
men of judgment, I will quote to you a passage 
from Dr. Hartley's Observations on Man. The 
author himself does not vouch for the truth of his 
observations, for he begins it with a supposition : 
" I suppose, then, that the Pentateuch consists of 
the writings of Moses, put together by Samuel, 
with a very few additions ; that the books of Josh- 
ua and Judges were, in like manner, collected by 
him ; and the book of Ruth, with the first part of 
the book of Samuel, written by him ; that the lat- 
ter part of the first book of Samuel, and the second 
book, were written by the prophets who succeeded 
Samuel, suj^pose Nathan and Gad ; that the books 
of Kings and Chronicles are extracts from the rec- 
ords of the succeeding prophets concerning their 
own times, and from the public genealogical tables 
made by Ezra ; that the books of Ezra and Nehe- 
miah are collections of like records, some written 
by Ezra and Nehemiah, and some by their prede- 
cessors ; that the book of Esther was written by 
some eminent Jew, in or near the times of the 
transactions there recorded, perhaps Mordecai ; the 
book of Job by a Jew, of an uncertain time ; the 
Psalms by David, and other pious persons ; the 
books of Proverbs and Canticles by Solomon ; the 
book of Ecclesiastes by Solomon, or perhaps by a 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 417 

Jew of later times, speaking in his person, but not 
with an intention to make him pass for the author ; 
the prophecies by the prophets whose names they 
bear ; and the books of the New Testament' by the 
persons to whom they are usually ascribed." I 
have produced this passage to you, not merely to 
show you that, in a great part of your work, you 
are attacking what no person is interested in de- 
fending, but to convince you that a wise and good 
man, and a firm believer in revealed religion — for 
such was Dr. Hartley, and no priest — did not reject 
the anonymous books of the Old Testament as 
books without authority. I shall not trouble either 
you or myself with any more observations on that 
head : you may ascribe the two books of Kings 
and the two books of Chronicles to what authors 
you please ; I am satisfied with knowing that the 
annals of the Jewish nation were written in the 
time of Samuel, and probably in all succeeding 
times, by men of ability who lived in or near the 
times of which they write. Of the truth of this 
observation we have abundant proof, not only from 
the testimony of Josephus and of the writers of 
the Talmuds, but front the Old Testament itself. 
I will content myself with citing a few places. 
" Now the acts of David the king, first and last, 
behold, they are written in the book of Samuel the 
seer, and in the book of Nathan the prophet, and 

Infidelity. St 



418 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

in the book of Gad the seer.". 1 Chron. 29 : 29. 
"Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and 
last, are they not written in the book of Nathan 
the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the 
Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer?" 
2 Chron. 9 : 29. '' Now the acts of Rehoboam, first 
and last, are they not written in the book of She- 
maiah the prophet, and of Iddo the seer, concern- 
ing genealogies?" 2 Chron. 12:15. "Now the 
rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, first and last, be- 
hold, they are written in the book of Jehu, the son 
of Hanini." 2 Chron. 20 : 34. Is it possible for 
writers to give a stronger evidence of their ve- 
racity, than by referring their readers to the books 
from which they had extracted the materials of 
their history ? 

" The two books of Kings," 3-ou say, " are little 
more than a history of assassinations, treachery, 
and war." That the kings of Israel und Judah 
were many of them very wicked persons, is evi- 
dent from the history which is given of them in the 
Bible ; but it ought to be remembered, that their 
wickedness is not to be attributed to their religion ; 
nor were the people of Israel'chosen to be the people 
of God on account of their wickedness ; nor was 
their being chosen a cause of it. One may wonder 
indeed, that having experienced so many singular 
marks of God's goodness towards their nation, they 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 419 

did not at once become, and continue to be — what, 
however, they have long been — strenuous advo- 
cates for the worship of one only God, the maker 
of heaven and earth. This was the purpose for 
which they were chosen, and this purpose has 
been accomplished. For above three and twenty 
hundred years, the Jews have uniformly witness- 
ed, to all the nations of the earth, the unity of God 
and his abomination of idolatry. But as you look 
•upon "the appellation of the Jews being God's 
chosen people as a lie, which the priests and leaders 
of the Jews had invented to cover the baseness of 
their own characters, and which Christian priests, 
sometimes as corrupt and often as cruel, have pro- 
fessed to believe," I will plainly state to you the 
reasons which induce me to believe that it is no 
lie, and I hope they will be such reasons as you 
will not attribute either to cruelty or corruption. 

To any one contemplating the universality of 
things and the fabric of nature, this globe of earth, 
with the men dwelling on its surface, will not 
appear, exclusive of the divinity of their souls, of 
more importance than a hillock of ants ; all of 
which, some with corn, some with eggs, some 
without any thing, run hither and thither, bus- 
tling about a little heap of dust. This is a thought 
of the immortal Bacon ; and it is admirably fitted 
to humble the pride of philosophy, attempting to 



420 ATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

prescribe forms to the proceedings, and bounds to 
the attributes of God. We may as easily circum- 
scribe infinity as penetrate the secret purposes of 
the Almighty. There are but two ways by which 
I can acquire any knowledge of the Supreme Be- 
ing — by reason, and by revelation ; to you, who 
reject revelation, there is but one. Now, my rea- 
son informs me that God has made a great differ- 
ence between the kinds of animals, with respect to 
their capacity of enjoying happiness. Every kind 
is perfect in its order ; but if we compare different 
kinds together, one will appear to be greatly supe- 
rior to another. An animal which has but one 
sense, has but one source of happiness ; but if it 
be supplied with what is suited to that sense, it 
enjoys all the happiness of which it is capable, and 
is in its nature perfect. Other sorts of animals, 
which have two or three senses, and which have 
also abundant means of gratifying them, enjoy 
twice or thrice as much happiness as those do 
which have but one. In the same sort of animals 
there is a great difference among individuals, one 
having the senses more perfect, and the body less 
subject to disease, than another. Hence, if I were 
to form a judgment of the divine goodness by this 
use of my reason, I could not but say that it was 
partial and unequal. " What shall we say then ? 
Is God unjust ? God forbid 1" His goodness may 



WATSONS REPLY TO PAINE. 421 

be unequal without being imperfect ; it must be 
estimated from the whole, and not from a part. 
Every order -of beings is so sufficient for its own 
happiness, and so conducive at the same time to 
the happiness of every other, that in one view it 
seems to be made for itself alone, and in another, 
not for itself, but for every other. Could we com- 
prehend the whole of the immense fabric which 
God hath formed, I am persuaded that we should 
see nothing but perfection, harmony, and beauty, 
in every part of it ; but while we dispute about 
parts, we neglect the whole, and discern nothing 
but supposed anomalies and defects. The maker 
of a watch, or the builder of a ship, is not to be 
blamed because a spectator cannot discover either 
the beauty or the use of the disjointed parts. And 
shall we dare to accuse God of injustice, for not 
having distributed the gifts of nature in the same 
degree to all kinds of animals, when it is probable 
that this very inequahty of distribution may be the 
means of producing the greatest sum total of hap- 
piness to the whole system ? In exactly the same 
manner may we reason concerning the acts of God's 
especial providence. If we consider any one act, 
such as that of appointing the Jews to be his 
peculiar people, as unconnected with every other, 
it may appear to be a partial display of his good- 
ness — it may excite doubts concerning the wisdom 



422 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

or the benignity of bis divine nature. But if we 
connect the history of the Jews with that of other 
nations, from the most remote antiquity to the 
present time, we shall discover that they were 
not chosen so much for their own benefit, or on 
account of their own merit, as for the general bene- 
fit of mankind. To the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Gre- 
cians, Romans, to all the people of the, earth, they 
were formerly, and they are still to all civilized 
nations, a beacon set upon a hill, to warn them 
from idolatr}'', to light them to the sanctuary of a 
God, holy, just, and good. Why should we sus- 
pect such a dispensation of being a lie, when, 
even from the little which we can understand of it, 
we see that it is founded in wisdom, carried on for 
the general good, and analogous to all that reason 
teaches us concerning the nature of God ? 

Several things, you observe, are mentioned in the 
book of the Kings, such as the drying up of Jero- 
boam's hand, the ascent of Elijah into heaven, the 
destruction of the children who mocked Elisha, 
and the resurrection of a dead man : these cir- 
cumstances being mentioned in the book of Kings, 
and not in that of Chronicles, is a proof to you that 
they are lies. I esteem it a very erroneous mode 
of reasoning, which, from the silence of one author 
concerning a particular circumstance, infers the 
want of veracity in another who mentions it ; and 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 423 

this observatiou is still more cogent when applied 
to a book which is only a supplement to, or abridg- 
ment of other books ; and under this description 
the book of Chronicles has been considered by all 
writers. But though you will not believe the 
miracle of the drying up of Jeroboam's hand, what 
can you say to the prophecy which was then de- 
livered concerning the future destruction of the 
idolatrous altar of Jeroboam? The prophecy is 
thus written : " Behold, a child shall be born unto 
the house of David, Josiah by name ; and upon 
thee," the altar, " shall he offer the priests of the 
high places." 1 Kings 13:2. Here is a clear proph- 
ecy" ; the name, family, and office of a particular per- 
son are described in the year 975, according to the 
Bible chronology, before Christ. About 350 years 
after the delivery of the prophecy you will find, by 
consulting the second book of Kings, chap. 23 : 15, 
16, this prophecy fulfilled in all its parts. 

Yoil make a calculation that Genesis was not 
written till 800 years after Moses, and that it is of 
the same age, and you may probably think of the 
same authority, as ^sop's Fables. You give what 
you call the evidence of this the air of a demon- 
stration : " It has but two stages : first, the account 
of the kings of Edom, mentioned in Genesis, is 
taken from Chronicles, and therefore the book of 
Genesis was written after the book of Chronicles ; 



424 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

secondly, the book of Chronicles was not begun 
to be written till after Zedekiah, in whose time 
Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, 588 j^ears 
before Christ, and more than 860 after Moses." 
Having answered this objection before, I might be 
excused taking any more notice of it ; but as you 
build much in this place upon the strength of j'our 
argument, I will show its weakness when it is 
properly stated. A few verses in the book of Gene- 
sis could not be written by Moses ; therefore no part 
of Genesis could be written by Moses : a child 
would deny your therefore. Again, a few verses 
in the book of Genesis could not be written by 
Moses, because they speak of kings of Israel, there 
having been no kings of Israel in the time of Mo- 
ses ; and therefore they could not be written by 
Samuel, or by Solomon, or any other person who 
lived after there were kings in Israel, except by 
the author of the book of Chronicles : this is also 
an illegitimate inference from your position. Again, 
a few verses in the book of Genesis are, word for 
w^ord, the same as a few verses in the book of 
Chronicles ; therefore the author of the book of 
Genesis must have taken them from Chronicles : 
another lame conclusion. Why might not the 
author of the book of Chronicles have taken them 
from Genesis, as he has taken many other geneal- 
ogies, supposing them to have been inserted in 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 425 

Genesis by Samuel? But where, you may ask, 
could Samuel, or any other person, have found the 
account of the kings of Edom ? Probably in the 
public records of the nation, which were certainly 
as open for inspection to Samuel, and the other 
prophets, as they were to the author of Chronicles. 
I hold it needless to employ more time on the 
subject. 



426 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 



LETTER V. 

At length you come to two books, Ezra and 
Nehemiah, which you allow to be genume books, 
giving an account of the return of the Jews from 
the Babylonian captivity, about 536 years before 
Christ ; but then you say, " Those accounts are 
nothing to us, nor to any other persons, unless it 
be to the Jews, as a part of the history of their 
nation : and there is just as much of the word of 
God in these books as there is in any of the histo- 
ries of France, or in Rapin's History of England." 
Here let us stop a moment, and try if, from your 
own concessions, it be not possible to confute your 
argument. Ezra and Nehemiah, jou. grant, are 
genuine books, " but they are nothing to us." 
The very first verse of Ezra says the prophecy of 
Jeremiah was fulfilled : is it nothing to us to know 
that Jeremiah was a true prophet ? Do but grant 
that the Supreme Being communicated to any of 
the sons of men a knowledge of future events, so 
that their predictions were plainly verified, and you 
will find little difficulty in admitting the truth of 
revealed religion. Is it nothing to us to know 
that, five hundred and thirty-six years before 
Christ, the books of Chronicles, Kings, Judges, 
Joshua, Deuteronomy, Numbers, Leviticus, Exo- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 427 

dus, Genesis, every book the authority of which 
you have attacked, are all referred to by Ezra and 
Nehemiah as authentic books, containing the his- 
tory of the Israelitish nation from Abraham to that 
very time ? Is it nothing to us to know that the 
history of the Jews is true ? It is every thing to 
us ; for if that history be not true, Christianity 
must be false. The Jews are the root, we are the 
branches " grafted in among them ;" to whom per- 
tain "the adoption, and the glory, and the cove- 
nants, and the giving of the law, and the service 
of God, and the promises ; whose are the fathers, 
and whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, 
who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen." 

The history of the Old Testament has, without 
doubt, some difiiculties in it ; but a minute philos- 
opher who busies himself in searching them out, 
while he neglects to contemplate the harmony of 
all its parts, the wisdom and goodness of God dis- 
played throughout the whole, appears to me to be 
like a purblind man, who, in surveying a picture, 
objects to the simplicity of the design and the 
beauty of the execution, from the asperities he has 
discovered in the canvas and the coloring. The 
history of the Old Testament, notwithstanding the 
real difficulties which occur in it, notwithstanding 
^the scoffs and cavils of unbelievers, appears to me 
to have such internal evidences of its truth, to be 



428 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

SO corroborated by the most ancient profane histo- 
ries, so confirmed by the present circumstances of 
the world, that if I were not a Christian, I would 
become a Jew. You think this history to be a 
collection of lies, contradictions, and blasphemies : 
I look upon it to be the oldest, the truest, the most 
comprehensive, and the most important history in 
the world. I consider it as giving more satisfac- 
tocy proofs of the being and attributes of God, of 
the origin and end of human kind, than ever was 
attained by the deepest researches of the most 
enlightened philosophers. The exercise of our rea- 
son in the investigation of truths respecting the 
nature of God and the future expectations of hu- 
man kind, is highly useful ; . but I hope I shall be 
pardoned by the metaphysicians in saying that the 
chief utility of such disquisitions consists in this — 
that they make us acquainted with the weakness 
of our intellectual faculties. I do not presume to 
measure other men by my standard : you may 
have clearer notions than I am able to form of the 
infinity of space ; of the eternity of duration ; of 
necessary existence ; of the connection between 
necessary existence and intelligence, between in- 
telligence and benevolence — 3'ou may see nothing 
in the universe but organized matter ; or, reject- 
ing a material, you may see nothing but an ideal 
world. With a mind weary of conjecture, fatigued 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 429 

by doubt, sick of disputation, eager for knowledge, 
anxious for certainty, and unable to attain it by 
the best use of my reason in matters of the utmost 
importance, I have long ago turned my thoughts 
to an impartial examination of the proofs on which 
revealed religion is grounded, and I am convinced 
of its truth. This examination is a subject within 
the reach of human capacity : you have come to 
one conclusion respecting it, I have come to an- 
other ; both of us cannot be right ; may God for- 
give him that is in an error. 

You ridicule, in a note, the story of an angel 
appearing to Joshua. Your mirth you will per- 
ceive to be misplaced, when you consider the de- 
sign of this appearance : it was to assure Joshua, 
that the same God who had appeared to Moses, 
ordering him to pull off his shoes because he stood 
on holy ground, had now appeared to himself. Was 
this no encouragement to a man who was about 
to engage in war with many nations ? Had it no 
tendency to confirm his faith ? Was it no lesson 
to him to obey in all tilings the commands of God, 
and to give the glory of his conquests to the author 
of them, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ? 
As to 3^our wit about pulling off the shoe, it origi- 
nates I think, in your ignorance : you ought to have 
known that this rite was an indication of reverence 
to the divine presence ; and that the custom of 



430 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

entering barefoot into their temples subsists, in 
some countries, to this clay. 

. You allow the book of Ezra to be a genuine 
book ; but that the author of it may not escape 
without a blow, you say that in matters of record 
it is not to be depended on, and as a proof of your 
assertion, you tell us that the total amount of the 
numbers who returned from Babylon does not 
correspond with the particulars ; and that every 
child may have an argument for its infidelity, you 
display the particulars, and show your skill in 
arithmetic by summing them up. And can you 
suppose that Ezra, a man of great learning, knew 
so little of science, so little of the lowest branch of 
science, that he could not give his readers the sum 
total of sixty particular sums? You know un- 
doubtedly that the Hebrew letters denoted also 
numbers ; and that there is such a similarity be- 
tween some of these letters that it was extremely 
easy for a transcriber of a manuscript to mistake 
a i for a 3, or 2 for 20 — a ^ for a ;, or 3 for 50 — a 
-I for a ^, or a 5 for 200. Now, what have we to 
do with numerical contradictions in the Bible, but 
to attribute them, wherever they occur, to this ob- 
vious source of error — the inattention of the tran- 
scriber in writing one letter for another that was 
like it ? 

I should extend these letters to a length troub- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 431 

lesome to the reader, to you, and to myself, if I 
answered minutely every objection you have made, 
and rectified every error into which you have fall- 
en ; it may be sufficient briefly to notice some of 
the chief. 

The character represented in Job under the 
name of Satan is, you say, " the first and the only 
time this name is mentioned in the Bible." Now, 
I find this name, as denoting an enemy, frequently 
occurring in the Old Testament : thus, " What 
have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah, that ye 
should this day be adversaries unto me ?" 2 Sam. 
19 : 22. In the original it is, Satans unto me. 
Again, " The Lord my God hath given me rest 
on every side, so that there is neither adversary 
nor evil occurrent." 1 Kings 5:4. In the origi- 
nal, neither Satan nor evil. I need not mention 
other places ; these are sufficient to show that the 
word Satan, denoting an adversary, does occur in 
various places of the Old Testament ; and it is 
extremely probable to me, that the root Satan was 
introduced in the Hebrew and other eastern lan- 
guages to denote an adversary, from its having 
been the proper name of the great enemy of man- 
kind. I know it is an opinion of Voltaire, that the 
word Satan is not older than the Babylonian cap- 
tivity : this is a mistake, for it is met with in the 
hundred and ninth psalm, which all allow to have 



432 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

been written by David, long before the captivity. 
Now we are upon this subject, permit me to rec- 
ommend to your consideration the universality of 
the doctrine concerning an evil being, who in the 
beginning of time had opposed himself, who still 
continues to oppose himself, to the supreme source 
of all good. Among all nations in all ages this 
opinion prevailed, that human affairs were subject 
to the will of the gods, and regulated by their 
interposition. Hence has been derived whatever 
we have read of the wandering stars of the Chal- 
deans, two of them beneficent and two malignant ; 
hence the Egyptian Typho and Osiris — the Persian 
Arimanius and Oromasdes — the Grecian celestial 
and infernal Jove — the Brama and the Zupay of 
the Indians, Peruvians, Mexicans — the good and 
evil principle, by whatever names they may be 
called, of all other barbarous nations ; and hence 
the structure of the whole book of Job, in what- 
€ver light, of history or drama, it may be consid- 
ered. Now, does it not appear reasonable to sup- 
pose that an opinion so ancient and so universal 
has arisen from tradition concerning the fall of our 
first parents ; disfigured, indeed, and obscured, as 
all traditions must be, by many fabulous additions ? 
The Jews, you tell us, ''never prayed but when 
they were in trouble." I do not believe this of the 
Jews ; but that they prayed more fervently when 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 433 

they were in trouble than at other times, may be 
true of the Jews, and I apprehend is true of all 
nations and of all individuals. But " the Jews 
never prayed for any thing but victory, vengeance, 
and riches." Kead Solomon's prayer at the dedi- 
cation of the temple, and blush for your assertion — 
illiberal and uncharitable in the extreme ! 

It appears, you observe, " to have been the cus- 
tom of the heathens to personify both virtue and 
vice by statues and images, as is done nowadays 
both by statuary and painting ; but it docs not fol- 
low from this that they worshipped them any more 
than we do." Not worshipped them ! What think 
you of the golden image which Nebuchadnezzar 
set up ? Was it not worshipped by the princes, 
the rulers, the judges, the people, the nations, and 
the languages of the Babylonian empire ? Not 
worshipped them I What think you of the decree 
of the Roman senate for fetching the statue of the 
mother of the gods from Pessinum ? Was it only 
that they might admire it as a piece of workman- 
ship ? Not worshipped them ! " What man is 
there that knoweth not how that the city of the 
Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess 
Diana, and of the image which fell down from 
Jupiter ?" Not worshipped them ! The worship 
was universal. " Every nation made gods of their 
own, and put them in the houses of the high 

liifidelify. 28 



434 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

places, which the Samaritans had made — the men 
of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, and the men of 
Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made 
Ashima, and the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, 
and the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to 
Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Seph- 
arvaim." 2 Kings, 17. The heathens are much 
indebted to you for this curious apology for their 
idolatry — for a mode of worship the most cruel, 
senseless, impure, abominable, that can possibly 
disgrace the faculties of the human mind. Had 
this your conceit occurred in ancient times, it 
might have saved Micak's teraphims, the golden calves 
of Jeroboam and of Aaron, and quite superseded the 
necessity of the second commandment ! Heathen 
morality has had its advocates before you ; the 
facetious gentleman who pulled off his hat to the 
statue of Jupiter, that he might have a friend when 
heathen idolatry should again be in repute, seems 
to have had some foundation for his improper hu- 
mor, some knowledge that certain men, esteeming 
themselves great philosophers, had entered into a 
conspiracy to abolish Christianity, some foresight 
of the consequences which will certainly attend 
their success. 

It is an error, you say, to call the Psalms the 
Psalms of David. This error was observed by St. 
Jerome many hundred years before you were 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 43.5 

born; his words are, "We know that they are 
in error who attribute all the Psalms to David." 
You, I suppose, will not deny that David wrote 
some of them. Songs are of various sorts ; we 
have hunting-songs, drinking-songs, fighting-songs, 
lovesongs, foolish, wanton, wicked songs ; if you 
will have the " Psalms of David to be nothing but 
a collection from different song-writers," you must 
allow that the writers of them were inspired by 
no ordinary spirit — that it is a collection incapable 
of being degraded by the name you give it — that 
it greatly excels every other collection in matter 
and in manner. Compare the book of Psalms with 
the odes of Horace or Anacreon, with the hymns 
of Cahimachus, the golden verses of Pythagoras, 
the choruses of the Greek tragedians — no con- 
temptible compositions any of these — and you will 
quickly see how greatly it surpasses them all in 
piety of sentiment, in sublimity of expression, in 
purity of morality, and in rational theology. 

As you esteem the Psalms of David a song- 
book, it is consistent enough in you to esteem the 
Proverbs of Solomon a jest-book : there have not 
come down to us above eight hundred of his jests ; 
if we had the whole three thousand which he 
wrote, our mirth would become extreme. Let us 
open the book, and see what kind of jests it con- 
tains : take the very first as a specimen : '' The 



436 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge ; 
but fools desjDise wisdom and instruction." Do 
you perceive any jest in this? The fear of the 
Lord ! What Lord does Solomon mean ? He 
means the Lord who took the posterity of Abra- 
ham to be his pecuHar people ; who redeemed that 
people from Egyptian bondage by a mu-aculous 
interposition of his power ; who gave the law to 
Moses ; who commanded the Israelites to exter- 
minate the nations of Canaan. Now this Lord 
you will not fear ; the jest says, you despise wis- 
dom and instruction. Let us try again. " My 
son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake 
not the law of thy mother." If your heart has 
been ever touched by parental feelings, you will 
see no jest in this. Once more. "My son, if 
sinners entice thee, consent thou not." These are 
the three first proverbs in Solomon's "jest-book ;" 
if you read it through, it may not make you merry ; 
I hope it will make you wise ; that it wiU teach 
you, at least, the beginning of wisdom — the fear of 
that Lord whom Solomon feared. Solomon, you 
tell us, was wittj^ : jesters are sometimes witty ; 
but though all the world, from the time of the 
queen of Sheba, has heard of the wisdom of Solo- 
mon, his wit was never heard of before. There is 
a great difference, Mr. Locke teaches us, between 
wit and judgment, and there is a greater between 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 437 

wit and wisdom. Solomon " was wiser than Ethan 
the Ezahite, and Ileman, and Chalcol, and Darda, 
tlie sons of Mahol." These men you may think 
were jesters ; and so you may call the seven wise 
men of Greece ; but you will never convince the 
world that Solomon, who was wiser than them all, 
was nothing but a witty jester. As to the sins 
and debaucheries of Solomon, we have nothing to 
do with them but to avoid them ; and to give full 
credit to his experience, when he preaches to us 
his admirable sermon on the vanity of every thing 
but piety and virtue. 

Isaiah has a greater share of your abuse than 
any other writer in the Old Testament, and the 
reason of it is obvious — the prophecies of Isaiah 
have received such a full and circumstantial com- 
pletion, that unless you can persuade yourself to 
consider the whole book, a few historical sketches 
excepted, " as one continued bombastical rant, full 
of extravagant metaphor, without application, and 
destitute of meaning,'^ you must of necessity allow 
its divine authority. You compare the burden of 
Babylon, the burden of Moab, the burden of Da- 
mascus, and the other denunciations of the prophet 
against cities and kingdoms, to the story "of the 
knight of the burning mountain, the story of Cin- 
derella, etc." I may have read these stories, but 
I remember nothing of the subjects of them ; I 



438 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

have read also Isaiah's burden of Babylon, and I 
have compared it with the past and present state 
of Babylon, and the comparison has made such 
an impression on my mind, that it will never be 
effaced from my memory. I shall never cease to 
believe that the Eternal alone, by whom things 
future are more distinctly known than past or pres- 
ent things are to man, that the eternal God alone 
could have dictated to the prophet Isaiah the sub- 
ject of the burden of Babylon. 

The latter part of the forty-fourth and the begin- 
ning of the forty-fifth chapter of Isaiah are, in your 
opinion, so far from being written by Isaiah, that 
they could only have been written by some person 
who lived at least a hundred and fifty years after 
Isaiah was dead. These chapters, you go on, "are 
a compliment to Cyrus, who permitted the Jews to 
return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity, 
above a hundred and fifty years after the death 
of Isaiah." And is it for this, sir, that you accuse 
the church of audacity, and the priests of igno- 
rance, in imposing, as jou call it, this book upon 
the world as the writing of Isaiah ? What shall 
be said of you, who, either designedly or ignorant- 
ly, represent one of the most clear and important 
prophecies in the Bible as a historical compliment, 
written above a hundred and fifty years after the 
death of the prophet ? We contend, sir, that this 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 439 

is a prophecy, and not a history ; that God called 
Cyrus by his name, declared that he should con- 
quer Babylon, and described the means by which 
he should do it, above a hundred years before 
Cyrus was born, and when there was no probabili- 
ty of such an event. Porphyry could not resist 
the evidence of Daniel's prophecies, but by saying 
that they were forged after the events predicted 
had taken place ; Voltaire could not resist the evi- 
dence of the prediction of Jesus concerning the 
destruction of Jerusalem, but by saying that the 
account was written after Jerusalem had been 
destroyed ; and you, at length — though, for aught 
I know, you may have had predecessors in this 
presumption — unable to resist the evidence of Isa- 
iah's prophecies, contend that they are bombastical 
rant, without application, though the application is 
circumstantial ; and destitute of meaning, though 
the meaning is so obvious that ' it cannot be mis- 
taken ; and that one of the most remarkable of 
them is not a prophecy, but a historical compliment 
written after the event. We will not, sir, give up 
Daniel and St. Matthew to the impudent assertions 
of Porphyry and Voltaire, nor will we give up Isa- 
iah to your assertion. Proof, proof is what we 
require, and not assertion ; we wnll not relinquish 
our religion in obedience to your abusive assertion 
respecting the prophets of God. That the wonder- 



440 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

ful absurdity of this hypothesis may be more ob- 
vious to you, I beg you to consider that Cyrus 
was a Persian, had been brought up in the rehgion 
of his country, and was probably addicted to the 
magian superstition of two independent beings 
equal in power but different in principle — one the 
anthor of light and of all good, the other the author 
of darkness and all evil. Now, is it probable that 
a captive Jew, meaning to comphment the greatest 
prince in the world, should be so stupid as to tell 
the prince his religion was a lie ? "I am the Lord, 
and there is none else : I form the light and create 
darkness, I make peace and create evil : I the Lord 
do all these things." 

But if you will persevere in believing that the 
prophecy concerning Cyrus was written after the 
event, peruse the burden of Babylon : was that 
also written after the event? Were the Modes 
then stirred up against Babylon? Was Babylon, 
the glory of the kingdoms, the beauty of the Chal- 
dees, then overthrown, and become as Sodom and 
Gomorrah ? Was it then uninhabited ? Was it 
then neither fit for the Arabian^s tent nor the shep- 
herd's fold? Did the wild beasts of the desert 
then lie there ? Did the wild beasts of the islands 
then cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in 
their pleasant places ? Were Nebuchadnezzar and 
Belshazzar, the son and the grandson, then cut off? 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 441 

Was Babylon then become a possession of the bit- 
tern, and pools of water ? Was it then swept with 
the besom of destruction, so swept that the world 
knows not where to find it ? 

I am unwilling to attribute bad designs, deliber- 
ate wickedness, to you or to any man ; I cannot 
avoid believing that you think you have truth on 
your side, and that you are doing service to man- 
kind in endeavoring to root out what you esteem 
superstition. What I blame you for is this, that 
you have attempted to lessen the authority of the 
Bible by ridicule more than by reason ; that you 
have brought forward every petty objection which 
your ingenuity could discover, or your industry 
pick up from the writings of others, and, without 
taking any notice of the answers which have been 
repeatedly given to these objections, you urge and 
enforce them as if they were new. There is cer- 
tainly some novelty at least in your manner, for 
you go beyond all others in boldness of assertion 
and in profaneness of argumentation ; Bolingbroke 
and Voltaire must yield the palm of scurriUty to 
Thomas Paine. 

Permit me to state to you what would, in my 
opinion, have been a better mode of proceeding — 
better suited to the character of an honest man, 
sincere in his endeavors to search out truth. Such 
a man, in reading the Bible, would, in the first 



442 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

place, examine whether the Bible attributed to the 
Supreme Being any attributes repugnant to holi- 
ness, truth, justice, goodness ; whether it repre- 
sented him as subject to human infirmities ; wheth- 
er it excluded him from the government of the 
world, or assigned the origin of it to chance and an 
eternal conflict of atoms. Finding nothing of this 
kind in the Bible — for the destruction of the Ca- 
naanites by his express command I have shown 
not to be repugnant to his moral justice — he would, 
in the second place, consider that the Bible being, 
as to many of its parts, a very old book, and writ- 
ten by various authors and at different and distant 
periods, there might probably occur some difficul- 
ties and apparent contradictions in the historical 
part of it ; he would endeavor to remove these dif- 
ficulties, to reconcile these apparent contradictions, 
by the rules of such sound criticism as he would 
use in examining the contents of any other book ; 
and if he found that most of them were of a trifling 
nature, arising from short additions inserted into 
the text as explanatory and supplemental, or from 
mistakes and omissions of transcribers, he would 
infer that all the rest were capable of being ac- 
counted for, though he was not able to do it ; and 
he would be the more wilHng to make this conces- 
sion, from observing that there ran through the 
whole book a harmony and connection utterly in- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 443 

consistent with every idea of forgery and deceit. 
He would then, in the third place, observe that the 
miraculous and historical parts of this book were 
so intermixed that they could not be separated, 
and that they must either both be true, or both 
false ; and from finding that the historical part was 
as well or better authenticated than that of any 
other history, he would admit the miraculous part ; 
and to confirm himself in this belief, he would ad- 
vert to the prophecies, well knowing that the predic- 
tion of things to come was as certain a proof of the 
divine interposition as the performance of a miracle 
could be. If he should find, as he cej-tainly would, 
that many ancient prophecies had been fulfilled in 
all their circumstances, and that some were fulfil- 
ling at this very day, he would not suffer a few 
seeming or real difficulties to overbalance the 
weight of the accumulated evidence for the truth 
of the Bible. Such, I presume to think, would be 
a proper conduct in all those who are desirous of 
forming a rational and impartial judgment on the 
subject of revealed religion. 

To return : 

As to your observation that the book of Isaiah 
is, at least in translation, that kind of composition 
and false taste which is properly called prose run 
mad, I have only to remark, that your taste for 
Hebrew poetry, even judging of it from the trans- 



444 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

lation, would be more correct if you would suffer 
yourself to be informed on the subject by Bishop 
Lowth, who tells you in his Prelections, that " a 
poem translated literally from the Hebrew into any 
other language, while the same forms of the sen- 
tences remain, will still retain, even as far as re- 
lates to versification, much of its native dignity, and 
a faint appearance of versification." If this is what 
you mean by prose run mad, your observation may 
be admitted. 

You explain at some length your notion of the 
misapplication made by St. Matthew of the proph- 
ecy in Isaiah, /'Behold, a virgin shall conceive and 
bear a son." That passage has been handled 
largely and minutely by almost every commenta- 
tor, and it is too important to be handled superfi- 
cially by any one. I am not on the present occa- 
sion concerned to explain it. It is quoted by you 
to prove — and it is the only instance you produce — 
that Isaiah was " a lying prophet and an unpostor." 
Now, I maintain that this very instance proves 
that he was a true prophet, and no impostor. The 
liistory of the prophecy, as deHvered in the seventh 
chapter, is this : Rezin king of Syria, and Pekah 
king of Israel, made war upon Ahaz king of Judah ; 
not merely, or perhaps not at all, for the sake of 
plunder or the conquest of territory, but with a 
declared purpose of making an entire revolution in 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 445 

the government of Judah, of destroying the royal 
house of David, and of placing another family on 
the throne. Their purpose is thus expressed : 
'' Let us go up against Judah and vex it, and let 
us make a breach therein for ns, and set a king in 
the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal." Now, 
what did the Lord commission Isaiah to say to 
Ahaz ? Did he commission him to say. The kings 
shall not vex thee ? No. The kings shall not 
conquer thee ? No. The kings shall not succeed 
against thee ? No. He commissioned him to say, 
" It," the purpose of the two kings, " shall not 
stand, neither shall it come to pass," I demand, 
did it stand ? did it come to pass ? Was any rev- 
olution effected ? Was the royal house of David 
dethroned and destroyed ? Was Tabeal ever made 
king of Judah ? No. The prophecy was perfectly 
accomplished. You say, " Instead of these two 
kings failing in their attempt against Ahaz, they 
succeeded ; Ahaz was defeated and destroyed." 
I deny the fact ; Ahaz was defeated, but was not 
destroyed ; and even the " two hundred thousand 
women, and sons, and daughters," whom you rep- 
resent as carried into captivity, were not carried 
into captivity ; they were made captives, but they 
were not carried into captivity ; for the chief men 
of Samaria, being admonished by a prophet, would 
not suffer Pekah to bring the captives into the 



446 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

land. "They rose up and took the captives, and 
with the spoil clothed all that were naked among 
them, and arrayed them, and shod them, and gave 
them to eat and to drink, and anointed them, and 
carried all the feeble of them upon asses" — some 
humanity, you see, among those Israelites whom 
you everywhere represent as barbarous brutes — > 
"and brought them to Jericho, the city of palm- 
trees, to their brethren." 2 Chron. 28 : 15. The 
kings did fail in their attempt : their attempt was to 
destroy the house of David, and to make a revolu- 
tion ; but they made no revolution, they did not 
destroy the house of David ; for Ahaz slept with 
his fathers, and Hezekiah his son, of the house of 
David, reigned in his stead. 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 447 



LETTER VI. 

After what I conceive to be a great misrepre- 
sentation of the character and conduct of Jeremiah, 
you bring forward an objection which Spinoza and 
others before you had much insisted upon, though 
it is an objection which neither affects the genuine- 
ness nor the authenticity of the book of Jeremiah, 
any more than the blunder of a bopkbinder, in mis- 
placing the sheets of your performance, would les- 
sen its authority. The objection is, that the book 
of Jeremiah has been put together in a disordered 
state. It is acknowledged that the order of time 
is not everywhere observed ; but the cause of the 
confusion is not known. Some attribute it to Ba- 
ruch collecting into one volume all the several 
prophecies which Jeremiah had written, and neg- 
lecting to put them in their proper places. Others 
think that the several parts of the work were at 
first properly arranged, but that, through accident 
or the carelessness of transcribers, they were de- 
ranged. Others contend that there is no confusion ; 
that prophecy differs from history in not being sub- 
ject to an accurate observance of time and order. 
But leaving this matter to be settled by critical 
discussion, let us come to a matter of greater im- 



448 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

portance — to your charge against Jeremiah for his 
duplicity, and for his false prediction. First, as to 
his duplicity. 

Jeremiah, on account of his having boldly pre- 
dicted the destruction of Jerusalem, had been 
thrust into a miry dungeon by the princes of Ju- 
dah, who sought his life ; there he M^ould have per- 
ished, had not one of the eunuchs taken compassion 
on him, and petitioned king Zedckiah in his favor, 
saying, " These men," the princes, " have done evil 
in all that they have done to Jeremiah the proph- 
et" — no small testimony this of the probity of the 
prophet's character — ''whom they have cast into 
the dungeon, and he is like to die for hunger." On 
this representation, Jeremiah was taken out of the 
dungeon by an order from the king, who soon 
afterwards sent privately for him, and desired him 
to conceal nothing from him, binding himself by an 
oath, that whatever might be the nature of his 
prophecy, he would not put him to death, or de- 
liver him into the hands of the princes who sought 
his life. Jeremiah delivered to him the puq^ose of 
God respecting the fate of Jerusalem. The con- 
ference being ended, the king, anxious to perform 
his oath to preserve the life of the prophet, dis- 
missed him, saying, " Let no man know of these 
words, and thou shalt not die. But if the princes 
hear that I have talked with thee, and they come 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 449 

unto thee, and say unto thee, Declare unto us now 
what thou hast said unto the king, hide it not from 
us, and we will not put thee to death ; also what 
the king said unto thee : then thou shalt say unto 
them, I presented my supphcation before the king, 
that he would not cause me to return to Jona- 
than's house to die there. Then came all the 
princes unto Jeremiah, and asked him ; and he told 
them according to all these words that the king 
had commanded." Thus, you remark, "this man 
of God, as he is called, could tell a lie, or very 
strongly prevaricate ; for certainly he did not go 
to Zedekiah to make his supplication, neither did 
he make it." It is not said that he told the princes 
he went to make his supplication, but that he pre- 
sented it. Now, it is said in the preceding chapter 
that he did make the supplication, and it is proba- 
ble that in this conference he renewed it ; but be 
that as it may, I contend that Jeremiah was not 
guilty of duplicity, or, in more intelligible terms, 
that he did not violate any law of nature or of civil 
society, in what he did on this occasion. He told 
the truth in part, to save his Ufe ; and he was 
under no obligation to tell the whole to men who 
were certainly his enemies, and no good subjects 
to his king. *'In a matter," says Puffendorf, 
'* which I am not obliged to declare to another, if 
I cannot, with safety, conceal the whole, I may 

Infiilelity. 29 



450 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

fairly discover no more than a part." Was Jere- 
miah under any obligation to declare to the princes 
what had passed in his conference with the king ? 
You may as well say that the house of lords has 
a right to compel privy counsellors to reveal the 
king's secrets. The king cannot justly require a 
privy counsellor to tell a lie for him, but he may 
require him not to divulge his counsels to those 
who have no right to know them. Now for the 
false prediction — I will give the description of it in 
your own words. 

In the 34th chapter is a prophecy of Jeremiah 
to Zedekiah, in these words, verse 2 : " Thus saith 
the Lord, Behold, I will give this city into the 
hands of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn 
it Tvith fire ; and thou shalt not escape out of his 
hand, but shalt surely be taken and delivered 
into his hand ; and thine eyes shall behold the 
eyes of the king of Babylon, and he shall speak 
with thee mouth to mouth, and thou shalt go to 
Babylon. Yet hear the word of the Lord, 
Zedekiah, king of Judah ; thus saith the Lord, 
Thou shalt not die by the sword, but thou shalt 
die in peace ; and with the burnings t)f thy fathers, 
the former kings that were before thee, so shall 
they burn odors for thee ; and they will lament 
thee, saying, Ah, lord ! for I have pronounced the 
word, saith the Lord." 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 451 

" Now, instead of Zedekiah bcliolding the eyes 
of the king of Babylon, and speaking with him 
mouth to mouth, and dying in peace, and with the 
burning of odors, as at the funeral of his fathers — 
as Jeremiah had declared the Lord himself had 
pronounced — the reverse, according to the 52d 
chapter, was the case ; it is there stated, verse 10, 
that ' the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zede- 
kiah before his eyes ; then he put out the eyes of 
Zedekiah, and bound him in chains, and carried him 
to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of 
his death.' What can we say of these prophets, 
but that they are impostors and liars ?" I can say 
this, that the prophecy you have produced was 
fulfilled in all its parts : and what then shall be 
said of those who call Jeremiah a liar, and an im- 
postor ? Here then we are fairly at issue : you 
affirm that the prophecy was not fulfilled, and I 
affirm that it was fulfilled in all its parts. '' I will 
give this city into the hands of the king of Baby- 
lon, and he shall burn it with fire :" so says the 
prophet; what says the history? "They," the 
forces of the king of Babylon, " burnt the house of 
God, and brake down the walls of Jerusalem, and 
burnt all the places thereof with fire." 2 Chron. 
36 : 19. "Thou shalt not escape out of his hand, 
but shalt surely be taken and delivered into his 
hand :" so says the prophet ; what says the his- 



452 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

tory ? " The men of war fled by night, and the 
khig went the way towards the plain. And the 
army of the Chaldees pursued after the king, and 
overtook him in the plains of Jericho ; and all his 
army were scattered from him. So they took the 
king, and brought him up to the king of Babylon to 
Riblah." 2 Kings 25 : 4-6. The prophet goes on, 
"Thine eyes shall behold the ej^es of the king of 
Babylon, and he shall speak with thee mouth to 
mouth." No pleasant circumstance this to Zede- 
kiah, who had provoked the king of Babylon by 
revolting from him ! The history says, " The king 
of Babylon gave judgment upon Zedekiah," or, as 
it is more literally rendered from the Hebrew, 
" Spake judgment with him at Riblah." The prophet 
concludes this part with, " And thou shalt go to 
Babylon ;" the history says, " The king of Babj^lon 
bound him in chains, and carried him to Babylon, 
and put him in prison till the day of his death." 
Jer. 52 : 11. "Thou shalt not die by the sword." 
He did not die by the sword, he did not fall in 
battle. "But thou shalt die in peace." He did 
die in peace : he neither expired on the rack, or on 
the scaffold ; was neither strangled nor poisoned ; 
no unusual fate of captive kings. He died peace- 
ably in his bed, though that bed was in a prison. 
" And with the burnings of thy fathers shall they 
burn odors for thee." I cannot prove from the 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 453 

history that tliis part of the prophecy was accom- 
plished, nor can you prove that it was not. The 
probabihty is, that it was accomphshcd ; and I 
have two reasons on which I ground this proba- 
bility. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, 
to say nothing of otlicr Jews, were men of great 
authority in the court of the king of Babylon, be- 
fore and after the commencement of the imprison- 
ment of Zedekiah ; and Daniel continued in power 
till the subversion of the kingdom of Babylon by 
Cyrus. Now, it seems to me to be very probable 
that Daniel and the other great men of the Jews 
would both have inclination to request, and influ- 
ence enough with the king of Babylon to obtain, 
}X3rmission to bury their deceased prince Zedekiah 
after the manner of his fathers. But if there had 
been no Jews at Babylon of consequence enough 
to make such a request, still it is probable that the 
king of Babylon would have ordered the Jews to 
bury and lament their departed prince after the 
manner of their country. Monarchs, like other 
men, are conscious of the instability of human con- 
dition ; and when the pomp of war has ceased, 
when the insolence of conquest is abated, and the 
fury of resentment subsided, they seldom fail to 
revere royalty even in its ruins ; and grant, with- 
out reluctance, proper obsequies to the remains of 
captive kings. 



454 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

You profess to have been particular in treating 
of the books ascribed to Isaiah and Jeremiah. Par- 
ticular ; in what ? You have particularized two or 
three passages, which you have endeavored to 
represent as objectionable, and which I hope have 
been shown to the reader's satisfaction, to be not 
justly liable to your censure ; and you have passed 
over all the other parts of these books without no- 
tice. Had 3^ou been particular in your examina- 
tion, you would have found cause to admire the 
probity and the intrepidity of the characters of the 
authors of them ; you would have met with many 
instances of sublime composition, and what is of 
more consequence, with many instances of prophet- 
ical veracity. Particularities of these kinds you 
have wholly overlooked. I cannot account for 
this ; I have no right, no inclination to call you a 
dishonest man ; am I justified in considering you 
as a man not altogether destitute of ingenuity, 
but so entirely under the dominion of prejudice in 
every thing respecting the Bible, that, like a cor- 
rupted judge, previously determined to give sen- 
tence on one side, you are negligent in the exam- 
ination of the truth ? 

You proceed to the rest of the prophets, and you 
take them collectively, carefully, however, select- 
ing for your observations such peculiarities as are 
best calculated to render, if possible, the prophets 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 455 

odious or ridiculous in the eyes of your readers. 
You confound prophets with poets and musicians ; 
I would distinguish them thus : many prophets 
were poets and musicians, but all poets and musi- 
cians were not prophets. Prophecies were often 
delivered in poetic language and measure • but 
flights and metaphors of the Jewish poets have 
not, as you affirm, been foolishly erected into what 
are now called prophecies ; they are now called, 
and have always been called, prophecies, because 
they were real predictions, some of which have 
received, some are now receiving, and all will re- 
ceive their full accomphshment. 

That there were false prophets, witches, necro- 
mancers, conjurers, fortune-tellers, among the Jews, 
no person will attempt to deny ; no nation, barba- 
rous or civilized, has been without them ; but 
when you would degrade the prophets of the Old 
Testament to a level with these conjuring, dream- 
ing, strolling gentry — when you would represent 
them as spending their lives in fortune-telling, 
casting nativities, predicting riches, fortunate or 
unfortunate marriages, conjuring for lost goods, 
etc., I must be allowed to say that you wholly 
mistake their office and misrepresent their charac- 
ter : their office was to convey to the children of 
Israel the commands, the promises, the threaten- 
ings of Almighty God ; and their character was 



456 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

that of men sustaining, with fortitude, persecution 
in the discharge of their duty. There were false 
prophets in abundance among the Jews ; and if 
you oppose these to the true prophets, and call 
them both party prophets, you have the liberty of 
doing so, but you will not thereby confound the 
distinction between* truth and falsehood. False 
prophets are spoken of with detestation in many 
parts of Scripture, particularly by Jeremiah, who 
accuses them of prophesying lies in the name of 
the Lord, saying, " I have dreamed, I have dream- 
ed. Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the 
Lord, that use their tongues and say. He saith ; 
that prophesy false dreams, and cause my people 
to err by their lies, and by their lightness." Jere- 
miah cautions his countrymen against giving credit 
to their prophets, to their diviners, to their dream- 
ers, to their enchanters, to their sorcerers, which 
speak unto you, saying, "Ye shall not serve the 
king of Babylon." You cannot think more con- 
temptibly of these gentrj^ than they were thought 
of by the true prophets at the time they lived ; 
but, as Jeremiah says on this subject, " what is 
the chaff to the wheat ?" what are the false proph- 
ets to the true ones ■? Every thing good is liable 
to abuse ; but who argues against the use of a 
thing from the abuse of it? against physicians, 
because there are pretenders to physic? Was 



"WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 457 

Isaiah a fortune-teller predicting riches, when he 
said to king Hezekiah, "Behold, the da3^s come 
that all that is in thy house, and that which thy 
fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall 
be carried to Babylon : nothing shall be left, saitb 
the Lord. And of thy sons that shall issue from 
thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away, ' 
and the}^ shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king 
of Babylon." Fortune-tellers generally predict 
good luck to their simple customers, that they may 
make something by their trade ; but Isaiah pre- 
dicts to a monarch desolation of his country and 
ruin of his family. This prophecy was spoken in 
the year before Christ 113 ; and, above a hun- 
dred years afterwards, it was accomplished ; when 
Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem, and carried out 
thence all the treasures of the house of the Lord, 
and the treasures of the king's house, 2 Kings 
24 : 13, and when he commanded the master of the 
eunuchs, Dan. 1 : 3, that he should take certain of 
the children of Israel, and of the king's seed, and 
of the princes, and educate them for three years, 
till they were able to stand before the king. 

Jehoram king of Israel, Jehoshaphat king of 
Judah, and the king of Edom, going with their 
armies to make war on the king of Moab, came 
into a place where there was no water either for 
their men or cattle. In this distress they waited 



458 ^YATSON•S REPLY TO PAINE. 

upon Elisha — a high honor for one of your conjur- 
ers — by the advice of Jehoshaphat, who knew that 
the word of the Lord was with him. The prophet, 
on seeing Jehoram, an idolatrous prince, wlio had 
revolted from the worship of the true God, come 
to consult him, said to him, "Get thee to the 
prophets of thy father, and the prophets of thy 
mother." This, you think, shows Elisha to have 
been a party prophet, full of venom and vulgarity. 
It shows him to have been a man of great courage, 
who respected the dignity of his own character, the 
sacredness of his ofiBce as a prophet of God, whose 
duty it was to reprove the wickedness of kings, as 
of other men. He ordered them to make the val- 
ley where they were full of ditches. This, you 
say, " every countryman could have told, that the 
way to get water was to dig for it." But this is 
not a true representation of the case : the ditches 
were not dug that water might be got by digging 
for it, but that they might hold the water when it 
should miraculously come, " without wind or rain," 
from another country; and it did come "from the 
way of Edom, and the country was filled with 
water." As to Elisha's cursing the little children 
who had mocked him, and their destruction in con- 
sequence of his imprecation, the whole story must 
be taken together. The provocation he received 
is, by some, considered as an insult offered to him, 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 459 

not as a man, but as a prophet ; and that the per- 
sons who offered it were not what we understand 
by little children, but grown up youths ; the term 
child being applied, in the Hebrew language, to 
grown up persons. Be this as it may, the cursing 
was the act of the prophet : had it been a sin, it 
would not have been followed by a miraculous 
destruction of the offenders ; for this was the act 
of God, who best knows who deserve punishment. 
What effect such a signal judgment had on the 
idolatrous inhabitants of the land, is nowhere said ; 
but it is probable it was not without a good effect, 
Ezekiel and Daniel lived during the Babylonian 
captivity ; you allow their writings to be genuine. 
In this you differ from some of the greatest adver- 
saries of Christianity ; and in my opinion, cut up, 
by this concession, the very root of your whole 
performance. It is next to an impossibility for 
any man, who admits the book of Daniel to be a 
genuine book, and who examines that book with 
intelligence and impartiality, to refuse his assent 
to the truth of Christianity. As to your saying 
that the interpretations which commentators and 
priests have made of these books only show the 
fraud, or the extreme folly to which credulity and 
priestcraft can go, I consider it as nothing but a 
proof of the extreme folly or fraud to which preju- 
dice and infidelity can carry a minute philosopher. 



460 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

You profess a fondness for science ; I will refer 
you to a scientific man who was neither a com- 
mentator nor a priest — to Ferguson. In a tract 
entitled, " The Year of our Saviour's Crucifixion 
ascertained, and the darkness at the time of his 
crucifixion proved to be supernatural," this real 
philosopher interprets the remarkable prophecy in 
the ninth chapter of Daniel, and concludes his dis- 
sertation in the following words : " Thus M^e have 
an astronomical demonstration of the truth of this 
ancient prophecy, seeing that the prophetic year 
of the Messiah's being cut off was the very same 
with the astronomical." I have somewhere read 
an account of a solemn disputation which was held 
at Venice, in the last century, between a Jew and 
a Christian : the Christian strongly argued from 
DanieFs prophecy of the seventy weeks, that Je- 
sus was the Messiah whom the Jews had long 
expected, from tlie predictions of their prophets ; 
the learned Rabbi who presided at this disputation, 
was so forcibly struck by the argument that he 
put an end to the business by saying, " Let us 
shut up our Bibles ; for if we proceed in the ex- 
amination of this prophecy, it will make us all be- 
come Christians." Was it a similar apprehension 
which deterred you from so much as opening the 
book of Daniel ? You have not produced from it 
one exceptionable passage. I hope you will read 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 461 

that book with attention, with intelligence, and 
with an unbiassed mind follow the advice of our 
Saviour when he quoted this prophecy, " Let him 
that rcadeth understand," and I shall not despair 
of your conversion from deism to Christianity. 

In order to discredit the authority of the books 
which you allow to be genuine, you form a strange 
and prodigious hypothesis concerning Ezekiel and 
Daniel, for which there is no manner of foundation 
either in history or probability. You suppose these 
two men to have had no dreams, no visions, no 
revelations from God Almighty, but to have pre- 
tended to these things ; and under that disguise, 
to have carried on an enigmatical coiTcspondence 
relative to the recovery of their country from the 
Babjionian yoke. That any man in his senses 
should frame or adopt such an hypothesis, and 
should have so little regard to his own reputation 
as an impartial inquirer after truth, so little respect 
for the understanding of Ms readers, as to obtrude 
it on the world, would have appeared an incredible 
circumstance, had not you made it a fact. 

You quote a passage from Ezekiel : in the 29th 
chapter, verse 11, speaking of Egypt, it is said, 
" No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of 
beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be in- 
habited forty years:" this, you say, "never came 
to pass, and consequently it is false, as all the 



462 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

books I have already reviewed are." Now that 
this did come to pass, we have, as Bishop Newton 
observes, " the testimonies of Megasthenes and 
Berosus, two heathen historians, who lived about 
300 years before Christ ; one of whom affirms ex- 
pressly that Nebuchadnezzar conquered the greater 
part of Africa ; and the other affirms it in effect, in 
saying, that when Nebuchadnezzar heard of the 
death of his father, having settled his affairs in 
Egypt, and committed the captives whom he took 
in Egypt to the care of some of his friends to bring 
them after him, he hasted directly to Babylon." 
And if we had been possessed of no testimony in 
support of the prophecy, it would have been a 
hasty conclusion that the prophecy never came to 
pass ; the history of 'E^gypt, at so remote a period, 
being nowhere accurately and circumstantially 
related. I admit that no period can be pointed 
out, from the age of Ezekiel to the present, in 
which there was no foot of man or beast to be 
seen for forty years in all Egypt ; but some think 
that only a part of Egypt is here spoken of; and 
surely you do not expect a literal accomplishment 
of a hyperbolical expression, denoting great desola- 
tion — importing that the trade of Egypt, w^hich was 
carried on then, as at present, by caravans, by the 
foot of man and beast, should be annihilated. Had 
you taken the trouble to have looked a little fur- 



WATSOlff' S REPLY TO PAINE. 463 

ther into the book from which you have made your 
quotation, you would have there seen a prophecy 
dehvered above two thousand years ago, and 
wliich has been fulfilling from that time to this ; 
" Egypt shall be the basest of the kingdoms, nei- 
ther shall it exalt itself any more above the na- 
tions — there shall be no more a prince of the land 
of Egypt." This you may call a dream, a vision, a 
lie : I esteem it a wonderful prophecy ; for " as is 
the prophecy, so has been the event. Egypt was 
conquered by the Babylonians ; and after the Bab- 
ylonians, by the Persians ; and after the Persians 
it became subject to the Macedonians ; and after 
the Macedonians, to the Komans ; and after the 
Romans, to the Saracens ; and then to the Mame- 
lukes ; and is now a province of the Turkish em- 
pire." 

Suffer mo to produce to you from this author, 
not an enigmatical letter to Daniel respecting the 
recovery of Jerusalem from the hands of the king 
of Babylon, but an enigmatical prophecy concern- 
ing Zedekiah the king of Jerusalem, before it was 
taken by the Chaldeans : "I will bring him," Zede- 
kiah, " to Babylon, to the land of the Chaldeans ; 
yet he shall not see it, though he shall die there." 
How ? not see Babylon, when he should die there ? 
How, moreover, is this consistent, you may ask, 
with what Jeremiah had foretold — that Zedekiah 



464 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

should see the eyes of the king of Babylon ? This 
darkness of expression, and apparent contradiction 
between the two prophets, induced Zedekiah, as 
Josephus informs us, to give no credit to either of 
them ; yet he unhappily experienced — and the fact 
is worthy of your observation — the truth of them 
both. He saw the eyes of the king of Babylon, 
not at Babjdon, but at Riblah ; his eyes were 
there put out ; and he was carried to Babylon, yet 
he saw it not ; and thus were the predictions of 
both the prophets verified, and the enigma of Eze- 
kiel explained. 

As to 3^our wonderful discovery that the proph- 
ecy of Jonah is a book of some Gentile, " and that 
it has been written as a fable, to expose the non- 
sense and to satirize the vicious and malignant 
character of a Biljle proj^het, or a predicting priest," 
I shall put it on the same shelf with your hypothe- 
sis concerning the conspiracy of Daniel and Ezekiel, 
and shall not say another word about it. 

You conclude your objections to the Old Testa- 
ment in a triumphant style — an angry opponent 
would say, in a style of extreme arrogance and 
sottish self-sufficiency. "I have gone," you say, 
"through the Bible" — mistaking here, as in other 
places, the Old Testament for the Bible — " as a man 
would go through a wood, with an axe on his shoul- 
der, and fell trees ; here they lie, and the priests, 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 465 

if they can, may replant them. They may perhaps 
stick them in the ground, but they will never 
grow." And is it possible that you think so highly 
of your performance as to believe that j^ou have 
thereby demolished the authority of a book which 
Newton himself esteemed the most authentic of all 
histories ; which, by its celestial light illumines the 
darkest ages of antiquity ; which is the touchstone 
whereby we are enabled to distinguish between 
true and fabulous theology, between the God of 
Israel, holy, just, and good, and the impure rabble 
of heathen Baalim ; which has been thought, by 
competent judges, to have afforded matter for the 
laws of Solon, and a foundation for the philosophy 
of Plato ; which has been illustrated by the labor 
of learning in all ages and countries, and been ad- 
mired and venerated for its piety, its sublimity, its 
veracity, by all who were able to read and under- 
stand it ? No, sir ; you have gone indeed through 
the wood, with the. best intention in the world to 
cut it down ; but you have merely busied yourself 
in exposing to vulgar contempt a few unsightly 
shrubs, which good men had wisely concealed from 
public view ; you have entangled yourself in thick- 
ets of thorns and briars ; you have lost your way 
on the mountains of Lebanon ; the goodly cedar- 
trees whereof, lamenting the madness and pitying 
the blindness of your rage against them, have 

Inftdelify 30 



466 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

scorned the blunt edge and the base temper of your 
axe, and laughed, unhurt, at the feebleness of your 
strokes. 

In plain language, you have gone through the 
Old Testament hunting after difficulties, and you 
have found some real ones ; these you have endeav- 
ored to magnify into insurmountable objections to 
the authority of the whole book When it is con- 
sidered that the Old Testament is composed of sev- 
eral books, written by different authors and at dif- 
ferent periods, from Moses to Malachi, comprising 
an abstracted history of a particular nation for 
above a thousand years, I think the real difficulties 
which occur in it are much fewer and of much less 
importance than could reasonably have been ex- 
pected. Apparent difficulties you have represented 
as real ones, without hinting at the manner in 
which they have been explained. You have ridi- 
culed things held most sacred, and calumniated 
characters esteemed most venerable ; you have ex- 
cited the scoffs of the profane, increased the scep- 
ticism of the doubtful, shaken the faith of the un- 
learned, suggested cavils to the "disputers of this 
world," and perplexed the minds of honest men who 
wish to worship the God of their fathers in sincerity 
and truth. This and more you have done in going 
through the Old Testament ; but you have not so 
much as glanced at the great design of the whole, 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 467 

at the harmony and mutual dependence of the sev- 
eral parts. You have said nothing of the wisdom 
of God in selecting a particular people from the rest 
of mankind, not for their own sakes, but that they 
might witness to the whole world, in successive 
ages, his existence and attributes ; that they might 
be an instrument of subverting idolatry, and of de- 
claring the name of the God of Israel throughout 
the whole earth. It was through this nation that 
the Egyptians saw the wonders of God ; that 
the Canaanites, whom wickedness had made a re- 
proach to human nature, felt his judgments ; that 
the Babylonians issued their decrees, that "none 
should dare to speak amiss of the God of Israel ; 
that all should fear and treiyible before him ;" and 
it is through them that you and I, and all the world, 
are not at this day worshippers of idols. You have 
said nothing of the goodness of God in promising 
that, through the seed of Abraham, all the nations 
of the earth were to be blessed ; that the desire of 
all nations, the blessing of Abraham to the Gen- 
tiles, should come. You have passed by all the 
prophecies respecting the coming of the Messiah : 
though they absolutely fixed the time of his coming, 
and of his being cut off : described his office, char- 
acter, condition, sufferings, and death, in so circum- 
stantial a manner that we cannot but be astonished 
at the accuracy of their completion m the person of 



468 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

Jesus of Nazareth. You have neglected noticing 
the testimony of the whole Jewish nation to the 
truth both of the natural and miraculous facts re- 
corded in the Old Testament. That we may better 
judge of the weight of this testimony, let us sup- 
pose that God should now manifest himself to us, 
as we contend he did to the Israelites in Egypt, in 
the desert, and in the land of Canaan, and that he 
should continue these manifestations of himself to 
our posterity for a thousand years or more, punish- 
ing or rewarding them according as they disobeyed 
or obeyed his commands ; what would you expect 
would be the issue? You would expect that our 
posterity would, in a remote period of time, adhere 
to their God, and maintain, against all opponents, 
the truth of the books in which the dispensations 
of God to us and to our successors had been re- 
corded. They would not yield to the objections 
of men, who, not having experienced the same di- 
vine government, should, for want of such experi- 
ence, refuse assent to their testimony. No. They 
would be to the then surrounding nations what 
the Jews are to us, witnesses of the existence and 
of the moral government of God. 



WATSONS REPLY TO PAINE. 469 



LETTER VII. 

"The New Testament, they tell us, is founded 
upon the prophecies of the Old ; if so, it must fol- 
low the fate of its foundation." Thus you open 
your attack upon the New Testament ; and I agree 
with you, that the New Testament must follow the 
fate of the Old ; and that fate is to remain unim- 
paired by such efforts as you have made against 
it. The New Testament, however, is not founded 
solely on the prophecies of the Old. If a heathen 
from Athens or Rome, who had never heard of the 
prophecies of the Old Testament, had been an eye- 
witness of the miracles of Jesus, he would have 
made the same conclusion that the Jew Nicodemus 
did : " Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come 
from God ; for no man can do these miracles that 
thou doest, except God be wnth him." Our Saviour 
tells the Jews, "Had ye believed Moses, ye would 
have believed me ; for he wrote of me ;" and he 
bids them search the Scriptures, for they testified 
of him. But notwithstanding this appeal to the 
prophecies of the Old Testament, Jesus said to the 
Jews, "Though ye believe not me, believe the 
works" — "believe me for the very works' sake." 
"If I had not done among them the works which 



470 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

none other man did, they had not had sin." These 
are sufficient proofs that the truth of Christ's mission 
was not even to the Jews, much less to the Gen- 
tiles, founded solely on the truth of the prophecies 
of the Old Testament. So that if you could prove 
some of these prophecies to have been misapplied, 
and not completed in the person of Jesus, the truth 
of the Christian religion would not thereby be over, 
turned. That Jesus of Nazareth was the person 
in whom all the prophecies, direct and typical, in 
the Old Testament, respecting the Messiah, were 
fulfilled, is a proposition founded on those prophe- 
cies, and to be proved by comparing them with the 
history of his life. That Jesus was a prophet sent 
from God, is one proposition ; that Jesus was Iht 
prophet, the Messiah, is another ; and though he 
certainly was both a prophet and the prophet, yet 
the foundations of the proof of these propositions 
are separate and distinct. 

The mere existence "of such a woman as Mary, 
and of such a man as Joseph, and Jesus," is, you 
saj'', a matter of indifference, about which there is 
no ground either to believe or to disbelieve. Belief 
la* different from knowledge, with which you here 
seem to confound it. We know that the whole is 
greater than its parts ; and we know that all the 
angles in the same segment of a circle are equal to 
each other: we have intuition and demonstration 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 471 

as grounds of this knowledge ; but is there no 
ground for belief of past or future existence ? Is 
there no ground for believing that the sun will 
exist to-morrow, and that your father existed be- 
fore you? You condescend, however, to think it 
probable that there were such persons as Mary, 
Joseph, and Jesus ; and without troubling yourself 
about their existence or non-existence, assuming, 
as it were, for the sake of argument, but without 
positively granting their existence, you proceed to 
inform us that " it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as 
told in the New Testament, and the wild and vision- 
ary doctrine raised thereon," against which you 
contend. You will not repute it a fable, that there 
was such a man as Jesus Christ ; that he lived in 
Judea near eighteen hundred years ago ; that he 
went about doing good, and preaching, not only in 
the villages of Galilee, but in the city of Jerusalem ; 
that he had several followers, who constantly at- 
tended him ; that he was put to death by Pontius 
Pilate ; that his disciples were numerous a few 
years after his death, not only in Judea, but in 
Rome, the capital of the world, and in every prov- 
ince of the Roman empire ; that a particular day 
lias been observed in a religious manner by all his 
followers, in commemoration of a real or supposed 
resurrection ; and that the constant celebration of 
ba})tism, and of the Lord's supper, may be traced 



472 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

back from the present time to him, as the author 
of those institutions. These things constitute, I 
suppose, no part of your fable ; and if these things 
be facts, they will, when maturely considered, draw 
after them so many other things related in the New 
Testament concerning Jesus, that there will be left 
for 3^our fable but very scanty materials, which 
will require great fertility of invention before you 
will dress them up into any form which will not 
disgust even a superficial observer. 

The miraculous conception you esteem a fable, 
and in your mind it is an obscene fable. Impure, 
indeed, must that man's imagination be, who can 
discover any obscenity in the angel's declaration 
to Mary, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, 
and the power of the Highest shall overshadow 
thee : therefore that holy thing which shall be 
born of thee, shall be called the Son of God." I 
wonder you do not find obscenity in Genesis, where 
it is said, "The Spirit of God moved upon the face 
of the waters," and brought order out of confusion, 
a world out of chaos, by his fostering influence. 
As to the Christian faith being built upon the hea- 
then mythology, there is no ground whatever for 
the assertion : there would have been some for 
saying that much of the heathen mythology was 
built upon the events recorded in the Old Testa- 
ment. 



"WATSON-S REPLY TO PAINE. 473 

You come now to a demonstration, or which 
amounts to the same thing, to a proposition which 
cannot, you say, be controverted. First, "That' 
the agreement of all the parts of a story does not 
prove that story to be true, because the parts may 
agree, and the whole may be false. Secondly, 
That the disagreemeMt of the parts of a story proves 
that the whole cannot be true. The agreement does 
not prove truth, but the disagreement proves false- 
hood positively." Great use, I perceive, is to be 
made of this proposition. You will pardon my un- 
skilfulness in dialectics, if I presume to controvert 
the truth of this abstract proposition, as applied to 
any purpose in life. The agreement of the parts 
of a story implies that the story has been told by 
at least two persons — the life of Doctor Johnson, 
for instance, by Sir John Hawkins and Mr. Bos- 
well. Now I think it scarcely possible for even two 
persons, and the difficulty is increased if there are 
more than two, to write the history of the life of 
any one of their acquaintance without there being 
a considerable difference between them with re- 
spect to the number and order of the incidents of 
his life. Some things will be omitted by one, and 
mentioned by the other ; some things will be briefly 
touched by one, and the same things circumstan- 
tially detailed by the otlier ; the same things which 
are mentioned in the same way by them both, may 



474 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

not be mentioned as having happened exactly at 
the same point of time, with other possible and 
probable differences. But these real or apparent 
difficulties in minute circumstances, will not inval- 
idate their testimony as to the material transactions 
of his life, much less will they render the whole of 
it a fable. If several independent witnesses of 
fair character should agree in all the parts of a 
story — in testifying, for instance, that a murder or 
a robbery was committed at a particular time, in a 
particular place, and by a certain individual — every 
court of justice in the world would admit the fact, 
notwithstanding the abstract possibility of the 
whole being false. Again, if several honest men 
should agree in saying that they saw the king of 
France beheaded, though the}'- should disagree as 
to the figure of the guillotine or the size of his exe- 
cutioner, as to the king's hands being bound or 
loose, as to his being composed or agitated in as- 
cending the scaffold, yet every court of justice in 
the world would think that such a difference re- 
specting the circumstances of the fact did not in- 
validate the evidence respecting the fact itself. 
When you speak of the whole of a story, you can- 
not mean every particular circumstance connected 
with the story, but not essential to it ; you must 
mean the pith and marrow of the story ; for it would 
be impossible to establish the truth of any fact — 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 475 

of Admirals Bjng or Keppel, for example, having 
neglected or not neglected their duty — if a dis- 
agreement in the evidence of witnesses, in minute 
points, should be considered as annihilating the 
weight of their evidence in points of importance. 
In a word, the relation of a fact differs essentially 
from the demonstration of a theorem. If one step 
is left out, one link in the chain of ideas constitut- 
ing a demonstration is omitted, the conclusion will 
be destroyed ; but a fact may be established, not- 
withstanding the disagreement of the witnesses in 
certain trifling particulars of their evidence respect- 
ing it. 

You apply your incontrovertible proposition to 
the genealogies of Christ given by Matthew and 
Luke — there is a disagreement between them ; 
therefore, you say, '' If Matthew speak truth, Luke 
speaks falsehood ; and if Luke speak truth, Mat- 
thew speaks falsehood ; and thence there is no 
authority for believing either ; and if they cannot 
be believed even in the very first thing they say 
and set out to prove, they are not entitled to be 
believed in any thing they say afterwards." I 
cannot admit either j^our premises or your conclu- 
sion : not your conclusion, because two authors 
who differ in tracing back the pedigree of an indi- 
vidual for above a thousand years, cannot, on that 
account, be esteemed incompetent to bear testi- 



476 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

'mony to the transactions of his hfe, unless an in- 
tention to falsify could be proved against them. 
If two Welsh historians should at this time write 
the life of any remarkable man of their country 
who had been dead twenty or thirty years, and 
should, through different branches of their genea- 
logical tree, carry up the pedigree to Cadwallon, 
would they, on account of that difference, be dis- 
credited in every thing they said ? Might it not 
be believed that they gave the pedigree as they 
had found it recorded in different instruments, but 
without the least intention to write a falsehood ? I 
cannot admit your premises, because Matthew 
speaks truth, and Luke speaks truth, though they 
do not speak the same truth ; Matthew giving the 
genealogy of Joseph, the reputed father of Jesus, 
and Luke giving the genealogy of Mary, the real 
mother of Jesus. If you will not admit this, other 
explanations of the difficulty might be given ; but 
I hold it sufficient to say, that the authors had no 
design to deceive the reader ; that they took their 
accounts from the public registers, which were 
carefully kept ; and that, had they been fabricators 
of these genealogies, they would have been ex- 
posed at the time to instant detection ; and the 
certainty of that detection would have prevented 
them from making the attempt to impose a false 
genealogy on the Jewish nation. 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 477 

But that you may effectually overthrow the 
credit of these genealogies, you make the follow- 
ing calculation : " From the birth of David to the 
birth of Christ is upwards of 1,080 years ; and as 
there were but twenty-seven full generations, to 
find the average age of each person mentioned in 
St Matthew's list at the time his first son was 
born, it is only necessary to divide 1,080 by 2T, 
which gives forty years for each person. As the 
lifetime of man was, then but of the same extent 
it is now, it is absurdity to suppose that twenty- 
seven generations should all be old bachelors be- 
fore they married. So far from this genealogy 
being a solemn truth, it is not even a reasonable 
lie." This argument assumes the appearance of 
arithmetical accuracy, and the conclusion is in a 
style which even its truth would not excuse ; yet 
the argument is good for nothing, and the conclu- 
sion is not true. You have read the Bible with 
some attention, and you are extremely liberal in 
imputing to it lies and absurdities : read it over 
again, especially the books of the Chronicles, and 
you will there find, that in the genealogical list of 
St. Matthew, three generations are omitted be- 
tween Joram and Ozias ; Joram was the father of 
Azariah, Azariah of Joash, Joash of Amaziah, and 
Amaziah of Ozias. I inquire not in this place 
whence this omission proceeded ; whether it is to 



478 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

be attributed to an error in the genealogical tables 
from whence Matthew took his account, or to a 
corruption of the text of the evangelist ; still it is 
an omission. Now, if joii will add these three 
generations to the twenty-seven you mention, and 
divide one thousand and eighty by thirty, jon will 
find the average age when these Jews had each 
of them their first son born was thirty-six. They 
married sooner than they ought to have done ac- 
cording to Aristotle, who fixes thirty-seven as the 
most proper age when a man should marry. Nor 
was it necessary that they should have been old 
bachelors, though each of them had not a son to 
succeed him till he was thirty-six ; they might 
have been married at twenty, without having a 
son till they were forty. You assume in your 
argument, that the first-born son succeeded the 
father in the list ; this is not true. Solomon suc- 
ceeded David, yet David had at least six sons who 
were grown to manhood before Solomon was born ; 
and Rehoboam had at least three sons before he 
had Abia — Abijah — who succeeded him. It is need- 
less to cite more instances to this purpose ; but 
from these, and other circumstances which might 
be insisted upon, I can see no ground for believing 
that the genealogy of Jesus Christ mentioned by 
St, Matthew is not a solemn truth. 
You insist much upon some things being men- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 479 

tioned by one evangelist, which are not mentioned 
by all, or by any of the others ; and you take this 
to be a reason why we should consider the gospels, 
not as the works of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and, 
John, but as the productions of some unconnected 
individuals, each of whom made his own legend. 
I do not admit the truth of this supposition, but I 
may be allowed to use it as an argument against 
yourself; it removes every possible suspicion of 
fraud and imposture, and confirms the gospel his- 
tory in the strongest manner. Four unconnected 
individuals have each written memoirs of the life 
of Jesus : from whatever source they derived their 
materials, it is evident that they agree in a great 
many particulars of the last importance, such as 
the purity of his manners, the sanctity of his doc- 
trines, the multitude and publicity of his miracles, 
the persecuting spirit of his enemies, the manner 
of his death, and the certainty of his resurrection ; 
and while they agree in these great points, their 
disagreement in points of little consequence is 
rather a confirmation of the truth, than an indica- 
tion of the falsehood of their several accounts. 
Had they agreed in nothing, their testimony ought 
to have been rejected as a legendary tale ; had 
they agreed in every thing, it might have been 
suspected that, instead of unconnected individuals, 
they were a set of impostors. The manner in 



480 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

which the evangelists have recorded the particu- 
lars of the life of Jesus is wholly conformable to 
what we experience in other biographers, and claims 
our highest assent to its truth, notwithstanding the 
force of your incontrovertible proposition. 

As an instance of contradiction between the 
evangehsts, you tell us that Matthew says, the 
angel announcing the immaculate conception ap- 
peared unto Joseph ; but Luke says he appeared 
unto Mary, The angel, sir, appeared to them both : 
to Mary, when he informed her that she should, 
by the power of God, conceive a son ; to Joseph, 
some months afterwards, when Mary's pregnancy 
was visible ; in the interim she had paid a visit of 
three months to her cousin Elizabeth. It might 
have been expected, that, from the accuracy with 
which you have read your Bible, you could not 
have confounded these obviously distinct appear- 
ances ; but men, even of candor, are liable to mis- 
takes. Who, you ask, would now believe a girl, 
who should say that she was gotten with child by 
a ghost ? Who, but yourself, would ever have 
asked a question so abominably indecent and pro- 
fane ? I cannot argue with j^ou on this subject. 
You will never persuade the world that the Holy 
Spirit of God has any resemblance to the stage 
ghosts in Hamlet or Macbeth, from which you 
seem to have derived your idea of it. 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 481 

The story of the massacre of the young children 
by the order of Herod, is mentioned only by Mat- 
thew ; and therefore you think it is a lie. We 
must give up all history, if we refuse to admit 
facts recorded by only one historian. Matthew 
addressed his gospel to the Jews, and put them in 
mind of a circumstance of which they must have 
had a melancholy remembrance ; but gentile con- 
verts were less Mnterested in that event. The 
evangelists were not writing the life of Herod, but 
of Jesus ; it is no wonder then that they omitted, 
above half a century after the death of Herod, an 
instance of his cruelty which was not essentially 
connected with their subject. The massacre, how- 
ever, was probably known even at Rome ; and it 
was certainly correspondent to the character of 
Herod. " John," you say, at the time of the mas- 
sacre, ''was under two years of age, and yet he 
escaped ; so that the story circumstantially belies 
itself." John was six months older than Jesus ; 
and you cannot prove that he was not beyond the 
age to which the order of Herod extended ; it prob- 
ably reached no farther than to those who had 
completed their first year, without including those 
who had. entered upon their second: but without 
insisting upon this, still I contend that you cannot 
prove John to have been under two years of age 
at the time of the massacre ; and I could give 

Infidelity. 31 



482 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

many probable reasons to the contrary. Nor is it 
certain that John was, at that time, in that part of 
the country to which the edict of Herod extended. 
But there would be no end of answering at length 
all your httle objections. 

No two of the evangelists, you observe, agree 
in reciting, exactly in the same words, the written 
inscription which was put over Christ when he 
was crucified. I admit that there is an unessen- 
tial verbal difference ; and are you certain that 
there was not a verbal difference in the inscrip- 
tions themselves ? One was written in Hebrew, 
another in Greek, another in Latin ; and though 
they all had the same meaning, yet it is probable, 
that if two men had translated the Hebrew and 
the Latin into Greek, there would have been a 
verbal difference between their translations. You 
have rendered yourself famous by writing a book 
called, The Rights of Man: had you been guillo- 
tined b}"- Robespierre, with this title, written in 
French, English, and German, and affixed to the 
guillotine, " Thomas Paine, of America, author of 
The Rights of Man ;" and had four persons, some 
of whom had seen the execution, and the rest had 
heard of it from eye-witnesses, written short ac- 
counts of your life twenty years or more after 
your death, and one had said the inscription was, 
" This is Thomas Paine, the author of The Rights 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAIKE. 483 

of Man ;" another, '' The author of The Rights of 
Man ;" a third, " This is the author of The Rights 
of ;Man ;" and a fourth, " Thomas Paine, of America, 
the author of The Rights of Man ;" would any man 
of common-sense have doubted, on account of this 
disagreement, the veracity of the authors in writ- 
ing your life? "The only one," you tell us, "of 
the men called apostles, who ap}:)ears to have been 
near the six)t where Jesus was crucified, was Pe- 
ter." This your assertion is not true : we do not 
know that Peter was present at the crucifixion ; 
but we do know that John, the disciple whom Je- 
sus loved, was present ; for Jesus spoke to him 
from the cross. You go on : " But why should we 
believe Peter, convicted by their own account of 
perjury, in swearing that he knew not Jesus ?" I 
will tell you why ; because Peter sineerely re- 
pented of the wickedness into which he had been 
betrayed, through fear for his life, and suffered 
martyrdom in attestation of the truth of the Chris- 
tian religion. 

But the evangelists disagree, you say, not only 
as to the superscription on the cross, but as to the 
time of the crucifixion : ^' Mark saying it was at the 
third hour — nine in the morning — and John at the 
sixth hour — twelve," as you suppose, "at noon." 
Various solutions have been given of this difficulty, 
none of wlaich satisfied Doctor Middleton, much 



484 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

less can it be expected that any of them should 
satisfy you ; but there is a solution not noticed by 
him, in which many judicious men have acquiesced, 
that John, writing his gospel in Asia, used the 
Roman method of computing time, which was the 
same as our own ; so that by the sixth hour, when 
Jesus was condemned, we are to understand six 
o'clock in the morning ; the intermediate time from 
six to nine, when he was crucified, being emploj^ed 
in preparing for the crucifixion. But if this diffi- 
culty should be still esteemed insuperable, it does 
not follow that it will always remain so ; and if it 
should, the main point, the crucifixion of Jesus, 
will not be affected thereby. 

I cannot, in this place, omit remarking some cir- 
cumstances attending the crucifixion, which are so 
natural, that we might have wondered if they had 
not occurred. Of all the disciples of Jesus, John 
was beloved by him with a peculiar degree of afi'ec- 
tion ; and as kindness produces kindness, there 
can be little doubt that the regard was reciprocal. 
Now, whom should we expect to be the attendants 
of Jesus in his last suffering ? Whom but John, 
the friend of his heart ? Whom but his mother, 
whose soul was now^pierced through by the sword 
of sorrow which Simeon had foretold ? Whom 
but those who had been attached to him through 
life J who, having been healed by him of their in- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 485 

firmities, were impelled by gratitude to minister to 
him of their substance, to be attentive to all his 
wants ? These were the persons whom we should 
have expected to attend his execution, and these 
were there. To whom would an expiring son, of 
the best affections, recommend a poor, and proba- 
bly a widowed mother, but to his warmest friend ? 
And this did Jesus. Unmindful of the extremity 
of his own torture, and anxious to alleviate the 
burden of her sorrows, and to protect her old age 
from future want and misery, he said to his be- 
loved disciple, " Behold thy mother I and from that 
hour that disciple took her to his own home." I 
own to you that such instances as these of the 
conformity of events to our probable expectation, 
are to me genuine marks of the simphcity and 
truth of the gospels ; and far outweigh a thousand 
little objections, arising from our ignorance of man- 
ners, times, and circumstances, or from our inca- 
pacity to comprehend the means used by the 
Supreme Being in the moral government of his 
creatures. 

St. Matthew mentions several miracles which 
attended our Saviour's crucifixion — the darkness 
which overspread the land — the rending of the 
veil of the temple — an earthquake, which rent the 
rocks — and the resurrection of many saints, and 
their going into the holy city. " Such," you say, 



486 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE., 

"is the account which this dashing writer of the 
book of Matthew gives, but in which he is not 
supported by the writers of tlie other books." 
This is not accurately expressed ; Matthew is sup- 
ported by Mark and Luke, with respect to two of 
the miracles — the darkness, and the rending of 
the veil ; and their omission of the others does not 
prove that they were either ignorant of them, or 
disbelieved them. I think it idle to pretend to say 
positively what influenced them to mention only 
two miracles : they probably thought them suffi- 
cient to convince any person, as they convinced 
the centurion, that Jesus "was a righteous man, 
the Son of God." And these two miracles were 
better calculated to produce general conviction 
among the persons for whose benefit Mark and 
Luke wrote their gospels, than either the earth- 
quake or the resurrection of the saints. The earth- 
quake was probably confined to a particular spot, 
and might, by an objector, have been called a nat- 
ural phenomenon ; and those to whom the saints 
appeared might, at the time of writing the gospels 
of Mark and Luke, have been dead ; but the dark- 
ness must have been generally known and remem- 
bered, and the veil of the temple might still be pre- 
served at the time these authors wrote. As to 
John not mentioning any of these miracles, it is 
well known that his gospel was written as a kind 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 487 

of supplement to the other gospels ; he has there- 
fore omitted many things which the other three 
evangelists had related, and he has added several 
things which they had not mentioned : in particu- 
lar, he has added a circumstance of great impor- 
tance ; he tells us that he saw one of the soldiers 
pierce the side of Jesus with a spear, and that the 
blood and water flowed through the wound ; and 
lest any one should doubt of the fact, from its not 
being mentioned by the other evangelists, he as- 
serts it with peculiar earnestness. " And he that 
saw it bare record, and his record is true ; and ho 
knoweth that he saith true, that ye might be- 
lieve." John saw blood and water flowing from 
the wound : the blood is easily accounted for ; but 
whence came the water ? The anatomists tell us 
that it came from the pericardium; so consistent is 
evangelical testimony with the most curious re- 
searches into natural science ! You amuse your- 
self with the account of what the Scripture calls 
many saints, and you call an ar7ny of saints, and 
are angry with Matthew for not having told you a 
great many things about them. It is very possible 
that Matthew might have known the fact of their 
resurrection without knowing every thing about 
them ; but if he had gratified your curiosity in 
every particular, I am of opinion that you would 
not have believed a word of what he had told you. 



488 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

I have no curiosity on the subject ; it is enough 
for me to know that " Christ was the first-fruits of 
them that slept," and " that all that are in the 
graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth," 
as those holy men did who heard the voice of the 
Son of God at his resurrection, and passed from 
"death to life. If I first indulge myself in being wise 
above what is written, I might be able to answer 
many of your inquiries relative to the saints ; but I 
dare not touch the ark of the Lord, I dare not sup- 
port the authority of Scripture by the boldness of 
conjecture. Whatever difficulty there may be in 
accounting for the silence of the other evangelists, 
and of St. Paul also on this subject, yet there is a 
greater difficulty in supposing that Matthew did 
not give a true narration of what had happened at 
the crucifixion. If there had been no supernatural 
darkness, no earthquake, no rending of the veil of 
the temple, no graves opened, no resurrection of 
holy men, no appearance of them unto many — if 
none of these things had been true, or rather, if 
any one of them had been false, what motive 
could Matthew, writing to the Jews, have had for 
trumping up such wonderful stories ? He wrote, 
as every man does, Mdth an intention to be be- 
lieved ; and yet every Jew he met would have 
stared him in the face and told him that he was a 
liar and an impostor. What author, who, twenty 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 489 

years hence, should address to the French nation 
a history of Louis XVI., would venture to affirm 
that when he was beheaded there was darkness 
for three hours over all France ; that there was 
an earthquake ; that rocks were split, graves 
opened, and dead men brought to life, who ap- 
peared to many persons in Paris ? It is quite 
impossible to suppose that any one should dare to 
publish such obvious lies ; and I think it equally 
impossible to suppose that Matthew would have 
dared to publish his account of what happened at 
the death of Jesus, had not the account been gen- 
erally known to be true. 



490 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 



LETTER VIII. 

The " tfile of the resurrection," you say, " follows 
that of the crucifixion." You have accustomed me 
so much to this kind of language, that when I find 
you speaking of a tale, I have no doubt of meeting 
with a truth. From the apparent disagreement in 
the accounts which the evangehsts have given o! 
some circumstances respecting the resurrection, 
you remark, " If the writers of these books had 
gone into any court of justice to prove an alibi — 
for it is the nature of an alibi that is here attempt- 
ed to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead 
body by supernatural means — and have given 
their evidence in the same contradictory manner 
as it is here given, they would have been in dan- 
ger of having their ears cropped for perjury, and 
would have justly deserved it :" " hard words, or 
hanging," it seems, if you had been their judge. 
Now I maintain that it is the brevity with which 
the account of the resurrection is given by all the 
evangelists which has occasioned the seeming con- 
fusion, and that this confusion would have been 
cleared up at once, if the witnesses of the resur- 
rection had been examined before any judicature. 
As we cannot have this viva voce, examination of 
all the witnesses, let us call up and question the 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 491 

evangelists as witnesses to a supernatural alibi. 
Did you find the sepulchre of Jesus empty ? One 
of us actually saw it empty, and the rest heard, 
from eye-witnesses, that it was empty. Did you, 
or any of the followers of Jesus, take away the 
dead body from the sepulchre ? All answer. No. 
Did the soldiers or the Jews take away the body ? 
No. How are you certain of that ? Because we 
saw the body when it was dead, and saw it after- 
wards when it was alive. How do you know that 
what you saw was the body of Jesus ? We had 
been long and intimately acquainted with Jesus, 
and knew his person perfectly. Were you not 
affrighted, and mistook a spirit for a body ? No ; 
the body had flesh and bones ; we are sure that it 
was the very body which hung upon the cross, 
for we saw the wound in his side, and the print of 
the nails in the hands and feet. And to all this 
you are ready to swear ? We are ; and we are 
ready to die also, sooner than we will deny any 
part of it. This is the testimony which all the 
evangehsts would give, in whatever court of jus- 
tice they were examined ; and this, I apprehend, 
would sufficiently establish the alibi of the dead 
body from the sepulchre by supernatural means. 

But as the resurrection of Jesus is a point which 
you attack with all your force, I will examine 
minutely the principal of your objections ; I do not 



492 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

think them deserving of this notice, but they shall 
have it. The book of Matthew, you say, " states 
that when Christ was put in the sepulchre, the 
Jews applied to Pilate for a watch or a guard to 
be placed over the sepulchre, to prevent the body 
being stolen by the disciples." I admit this ac- 
count ; but it is not the whole of the account ; you 
have omitted the reason for the request which the 
chief priests made to Pilate : " Sir, we remember 
that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, 
after three days I will rise again." It is material 
to remark this ; for at the very time that Jesus 
predicted his resurrection, he predicted also his 
crucifixion, and all that he should suffer from the 
maUce of those very men who now applied to Pi- 
late for a guard. " He showed to his disciples, 
how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer 
many things of the elders and chief priests and 
scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third 
day." Matt. 16:21. These men knew full well 
that the first part of this prediction had been ac- 
tually fulfilled through their malignity ; and in- 
stead of repenting of what they had done, they 
were so infatuated as to suppose that by a guard 
of soldiers they could prevent the completion of 
the second. The other books, you observe, " say 
nothing about this application, nor about the seal- 
ing of the stone, nor the guard, nor the watch, and 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 493 

according to these accounts there were none." 
This, sir, I deny. The other books do not say- 
that there were none of these things : how often 
must I repeat, that omissions are not contradic- 
tions, nor silence concerning a fact a denial of it ? 

You go on : " The book of Matthew continues 
its account, that at the end of the Sabbath, as it 
began to dawn, towards the first day of the week, 
came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see 
the sepulchre. Mark says it was sun-rising, and 
John says it was dark. Luke says it was Mary 
Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of 
James, and other women, that came to the sepulchre. 
And John says that Mary Magdalene came alone. 
So well do they all agree about their first evidence ! 
They all appear, however, to have known most 
about Mary Magdalene ; she was a woman of a 
large acquaintance, and it was not an ill conjecture 
that she might be upon the stroll." This is a long 
paragraph : I will answer it distinctly. First, there 
is no disagreement of evidence with respect to the 
time when the women went to the sepulchre ; all 
the evangelists agree as to the day on which they 
went ; and as to the time of the day, it was early 
in the morning : what court of justice in the world 
would set aside this evidence, as insufficient to 
substantiate the fact of the women's having gone to 
the sepulchre, because the witnesses differed as to 



494 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

the degree of twilight which lighted them on their 
way ? Secondly, there is no disagreement of evi- 
dence with respect to the persons who went to 
the sepulchre. John states that Mary Magdalene 
Went to the sepulchre ; but he does not state, as 
you make him state, that Mary Magdalene went 
alone ; she might, for any thing you have proved, 
or can prove to the contrary, have been accompa- 
nied by all the women mentioned by Luke : is it 
an unusual thing to distinguish by name a princi- 
pal person going on a visit, or on an embassy, 
without mentioning his subordinate attendants ? 
Thirdly, in opposition to your insinuation that 
Mary Magdalene was a common woman, I wish it 
to be considered whether there is any scriptural 
authority for that imputation ; and whether there 
be, or not, I must contend that a repentant -and 
reformed woman ought not to be esteemed an im- 
proper witness of a fact. The conjecture which 
you adopt concerning her is nothing less than an 
illiberal, indecent, unfounded calumny, not excusa- 
ble in the mouth of a libertine, and intolerable in 
yours. 

" The book of Matthew," you observe, "goes on 
to say, ' And behold, there was an earthquake ; for 
the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and 
came and rolled back the stone from the door, and 
sat upon it f but the other books say nothing about 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 495 

an earthquake." What then? does then* silence 
prove that there was none ? " Nor about the 
angel rolling back the stone, and sitting upon it." 
What then ? does their silence prove that the stone 
was not rolled back by an angel, and that he did 
not sit upon it ? " And according to their accounts, 
there was no angel sitting there." This conclusion 
I must deny : their accounts do not say there was 
no angel sitting there at the time that Matthew 
says he sat upon the stone. They do not deny 
the fact, they simply omit the mention of it ; and 
they all take notice that the women, when they 
arrived at the sepulchre, found the stone rolled 
away: hence it is evident that the stone was 
rolled away hefore the women arrived at the sepul- 
chre ; and the other evangehsts, giving an account 
of what happened to the women when they reached 
the sepulchre, have merely omitted giving an ac- 
count of a transaction previous to their arrival. 
Where is the contradiction ? What space of time 
intervened between the rolling away the stone, 
and the arrival of the women at the sepulchre, is 
nowhere mentioned ; but it certainly was long 
enough for the angel to have changed his position ; 
from sitting on the outside, he might have entered 
into the sepulchre ; and another angel might have 
made his appearance, or, from the first, there 
might have been two, one on the outside, rolling 



496 • WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

away the stone, and the other within. Luke, you 
tell us, "says there were two, and they were both 
standing ; and John says there were two, and both 
sitting." It is impossible, I grant, even for an an- 
gel to be sitting and standing at the same instant 
of time ; but Luke and John do not speak of the 
same instant, nor of the same appearance. Luke 
speaks of the appearance to all the women, and 
John of the appearance to Mary Magdalene alone, 
who tarried weeping at the sepulchre after Peter 
and John had left it. But I forbear making any 
more minute remarks on still minuter objections, 
all of which are grounded on this mistake — that 
the angels were seen at one particular time, 
in one particular place, and by the same individ- 
uals. 

As to your inference, from Matthew's using the 
expression, imto this day, that " the book must have 
been manufactured after the lapse of some genera- 
tions at least," it cannot be admitted against the 
positive testimony of all antiquity. That the story 
about stealing away the body was a bungling story, 
I readily admit ; but the chief priests are answera- 
ble for it: it is not worthy either youv notice or 
mine, except as it is a strong instance to you, to 
me, and to every body, how far prejudices may 
mislead the understanding. 

You come to that part of the evidence in those 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 497 

books that respects, you say, "the pretended ap- 
pearance of Christ after his pretended resurrec- 
tion." The writer of the book of Matthew relates, 
that the angel that was sitting on the stone at the 
mouth of the sepulchre, said to the two Marys, 
chap. 28 : Y, *' Behold, Christ is gone before you into 
Galilee ; there shall you see him." The gospel, sir, 
was preached to poor and illiterate men, and it is 
the duty of priests to preach it to them in all its 
purity ; to guard them against the error of mis- 
taken, or the designs of wicked men. You, then, 
who can read your Bible, turn to this passage, and 
you will find that the angel did not say, " Behold, 
Christ is gone before you into Galilee ;" but, " Be- 
hold, he goeth before you into Galilee." I know not 
what Bible you made use of in this quotation, none 
that I have seen render the original word by, he 
is gone. It might be properly rendered, he will 
go : and it is literally rendered, he is going. This 
phrase does not imply an immediate setting out 
for Galilee. When a man has fixed upon a long 
journey to London or Bath, it is common enough 
to say, he is going to London or Bath, though the 
time of his going may be at some distance. Even 
your dashing Matthew could not be guilty of such 
a blunder as to make the angel say, ke. is go7ie; for 
he tells us immediately afterwards, ■ that, as the 
women were departing from the sepulchre to tell 

Infidelity. 32 



498 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

his disciples what the angels had said to them, 
Jesus himself met them. Now, how Jesus could 
be gone into Galilee, and yet meet the women at 
Jerusalem, I leave you to explain, for the blunder 
is not chargeable upon Matthew. I excuse your 
introducing the expression, ''then the eleven dis- 
ciples went away into Galilee," for the quotation 
is rightly made ; but had you turned to the Greek 
Testament, you would not have found in this 
place any word answering to then : the passage is 
better translated, "and the eleven." Christ had 
said to his disciples, Matt. 26 : 32, " After I am 
risen again, I will go before you into Galilee ;" and 
the angel put the women in mind of the very ex- 
pression and prediction : "He is risen, as he said ; 
and behold, he goeth before you into Galilee." 
Matthew, intent upon the appearance in Galilee, of 
which there were, probably, at the time he wrote, 
many living witnesses in JuJea, omits the mention 
of many appearances taken notice of by John, and 
by this omission seems to connect the day of the 
resurrection of Jesus with that of the departure of 
the disciples for Galilee. You seem to think ' this 
a great difficulty, and incapable of solution ; for 
you say, "It is not possible, unless we admit 
these disciples the right of wilful lying, that the 
writers of these books could be any of the eleven 
persons called disciples ; for if, according to Mat- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 499 

thew, the eleven went into Galilee to meet Jesus 
in a mountain, by his own appointment, on the 
same clay that he is said to have risen, Luke and 
Jolin must have been two of that eleven ; yet the 
writer of Luke says expressly, and John implies 
as much, that the meeting was that day in a house 
at Jerusalem : and on the other hand, if, according 
to Luke and John, the eleven were assembled in a 
house at Jerusalem, Matthew must have been one 
of that eleven ; yet Matthew says the meeting 
was in a mountain in Galilee, and consequently 
the evidence given in those books destroys each 
other." When I was a young man in the univer- 
sity, I was pretty much accustomed to drawing of 
consequences ; but my Alma Mater did not suffer 
me to draw consequences after your manner : she 
taught me that a false position must end in an 
absurd conclusion. I have shown your position, 
that " the eleven went into Galilee on the day of 
the resurrection," to be false ; and hence your con- 
sequence, that " the evidence given in those two 
books destroys each other," is not to be admitted. 
You ought, moreover, to have considered that the 
feast of unleavened bread, which immediately fol- 
lowed the day on which the passover was eaten, 
lasted seven days ; and that strict observers of the 
law did not think themselves at liberty to leave 
Jerusalem till that feast was ended : and this is a 



500 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

collateral proof that the disciples did not go to Gali- 
lee on the day of the resurrection. 

You certainly have read the New Testament, 
but not, I think, with great attention, or you would 
have known who the apostles were. In this place 
you reckon Luke as one of the eleven, and in other 
places you speak of him as an eye-witness of the 
things he relates. You ought to have known that 
Luke was no apostle ; and he tells you himself, in 
the preface to his gospel, that he wrote from the 
testimony of others. If this mistake proceeds from 
your ignorance, you are not a fit person to write 
comments on the Bible ; if from design — which I 
am unwilling to suspect — you are still less fit : in 
either case it may suggest to your readers the pro- 
priety of suspecting the truth and accuracy of your 
assertions, however daring and intemperate. "Of 
the numerous priests or parsons of the present 
day, bishops and all, the sum total of whose learn- 
ing," according to you, ''is a b ab, and hie, hcec, hoc, 
there is not one among them," you say, " who can 
write poetry like Homer, or science like Euclid." 
If I should admit this — though there are many of 
them, I doubt not, who understand these authors 
better than you do — yet I cannot admit that there 
is one among them, bishops and all, so ignorant as 
to rank Luke the evangelist among the apostles of 
Christ. I will not press this point ; any man may 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 501 

fall into a mistake, and the consciousness of this 
fallibility should create in all men a little modesty, 
a little diffidence, a little caution, before they pre- 
sume to call the most illustrious characters of an- 
tiquity liars, fools, and knaves. 

You want to know why Jesus did not show him- 
self to all the people after the resurrection. This 
is one of Spinoza's objections, and it may sound 
well enough in the mouth of a Jew, wishing to 
excuse the infidelity of his countrymen ; but it is 
not judiciously adopted by deists of other nations. 
God gives us the means of health, but he does not 
force us to the use of them ; he gives us the pow- 
ers of the mind, but he does not compel us to the 
cultivation of them ; he gave the Jews opportuni- 
ties of seeing the miracles of Jesus, but he did not 
oblige them to believe them. They who perse- 
vered in their incredulity after the resurrection of 
Lazarus, would have persevered also after the res- 
urrection of Jesus. Lazarus had been buried four 
days, Jesus but three ; the body of Lazarus had 
begun to undergo corruption, the body of Jesus 
saw no corruption ; why should you expect that 
they would have believed in Jesus on his own 
resurrection, when they had not believed in him 
on the resurrection of Lazarus ? When the Phari- 
sees were told of the resurrection of Lazarus, they, 
together with the chief priests, gathered a council 



502 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

and said, " What do we ? for this man docth many 
miracles. If we let him thus alone, all men will 
believe on him. Then from that day forth they 
took counsel together to put him to death." The 
great men at Jerusalem, you see, admitted that 
Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead ; yet the 
belief of that miracle did not generate conviction 
that Jesus was the Christ : it only exasperated 
their malice and accelerated their purpose of de- 
stroying him. Had Jesus shown himself after his 
resurrection, the chief priests would probably have 
gathered together another council, have opened it 
with " What do we ?" and ended it with a deter- 
mination to put him to death. As to us, the evi- 
dence of the resurrection of Jesus which we have 
in the New Testament, is far more convincing than 
if it had been related that he showed himself to 
every man in Jerusalem ; for then we should have 
had a suspicion that the whole story had been 
fabricated by the Jews. 

You think Paul an improper witness of the res- 
urrection ; I think him one of the fittest that 
could have been chosen, and for this reason, his 
testimony is the testimony of a former enemy. 
He had, in his own miraculous conversion, suffi- 
cient ground for changing his opinion as to the 
matter of fact — for believing that to have been a 
fact, which he had formerly, through extreme prej- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 503 

udice, considered as a fable. For the truth of the 
resurrection of Jesus, he appeals to above two 
hundred and fifty living witnesses ; and before 
whom does he make his appeal ? Before his ene- 
mies, who were able and willing to blast his char- 
acter, if he had advanced an untruth. You know, 
undoubtedly, that Paul had resided at Corinth near ■ 
two years ; that during a part of that time he had 
testified to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ ; 
that, finding the bulk of that nation obstinate in 
their unbelief, he had turned to the Gentiles, and 
had converted many to the faith in Christ ; that he 
left Corinth, and went to preach the gospel in 
other parts ; that about three years after he had 
quitted Corinth, he wrote a letter to the converts 
which he had made in that place, and who, after 
his departure, had been spht into different factions, 
and had adopted different teachers in opposition to 
Paul. From this account we may be certain that 
Paul's letter, and every circumstance in it, would 
be minutely examined. The city of Corinth was 
full of Jews ; these men were, in general, PauPs 
bitter enemies ; yet, in the face of them all, he 
asserts that " Jesus Christ was buried ; that he 
rose again the third day ; that he was seen of Ce- 
phas, then of the twelve ; that he was afterwards 
seen of above five hundred brethren at once, of 
whom the greater part were then alive." An ap- 



504 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

peal to above two hundred and fifty living wit- 
nesses is a pretty strong proof of a fact ; but it be-» 
comes irresistible when that appeal is submitted 
to the judgment of enemies. St. Paul, you must 
allow, was a man of ability ; but he would have 
been an idiot had he put it in the power of his 
enemies to prove, from his own letter, that he was 
a lying rascal. They neither proved, nor attempt- 
ed to prove any such thing ; and therefore we may 
safely conclude that this testimony of Paul to the 
resurrection of Jesus was true : and it is a testi- 
mony, in my opinion, of the greatest weight. 

You come, you say, to the last scene, the ascen- 
sion ; upon which, in your opinion, " the reality of 
the future mission of the disciples was to rest for 
proof." I do not agree with you in this. The 
reality of the future mission of the apostles might 
have been proved, though Jesus Christ had not 
visibly ascended into heaven. Miracles are the 
proper proofs of a divine mission ; and when Je- 
sus gave the apostles a commission to preach the 
gospel, he commanded them to stay at Jerusalem 
till the3^ were endued with power from on high. 
Matthew has omitted the mention of the ascen-* 
sion ; and John, you say, has not said a syllable 
about it. I think otherwise. John has not given 
an express account of the ascension, but he has 
certainly said something about it ; for he informs 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 505 

US that Jesus said to Mary, '' Touch me not ; for I 
am not yet ascended to my Father ; but go to my 
brethren, and say ufito them, I ascend unto my 
Father and j^our Father, and to my God and your 
God." This is surely saying something about the 
ascension ; and if the fact of the ascension be not 
related by John or Matthew, it may reasonably be 
supposed that the omission was made on account 
of the notoriety of the fact. That the fact was 
generally known may be justly collected from the 
reference which Peter makes to it, in the hearing 
of all the Jews, a very few daj^s after it had hap- 
pened : " This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof 
we all are witnesses. Therefore being hy the right 
hand of God exalted" — Paul bears testimony also 
to the ascension, when he says that Jesus was 
received up into glory. As to the difference you con- 
tend for, between the account of the ascension as 
given by Mark and Luke, it does not exist ; except 
in this, that Mark omits the particulars of Jesus 
going with his apostles to Bethany and blessing 
them there, which are mentioned by Luke. But 
omissions, I must often put you in mind, are not 
contradictions. 

You have now, you say, ''gone through the ex- 
amination of the four books ascribed to Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and John ; and when it is considered 
that the whole space of time, from the crucifixion 



506 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

to what is called the ascension, is but a few days, 
apparently not more than three or four, and that 
all the circumstances are reported to have hap- 
pened near the same spot, Jerusalem, it is, I be- 
lieve, impossible to find, in any story upon record, 
so many and such glaring absurdities, contradic- 
tions, and falsehoods, as are in those books." What 
am I to say to this ? Am I to say that, in writing 
this paragraph, you have forfeited your character 
as an honest man ? Or, admitting your honesty, 
am I to say that you are grossly ignorant of the 
subject ? Let the reader judge. John says that 
Jesus appeared to his disciples at Jerusalem on 
the day of his resurrection, and that Thomas was 
not then with them. The same John says, that 
after eight days he appeared to them again, when 
Thomas was with them. Now, sir, how apparently 
three or four days can be consistent with really eight 
days, I leave you to make out. But this is not the 
whole of John's testimony, either with respect to 
place or time ; for he says, "After these things" — 
after the two appearances to the disciples at Jeru- 
salem on the first and on the eighth day after the 
resurrection — "Jesus showed himself again to his 
disciples at the sea of Tiberias." The sea of Tibe- 
rias, I presume you know, was in Gahlee ; and 
Galilee, you may know, was sixty or seventy 
miles from Jerusalem : it must have taken the 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 507 

disciples some time, after the eighth day, to travel 
from Jerusalem into Galilee. What, in your own 
insulting language to the priests, what have you 
to answer, as to the same spot Jerusalem, and as to 
your apparently three or four days? But this is 
not all. Luke, in the beginning of the Acts, refers 
to his gospel, and says, "Christ showed himself 
alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, 
being seen of the apostles forty days, and speaking 
of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God." 
Instead of four, you perceive there wsls forty days 
between the crucifixion and the ascension. I need 
not, I trust, after this, trouble myself about the 
falsehoods and contradictions which you impute to 
the evangelists ; your readers cannot but be upon 
their guard as to the credit due to your assertions, 
however bold and improper. You will suffer mo 
to remark, that the evangelists were plain men, 
who, convinced of the truth of their narration, and 
conscious of their own integrity, have related what 
they knew with admirable simplicity. They seem 
to have said to the Jews of their time, and to say 
to the unbelievers of all times. We have told you 
the truth ; and if you will not believe us, we have 
nothing more to say. Had they been impostors 
they would have written with more caution and 
art, have obviated every cavil, and avoided every 
appearance of contradiction. This they have not 



508 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

done ; and this I consider as a proof of their hon- 
esty and veracity. 

John the Baptist had given his testimony to the 
truth of our Saviour's mission in the most unequiv- 
ocal terms ; he afterwards sent two of his disciples 
to Jesus, to ask him whether he was really the ex- 
pected Messiah or not. Matthew relates hoth these 
circumstances : had the writer of the book of Mat- 
thew been an impostor, would he have invalidated 
John's testimony, by bringing forward his real or 
apparent doubt ? Impossible ! Matthew, having 
proved the resurrection of Jesus, tells us that the 
eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a 
mountain where Jesus had appointed them ; and 
"when they saw him, they worshipj^ed him ; but 
some doubted." Would an impostor, in the very 
last place where he mentions the resurrection, and 
•in the conclusion of his book, have suggested such 
a cavil to unbelievers as to say, "some doubted?" 
Impossible ! The evangelist has left us to collect 
the reason why some doubted. The disciples saw 
Jesus, at a distance, on the mountain ; and some 
of them fell down and worshipped him ; while others 
doubted whether the person they saw was really 
Jesus : their doubt, however, could not have lasted 
long, for in the very next verse we are told that 
Jesus came and spoke unto them. 

Great and laudable pains have been taken by many 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 509 

learned men to harmonize the several accounts 
given us by the evangelists of the resurrection. It 
does not seem to me to be a matter of any great 
consequence to Christianity whether the accounts 
can, in every minute particular, be harmonized or 
not, since there is no such discordance in them as 
to render the fact of the resurrection doubtful to 
any impartial mind. If any man, in a court of jus- 
tice, should give positive evidence of a fact, and 
three others should afterwards be examined, and 
all of them should confirm the evidence of the first 
as to the fact, but should apparently differ from him 
and from each other, by being more or less partic- 
ular in their accounts of the circumstances attend- 
ing the fact, ought we to doubt of the fact because 
we could not harmonize the evidence respecting 
the circumstances relating to it ? The omission of 
any one circumstance — such as that of Mary Mag- 
dalene having gone twice to the sepulchre ; or that 
of the angel having, after he had rolled away the 
stone from the sepulchre, entered into the sepul- 
chre — may render a harmony impossible, without 
having recourse to supposition to supply the de- 
fect. You deists laugh at all such attempts, and 
call them priestcraft. I think it better then, in 
arguing with you, to admit that there may be — 
not granting, however, that there is — an irrecon- 
cilable dififetence between the evangelists in some 



510 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

of their accounts respecting the hfe of Jesus, or his 
resurrection. Be it so ; what then ? Does this dif- 
ference, admitting it to be real, destroy the credi- 
bility of the gospel history in any of its essential 
points ? Certainly, in my opinion, not. As I look 
upon this to be a general answer to most of your 
deistical objections, I profess my sincerity in say- 
ing that I consider it as a true and sufficient an- 
swer ; and I leave it to your consideration. I have 
purposely, in the whole of this discussion, been 
silent as to the inspiration of the evangehsts, well 
knowing that you would have rejected, with scorn, 
any thing I could have said on that point ; but in 
disputing with a deist, I do most solemnly contend 
that the Christian religion is true, and worth}' of 
all acceptation, whether the evangehsts were in- 
spired or not. 

Unbelievers in general wish to conceal their sen- 
timents ; they have a decent respect for public 
opinion ; are cautious of affronting the religion of 
their country, fearful of undermining the founda- 
tions of civil society. Some few have been more 
daring, but less judicious, and have, without dis- 
guise, professed their unbelief. But you are the 
first who ever swore that he was an infidel, con- 
cluding your deistical creed with — So help me 
God ! I pray that God may help you ; that he 
may, through the influence of his Holy Spirit, 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 511 

bring you to a right mind ; convert you to the 
religion of his Son, whom, out of his abundant 
love to mankind, he sent into the world, that all 
who believe in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life. 

You swear that you think the Christian religion 
is not true. I give full credit to your oath ; it is 
an oath in confirmation — of what ? of an opinion. 
It proves the sincerity of your declaration of your 
opinion ; but the opinion, notwithstanding the oath, 
may be either true or false. Permit me to produce 
to you an oath not confirming an opinion, but a 
fact ; it is the oath of St. Paul, when he swears to 
the Galatians, that in what he told them of his 
miraculous conversion he did not lie : " Now the 
things which I write unto you, behold, before God, 
I lie not" — do but give that credit to St. Paul 
which I give to you, do but consider the difference 
between an opinion and a fact, and I shall not 
despair of your becoming a Christian. 

Deism, you say, consists in a belief of one God, 
and an imitation of his moral character, or the prac- 
tice of what is called virtue ; and in this, as far as 
religion is concerned, you rest all your hopes. 
There is nothing in deism but what is in Christian- 
ity, but there is much in Christianity which is not 
in deism. The Christian has no doubt concerning 
a future state ; every deist, from Plato to Thomas 



512 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

Paine, is on this subject overwhelmed with doubts 
insuperable by human reason. The Christian has 
no misgivings as to the pardon of penitent sinners, 
through the intercession of a mediator ; the deist 
is harassed with apprehensions lest the moral jus- 
tice of God should demand, with inexorable rigor, 
punishment for transgression. The Christian has 
no doubt concerning the lawfulness and the effica- 
cy of prayer ; the deist is disturbed on this point 
by abstract considerations concerning the goodness 
of God, which wants not to be entreated — con- 
cerning his foresight, which has no need of our 
information — concerning his immutability, which 
cannot be changed through our supplication. The 
Christian admits the providence of God, and the 
liberty of human actions ; the deist is involved in 
great difficulties when he undertalies the proof of 
either. The Christian has assurance that the 
Spirit of God will help his infirmities ; the deist 
does not deny the possibility that God may have 
access to the human mind, but he has no ground 
to believe the fact of his either enlightening the 
understanding, influencing the will, or purifying 
the heart. 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 513 



LETTER IX. 

'^ Those," you say, " who are noi^much acquaint- 
ed with ecclesiastical history, may suppose that 
the book called the New Testament has existed 
ever since the time of Jesus Christ ; but the fact 
is historically otherwise : there was no such book 
as the New Testament till more than three hun- 
dred years after the time that Christ is said to 
have lived." This paragraph is calculated to mis- 
lead common readers ; it is necessary to unfold its 
meaning. The book called the New Testament, 
consists of twenty-seven different parts ; concern- 
ing seven of these, namely, the epistle to the He- 
brews, that of James, the second of Peter, the 
second of John, the third of John, that of Jude, 
and the Revelation, there were at first some, 
doubts ; and the question whether they should be 
received into the canon might be decided, as all 
questions concerning opinions must be, by vote. 
With respect to the other twenty parts, those who 
are most acquainted with ecclesiastical history will 
tell you, as Du Pin does after Eusebius, that they 
were owned as canonical at all times, and by all 
Christians. Whether the council of Laodicea was 
held before or after that of Nice, is not a settled 
point : all the books of the New Testament, except 

Infidelity. 33 



514 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

the Revelation, are enumerated as canonical in 
the constitution of that council ; but it is a great 
mistake to suppose that the greatest part of the 
books of the N^w Testament were not in general 
use among the Christians long before the council of 
Laodicea was held. This is not merely my opinion 
on the subject ; it is the opinion of one much bet- 
ter acquainted with ecclesiastical history than I 
am, and probably than you are — Mosheim. " The 
opinions," says this author, " or rather, the conjec- 
tures of the learned, concerning the time when the 
books of the New Testament were collected into 
one volume, as also about the authors of that col- 
lection, are extremely different. This important 
question is attended with great and almost insuper- 
able difficulties to us in these latter times. It is 
however sufficient for us to know, that before the 
.middle of the second century, the greatest part of 
the books of the New Testament were read in 
every Christian society throughout the world, and 
received as a divine rule of faith and manners. 
Hence it aj^pears that these sacred writings were 
carefully separated from several human composi- 
tions upon the same subject, either by some of the 
apostles themselves who lived so long, or by their 
disciples and successors who were spread abroad 
through all nations. "We are well assured that 
the four gospels were collected during the life of 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 515 

St. John, and that the three first received the ap- 
probation of this divine apostle. x\nd why may 
we not suppose that the other books of the New 
Testament were gathered together at the same 
time ? What renders this highly probable is, that 
thg most urgent necessity required its being done. 
For, not long after Christ's ascension into heaven, 
several histories of his life and doctrines, full of 
pious frauds and fabulous wonders, were composed 
by persons whose intentions, perhaps, were not 
bad, but whose writings discovered the greatest 
superstition and ignorance. Nor was this all ; pro- 
ductions appeared, which were imposed on the 
world by fraudulent men as the writings of the 
holy apostles. These apocryphal and spurious 
writings must have produced a sad confusion, and 
rendered both the history and the doctrine of 
Christ uncertain, had not the rulers of the church 
used all possible care and dDigence in separating 
the books that were truly apostolical and divine 
from all that spurious trash, and conveying them 
down to posterity in one volume." 

Did you ever read the Apology for the Christians 
which Justin Martyr presented to the emperor An- 
toninus Pius, to the senate, and people of Rome? 
I should sooner expect a fallacy in a petition which 
any body of persecuted men, imploring justice, 
should present to the king and parliament of Great 



516 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

Britain, than in this Apology. Yet in this Apolo- 
gy, which was presented not fifty years after the 
death of St, John, not only parts of all the four gos- 
pels are quoted, but it is expressly said, that on the 
day called Sunday a portion of them was read in 
the public assemblies of the Christians. I forbgar 
pursuing this matter further, else it might easily 
be shown that probably the gospels, and certainly 
some of St. Paul's epistles, were known to Clem' 
ent, Ignatius, and Polycarp, contemporaries with 
the apostles. These men could not quote or refer 
to books which did not exist ; and therefore, though 
you could make it out that the book called the New 
Testament did not formally exist under that title 
till 350 years after Christ, yet I hold it to be a cer- 
tain fact that all the books of which it is composed 
were written, and most of them received by all 
Christians, within a few years after his death. 

You raise a difficulty relative to the time which 
intervened between the death and resurrection of 
Jesus, who had said that the Son of man should 
be three days and three nights in the heart of the 
earth. Are you ignorant, then, that the Jews 
used the phrase three days and three nights to 
denote what we understand by three days ? It is 
said in Genesis, chap. 7:12, " The rain was upon 
the earth forty days and forty nights ;" and this is 
equivalent to the expression, verse It, "And the 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 517 

flood was forty days upon the earth." Instead 
then of sayhig three days and three nights, let iis 
simply say three days ; and you will not object to 
Christ's being three days — Friday, Saturday, and 
Sunday — in the heart of the earth. I do not say 
that he was in the grave the whole of either Fri- 
day or Su'nday ; but a hundred instances might be 
produced, from writers of all nations, in which a 
part of a day is spoken of as the whole. Thus 
much for the defence of the historical part of the 
New Testament. 

You have introduced an account of Faustus, as 
denying the- genuineness of the books of the New 
Testament. Will you permit that great scholar in 
sacred literature, Michaelis, to tell you something 
about this Faustus ? " He was ignorant, as were 
most of the African writers, of the Greek language, 
and acquainted with the New Testament merely 
through the channel of the Latin translation : he 
was not only devoid of a sufficient fund of learning, 
but illiterate in the highest degree. An argument 
which he brings against the genuineness of the 
gospel affords sufficient ground for this assertion ; 
for he contends that the gospel of St. Matthew 
could not have been written by St. Matthew him- 
self, because he is always mentioned in the third 
person." You know who has argued like Faustus, 
but I did not think myself authorized on that ac^ 



518 • WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

count to call you illiterate in the highest degree ; 
but MichaeUs makes a still more severe conclusion 
concerning Faustus, and he extends his observa- 
tion to every man who argued like him : "A man 
capable of such an argument must have been igno- 
rant not only of the Greek writers, the knowledge 
of which could not have been expected from Faus- 
tus, but even of the commentaries of Csesar. And 
were it thought improbable that so heavy a charge 
could be laid with justice on the side of his know- 
ledge, it would fall with double weight on the side 
of his honesty, and induce us to suppose that, pre- 
ferring the art of sophistry to the plainness of truth, 
he maintained opinions which he believed to be 
false." Never more, I think, shall we hear of Mo- 
ses not being the author of the Pentateuch, on ac- 
count of its being written in the third person. 

Not being able to produce any argument to ren- 
der questionable either the genuineness or the 
authenticity of St. Paul's epistles, you tell us that 
" it is a matter of no great importance by whom 
they were written, since the writer, whoever he 
was, attempts to prove his doctrine by argument : 
he does not pretend to have been witness to any 
of the scenes told of the resurrection and ascension, 
and he declares that he had not believed them." 
That Paul had so far resisted thfe evidence which 
the apostles had given of the resurrection and as- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 519 

cension of Jesus as to be a persecutor of the disci- 
ples of Christ, is certain ; but I do not remember 
the place where he declares that he had not be- 
lieved them. The high-priest and the senate of 
the children of Israel did not deny the reality of 
the miracles which had been wrought by Peter 
and the apostles ; they did not contradict their 
testimony concerning the resurrection and the as- 
cension ; but whether they believed it or not, they 
were fired with indignation, and took counsel to 
put the apostles to death : and this was also the 
temper of Paul : whether he believed or did not 
believe the story of the resurrection, he was ex- 
ceedingly mad against the saints. The writer of 
Paul's epistles does not attempt to prove his doc- 
trine by argument ; he in many places tells us that 
his doctrine was not taught him by man, or any 
invention of his own which required the ingenuity 
of argument to prove it : "I certify you, brethren, 
that the gospel, which was preached of me, is not 
after man ; for I neither received it of man, neither 
was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus 
Christ." Paul does not pretend to have been a 
witness of the story of the resurrection, but he 
does much more, he asserts that he was himself a 
witness of the resurrection. After enumerating 
many appearances of Jesus to his disciples, Paul 
says of himself, " Last of all, he was seen of me 



520 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

also, as of one born out of due time." Whether 
you will admit Paul to have been a true witness 
or not, you cannot deny that he pretends to have 
been a witness of the resurrection. 

The story of his being struck to the ground as 
he was journeying to Damascus, has nothing in it, 
you say, miraculous or extraordinary; you repre- 
sent him as struck by lightning. It is somewhat 
extraordinary for a man who is struck by lightning, 
to have, at the very time, full possession of his 
understanding ; to hear a voice issuing from the 
lightning, speaking to him in the Hebrew tongue, 
calling him by his name, and entering into conver- 
sation with him. His companions, you say, ap- 
pear not to have suffered in the same manner ; 
the greater the wonder. If it was a common storm 
of thunder and lightning which struck Paul and all 
his companions to the ground, it is somewhat ex- 
traordinary that he alone should be hurt ; and that, 
notwithstanding his being struck blind by lightning, 
he should in other respects be so little hurt as to 
be immediately able to walk into the city of Da- 
mascus. So difficult is it to oppose truth by an 
hypothesis. In the character of Paul you discover 
a great deal of violence and fanaticism ; and such 
men, you observe, are never good moral evidences 
of any doctrine they teach. Read, sir, lord Lyttel- 
ton's Observations on the Conversion and Apostle- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 521 

ship of St. Paul, and I tliink you will be convinced 
of the contrary. That elegant writer thus ex- 
presses his opinion on this subject : '' Besides all 
the proofs of the Christian religion which may be 
drawn from the prophecies of the Old Testament,^ 
from the necessary connection it has with the 
whole system of the Jewish rehgion, from the 
miracles of Christ, and from the evidence given of 
his resurrection by all the other apostles, I think 
the conversion and apostleship of St. Paul alone, 
duly considered, is of itself a demonstration suffi- 
cient to prove Christianity to be a divine revela- 
tion." I hope this opinion will have some weight 
with you ; it is not the opinion of a lying Bible- 
prophet, of a stupid evangelist, or of an ah ah 
priest, but of a learned layman, whose illustrious 
rank received splendor from his talents. 

You are displeased with St. Paul *' for setting 
out to prove the resurrection of the saiJie bod3^" 
You know, I presume, that the resurrection of the 
same body is not, by all, admitted to be a scrip- 
tural doctrine. " In the New Testament — where- 
in, I think, are contained all the articles of the 
Christian faith — I find our Saviour and the apos- 
tles to preach the resurrection of the dead, and the 
resurrection from the dead, in many places ; but I 
do not remember any place where the resurrection 
of the same body is so much as mentioned." This 



522 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

observation of Mr. Locke I so far adopt as to deny 
that you can produce any place in tlie writings of 
St. Paul, wherein he sets out to prove the resur- 
rection of the same body. I do not question the 
possibility of the resurrection of the same body, 
and I am not ignorant of the manner in which 
some learned men have explamed it — somewhat 
after the way of your vegetative speck in the ker- 
nel of a peach ; but as you are discrediting St. 
Paul's doctrine, you ought to show that what you 
attempt to discredit is the doctrine of the apostle. 
As a matter of choice, you had rather have a better 
"body — you will have a better body, "your natural 
body will be raised a spiritual body, jour corrupti- 
ble will put on incorruption.'' You are so much 
out of humor with your present body, that you 
inform us every animal in the creation excels us 
in something. Now I had always thought that 
the single circumstance of our having hands, and 
their having none, gave us an infinite superiority^, 
not only over insects, fishes, snails, and spiders — 
which you represent as excelling us in locomotive 
powers — but over all the animals of the creation ; 
and enabled us, in the language of Cicero, describ- 
ing the manifold utility of our hands, to make as it 
were a new nature of things. As to what you 
say about the consciousness of existence being the 
only conceivable idea of a future life, it proves 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 523 

nothing, either for or against the resurrection of a 
body, or of tlie same body ; it does not inform ns 
whether to any or to what substance, material or 
immaterial, this consciousness is annexed. I leave 
it however to others, who do not admit personal 
identity to consist in consciousness, to dispute with 
you on this point, and willingly subscribe to the 
opinion of Mr. Locke, that " nothing but conscious- 
ness can unite remote existences into the same 
person." 

From a caterpillar's passing into a torpid state 
resembling death, and afterwards appearing a 
splendid butterfly, and from the — supposed — con- 
sciousness of existence which the animal had in 
these different states, you ask, " Why must I be- 
lieve that the resurrection of the same body is 
necessary to continue in me the consciousness of 
existence hereafter?" I do not dislike analogical 
reasoning, when applied to proper objects and kept 
within due bounds ; but where is it said in Scrip- 
ture, that the resurrection of the same body is 
necessary to continue in you the consciousness of 
existence ? Those who admit a conscious state of 
the soul between death and the resurrection, will 
contend that the soul is the substance in wiiich 
consciousness is continued without interruption : 
those who deny the intermediate state of the soul 
as a state of consciousness, will contend that con- 



524 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

sciousness is not destroyed by death, but sus- 
pended by it, as it is suspended during a sound 
sleep, and that it may as easily be restored after 
death as after sleep, during which the faculties of 
the soul are not extinct, but dormant. Those who 
think that the soul is nothing distinct from the 
compages of the body, not a substance but a mere 
quality, will maintain that the consciousness ap- 
pertaining to every individual person is not lost 
when the body is destroyed ; that it is known to 
God, and may, at the general resurrection, be an- 
nexed to any system of matter he may think fit, 
or to that particular compages to which it belonged 
in this life. 

In reading your book I have been frequently 
shocked at the virulence of your zeal, at the inde- 
corum of your abuse in applying vulgar and ofifen- 
sive epithets to men who have been held, and who 
will long, I trust, continue to be holden in high 
estimation. I know that the scar of calumny is 
seldom wholly effaced, it remains long after the 
wound is healed ; and your abuse of holy men and 
holy things will be remembered when your argu- 
ments against them are refuted and forgotten. 
Moses you term an arrogant coxcomb, a chief as- 
sassin : Aaron, Joshiia, Samuel, David, monsters 
and impostors ; the Jewish kings a parcel of ras- 
cals ; Jeremiah and the rest of the prophets liars ; 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 525 

and Paul a fool, for having written one of the sub- 
limest compositions, and on the most important 
subject that ever occupied the mind of man — the 
fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corin- 
thians : this you call a doubtful jargon, as destitute 
of meaning as the tolling of the bell at a funeral. 
Men of low condition, pressed down, as you often 
are, by calamities generally incident to human na- 
ture, and groaning under burdens of misery pecul- 
iar to your condition, what thought you when you 
heard this chapter read at the funeral of your child, 
your parent, or your friend ? Was it mere jargon 
to you, as destitute of meaning as the tolling of a 
bell ? No. You understood from it that you would 
not all sleep, but that you would all be changed in 
a moment, at the last trump ; you understood from 
it that this corruptible must put on incorruption, 
that this mortal must put on immortality, and that 
death would be swallowed up in victor}?- ; you 
understood from it, that if — notwithstanding pro- 
fane attempts to subvert your faith — ye continue 
steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the 
work of the Lord, your labor will not be in vain. 

You seem fond of displaying your skill in science 
and philosophy ; you speak more than once of Eu- 
chd ; and in censuring St. Paul, you intimate to 
us, that when the apostle says one star differeth 
from another star in glory, he ought to have said 



526 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

in distance. All men see that one star differeth 
from another star in glory or brightness., but few 
men know that their difference in brightness arises 
from their difference in distance ; and I beg leave 
to say, that even you, philosopher as you are, do 
not know it. You make an assumption which you 
cannot prove — that the stars are equal in magni- 
tude, and placed at different distances from the 
earth ; but you cannot prove that they are not 
different in magnitude and placed at equal dis- 
tances, though none of them may be so near to 
the earth as to have any sensible annual parallax. 
I beg pardon of my readers for touching upon this 
subject ; but it really moves one's indignation to 
see a smattering in philosophy urged as an argu- 
ment against the veracity of an apostle. " Little 
learning is a dangerous thing." 

Paul, you say, affects to be a naturalist, and to 
prove — you might more properly have said illus- 
trate — his system of resurrection from the princi- 
ples of vegetation: "Thou fool," says he, "that 
which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die ;" 
to which one might reply in his own language, and 
say, " Thou fool, Paul, that which thou sowest is 
not quickened, except it die not.^^ It may be seen, 
I think, from this passage, who affects to be a nat- 
uralist, to be acquainted with the microscopical 
discoveries of modern timcs^ which were probably 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 527 

neither known to Paul nor to the Corinthians ; and 
which, had they been known to them both, would 
have been of little use in the illustration of the 
subject of the resurrection. Paul said, " That which 
thou sowest is not quickened, except it die :" every 
husbandman in Corinth, though unable perhaps to 
define the term death, would understand the ajDOs- 
tle's phrase in a popular sense, and agree with him 
that a grain of wheat must become rotten in the 
ground before it could sprout ; and that, as God 
raised, from a rotten grain of wheat, the roots, the 
stem, the leaves, the ear of a new plant, he might 
also cause a new body to spring up from the rotten 
carcass in the grave. Doctor Clarke observes, " In 
hke manner, as in every grain of corn there is con- 
tained a minute insensible seminal principle, which 
is itself the entire future blade and ear, and in due 
season, when all the rest of the grain is corrupted, 
evolves and unfolds itself visibly to the eye ; so 
our present mortal and corruptible body may be 
but the exuvicB, as it were, of some hidden and at 
present insensible principle — possibly the present 
seat of the soul — ^which at the resurrection shall dis- 
cover itself in its proper form." I do not agree with 
this great man, for such I esteem him, in this phi- 
losophical conjecture ; but the quotation may serve 
to show you that the germ does not evolve and 
unfold itself visibly to the eye till after the rest of 



528 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

the grain is corrupted; that is, in the language and 
meaning of St. Paul, till it dies. Though the au- 
thority of Jesus may have as little weight with 
you as that of Paul, yet it may not be improper to 
quote to you our Saviour's expression, when he 
foretells the numerous disciples which his death 
would produce : " Except a corn of wheat fall into 
the ground and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, 
it bringeth forth much fruit." You perceive from 
this, that the Jews thought the death of the grain 
was necessary to its reproduction ; hence every 
one may see what little reason you had to object 
to the apostle's popular illustration of the possibili- 
ty of a resurrection. Had he known as much as 
any naturaUst in Europe does of the progress of 
an animal from one state to another, as from a 
worm to a butterfly — which you think applies to 
the case — I am of opinion he would not have used 
that illustration in preference to what he has used, 
which is obvious and satisfactory. 

Whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul 
were written by him or not, is, in your judgment, 
a matter of indifference. So far from being a mat- 
ter of indifference, I consider the genuineness of 
St. Paul's epistles to be a matter of the greatest 
importance ; for if the epistles ascribed to Paul 
were written by him — and there is unquestionable 
proof that they were — it will be difficult for you, or 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 529 

for any man, upon fair principles of sound reason- 
ing, to deny that the Christian rehgion is true. 
The argument is a short one, and obvious to every 
capacity. It stands thus : St. Paul wrote several 
letters to those whom, in different countries, he 
had converted to the Christian faith ; in these 
letters he affirms two things : first, that he had 
wrought miracles in their presence ; secondly, 
that many of themselves had received the gift of 
tongues, and other miraculous gifts of the Holy 
Ghost. The persons to whom these letters were 
addressed must, on reading them, have certainly 
known whether Paul affirmed what was true, or 
told a plain lie ; they must have known whether 
they had seen him work miracles ; they must have 
been conscious whether they themselves did or did 
not possess any miraculous gifts. Now, can you, 
or can any man, believe for a moment that Paul — 
a man certainly of great abilities — would have 
written public letters full of lies, and which could 
not fail of being discovered to be lies as soon as 
his letters were read ? Paul could not be guilty 
of falsehood in these two points, or in either of 
them ; and if either of them be true, the Christian 
religion is true. References to these two points 
are frequent in St. Paul's epistles : I will mention 
only a few. In his epistle to the Galatians he 
says, chap. 3:2, 5, " This only would I learn of 

Infidelity. 34 



530 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

you, Received ye the Spirit" — gifts of the Spirit — 
" by the works of the law ? He ministereth to you 
the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you." To 
the Thessalonians he says, 1 Thess. chap. 1 : 5, 
"Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but 
also in power, and in the Holy Ghost." To the 
Corinthians he thus expressed himself, Cor. 2 : 4, 
"My preaching was not with enticing words of 
man's wisdom, but in the demonstration of the 
Spirit and of power ;" and he adds the reason for 
his working miracles, " That your faith should not 
stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of 
God." With what alacrity would the faction at 
Corinth which opposed the apostle, have laid hold 
of this and many similar declarations in his letter, 
had thej'' been able to have detected any falsehood 
in them. There is no need to multiply words on 
so clear a point : the genuineness of Paul's epistles 
proves their authenticity, independently of every 
other proof ; for it is absurd in the extreme to sup- 
pose him, under circumstances of obvious detec- 
tion, capable of advancing what was not true ; and 
if Paul's epistles be both genuine and authentic, the 
Christian religion is true. Think of this argument. 
You close your observations in the following 
manner : " Should the Bible" — meaning, as I have 
before remarked, the Old Testament — " and Testa- 
ment hereafter fall, it is not I that have been the 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 531 

You look, I think, upon your produc- 
tion with a parent's partial eye when you speak of 
it in such a style of self-complacency. The Bible, 
sir, has withstood the learning of Porphyry and 
the power of Julian, to say nothing of the Man- 
ichean Faustus ; it has resisted the genius of Bo- 
lingbroke and the wit of Voltaire, to say nothing 
of the numerous herd of inferior assailants ; and 
it will not fall by your force. You have barbed 
anew the blunted arrows of former adversaries ; 
you have feathered them with blasphemy and ridi- 
cule ; dipped them in your deadliest poison ; aimed 
them with your utmost skill ; shot them against 
the shield of faith with your utmost vigor ; but, 
like the feeble javelin of aged Priam, they will 
scarcely reach the mark, and will fall to the ground 
without a stroke. 



532 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 



LETTER X. 

The remaining part of your work can hardly be 
made the subject of animadversion. It principally 
consists of unsupported assertions, abusive appel- 
lations, illiberal sarcasms, " strifes of words, pro- 
fane babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely 
so called." I am hurt at being, in mere justice to 
the subject, under the necessity of using such 
harsh language ; and am sincerely sorry that, from 
what cause I know not, your mind has received a 
wrong bias in every point respecting revealed re- 
ligion. You are capable of better things ; for there 
is a philosophical sublimity in some of your ideas 
when you speak of the Supreme Being as the 
Creator of the universe. That you may not ac- 
cuse me of disrespect, in passing over any part 
of your work without bestowing proper attention 
upon it, I will wait upon you through what you 
call your conclusion. 

You refer your reader to the former part of the 
Age of Reason ; in which you have spoken of what 
you esteem three frauds : mystery, miracle, and 
prophecy. I have not at hand the book to which 
you refer, and know not what you have said on 
these subjects. They are subjects of great impor- 
tance, and we, probably, should differ essentially 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 533 

in our opinion concerning them ; but I confess,.! 
am not sorry to be excused from examining what 
you have said on these points. The specimen of 
your reasoning which is now before me, has taken 
from me every incHnation to trouble either my 
reader or myself with any observations on your 
former book. 

You admit the possibility of God's revealing his 
will to man ; yet " the thing so revealed," you say, 
''is revelation to the person only to whom it is 
made ; his account of it to another is not revela- 
tion." This is true ; his account is simple testi- 
mony. You add, there is no " possible criterion to 
judge of the truth of what he says." This I posi- 
tively deny ; and contend that a real miracle, per- 
formed in attestation of a revealed truth, is a cer- 
tain criterion by which we may judge of the truth 
of that attestation. I am perfectly aware of the 
objections which may be made to this position ; I 
have examined them with care ; I acknowledge 
them to be of weight ; but I do not speak unad- 
visedly, or as wishing to dictate to other men, 
when I say that I am persuaded the position is 
true. So thought Moses when in the matter of 
Korah he said to the Israelites, " If these men die 
the common death of all men, then the Lord hath 
not sent me." So thought Elijah when he said, 
" Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it 



§34 WATSON'S EEPLY TO PAINE. 

be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and 
that I am thy servant ;" and the people before 
whom he spoke were of the same opinion, for 
when the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the 
burnt-sacrifice, they said, "The Lord he is the 
God." So thought our Saviour when he said, 
" The works that I do in my Father's name they 
bear witness of me ;" and, " If I do not the works 
of my Father, beUeve me not." 

What reason have we to believe Jesus speaking 
in the gospel, and to disbelieve Mahomet speaking 
in the Koran ? Both of them lay claim to a divine 
commission ; and yet we receive the words of the 
one as a revelation from God, and we reject the 
words of the other as an imposture of man. The 
reason is evident: Jesus estabhshed his preten- 
sions, not by alleging any secret communication 
with the Deity, but by working numerous and 
indubitable miracles in the presence of thousands, 
and which the most bitter and watchful of his ene- 
mies could not disallow ; but Mahomet wrought 
no miracles at all : nor is a miracle the only crite- 
rion by which we may judge of the truth of a reve- 
lation. If a series of prophets should, through a 
course of many centuries, predict the appearance 
of -a certain person whom God would at a particu- 
lar time send into the world for a particular end, 
and at length a person should appear in whom all 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 535 

the predictions were minutely accomplished ; such 
a completion of prophecy would be a criterion of 
the truth of that revelation which that person 
should deliver to mankind. Or if a person should 
now say — as many false prophets have said, and 
are daily saying — that he had a commission to 
declare the will of God ; and as a proof of his ve- 
racity, should predict that, after his death, he 
would rise from the dead on the third day, the 
completion of such a prophecy would, I presume, 
be a sufficient criterion of the truth of what this 
man might have said concerning the will of God. 
" Now I tell you," says Jesus to his disciples con- 
cerning Judas, who was to betray him, " before it 
come, that when it is come to pass, ye may believe 
that I am he." 

In various parts of the gospels our Saviour, with 
the utmost propriety, claims to be received as the 
messenger of God, not only from the miracles 
which he wrought, but from the prophecies which 
were fulfilled in his person, and from the predic- 
tions which he himself delivered. Hence, instead 
of there being no criterion by which we may judge 
of the truth of the Christian revelation, there are 
clearly three. ■ It is an easy matter to use an in- 
decorous flippancy of language in speaking of the 
Christian religion, and with a supercilious negli- 
gence, to class Christ and his apostles among the 



536 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

impostors who have figured in the world ; but it is 
not, I think, an easy matter for any man, of good 
sense and sound erudition, to make an impartial 
examination into any one of the three grounds 
of Christianity which I have here mentioned, and 
to reject it. 

What is it, you ask, the Bible teaches? The 
prophet Micah shall answer you : it teaches us 
"to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
with our God ;" justice, mercy, and piety, instead 
of what you contend for — rapine, cruelty, and mur- 
der. What is it, you demand, the Testament 
teaches us ? You answer your question — to be- 
lieve that the Almighty committed debauchery 
with a woman. Absurd and impious assertion ! 
No, sir, no ; this profane doctrine, this miserable 
stuff, this blasphemous perversion of Scripture, is 
your doctrine, not that of the New Testament. I 
will tell you the lesson which it teaches to infidels 
as well as to believers ; it is a lesson which phi- 
losophy never taught, which wit cannot ridicule, 
nor sophistry disprove ; the lesson is this : " The 
dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and 
they that hear shall live : all that are in their 
graves shall come forth ; they that have done 
good, unto the resurrection of life ; and they that 
have done evil, unto the resurrection of damna- 
tion." 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 537 

The moral precepts of the gospel are so well 
fitted to promote the happiness of mankind in this 
world, and to prepare human nature for the future 
enjoyment of that blessedness, of which, in our 
present state, we can form no conception, that I 
had no expectation they would have met with 
your disapprobation. You say, however, "As to 
the scraps of morality that are irregularly and 
thinly scattered in those books, they make no part 
of the pretended thing, revealed religion." "What- 
soever ye would that men should do to you, do ye 
even so to them." Is this a scrap of morality ? Is 
it not rather the concentrated essence of all ethics, 
the vigorous root from which every branch of moral 
duty towards each other may be derived ? Duties, 
you know, are distinguished by moralists into du- 
ties of perfect and imperfect obligation : does the 
Bible teach you nothing, when it instructs you 
that this distinction is done away — when it bids 
you " put on bowels of mercy, kindness, humble- 
ness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing 
one another, and forgiving one another, if any man 
have a quarrel against any ?" These, and precepts 
such as these, you will in vain look for in the codes 
of Frederick or Justinian ; you cannot find them 
in your statute-books ; they were not taught, nor 
are they taught, in the schools of heathen philoso- 
phy ; or if some one or two of them should chance 



538 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

to be glanced at by a Plato, a Seneca, or a Cicero, 
they are not bound upon the conscience of man- 
kind by any sanction. It is in the gospel, and in 
the gospel alone, that we learn their importance : 
acts of benevolence and brotherly love may be to 
an unbeliever voluntary acts — to a Christian, they 
are indispensable duties. Is a new commandment 
no part of revealed religion ? "A new command- 
mandment I give unto j^ou, that ye love one an- 
other:" the law of Christian benevolence is en- 
joined us by Christ himself, in the most solemn 
manner, as the distinguishing badge of our being 
his disciples. 

Two precepts you particularize as inconsistent 
with the dignity and the nature of man — that of 
not resenting injuries, and that of loving enemies. 
Who but yourself ever interpreted literally the 
proverbial phrase, '' If a man smite thee on thy 
right cheek, turn to him the other also ?" Did 
Jesus himself turn the other cheek when the offi- 
cer of the high-priest smote him ? It is evident 
that a patient acquiescence under slight personal 
injuries is here enjoined ; and that a proneness to 
revenge, which instigates men to savage acts of 
brutality for every trifling offence, is forbidden. 
As to loving enemies, it is explained in another 
place to mean the doing them all the good in our 
power : *' If thine enemy hunger, feed him ; if he 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 539 

thirst, give him drink ;" and what, think you, is 
more likely to preserve peace, and to promote kind 
affections among men, than the returning good for 
evil ? Christianity does not order us to love in 
proportion to the injury ; "it does not offer a pre- 
mium for a crime ;" it orders us to let our benevo- 
lence extend alike to all, that we may emulate the 
benignity of God himself, who maketh " his sun to 
rise on the evil, and on the good." 

Aristotle, in his treatise of morals, says that 
some thought retaliation of personal wrongs an 
equitable proceeding ; Rhadamanthus is said to 
have given it his sanction ; the decemviral laws 
allowed it ; the common law of England did not 
forbid it, and it is said to be still the law of some 
countries, even in Christendom : but the mild spirit 
of Christianity absolutely prohibits, not only the 
retaliation of injuries, but the indulgence of every 
resentful propensity. 

" It has been," you affirm, " the scheme of the 
Christian church to hold man in ignorance of the 
Creator, as it is of government to hold him in igno- 
rance of his rights." I appeal to the plain sense 
of any honest man to judge whether this represen- 
tation be true. When he attends the services of 
the church, does he discover any design in the 
minister to keep him in ignorance of his Creator? 
Are not the public prayers in which he joins, and 



540 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

the sermons -whicli are preached, all calculated to 
impress upon his mind a strong conviction of the 
mercy, justice, holiness, power, and wisdom of the 
one adorable God, blessed for ever? By these 
means which the Christian church has provided 
for our instruction, I will venture to say that the 
most unlearned congregation of Christians have 
more just and sublime conceptions of the Creator, 
a more perfect knowledge of their duty towards 
him, and a stronger inducement to the practice of 
virtue, hoUness, and temperance, than all the phi- 
losophers of all the heathen countries in the world 
ever had, or now have. If indeed your scheme 
should take place, and men should no longer be- 
lieve their Bible, then would they soon become as 
ignorant of the Creator as all the w^orld was when 
God called Abraham from his kindred, and as all 
the world which has had no communication with 
either Jews or Christians, now is. Then would 
they soon bow down to stocks and stones, kiss 
their hand — as they did in the time of Job, and as 
the poor African does now — to " the moon walking 
in brightness, and deny the God that is above ;" 
then would they worship Jupiter, Bacchus, and 
Venus, and emulate, in the transcendent flagitious- 
ness of their lives, the impure morals of their gods.' 
You are animated with proper sentiments of 
piety when you speak of the structure of the uni- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 541 

verse. No one, indeed, who considers it with 
attention, can fail of having his mind filled with 
the supremest veneration for its Author. Who 
can contemplate, without astonishment, the mo- 
tion of a comet, running far beyond the orb of 
Saturn, endeavoring to escape into the pathless 
regions of unbounded space, yet feeling, at its 
utmost distance, the attractive influence of the 
sun ; hearing, as it were, the voice of God arrest- 
ing its progress, and compelHng it, after a lapse of 
ages, to reiterate its ancient course ? Who can 
comprehend the distance of the stars from the 
earth, and from each other ? It is so great, that 
it mocks our conception ; our very imagination is 
terrified, confounded, and lost, when we are told 
that a ray of light, which moves at the rate of ten 
millions of miles in a minute, will not, though 
emitted at this instant from the brightest star, 
reach the earth in less than six years. We think 
this earth a great globe, and we see the sad wick- 
edness which individuals are often guilty of, in 
scraping together a little of its dirt ; we view, 
with still greater astonishment and horror, the 
mighty ruin which has in all ages been brought 
upon human kind by the low ambition of contend- 
ing powers, to acquire a temporary possession of a 
little portion of its surface. But how does the 
whole of this gbbe sink, as it were, to nothing, 



542 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

when we consider that a milHon of earths will 
scarcely equal the bulk of the sun ; that all the 
stars are suns ; and that millions of suns consti- 
tute, probably, but a minute portion of that mate- 
rial world which God hath distributed through the 
immensity of space 1 Systems, however, of insen- 
sible matter, though arranged in exquisite order, 
prove only the wisdom and the power of the great 
Architect of nature. As percipient beings, we look 
for something more — ^for his goodness ; and we 
cannot open our eyes without seeing it. 

Every portion of the earth, sea, and air, is full of 
sensitive beings, capable, in their respective orders, 
of enjoying the good things which God has pre- 
pared for their comfort. All the orders of beings 
are enabled to propagate their kind ; and thus pro- 
vision is made for a successive continuation of hap- 
piness. Individuals yield to the law of dissolution 
inseparable from the material structure of their 
bodies, but no gap is thereby left in existence ; 
their place is occupied by other individuals capable 
of participating in the goodness of the Almighty. 
Contemplations such as these fill the mind with 
humility, benevolence, and piety. But why should 
we stop here — why not contemplate the goodness 
of God in the redemption, as well as in the creation 
of the world ? By the death of his only begotten 
Son Jesus Christ, he has redeemed us from the 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 543 

eternal death which the transgression of Adam had 
entailed on all his posterity. You believe nothing 
about the transgression of Adam. The history of 
Eve and the serpent excites your contempt ; you 
will not admit that it is either a real history or 
an allegorical representation of death entering into 
the world through disobedience to the command 
of God. Be it so. You find, however, that death 
reigns over all mankind, by whatever means it 
was introduced : this is not a matter of belief, but 
of lamentable knowledge. The New Testament 
tells us that, through the merciful dispensation of 
God, Christ has overcome death, and restored man 
to that immortality which Adam had lost. This 
also you refuse to beheve. Why ? Because you 
cannot account for the propriety of this redemp- 
tion. Miserable reason I stupid objection ! What 
is there that you can account for? Not for the 
germination of a blade of grass, not for the fall of a 
leaf of the forest ; and will you refuse to eat of the 
fruits of the earth, because God has not given you 
wisdom equal to his own ? Will you refuse to 
lay hold on immortalit}'' because he has not given 
you, because he, probably, could not give to such 
a being as man a full manifestation of the end for 
which he designs him, nor of the means requisite 
for the attainment of that end ? What father of a 
family can make level to the apprehension of his 



544 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

infant children all the views of happiness which 
his paternal goodness is preparing for them ? How 
can he explain to them the utility of reproof, cor- 
rection, instruction, example — of all the various 
means by which he forms their minds to piety, 
temperance, and probity ? We are children in the 
hand of God ; we are in the very infancy of our 
existence, just separated from the womb of eternal 
duration ; it may not be possible for the Father of 
the universe to explain to us — infants in apprehen- 
sion — the goodness and the wisdom of his dealings 
with the sons of men. What qualities of mind 
will be necessary for our well-doing through all 
eternity, we know not ; what discipline in this 
infancy of existence may be necessary for generat- 
ing these qualities, we know not; whether God 
could or could not, consistently with the general 
good, have forgiven the transgression of Adam 
without any atonement, we know not ; whether 
the malignity of sin be not so great, so opposite to 
the general good, that it cannot be forgiven while 
it exists, that is, while the mind retains a propen- 
sity to it, we know not ; so that if there should be 
much greater difficulty in comprehending the mode 
of God's moral government of mankind than there 
really is, there would be no reason for doubting of 
its rectitude. If the whole human race be consid- 
ered as but one small member of a large commu- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 545 

nity of free and intelligent beings of different 
orders, and if this whole community be subject to 
discipline and laws productive of the greatest pos- 
sible good to the whole system, then may we still 
more reasonably suspect our capacity to compre- 
hend the wisdom and goodness of all God's pro- 
ceedings in the moral government of the universe. 
You are lavish in your praise of deism. It is so 
much better than atheism, that I mean not to say 
any thing to its discredit ;■ it is not, however, with- 
out its difficulties. What think you of an uncaused 
cause of every thing ; of a Being who has no rela- 
tion to time, not being older to-day than he was 
yesterday, nor younger to-day than he will be to- 
morrow ; who has no relation to space, not being 
a part here, and a part there, or a whole anywhere ? 
What think you of an omniscient Being who can- 
not know the future actions of a man ? Or, if his 
omniscience enables him to know them, what think 
you of the contingency of human actions ? And if 
human actions are not contingent, what think you 
of the morality of actions, of the distinction be- 
tween vice and virtue, crime and innocence, sin 
and duty ? What think you of the infinite good- 
ness of a Being who existed through eternity with- 
out any emanation of his goodness manifested in 
the creation of sensitive beings ? Or, if you con- 
tend that there has been an eternal creation, what 

Infidelity. 35 



546 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

think you of an effect coeval with its cause, of mat- 
ter not posterior to its Maker ? What think you 
of the existence of evil, moral and natural, in the 
work of an infinite Being, powerful, wise, and 
good ? What think you of the gift of freedom of 
will, when the abuse of freedom becomes the cause 
of general misery ? I could propose to your con- 
sideration a great many other questions of a similar 
tendency, the contemplation of which has driven 
not a few from deism to atheism, just as the diffi- 
culties in revealed religion have driven yourself, 
and some others, from Christianity to deism. 

For my own part, I can see no reason why either 
revealed or natural religion should be abandoned 
on account of the difficulties which attend either of 
them. I look up to the incomprehensible Maker of 
heaven and earth with unspeakable admiration and 
self-annihilation. I contemplate, with the utmost 
gratitude and humility of mind, his unsearchable 
wisdom and goodness in the redemption of the 
world from eternal death, through the intervention 
of his Son Jesus Christ ; and I have no doubt of a 
future state. You and other men may conclude 
differently. From the inert nature of matter, from 
tlie faculties of the human mind, from the apparent 
imperfection of God's moral government of the 
world, from many modes of analogical reasoning, 
and from other sources, some of the philosophers 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 547 

of antiquity did collect, and modern philosophers 
may, perhaps, collect a strong probability of a fu- 
ture existence ; and not only of a future existence, 
but — which is quite a distinct question — of a future 
state of retribution proportioned to our moral con- 
duct in this world. Far be it from me to loosen 
any of the obligations to virtue ; but I must con- 
fess that I cannot, from the same sources of argu- 
mentation, derive any positive assurance on the 
subject. Think then with what thankfulness of 
heart I receive the word of God, which tells me, 
that though "in Adam," by the condition of our 
nature, "all die," yet "in Christ," by the covenant 
of grace, " shall all be made alive." I lay hold on 
"eternal life as the gift of God through Jesus 
Christ ;" I consider it not as any appendage to the 
nature I derive from Adam, but as the free gift of 
the Almighty through his Son, whom he hath con- 
stituted Lord of all, the Saviour, the Advocate, and 
the Judge of human kind. 

"Deism," you affirm, "teaches us, without the 
possibility of being mistaken, all that is necessary 
or proper to be known." There are three things 
which all reasonable men admit are necessary and 
proper to be known: the heiiig of God; the 'provi- 
dence of God; a fiilurt^state of retribution. Whether 
these three truths are so taught us by deism 'that 
there is no possibility of being mistaken concern- 



548 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

ing any of them, let tlie history of philosophy, and 
of idolatry, and superstition, in all ages and coun- 
tries determine. A volume might be filled with an 
account of the mistakes into which the -greatest 
reasoners have fallen, and of the uncertainty in 
which they lived, with respect to every one of 
these points. I will advert, briefly, only to the 
last of them. Notwithstanding the illustrious la- 
bors of Gassendi, Cudworth, Clarke, Baxter, and 
of above two hundred other modern writers on 
the suljject, the natural mortality or immortality of 
the human soul is as little understood by us as 
it was by the philosophers of Greece and Rome. 
The opposite opinions of Plato and of Epicurus on 
this subject have their several supporters among 
the learned of the present age in Great Britain, 
Germany, France, Ital}^ — in every enlightened part 
of the world ; and they who have been most se- 
riously occupied in the study of the question con- 
cerning a future state, as deducible from the nature 
of the human soul, are least disposed to give, from 
reason, a positive decision of it either way. The 
importance of revelation is by nothing rendered 
more apparent than by the discordant sentiments 
of learned and good men — for I speak not of the 
ignorant and immoral — on this point. They show 
the -insuflficiency of human reason, in a course of 
above two thousand years, to unfold the mysteries 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 549 

of human nature, and to furnish, from the contem- 
plation of it, any assurance of the quaUty of our 
future condition. If you should ever become per- 
suaded of this insufficiency — and jou can scarce 
fail of becoming so, if you examine the matter 
deeply — you will, if you act rationally, be disposed 
to investigate, with seriousness and impartiality, 
the truth of Christianity. You will say of the 
gospel, as the Northumbrian heathens said to 
Paulinus, by whom they were converted to the 
Christian religion, "The more we reflect on the 
nature of our soul, the less we know of it. While 
it animates our body, we may know some of its 
properties ; but when once separated, we know 
not whither it goes, or from whence it came. 
Since, then, the gospel pretends to give us clearer 
notions of these matters, we ought to hear it, and 
laying aside all passion and prejudice, follow that 
which shall appear most comformable to right 
reason." 

What a blessing is it to beings with such limited 
capacities as ours confessedly are, to have God 
himself for our instructor in every thing which it 
much concerns us to know. We are principally 
concerned in knowing, not the origin of arts, or the 
recondite depths of science ; not the history of 
mighty empires desolating the globe by their con- 
tentions ; not the subtil ties of logic, the mysteries 



550 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

of metaphysics, the sublimities of poetiy, or the 
niceties of criticism. These, and subjects such as 
these, properly occupy the learned leisure of a few ; 
but the bulk of human kind have ever been, and 
must ever remain ignorant of them all ; they must, 
of necessity, remain in the same state with that 
wjiich a German emperor voluntarily put himself 
into when he made a resolution bordering on bar- 
barism, that he would never read a printed book. 
We are all, of every rank and condition, equally 
concerned in knowing what will become of us after 
death ; and if we are to live again, we are inter- 
ested in knowing whether it be possible for us to 
do any thing while we live here which may render 
that future life a happy one. Now, "that thing 
called Christianity," as you scofifingly speak — that 
last best gift of Almighty God, as I esteem it — the 
gospel of Jesus Christ, has given us the most clear 
and satisfactory information on both these points. 
It tells us, what deism never could have told us, 
that we shall certainly be raised from the dead ; 
that, whatever be the nature of the soul, we shall 
certainly live for ever; and that, while we live 
here, it is possible for us to do much towards the 
rendering that everlasting life a happy one. These 
are tremendous truths to bad men : they cannot 
be received and reflected on with indifi'erence by 
the best; and they suggest to all such a cogent 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAJNE. 551 

motive to virtuous action, as deism could not fur- 
nish even to Brutus himself. 

Some men have been warped to infidelity by 
viciousness of life ; and some may have hypocriti- 
cally professed Christianity from prospects of tem- 
poral advantage ; but being a stranger to your 
character, I neither impute the former to you, nor 
can admit the latter as operating on myself. The 
generality of unbelievers are such from want of 
information on the subject of religion ; having been 
engaged from their youth in struggling for worldly 
distinction, or perplexed with the incessant intrica- 
cies of business, or bewildered in the pursuits of 
pleasure, they have neither ability, inclination, nor 
leisure, to enter into critical disquisitions concern- 
ing the truth of Christianity. Men of this descrip- 
tion are soon startled by objections which they are 
not competent to answer ; and the loose morality 
of the age — so opposite to Christian perfection — 
cooperating with their want of scriptural know- 
ledge, they presently get rid of their nursery faith, 
and are seldom sedulous in the acquisition of an- 
other, founded, not on authority, but sober inves- 
tigation. The gospel has been offered to their 
acceptance ; and from whatever cause they reject 
it, I cannot but esteem their situation to be dan- 
gerous. Under the influence of that persuasion I 
have been induced to write this book. I do not 



552 WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 

expect to derive from it either fame or profit ; these 
are not improper incentives to honorable activity, 
but there is a time of Ufe when they cease to di- 
rect the judgment of thinking men. What I have 
written will not, I fear, make any impression on 
you ; but I indulge a hope that it may not be 
without its effect on some of your readers. In- 
fidelity is a rank weed ; it threatens to overspread 
the land ; its root is principally fixed among the 
great and opulent, but you are endeavoring to« 
extend the malignity of its poison through all the 
classes of the community. For all I have the 
greatest respect, and am anxious to preserve them 
from the contamination of your irreligion. I know 
that many of the mercantile and laboring classes 
are given to reading, and desirous of information 
on all subjects. If this little book should chance 
to fall into their hands after they have read yours, 
and they should think that any of your objections 
to the authority of the Bible have not been fully 
answered, I entreat them to attribute the omission 
to the brevity which I have studied ; to my desire 
of avoiding learned disquisitions ; to my inadver- 
tency ; to my inability — to any thing, rather than to 
an impossibility of completely obviating every difii- 
culty you have brought forward, I address the 
same request to such of the youth of both sexes 
as may unhappily have imbibed, from your writ- 



WATSON'S REPLY TO PAINE. 553 

ings, the poison of infidelity ; beseeching tliem to 
believe that all their religious doubts may be re- 
moved, though it may not have been in my power 
to answer, to their satisfaction, all your objections. 
I pray God that the rising generation of this land 
may be preserved from that " evil heart of unbe- 
lief" which has brought ruin on a neighboring 
nation ; that neither a neglected education, nor 
domestic irreligion, nor evil communication, nor 
the fashion of a licentious world, may ever induce 
them to forget that religion alone ought to be their 
rule of life. 

In the conclusion of my Apology for Christianity, 
I informed Mr. Gibbon of my extreme aversion to 
public controversy. I am now twenty years older 
than I was then, and I perceive that this my aver- 
sion has increased with my age. I have, through 
life, abandoned my little literary productions to 
their fate : such of them as have been attacked, 
have never received any defence from me ; nor 
will this receive any, if it should meet with your 
public notice, or with that of any other man. 

Sincerely wishing that you mq^ become a par- 
taker of that faith in revealed religion which is the 
foundation of my happiness in this world, and if 
all my hopes in another, I bid you farewell. 

E. LANDAFP 

Calqarth Park, Jan. 20, 1796. 



HUME'S 

DENIAL OF MIRACIES, 



The plausible and sophistical argument of Hume 
in his Essay on Miracles, in which he contends that 
"a miracle, however attested, can never be ren- 
dered credible," since " it is contrary to experience 
that a miracle should be true, but not contrary to 
experience that testimony should be false," has 
been ably answered by Drs. Campbell, Adam, Hey, 
Price, Douglass, Paley, Whately, D wight, Alexan- 
der, Professor Vince, and others. The following 
brief notices seem all that it is necessary to insert 
in this volume. 

" Independent," says Douglass in his Errors re- 
garding Religioa, ''of the redudio ad ahsurdum 
which Hume's own philosophy affords against his 
favorite argument, and which is undermined by the 
very system from which it springs, it may be ob- 
served that it contains within itself a complication 
of blunders, more numerous, perhaps, than ever 



HUME'S DENIAL OF MIRACLES. 555 

were crowded into the same brief space. The 
argument of Hume against miracles is as follows : 
A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature ; but 
we learn from experience that the laws of nature 
are never violated. Our only accounts of miracles 
depend upon testimony, and our belief in testimony 
itself depends upon experience. But experience 
shows that testimony is sometimes true, and some- 
times false ; therefore we have only a variable ex- 
perience in favor of testimony. But we have a 
uniform experience in favor of the uninterrupted 
course of nature. Therefore, as on the side of 
miracles there is but a variable experience, and on 
the side of no miracles a uniform experience, it is 
clear that the lower degree of evidence must yield 
to the higher degree, and therefore no testimony 
can prove a miracle to be true. 

" Every one who has attacked this sophistry has 
pointed out a new flaw in it, and they are scarcely 
yet exhausted. Paley showed that it was neces- 
sary to demonstrate that there was no God, pre- 
viously to demonstrating that there could be no 
miracles. Campbell showed that so far from belief 
in testimony being founded on experience alone, it 
was diffidence in testimony that we acquire by 
experience. Others have pointed out the sophism 
in the double use of the word experience, and the 
confusing of the experience of a particular individ- 



556 HUME'S DENIAL OF MIRACLES. 

ual with the universal experience of mankind ; for 
to assert that miracles are contrary to experience 
in the last sense, is most pitifully to beg the ques- 
tion. Others have observed upon the complete 
misapprehension of the argument of Tillotson, and 
upon the sophism in the use of the word "con- 
trary," for as it is a begging of the question to say 
that miracles are contrary to the experience of 
mankind, so it is a sophism to say that they are 
contrary to the experience of Mr. Hume himself, 
unless he had been personally present at the time 
V and place when and where all the miracles re- 
corded in the Bible are said to have been wrought, 
from the days of Moses to the time of our Saviour. 
Our experience, so far from being contrar}' to mira- 
cles, is decided in favor of them. Both our reason 
and our experience are altogether in favor of the 
veracity of testimony, where there is no motive to 
deceive, and no possibility of being deceived. Such 
was the case with the apostles. Their personal 
experience, and that of many others, is invincibly 
in favor of miracles. There is no experience — no, 
not even of a single individual, against miracles. 
No one was ever placed in the situation where 
miracles might be reasonably expected, to whom 
miracles were not vouchsafed. Thus so far from 
miracles being contrary to experience, the whole 
range of the experience we possess is altogether, 



HUME'S DENIAL OF MIRACLES. 557 

and without one solitary exception, in favor of 
miracles. 

"But to take entirely new ground, miracles, 
philosophically speaking, are not violations of the 
laws of nature. The miracles of the Bible, which 
are the only true miracles, so far from being viola- 
tions of nature, are as natural as the lifting up of 
a stone from the ground, or impelhng a vessel 
along the waves by the stroke of an oar. None 
would call it a violation of the laws of nature when 
human agents set a body in motion which was 
previously at rest, and which would have remained 
at rest without their interference ; still less can it 
be called a violation of the laws of nature, when 
the divine Agent, who is the lawgiver of nature, 
impresses an additional force upon creation, and 
gives a new direction to its movements. But it 
would be endless to go over all the variety of mis- 
takes involved in the sophistry against miracles, 
and to point out the many vulgar and unphilosoph- 
ical notions implied in Hume's reasonings, both 
concerning nature and her inviolable laws." 



STARKIE'S 

EXAMINATION OF HUME'S ARGUMENT. 



Starkie, an author of great eminence in the legal 
profession, in his " Practical Treatise on the Law 
of Evidence," under the head of " Force of Testi- 
mony," vol. 1, p. 4*71, appends the following note, 
than which nothing can be more conclusive. 

"In observing upon the general principles on 
which the credibility of human testimony rests, it 
may not be irrelevant to advert to the summary 
positions on this subject advanced by Mr. Hume. 
He says in his Essay, vol. 2, sec. 10, * A miracle 
is a violation of the laws of nature ; and as a firm 
and unalterable experience has established these 
laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very 
nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument 
from experience can possibly be imagined.' As a 
matter of abstract philosophical consideration — for 
in that point of view only can the subject be ad- 
verted to in a work like this — Mr. Hume's reason- 
ing appears to be altogether untenable. In the 
first place, the very basis of his inference is, that 



EXAMINATION OF HUME. 559 

faith in human testimony is founded solely upon 
experience : this is by no means the fact ; the credi- 
bility of testimony frequently depends upon the 
exercise of reason on the effect of coincidences in 
testimony, which, if collusion be excluded, cannot 
be accounted for but upon the supposition that 
the testimony of concurring witnesses is true ; so 
much so, that their individual character for veracity 
is frequently but of secondary importance — snpra, 
466. Its credibility also greatly depends upon 
confirmation by collateral circumstances, and on 
analogies supplied by the aid of reason as well as 
of mere experience. But even admitting experi- 
ence to be the basis, even the sole basis, of such 
belief, the position built upon it is unwarrantable ; 
and it is fallacious, for, if adopted, it would lead to 
error. The position is, that human testimony, the 
force of which rests upon experience, is inadequate 
to prove a violation of the laws of nature, which 
are estabhshed by firm and unalterable experience. 
The very essence of the argument is, that the force 
of human testimony — the eSicacy of which in the 
abstract is admitted — is destroyed by an opposite, 
conflicting, and superior force, derived also from 
experience. If this were so, the argument would 
be invincible ; but the question is, whether mere 
previous inexperience of an event testified is directly 
opposed to human testimony, so that mere inex- 



560 EXAMINATION OF HUME. 

perience as strongly proves that the thing is not, 
as previous experience of the credibihty of human 
testimony proves that it is. Now a miracle, or 
violation of the laws of nature, can mean nothing 
more than an event or effect never observed be- 
fore ; and on the other hand, an event or effect in 
nature never observed before is a violation of the 
laws of nature ; thus, to take Mr. Hume's own 
example, ' it is a miracle that a dead man should 
come to life, because that has never been observed in 
any age or country ;' precisely in the same sense, 
the production of a new metal from potash, by 
means of a powerful and newly discovered agent 
in nature, and the first observed descent of mete- 
oric stones, were violations of the laws of nature ; 
they were events which had never before been 
observed, and to the production of which the 
known laws of nature are inadequate. But none 
of these events can, with the least propriety, be 
said to be against or contrary to the laws of nature 
in any other sense than that they have never be- 
fore been observed ; and that the laws of nature, 
as far as they were previously known, were inade- 
quate to their production. The proposition of Mr. 
Hume ought then to be stated thus : Human tes- 
timony is founded on experience, and is therefore 
inadequate to prove that of which there has been 
no previous experience. Now, whether it be plain 



EXAMINATION OF HUME, 561 

and self-evident that the mere negation of experi- 
ence of a particular fact necessarily destroys all 
faith in the testimony of those who assert the fact 
to be true ; or whether, on the other hand, this be 
not to confound the principle of belief with the siih- 
jed mailer to which it- is to be applied ; and whether 
it be not plainly contrary to reason to infer the 
deslruclion of an active principle of belief from the 
mere negalion of experience, which is perfectly con- 
sistent with the just operation of that principle ; 
whether, in short, this be not to assume broadly 
that mere inexperience on the one hand is neces- 
sarily superior to positive experience on the other, 
must be left to every man's understanding to de- 
cide. The inferiority of mere negative evidence to 
that which is direct and positive, is, it will be seen, 
a consideration daily acted upon in judicial investi- 
gations. Negative evidence is, in the abstract, 
inferior to positive, because the negative is not 
directly opposed to the positive testimony ; both 
may be true. Must not this consideration also 
operate where there is mere inexperience, on the 
one hand, of an event in nature, and positive tes- 
timony of the fact on the other ? Again, what are 
the laws of nature, established by firm and unal- 
terable experience ? That there may be, and are, 
general and even unallerable laws of providence 
and nature may readily be admitted ; but that 

luhdehty. 36 



562 EXAMINATION OF HUME. 

human knowledge and experience of those laws is un- 
alterable — which alone can be the test of exclu- 
sion — is untrue, except in a very limited sense ; 
that is, it may fairly be assumed that a law of na- 
ture once known to operate, will always operate 
in a similar manner, unless its operation be impeded 
or counteracted by a new and contrary cause. In 
a larger sense, the laws of nature are continually 
alterable : as experiments are more frequent, more 
perfect, and as new phenomena are observed, and 
new causes or agents are discovered, human expe- 
rience of the laws of nature becomes more general 
and more perfect. How much more extended and 
perfect, for instance, are the laws which regulate 
chemical attractions and afiBnities than they w^ere 
two centuries ago ? And it is probable that in 
future ages experience of the laws of nature will 
be more perfect than it is at present ; it is, in 
short, impossible to define to what extent such 
knowledge may be carried, or whether, ultimately, 
the whole may not be resolvable into principles 
admitting of no other explanation than that they 
result immediately from the will of a superior Be- 
ing. This, at all events, is certain, that the laws 
of nature, as inferred by the aid of experience, have 
from time to time, by the aid of experience, been 
rendered more general and more perfect. Experi- 
ence, then, so far from pointing out any unalterable 



EXAMINATION OF HUME. 563 

laws of nature to the exclusion of events or phe- 
nomena which have never before been experienced, 
and which cannot be accounted for by the laws 
already observed, shows the very contrary, and 
proves that such new events or phenomena may 
become the foundation of more enlarged, more 
general, and therefore more perfect laws. But 
whose experience is to be the test ? that of the 
objector ; for the very nature of the objection ex- 
cludes all light from the experience of the rest of 
mankind. The credibility, then, of human testi- 
mony is to depend not on any intrinsic or collateral 
considerations which can give credit to testimony, 
but upon the casual and previous knowledge of 
the person to whom the testimony is offered ; in 
other ends, it is plain that a man's scepticism must 
bear a direct proportion to his ignorance. Again, 
if Mr. Hume's inference be just, the consequences 
to which it leads cannot be erroneous ; on the 
other hand, if it lead to error, the inference must 
be fallacious : the position is, that human testi- 
mony is inadequate to prove that which has never 
been observed before, and this, by proving far too 
much for the author's purpose, is felo cle se, and in 
effect proves nothing ; for if constant experience 
amount to stronger evidence on the one side than 
is supplied by positive testimony on the other, the 
argument apphes necessarily to all cases where 



564 EXAMINATION OF HUME. 

mere constant inexperience on the one hand is 
opposed to positive testimony on the other. Ac- 
cording, then, to this argument, every philosopher 
was bound to reject the testimony of witnesses 
that they had seen the descent of meteoric stones, 
and even acted contrary to sound reason in at- 
tempting to account for a fact disproved by con- 
stant inexperience, and would have been equally 
foolish in giving credit to a chemist that he had 
produced a metal from potash by means of a gal- 
vanic battery. It will not, I apprehend, be doubted 
that in these and similar instances the effect of Mr. 
Hume's argument would have been to exclude tes- 
timony which was true, and to induce false con- 
clusions ; the principle therefore, on which it is 
founded, must of necessity be fallacious. Nay, 
further, if the testimony of others is to be rejected, 
however unhkely they were either to deceive or 
be deceived, on the mere ground of inexperience of 
the fact testified, the same argument might be 
urged even to the extravagant length of excluding 
the authority of a man's own senses ; for it might 
be said that it is more probable that he should 
have labored under some mental delusion, than 
that a fact should have happened contrary to con- 
stant experience of the course of nature. 

'' In stating that the inference attempted to be 
drawn from mere inexperience is fallacious, I mean 



EXAMINATION OF HUME. 565 

not to assert that the absence of previous experi- 
ence of a particular fact or phenomenon is not of 
the highest importance to be weighed as a circum- 
stance in all investigations, whether they be phys- 
ical, judicial, or historical ; the more remote the 
subject of testimony is from our own knowledge 
and experience, the stronger ought the evidence 
to be to warrant our assent : neither is it meant 
to deny that in particular instances, and under par- 
ticular circumstances, the want or absence of pre- 
vious experience may not be too strong for positive 
testimony, especially when it otherwise labors un- 
der suspicion. What is meant is this, that mere '' 
inexperience, however constant, is not in itself, 
and in the abstract, and without consideration of 
all the internal and external probabilities in favor 
of human testimony, sufBcient to defeat and to 
destroy it, so as to supersede the necessity of 
investigation. Mr. Hume's conclusion is highly 
objectionable in a philosophical point of view, in- 
asmuch as it would leave phenomena of the most 
remarkable nature wholly unexplained, and would 
operate to the utter exclusion of all inquiry. Es- 
toppels are odious, even in judicial investigations, 
because they tend to exclude the truth ; in meta- 
physics they are intolerable. So conscious was 
Mr. Hume himself of the weakness of his general 
and sweeping position, that in the second part of 



566 EXAMINATION OF HUME. 

his tenth section he Hmits his inference in these 
remarkable terms : * I beg the Hmitations here made 
may be remarked, when I say that a miracle can 
never be proved so as to be the foundation of a 
system of religion ; for I own that otherwise there 
may 'possibly be miracles, or violations of the usual 
course of nature, of such a kind as to admit of proof 
from human testimony J 

"In what way the use to be made of a fact, 
when proved, can affect the validity of the proof, 
or how it can be that a fact proved to be true is not 
true for all purposes to which it is relevant, I pre- 
tend not to understand. Whether a miracle, when 
proved, may be the foundation of a system of relig- 
ion, is foreign to the present discussion ; but when 
it is once admitted that a miracle Tnay he proved hy 
huvian testimony, it necessarily follows, from ^Mr. 
Hume's own concession, that his general position 
is untenable ; for that, if true, goes to the full ex- 
tent of proving that human testimony is inadeqiiaie 
to the proof of a miracle, or violation of the laws of 
nature." 



THE RESURRECTION. 

ORDER OF EVENTS, AS RECORDED BY THE 
FOUR EVANGELISTS. 

In the unanswered and unanswerable treatise 
of Gilbert West, Esq., on the Resurrection, all 
seeming contradictions in the narratives of the 
evangelists are so fully explained, and the whole 
subject of the resurrection so amply and ably pre- 
sented, that it forms one of the mosi convincing 
proofs of the truth of Christianity. The reader 
who would thoroughly examine the subject, is re- 
ferred to the volume itself. Only the outline of 
the order of events as presented by the author is 
here given. 

Mr. West says, section 9, Having thus cleared the 
way, ]p shall now set down the several incidents 
of this wonderful event in the order in which, 
according to the foregoing observations, they seem 
to have arisen ; after premising that our Saviour 
Christ was crucified on a Friday — the preparation, 
or the day before the Jewish Sabbath — gave up 
the ghost about three o'clock in the afternoon of 
the same day, and was buried that evening, before 



568 WEST ON THE RESURUECTION. 

the commencement of the Sabbath, -which among 
the Jews w^as always reckoned to begin from the 
first appearance of the stars on Friday evening, 
and to end at the appearance of them again on the 
day we call Saturdaj^ ; that some time, and most 
probably towards the close of the Sabbath, after 
the religious duties of the day were over, the chief 
priests obtained of Pilate the Roman governor a 
guard to watch the sepulchre till the tliird day 
was past, pretending to apprehend that his dis- 
ciples might come by night and steal away the 
body, and then give out that he was risen, accord- 
ing to what he himself had predicted while he was 
yet alive ; that they did accordingly set a guard, 
made sure the sepulchre, and to prevent the sol- 
diers themselves from concurring with the disci- 
ples, they put a seal upon the stone which closed 
up the entrance of the sepulchre. 

The order I conceive to have been as follows : • 
Very early on the first day of the week — the 
day immediately following the Sabbath, and the 
third from the death of Christ — Mary Magdalene 
and the other Mary, in pursuance of the design of 
embalming the Lord's body, which they had con- 
certed with the other women who attended him 
from Galilee to Jerusalem, and for the performing 
of which they had prepared unguents and spices, 
set out, in order to take a view of the sepulchre, 



WEST ON THE RESURRECTION. 569 

just as the day began to break ; and about the 
time of their setting out, " there was a great earth- 
quake ; for the angel of the Lord descended from 
heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from 
the door of the sepulchre, and sat upon it : his 
countenance was like lightning, and his raiment 
white as snow ; and for fear of him the keepers did 
shake, and became as dead men ;" during whose 
amazement and terror, Christ came out of the sep- 
ulchre ; and the keepers being now recovered out 
of their trance and fled, the angel, wjio till then 
sat upon the stone, quitted the station on the out- 
side, and entered into the sepulchre, and probably 
disposed the linen clothes and napkin in that order 
in which they were afterwards found and observed 
by John and Peter. Mary Magdalene, in the mean- 
while, and the other Mary, were still on their way 
to the sepulchre, where, together with Salome — 
whom they had either called upon or met as they 
were going — they arrived at the rising of the sun. 
And as they drew near, discoursing about the 
method of putting their intent of embalming the 
body of their Master in execution, "they said 
among themselves, Who shall roll us away the 
stone from the door of the sepulchre ? for it was 
very great ;" and they themselves — the two Marys 
at least — had seen it placed there two days before, 
and seen with what difficulty it was done. But in 



570 WEST ON THE RESURRECTION. 

the midst of their dehb'eration about removing this 
great and sole obstacle to their design — for it does 
not appear that they knew any thing of the guard — 
lifting up their eyes, while they were yet at some 
distance, they perceived it was already rolled away. 
Alarmed at so extraordinary and so unexpected a 
circumstance, Mary Magdalene, concluding that 
as the stone could not be moved without a great 
number of hands, so it was not rolled away with- 
out some design, and that they who rolled it away 
could have» no other design but to remove the 
Lord's body ; and being convinced by appearances 
that they had done so, ran immediately to acquaint 
Peter and John with what she had seen and what 
she suspected, leaving Mary and Salome there, 
that if Joanna and the other women should come 
in the meantime, they might acquaint them with 
their surprise at finding the stone removed and 
the body gone, and of Mary Magdalene's running 
to inform the two above-mentioned apostles of it. 
While she was going on this errand, Mary and 
Salome went on, and entered into the sepulchre, 
and there saw an angel " sitting on the right side, 
clothed in a long white garment ; and they were 
affrighted. And he saith unto them, Be not af- 
frighted : ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was 
crucified : he is risen ; he is not here : behold the 
place where they laid him. But go your way, tell 



WEST ON THE RESURRECTION. 571 

his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you 
into Galilee ; there shall ye see him, as he said 
unto you. And they went out quickly, and fled 
from the sepulchre, for they trembled and were 
amazed : neither said they any thing to any man, 
for they were afraid." After the departure of Mary 
and Salome came John and Peter, who having been 
informed by Mary Magdalene that the body of the 
Lord was taken away out of the sepulchre, and 
that she knew not where they had laid him, " ran 
both together to the sepulchre, and the other dis- 
ciple," John, " outran Peter, and came first to the 
sepulchre ; and he, stooping down and looking in, 
saw the linen clothes lying, yet went he not in. 
Then cometh Simon Peter, following him, and went 
into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, 
and the napkin that was about his head, not lying 
with the hnen clothes, but wrapped together in a 
place by itself. Then went in also that other dis- 
ciple which came first to the sepulchre, and he 
saw and believed ; for as yet they knew not the 
scripture, that he must rise again from the dead. 
Then the disciples went away again unto their 
own home. But Mary stood without at the sepul- 
chre weeping ; and as she wept, she stooped down 
and looked into the sepulchre, and seeth two an- 
gels in white, sitting, the one at the head, and the 
other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had 



572 WEST ON THE RESURRECTION. 

lain ; and they say unto her, Woman, why weep- 
est thou ? She saith unto them, Because they 
have taken away my Lord, and I know not where 
they have laid him. And when she had thus said, 
she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, 
and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto 
her. Woman, why weepest thou ? Whom seekest 
thou ? She, supposing him to be the gardener, 
saith unto him. Sir, if thou have borne him hence, 
tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take 
him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary ! She 
turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni I 
which is to say, Master ! Jesus saith unto her. 
Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended unto my 
Father ; but go to my brethren, and say unto 
them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, 
and to my God and your God." After this appear- 
ance of Christ to Mary Magdalene, to whom St. 
Mark says expressly he appeared first, the other 
Mary and Salome, who had fled from the sepulchre 
in such terror and amazement that they said not 
any thing to any man — that is, as I understand, 
had not told the message of the angel to some 
whom they met, and to whom they were directed 
to deliver it — were met on their way by Jesus 
Christ himself, who said to them, " All hail ! And 
they came and held him by the feet, and wor- 
shipped him. Then said Jesus unto them, Be not 



WEST ON THE RESURRECTION. 573 

afraid ; go tell my brethren that they go into Gali- 
lee, and there shall they see me." These several 
women and the two apostles being now gone from 
the sepulchre, Joanna with the other Galilean 
women, " and others with them, came bringing 
the spices which they had prepared for the em- 
balming the body of Jesus, and finding the stone 
rolled away from the sepulchre, they entered in, 
but not finding the body of the Lord Jesus, they 
were much perplexed thereabout, and behold two 
men stood by them in shining garments ; and as 
they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to 
the earth, they said unto them. Why seek ye the 
living among the dead ? He is not here, but is 
risen. Remember how he spake unto you when 
he was yet in Galilee, saying. The Son of man 
must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, 
and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And 
they remembered his words, and returned from 
the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the 
eleven, and to all the rest. And their words 
seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed 
them not." But Peter, who upon the report of 
Mary Magdalene had been at the sepulchre, had 
entered into it, and with a curiosity that bespoke 
an expectation of something extraordinary, and a 
desire of being satisfied, had observed that the 
linen clothes in which Christ was buried, and the 



574 WEST ON THE HESURRECTION. 

napliiii which was about his head, were not only 
left in the sepulchre, but carefully wrapped up and 
laid in several places ; and who from thence might 
begin to suspect what his companion St. John from 
those very circumstances seems to have believed : 
Peter, I say, hearing from Joanna that she had 
seen a vision of angels at the sepulchre, who had 
assured her that Christ was risen, starting up, ran 
thither immediately, and knowing that the angels, 
if they were within the sepulchre, might be dis- 
covered without his going in, he did not, as before, 
enter in, but stooping down looked so far in as to 
see the "linen clothes, and departed, wondering 
in himself at that which was come to pass." And 
either with Peter, or about that time, went some 
other disciples who were present when Joanna 
and the other women made their report, "and 
found it even so as the women had said. The 
same day two of the disciples went to a village 
called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about 
threescore furlongs. And they talked together of 
all those things which had happened. And it came 
to pass that while they communed together and 
reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with 
them. But their eyes were holden, that they 
should not know him. And he said unto them. 
What manner of communications," arguments, "are 
these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, 



WEST ON THE RESURRECTION. 575 

and are sad ? And one of tbem, whose name was 
Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a 
stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the 
things which are come to pass tht^re in these days ? 
And he said unto them. What things ? And they 
said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which 
was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God 
and ^W the people ; and how the chief priests and 
our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, 
and have crucified him. But we trusted that it 
had been he which should have redeemed Israel ; 
and besides all this, to-day is the third day since 
these things were done. Yea, and certain women 
also of our company made us astonished, which 
were early at the sepulchre ; and when they found 
not his body, they came, saying that they had also 
seen a vision of angels, which said that he was 
alive. And certain of them which were with us 
went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the 
women had said ; but him they saw not. Then 
he said unto them, fools, and slow of heart to 
believe all that the prophets have spoken : ought 
not Christ to ha»ve suffered these things, and to 
enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses 
and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in 
all the scriptures the things concerning himself. 
And they drew nigh unto the village whither they 
went ; and he made as though he would have gone 



576 WEST ON THE RESURRECTION. 

further. But they constrained him, saying, Abide 
with 'j us for it is towards evening, and the day is 
far spent. And he went in to tarry witli them. 
And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, 
he took. bread and blessed it, and brake and gave 
to them. And their eyes were opened, and they 
knew him ; and he vanished out of their sight. 
And they said one to another, did not our heart 
burn within us, while he talked with us by the 
way, and while he opened to us the scriptures? 
And they rose up the same hour, and returned to 
Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered togeth- 
er, and them that were with them, saying, The 
Lo '^ risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon. 
Anv ' told what things were done in the way, 

and ^ he was known of them in breaking of 
breau."' ., 

This is the order in which tha several incidents 
above related appear to have arisen ; the conform- 
ity of which with the words of the evangelists, 
interpreted in their obvious and most natural 
sense, I have shown in my remarks upon the 
passages wherein they are confined. By this 
order, all the different events naturally and easily 
follow, and as it were rise out of one another, and 
the narration of the evangelists is cleared from all 
confusion and inconsistencies. 



