pisaiffi r n Wm^Sr a 8n r4«g)e>^! PS TV ’flTTTM ii Tim rp f it -1 *». . J\j J 1 i./ - d •„;., — yap * '.W sAv mKT'’" \ ' v iotfi *&0 - * y^S® ■RaP-v i .^3 a miasKw - c'. AVi '5* ’ : few " ••• SmwS ’ ~VtPJLx£j?f^Bm* *. '■ MEW*' '^LjgHH JP*T‘ . . »> ; V'UHni: ' M; I u L- ' jbc } j) . * 7 O F TH E U N I VERS ITY Of ILLINOIS Z0& P/7 1838a. ) J > \ < t I )' I 1 •v ! . \ 1 ' - THE WORKS OF WILLIAM PA LEY, D. D. \ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates / https://archive.org/details/worksofwilliampa00pale_0 THE WORKS OF WILLIAM PALEY, D.D. ARCHDEACON OF CARLISLE. A NEW EDITION, WITH ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES AND A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. L O N DON: PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM SMITH, 113, FLEET STREET. MDCCCXXXVIII. BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS TO THE QUEEN, WH (TEFR1ARS. ao $ P/7 ADVERT IS EM ENT. I j 4 T~'‘ t--> The present edition of the Works of Paley was intended to combine *¥ together, in one handsome volume, all the published labours of that great man—uniting closeness of arrangement with clearness and beauty r- Vq . of type. This Edition is also furnished with copious Notes, marking, 'V 1 W for instance, the discoveries of science, illustrative of the existence of So rj a Divine Contriver, or Creator, which have been made since Paley produced his immortal “ Natural Tlieologyand Biographical Sketches ^ of those of the Author’s friends who patronized or assisted him, or '>^vhose works he has quoted, have been added; the Editor being anxious ir ' r/tliat nothing should be omitted which would render the volume more ^acceptable to the Public. Jo j? June ,•, 1838 . & ff ' C O N T E N T S. PAGK Life of Dr. Paley.J Dedication..., . , .23 NATURAL THEOLOGY. PART I. Chapter I. State of the Argument.25 IT. State of the Argument continued.28 III. Application of the Argument.31 IV. Of the Succession of Plants and Animals ..42 Y. Application of the Argument continued.43 VI. The Argument cumulative 49 VII. Of the Mechanical and Immechanical Parts and Functions of Animals and Vegetables.50 VIII. Of Mechanical Arrangement in the Human Frame.—Of the Bones 55 - IX. Of the Muscles .66 X. Of the Vessels of Animal Bodies ..73 XI. Of the Animal Structure regarded as a Mass.84 XII. Comparative Anatomy .. ... .92 XIII. Peculiar Organization.. 1( b IV CONTENTS. PAGS Section ix. Our present Gospels were considered by the Adversaries of Christianity as containing the Accounts upon which the Religion was founded.266 x. Formal Catalogues of authentic Scriptures were pub¬ lished, in all which our present Gospels were included 269 xi. The above Propositions cannot be predicated of those Books which are commonly called Apocryphal Books of the New Testament .270 Chap. X. Recapitulation . . 272 OF THE DIRECT HISTORICAL EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, AND WHEREIN IT IS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE EVIDENCE ALLEGED FOR OTHER MIRACLES. PROPOSITION II. Chap. I. That there is not satisfactory Evidence, that persons pretending to be original Witnesses of any other similar Miracles, have acted in the same manner, in Attestation of the Accounts which they delivered, and solely in Consequence of their Belief of the Truth of those Accounts .275 Consideration of some specific Instances .283 FART IT —OF THE AUXILIARY EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. Chap. I. Prophecy. 287 II. The Morality of the Gospel .292 III. The Candour of the Writers of the New Testament.305 IV. Identity of Christ’s Character.309 V. Originality of Christ’s Character.314 VI. Conformity of the Facts occasionally mentioned or referred to in Scripture, with the State of Things in those Times, as represented by foreign and independent Accounts VII. Undesigned Coincidences 328 CONTENTS. v PAGE Chap. VIII. Of the History of the Resurrection.329 IX. Of the Propagation of Christianity.331 Sect. ii. Reflections upon the preceding Account.338 hi. Of the Success of Mahometanism.. 341 PART III.—A BRIEF CONSIDERATION OF SOME POPULAR OBJECTIONS. Chap. I. The Discrepancies between the several Gospels.348 II. Erroneous Opinions imputed to The Apostles.349 III. The Connexion of Christianity with Jewish History.351 IV. Rejection of Christianity.353 V. That the Christian Miracles are not recited, or appealed to, by early Christian Writers themselves, so fully or frequently as might have been expected.359 VI. Want of Universality in the Knowledge and Reception of Christianity, and of greater Clearness in the Evidence.363 VII. The supposed Effects of Christianity.366 VIII. Conclusion.369 BORM PAULINA. Dedication.376 Chap. I. Exposition of the Argument . 377 II. The Epistle to the Romans.381 III. The First Epistle to the Corinthians.391 IV. The Second Epistle to the Corinthians.398 V. The Epistle to the Galatians.410 VI. The Epistle to the Ephesians.4^2 vi CONTENTS. PAGE Chap. VII. The Epistle to the Philippians ..433 VIII. The Epistle to the Colossians.438 IX. The First Epistle to the Thessalonians.441 X. The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians.445 XI. The First Epistle to Timothy.448 XII. The Second Epistle to Timothy. .... 451 XIII. The Epistle to Titus.455 XIV. The Epistle to Philemon.458 XV. The Subscriptions of the Epistles.460 XVI. The Conclusion.462 MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. BOOK I.—PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. Dedication.475 Preface. 477 % Chap. I. Definition and Use of the Science.483 II. The Law of Honour .484 III. The Law of the Land.ib. IV. The Scriptures.485 V. Xhe Moral Sense.486 VI. Human Happiness .489 VII. Virtue. 495 BOOK II.—MORAL OBLIGATIONS. Chap. I. The Question, Why am I obliged to keep my Word? considered . 500 II. What we mean, when we say a Man is obliged to do a thing ( , . 501 CONTENTS. vii PAGE Chap. III. The Question, Why am I obliged to keep my word ? resumed . . 501 IV. The Will of God.502 V. The Divine Benevolence.503 VI. Utility.505 VII. The Necessity of General Rules.506 VIII. The Consideration of General Consequences pursued .507 IX. Of Right.509 X. The Division of Rights . 510 XI. The General Rights of Mankind.512 BOOK III —RELATIVE DUTIES. PART I.—OF RELATIVE DUTIES WHICH ARE DETERMINATE. Chap. I. Of Property . 515 II. The Use of the Institution of Property.ib. III. The History of Property.517 IV. In what the Right of Property is founded.ib. V. Promises.* 520 VI. Contracts.525 VII. Contracts of Sale. 526 VIII. Contracts of Hazard.528 IX. Contracts of Lending of inconsumable Property.529 X. Contracts concerning the Lending of Money.530 XI. Contracts of Labour—Service.532 XII. Contracts of Labour—Commissions.534 XIII. Contracts of Labour—Partnership .535 XIV. Contracts of Labour—Offices .536 XV. Lies.537 Vlll CONTENTS. PA OB Chap. XVI. Oaths...539 XVII. Oath in Evidence ... . 542 XVIII. Oath of Allegiance ...... .. 543 XIX. Oath against Bribery in the Election of Members of Parliament . 544 XX. Oath against Simony.ib. XXI. Oaths to observe Local Statutes.546 XXII. Subscription to Articles of Religion.ib. XXIII. Wills.547 PART II.—OF RELATIVE DUTIES WHICH ARE INDETERMINATE, AND OF THE CRIMES OPPOSED TO THESE. Chap. I. Charity.551 II. Charity—The Treatment of our Domestics and Dependants . . . ib. III. Slavery.552 IV. Charity—Professional Assistance. 553 V. Charity—Pecuniary Bounty . .555 VI. Resentment .559 $ VII. Anger.ib. VIII. Revenge.561 IX. Duelling.562 X. Litigation.564 XI. Gratitude.565 XIL Slander.566 CONTENTS. ix * % PART III—OF RELATIVE DUTIES WHICH RESULT FROM THE CONSTI¬ TUTION OF THE SEXES, AND OF THE CRIMES OPPOSED TO THESE. PAGE Chap. I. Of the Public Use of Marriage Institutions.568 II. Fornication . . . . ... . 569 III. Seduction.571 IV. Adultery .572 V. Incest.574 VI. Polygamy.575 VII. Divorce .576 VIII. Marriage .580 IX. Of the Duty of Parents.581 X. The Rights of Parents.587 XI. The Dutv of Children.588 * BOOK IV—DUTIES TO OURSELVES. Chap. I. The Rights of Self-Defence .591 II. Drunkenness .592 III. Suicide .. .595 BOOK V.—DUTIES TOWARD GOD. Chap. 1. Division of these Duties . 598 II. Of the Duty and of the Efficacy of Prayer, so far as the same appear from the Light of Nature.ib. III. Of the Duty and Efficacy of Prayer, as represented in Scripture . 601 IV. Of Private Prayer, Family Prayer, and Public Worship .... 603 X CONTENTS. PAGE Chap. V. Of Forms of Prayer in Public Worship.605 VI. Of the Use of Sabbatical Institutions .608 VII. Of the Scripture Account of Sabbatical Institutions.609 V III. By what Acts and Omissions the Duty of the Christian Sabbath is violated..614 IX. Of reverencing the Deity.615 BOOK VI.—ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE. Chap. I. Of the Origin of Civil Government.619 II. How Subjection to Civil Government is maintained.621 III. The Duty of Submission to Civil Government explained .... 623 IV. Of the Duty of Civil Obedience, as stated in the Christian Scriptures.629 V. Of Civil Liberty. 632 VI. Of different Forms of Government.635 VII. Of the British Constitution .639 VIII. Of the Administration of Justice.651 * IX. Of Crimes and Punishments.661 X. Of Religious Establishments, and of Toleration.670 XI. Of Population and Provision ; and of Agriculture and Commerce, as subservient thereto.681 XII. Of War and Military Establishments.697 Observations upon the Character and Example of Christ, and the Morality of the Gospel . . . . . . 705 CONTENTS. xi SERMONS ON SEVERAL SUBJECTS. PAGE Sermon I. Seriousness in Religion indispensable above all otlier Dispositions . 713 II. Taste for Devotion.719 III. The Love of God.724 IV. Meditating upon Religion.728 V. Of the State after Death .731 VI. On Purity of the Heart and Affections .734 VII. Of the Doctrine of Conversion.737 VIII. Prayer in Imitation of Christ .742 IX. On Filial Piety .744 X. To think less of our Virtues and more of our Sins. Part 1. . . . 747 XI. To think less of our Virtues and more of our Sins. Part 2. . .751 XII. Salvation for Penitent Sinners .755 XIII. Sins of the Fathers upon the Children.758 XIV. How Virtue produces Belief, and Vice Unbelief .761 XV. John’s Message to Jesus.764 XVT. On Insensibility to Offences.767 XVII. Seriousness of Disposition necessary.769 XVIII. The Efficacy of the Death of Christ . . *.772 XIX. All stand in Need of a Redeemer.775 XX. The Efficacy of the Death of Christ consistent with the necessity of a good Life; the one being the Cause, the other the Condition of Salvation.778 XXI. Pure Religion.781 XXII. The Agency of Jesus Christ since his Ascension.784 XXIII. Of Spiritual Influence in general. Parti.789 CONTENTS. xii PASS Sermon XXIY. Of Spiritual Influence in general. Part 2..792 XXY. Of Spiritual Influence in general. Part 3.795 XXVI. Sin encountered by Spiritual Aid. Part 1.799 XXVII. Evil Propensities encountered by the Aid of the Spirit. Part 2. 802 XXVIII. The Aid of the Spirit to be sought and preserved by Prayer. Part 3.804 XXIX. The Destruction of the Canaanites.807 XXX. Neglect of Warnings.810 XXXI. The Terrors of the Lord. . .813 XXXII. Preservation and Recovery from Sin.817 XXXIII. This Life a State of Probation.821 XXXIV. The Knowledge of one another in a Future State. 825] XXXV. The General Resurrection.827 SERMONS ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. Sermon I. Caution recommended in the Use and Application of Scriptural Language.830 II. Advice addressed to the Young Clergy of the Diocese of Carlisle 833 III. A Distinction of Orders in the Church defended upon Principles of Public Utility.837 IV. The Use and Propriety of local and occasional Preaching . . . 841 V. Dangers incidental to the Clerical Character stated . . .' . . . 849 VI. Preached at the Assizes of Durham 854 CONTENTS. x iii CLERGYMAN’S COMPANION THE MANNER OF VISITING THE SICK. not Sect. I. Assistance that is to be given to sick and dying Persons by the Ministry of the Clergy.860 II. Rules for the Manner of Visiting the Sick.ib. III. Of instructing the Sick Man in the Nature of Repentance and Confession of his Sins.861 Arguments and Exhortations to move the Sick Man to Repentance and Confession of his Sins.862 Arguments and general Heads of Discourse, by way of Consideration to awaken a stupid Conscience and the careless Sinner .... 864 IV. Of applying spiritual Remedies to the unreasonable Fears and Dejections of the Sick.867 Considerations to be offered to Persons under Religious Melancholy ib. An Exercise against Despair ... . 869 V. Considerations against Presumption.871 The Order for the Visitation of the Sick. 872 The Communion of The Sick. 876 Proper Collects that may be used with any of the Prayers for the Sick. 881 PRAYERS FOR THE SICK: VIZ. A general Prayer for the Acceptance of our Devotions for the Sick .... 882 Particular Prayers for the Sick ..ib. A larger Form of Prayer for the Sick.. 883 Proper Psalms for the Sick .885 A Declaration of Forgiveness.886 CONTENTS. PACK OCCASIONAL PRAYERS FOR THE SICK: VIZ. A Prayer for a Person in the Beginning of his Sickness.886 For Thankfulness in Sickness.ib. For a Blessing on the Means used for a Sick Person s Recovery.887 For a Sick Person, when there appears some Hope of Recovery.ib. In Behalf of the Sick Person, when he finds any Abatement of his Distemper . ib. For one who is dangerously ill.888 For a Sick Person, when Sickness continues long upon him ... . ib. For the Grace of Patience, and a suitable Behaviour in a Sick Person to Friends and Attendants.ib. For Spiritual Improvement by Sickness.889 For a Sick Person who is about to make his Will.. . . . . ib. For a Sick Penitent.890 For a Sick Person who intends to receive the blessed Sacrament.ib. For a Sick Person that wants Sleep.891 A Prayer to be said when the sick Person grows light-headed.ib. For a Person when Danger is apprehended by excessive Sleep.892 For a Person lying insensible on a sick Bed.ib. For one who hath been a notoriously wicked Liver.893 For one who is hardened and impenitent.ib. For a Sick Woman that is with Child.894 For a Woman in the Time of her Travail. ib. For a Woman who cannot be delivered without Difficulty and Hazard . . 895 For Grace and Assistance for a Woman after Delivery, but still in Danger . . 896 Prayers for a Sick Child.ib. For a Person who, from a State of Health, is suddenly seized with the Symptoms of Death.897 For a Sick Person when there appeareth small Hope of Recovery ... . ib. CONTENTS. xv PAGE A general Prayer for Preparation and Readiness to die.898 A commendatory Prayer for a Sick Person at the Point of Departure . . . 898 A Litany for a Sick Person at the Time of Departure .899 Form of recommending the Soul to God in her Departure from the Body . . 900 A consolatory Form of Devotion, that may he used with the Friends or Relations of the Deceased.ik. OCCASIONAL PRAYERS AND DEVOTIONS FOR THE SICK AND UNFORTUNATE IN EXTRAORDINARY CASES : VIZ. A Prayer for a Person whose Illness is chiefly brought on him by some calamitous Disaster or Loss ; as of Estate, Relations, or Friends, &c. . . 902 For a Person who, by any calamitous Disaster, hath broken any of his Bones, or is very much bruised and hurt in his Body.ib. For a Person that is afflicted with grievous Pains of his Body.903 For one who is troubled with acute Pains of the Gout, Stone, Colic, or any other bodily Distemper.ib. For a Person in the Small Pox, or any such-like raging infectious Disease . 904 For a Person in a Consumption, or any lingering Disease.ib. For a Person who is lame in his Sickness.905 For one that is Bedridden.ib. For a Person troubled in Mind or in Conscience.ib. For one under deep Melancholy and Dejection of Spirit.906 Another for the same.ib. A Prayer for one under Fears and Doubts concerning his spiritual Condition ; or under perplexing Thoughts and Scruples about his Duty.ib. For one who is disturbed with wicked and blasphemous Thoughts .... 907 For one who is afflicted with a profane Mistrust of Divine Truths, and blasphemous Thoughts. ib. For one under the Dread of God’s Wrath and everlasting Damnation . ib. For a Lunatic. • • 008 XV? CONTENTS. PAGE For natural Fools or Madmen.908 Proper Psalms for a Sick Person at Sea...ib. A Prayer for a Sick Seaman.. . 909 For a Sick Soldier or Seaman.910 A Prayer to be used by a Person afflicted with a Distemper of long Continuance. .-911 OTHER OCCASIONAL PRAYERS: VIZ, On the Death of a Friend . .911 For a Person troubled in Mind . ..912 For an old Person.ib. A Prayer for a Person condemned to die.ib. A Prayer of Preparation for Death.913 The Ministration of Public Baptism of Infants to be used in Churches ib. The Ministration of Private Baptism of Children in Houses . . . 917 TRACTS. A Defence of the Considerations on the Propriety of requiring a Subscription to Articles of Faith, in Reply to a late Answer from the Clarendon Press . 918 Reasons for Contentment, addressed to the Labouring Part of the British Public .929 UUC/XM 1P1YJ1 1‘Vi JiS| J. r. ©. Hi) THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PALEY, D.D. Among the many extraordinary men, who distinguished themselves in the early years of the present century, was William Paley, the subject of the following memoir—a man, whose fame no eulogium can increase, and whose talents no laboured notes need illustrate. He could not he an ordinary man whom contending factions united in honouring, whom high Tory bishops exalted when living, and whose works, when dead, a Whig ex-chancellor has endeavoured to illustrate with equal industry and talent. Palcy’s is one of those many great names of England’s history, whose memory will remain as long as her lan¬ guage endures; for we shall find in proceeding through his works, that this great man laboured through life, with an industry which never tired, and a zeal never exhausted, in the best and holiest of causes ; despising, by any compromise of principle, to catch an ephemeral notoriety, in which meaner souls would have gloried. He wrote thus eloquently, not for the thoughtless and the superficial, but for the ardent, the anxious searcher after truth : he was rewarded even in his lifetime by the approbation of his countrymen; and he has well secured for himself the plaudits of the great, and the good of all nations and after-ages. His life, to the talented yet obscure, is full of materials for abundant con¬ solation and hope; for Paley owed all his fame, all his patrons, all his promotions, to his own unaided exertions. He had no powerful connections to push him forward—prac¬ tised no mean arts—did not excel in public speaking—had no strictly personal attractions —did not even write political papers. Neither did the opulence of his parents compensate for the obscurity of his other relations, since lie was the only son of a country schoolmaster, whose living produced him at most thirty-five pounds a year. In spite, however, of all these difficulties which attended Paley through the early period of his career, we shall find, that at last, by a steady and energetic use of his talents, he rose superior to the obstacles which impeded his progress; that he was courted by the high and talented of the land, and that preferments were showered upon him with a rapidity u more than adequate,” to employ his own words, “ to every object of reasonable ambition*.” * Dedication to liis Natural Philosophy. The biographical notices of Paley already extant are to be found in the following works : — 1. Public Characters for 1802. 2. Aikin’s Biographical Dictionary, 1808. 3. Life, by Meadley, 1809—1810. 4. Chalmers 1 Biographical Dictionary, 1814. 5. Paley’s Works, edited by Chalmers. 6 . In a small Edition of his Works, in 18mo. 7. In the Edition of his Works by the Rev. Robert Lynam, 1823. 8. Edition of his Works by his Son, the Rev. Edmund Paley, 1825. I* <, 2 THE LIFE OF PALEY. William Paley, according to the register of the cathedral of Peterborough, was baptised on the 30tli of August, 1743, and is stated by one of his biographers to have been born in the previous July, at that city* * * § . He descended, according to Whitaker t, from a family long settled at Langcliffe, in the parish of Giggleswick, on a patrimonial estate, which is believed still to be in the possession of the Paleys. Whatever, however, was the ancient respectability of the family, Paley was the last to take any undue pride in his ancestry, for he was fond of retailing anecdotes of an uncle who kept a hardware-stall, on market days, at Settle and of another kinsman, whom in early life, he personally assisted to wrap up tobacco behind the counter of his own grocer s shop, in the same town. At one time, he had some idea of choosing for his crest, a malt sho vel, from the belief that his ancestors were engaged in that branch of trade, as on the patrimonial estate at Giggleswick a large malt kiln still exists §. The father and namesake of Paley, just described, was a younger son, educated at the free-scliool of Giggleswick, of which he subsequently became head-master. Fie was admitted at Christ college, Cambridge, January 31, 1729, as a sizar. Attaining the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1734, he was almost immediately afterwards presented to the living of Flelpstone, in Northamptonshire, of which he was instituted the vicar August 14, 1735, being then of the value of thirty-five pounds per annum. Not long afterwards, being elected a minor canon of Peterborough, he changed in consequence his residence to that city; and on the tenth of July, in 1742, married Miss Elizabeth Clapliam, of the parish of Giggleswick, a woman both active and intelligent ||. She is thus described by her grandson, “ She was a little slirewd-looking, keen-eyed woman, of remarkable strength of mind and spirits; one of those positive characters that decide promptly, and execute at once, of a sanguine and irritable temper, which led her to be constantly on the alert in thinking and acting.” She had, it appears, a fortune of 400/. ; made her servants rise at four o’clock in the morning; on her marriage, rode behind her husband from Settle in Craven to Peterborough; and on her husband being made master of Giggleswick, back again in the same manner, with her son in her lap ; all their worldly goods, according to \ our author, being contained in a tea-chest. She was economical and generous, gave much away, and on her death left more than two thousand pounds to her family ^[. Paley’s father, it appears, was, like his wife, at once generous and economical; had for his income, at first, only eighty pounds per annum from Giggleswick school, but afterwards two hundred. Flelpstone vicarage, it seems, did not pay a curate’s salary. But then he had the good fortune to take private pupils, had a legacy left to him of fifteen hundred pounds, and by excellent management left behind him seven thousand pounds; so that his son did not start in life with the curse of poverty as his patrimony. “ Fie was,” says his grandson, “ a cheerful jocose man, a great wit, and an enlivening companion ; fond of field sports, and more fond of company than was relished at home; was twenty years curate of Giggleswick, * Meadley’s Life of Paley, p. 1. In this parish is a celebrated ebbing and flowing well, -J* History of Craven, p. 133, 137. which Drayton has celebrated in his Polyolbion, Song 28. % The death of one of his ancestors, George Paley, of The vicarage, which is in the gift of the Winkip family, Knight Stainforth, is recorded in the register of the parish was never held by Paley’s father, although he was many where he Avas bnx’ied, on the 12th of February, 1576.— years the curate. Whitaker’s History of the Deanery of Craven, p. 140, || She died in March 1796, in the 83rd year of her 145. age, having lived to see her only son at the height of his Giggleswick is near to the town of Settle ; its school, fame, and in the enjoyment of the best of his prefer- founded by Edward VI., is described as being “ now one ments.—Epitaph on her gravestone in Giggleswick church, of the most opulent in the north of England.” Life of Paley, by his Son, p. 21. § Life by his Son, p. 17. THE LIFE OF PALEY. and afterwards of IIorton # .” He was evidently a pedagogue, and taught in his school at the age of eighty-three, when nature was nearly exhausted. A year after that of his fathers marriage, the subject of this memoir was born, and his mother afterwards brought into life three daughters, whose history it is not necessary to pursue. The first two years of Paley’s life were spent at Peterborough; but in 1745, his father being made head-master of Giggleswick school, and in consequence resigning his minor canonship, he accompanied him into Craven. For the long period of fifty-four years, his father held the mastership of this school, with the rectory of Ilclpstone, for he lived till September, 1799 ; his son, who only survived him six years, being then at the height of his popularity and preferment t. No further particulars arc preserved relative to this venerable old gentleman. He is described as being an excellent classical scholar, mild and benevolent in his disposition, and possessed of much good sense. He was certainly not ambitious of fame ; lie appears to have made no literary efforts; acquired no other preferments than those with which he commenced life ; nor does it appear that any means were used by his relations to acquire for him additional emoluments. He was probably happy and contented, passed through life like most country vicars; and finally glided to his grave, regretted and beloved by his neighbours and friends. At Giggleswick, Paley passed the first fifteen years of his life, and in its school, under the care of his father, he received his early education. His progress at school appears to have betrayed few indications of his future eminence. His talents were but slowly developed, he was studious and persevering, was considered a good classic, but was never brilliant, or regarded as an accomplished scholar. Fie was probably a thick-built, heavy-looking, inactive boy, who was incapable of joining in any sports which required activity or exertion j. There are few boys to be found to whom riding on horseback is either difficult or appalling. Paley, however, was one of these unfortunates; for when he rode with his father from Giggleswick to Cambridge, he met, in consequence of his bad horsemanship, with sundry disagreeable adventures, which in after life he would very readily detail. “ I was never,” he would say, “ a good horseman, and when I followed my father on a pony of my own, on my first journey to Cambridge, I fell off seven times ; I was lighter then than I am now, and my falls were not likely to be serious; so that I soon began to care very little about them. My father, though at first a good deal alarmed at my awk¬ wardness, afterwards became so accustomed to it, that on hearing a thump, he would only turn his head half aside and say, 4 Get up and take care of thy money, lad §.’ ” His bad horsemanship accompanied him through life, for when, in after years, he kept a horse at Cambridge, he never used it but in a chaise, and kept it three miles away from his own residence. This naturally amused his friends. 44 For what purpose, Paley,” said one of these to him, 44 can you keep a horse, which is always two or three miles off at grass, or in a straw yard at Ditton V* 44 Why for the same purpose as other persons keep horses; * Life of Paley, by his Son, p. 23. c Aj^e, for sure,’ said an old lady who was passing, ‘ every F Epitaph at Giggleswick. He was eighty-eight years body knows thou art a guileless lad.’”—Life by his own of age at his death. Son, p. 31. F “ When a mere boy, probably from the same prin- From the same authority we learn that he had even as ciple which tempts other boys to imitate their fathers, a boy a very awkward gait, p. 28. He was nicknamed he was found preaching in the market-cross of his village, TheDoctor,” enjoyed cock-fighting, and associated much and bawling out to a circle of old women and boys, with old w'omen, who thought him a very nice boy, p. 29. ‘ Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile !’ § Meadley’s Life of Paley, p. 6. B 2 4 THE LIFE OF PALEY. for exercise, certainly.” “ But you never ride,” objected his friend. “ No,” said Paley, “but I walk almost every day to see it, and that answers just as well*.” As years crept on, when exercise became absolutely necessary, and he at last began seriously to learn the art of horsemanship, his feats in his secluded rectorial park at Bishop’s Wearmoutli excited the laughter of his parishioners, who had discovered his secretly-performed evo- lutionst. One of them wrote upon the door of his park, “ Feats of horsemanship here every day, by an eminent performer.” •; Though inactive in body, in mind Paley was restless and energetic. Ilis amusements were not those of boys ;—lie had a taste for mechanics ;—conversed eagerly with those who had any knowledge of this subject;—loved to attend the law courts at the assizes ;—would sit for hours in the Crown court, a practice in which he indulged in after years;—and had but one recreation, that of angling : a pursuit he followed through life with the characteristic zeal of a dexterous fly-fisherman. He was admitted as a sizar of Christ’s college, Cambridge, on the 16th of November 1758, being then not much more than fifteen years of age. His taking this means of acquiring an university education, by holding an office which in the same college his father had formerly held, betrays the humble means of his parents, since the office, which corre¬ sponds with that of a servitor at Oxford, is exempt from various expenses, and is usually held by those whose means are limited. The sizars were formerly subject to many disagreeable requisitions ; had to perform various menial offices in the dining hall; but most of these duties, when Paley held the office, had long been disused : yet it was then, as now, considered a very humble way of entering the University. The classics were alone studied at Giggleswick school, and in consequence, as soon as he returned from entering himself at Cambridge, he proceeded to study algebra and geometry under Mr. William Howartlr, an eminent teacher of mathematics at Ditcliford, with whom he resided for some time, and acquired a knowledge which served him as an excellent foundation for greater attainments when he returned to Cambridge. He became a resident at the University in October 1759, when not yet seventeen, a period much too young for such an important transition as that from a parent’s roof to the life and temptations of a college. His father appears to have at this time predicted his future eminence, for he expressed to one of his pupils, on the evening after his son had left for Cambridge, this feeling with all the pardonable enthusiasm of a parent. “ My son is now gone to college,” were his words ; “ he will turn out a great man—very great indeed—I am certain of it, for he has by far the clearest head I ever met with in my life^.” In the December following his arrival at Cambridge, his pecuniary means were increased by his being elected to one of the scholarships, founded by Mr. Carr, for the use of the students from Giggleswick school; successively became a scholar on the foun¬ dation at Christ’s college; and was appointed to one of the exhibitions founded by sir Walter Mildmay. Two years afterwards, May 26th, 1761, by his election to one of the Bantry scholarships, his income was still farther increased. His first appearance at Cambridge excited among the under graduates no feelings save those of mirth, for his dress and manners were alike uncouth ; his accent strongly pro¬ vincial, a defect which he never entirely lost; and his habits indolent. Thus he rose late; was always among the last at prayers; and of the two days in the week, on which the * Meadley’s LPe of Paley, p. 87. f Ibid. p. 202. -f Ibid, p. 9. THE LIFE OF PALEY. 5 undergraduates arc allowed to absent themselves from the college lectures, he invariably availed himself, lying in bed on those privileged days nearly till noon. Added to these, his amusements at this period were not very refined. He had a love for country fairs,—strolling players,—and puppet shows. His soubriquet places him before the imagination ; for amongst his associates he was known by the cant title of “ Tommy Potts,” and under this signature some of his earliest poetical productions were printed in the periodicals of that day. In spite of these unpolished attributes, Paley soon became popular among his fellow collegians, for if he was lethargic, he was not idle. His reading, however desultory, was incessant;—he was the first to laugh at his own blunders and deficiencies;—practised the strictest morality;—and was acknowledged to possess, on his arrival at Cambridge, as much mathematical knowledge as many can claim on their departure. Let not, therefore, the indolent or the negligent student plead in excuse for his lethargy the example of Paley : but, let it be remembered that it is yet a warning observation among the Cantabs, “ Though you are a sloven, do not fancy you are a Paley.” Among his associates at this period, was the Rev. W. C. Unwin, afterwards vicar of Stock, in Essex; Stoddard, afterwards master of Ashford school, in Kent; Hall, since master of Grantham school, and who was a brother scholar at Giggles wick. Thus passed the two first years of Paley’s life at college ; yet he was not altogether ill-employed, for he could read even amid the revelry of his jovial companions—could study even in a coffee house. He used to describe the incident to his friends, which first roused him to exert more decidedly his mental powers, and his own account is too interesting to be omitted *. u I spent the first two years of my undergraduateship happily but unprofitably. I was constantly in society, where we were not immoral, but idle and rather expensive.—At the commencement of my third year, however, after having left the usual party at rather a late hour in the evening, I was awakened at five o’clock in the morning by one of my com¬ panions, who stood at my bed side, and said, 4 Paley, I have been thinking what a damned fool you are. I could do nothing, probably, were I to try, and can afford the life I lead ; you could do every thing and cannot afford it. I have had no sleep all night on account of these reflections, and am now come solemnly to inform you that if you persist in your indolence, I must renounce your society.’ I was so struck with the visit and the visiter, that I lay in bed the greater part of the day, and formed my plan. I ordered my bed maker to prepare my fire every evening, in order that it might be lighted by myself. I arose at five, read during the whole of the day, except such hours as Chapel and Flail required, allotting to each time its peculiar branch of study; and just before the closing of the gates (nine o’clock), I went to a neighbouring coffee-house, where I constantly regaled upon a mutton chop, and a dose of milk punch. And thus on taking my bachelors degree, I became senior wrangler.” From this period Paley never relaxed in his exertions ; he burst away from all the doubts and horrors of idleness, and resolved in the very year of his mental emancipation, to strive for the highest honour in the University. Having this purpose, he endeavoured to place himself under Dr. Sharp, the senior wrangler of 1758 ; then fellow of Peterhouse, and afterwards archdeacon of Northumberland. Sharp, however, had other business to attend to: he therefore declined the task, but recommended Paley to Mr. Wilson, senior * Meadlcy’s Paley, p. 23. G THE LIFE OF PALEY. wrangler in 1761 ; a man of first-rate abilities, afterwards very successful as a barrister, and who died one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas. In 1762, Mr. Jebb and Mr. Watson were chosen the University moderators for the first time, and soon afterwards Watson sent Paley an act *. It being in consequence necessary for him to choose some questions for public disputation in the schools—he, referring to “ Johnsons Quaestiones Philosophise,” a work which contained a list of the questions usually disputed of in the schools, made choice of two. The first, upon the u Unlawfulness of Capital Punishment,” the second “ the Eternity of Hell Torments, as contradictory to the Divine Attributes.” The nature of the questions chosen by Paley, was speedily rumoured in the University, and many of its members were alarmed at the last question. The master of Christ's college was appealed to; who almost immediately insisted upon his relinquishing the objectionable theme. Paley, anxious to comply, waited upon the moderator to obtain the requisite permission to withdraw his question. The intrepid Watson, who was naturally indignant at the heads of colleges interfering with questions of the propriety of which he was the sole judge, refused to allow of the proposed with¬ drawal. “ The best way for you to satisfy the scruples of these gentlemen,” said Watson, “ will be for you to defend the eternity of liell torments. ITutton, of St. John’s, your first opponent, will certainly stiffen you; but I must help you out, and we will support the question as well as we cant.” The question as thus amended stood thus, JEternitas poenarum non contradicit Divinis attributis —and in its defence Paley displayed great ability. In the month of January 1763, Paley had to contend in the Senate House, as a ques- tionist, against Mr. Frere, his talented opponent for the senior wranglersliip. Here Paley’s mathematical knowledge, his celerity of apprehension, his promptitude at a reply, admirably served him in the struggle ; he outstripped all his competitors, and was announced as the victor in this honourable contest for pre-eminence. It hardly accords with our ideas of the honours of a senior wranglersliip, to find that almost the next step in life which Paley’s biographer has to record, after he had taken his bachelor’s degree, was his engagement as the second usher in an academy at Greenwich, kept by a Mr. Bracken; who, before he would admit Paley into the school, insisted upon the observance of several very unpleasant stipulations, among which sitting behind the door in the school-room, and above all, the wearing of a full sized wig, in which he made a very ridiculous appearance, particularly annoyed him, for he was not a little proud of his own handsome hairt. The student should not omit to mark the noble sacrifice Paley made of his feelings to his sense of duty, and should remember too that he was not yet twenty-one years of age, when he became senior wrangler, and accepted the humble office of a tutor in * Both these gentlemen were extraordinary charac¬ ters. Dr. John Jebb was the son of the dean of Cashel. Talented and learned, he was wavering and unsettled, might have obtained the highest honours in the Church, hut he vacated his fellowship by marrying, and became an Unitarian ; was a warm political partisan, and acquiring a doctor’s degree from St. Andrew’s, practised not alto¬ gether unsuccessfully as a physician. His works, edited by his friend Disney, in three volumes, have been pub¬ lished since his decease, which took place in 1786.—Life by Disney. Richard Watson, the other moderator, was in after-life still more distinguished than Jchb ; he became bishop of Llandaff, and is well and honourably known as the victo¬ rious opponent of Thomas Paine. He was the author of “ Chemical Essays the first work which made chemis¬ try a popular study in England ; and several other pro¬ ductions. He died in 1816. His rapidity in the acquisi¬ tion of knowledge may be estimated from the fact, as he often acknowledged, that when he first became professor of chemistry at Cambridge, he did not know a retort from a crucible-Life by himself, Annual Biography for 1816. ■f - Meadley, p. 32. + This wig so entirely metamorphosed Paley’s appear¬ ance, that when he went into Yorkshire, some of his neighbours mistook him for his old aunt’s husband. THE LIFE OF PALEY. i a private academy. The task must have been additionally irksome, from the circum¬ stance that Paley is supposed by Meadley, though his son denies the truth of the asser¬ tion, to have had little relish for classical lore; and in after life would often acknowledge that Virgil was the only Latin author whose works he could read with pleasure. In addition to his duties at the academy, he had private pupils. His amusements were confined either to the theatres, upon which he was through life an occasional attendant, or to the court at the Old Bailey, criminal trials being to him always an object of interest. In 1765, while yet at Greenwich, he gained one of the prizes annually bestowed by the parliamentary representatives of the University, for senior bachelors. The subject being for that year, a comparison between the Stoical and Epicurean philosophies, with respect to the influence of each on the morals of a people. Paley, in his prize essay, took the side of Epicurus, in a manner which commanded the suffrages of his judges : an accidental ignorance of the customary usages had nearly, however, proved fatal to his success. To the essay, written in Latin, he had appended elaborate English notes, at once exhibiting his powers of reasoning and his profound erudition. To these, one of the judges strongly objected ; “ he imagined the author had been assisted by his father, some country clergy¬ man, who, having forgotten his Latin, had written the notes in English*.” Paley announced his success to his friend Stoddart, in the following laconic unsigned letter, “ Io, triumplie; Cliamberlayne is secondt.” Paley had to read his essay in the Senate House, before the University, and for that purpose proceeded from Greenwich to Cambridge, with a full sense of the honours he had acquired, and entering that town alone in a post chaise, he drew down the windows, and desired the driver to proceed very slowly along the streets ; a piece of vanity which was long remembered among his friends as too good to be forgotten^:. His delivery of his essay was not remarkable either for its manner or its correctness—he was affected and confused. In the early part of 1766, he quitted the Greenwich academy ; took deacon’s orders ; and became assistant curate to Dr. Hinclicliffe, afterwards bishop of Peterborough, then vicar of Greenwich. As a preacher, Paley gained little reputation; his early sermons were too full of words, much too florid for liis audience—and he did not compensate by the graces of his delivery for the deficiencies of his composition. He seems to have undervalued what he never pos¬ sessed, once observing of a preacher, who excelled in his delivery, “ I know nothing against him, except that he is a popular preacher §.” Of his style in the pulpit his son gives us the following description.:—“ He had a peculiarity of delivery, and an awkwardness of attitude, particularly observable ; but the attention of his hearers soon wholly merged in the matter, and was carried from the preacher to the subject. He seemed indeed to be inattentive to all arts and elegancies of elocution, and to prefer what might show him anxious to do his best, and do credit to his subject, rather than as at all desirous of the graces and decorations of delivery. The manner of his preaching was strong and striking, and * Meadley, p. 45. honoured the hero of Culloden by’rising from their seats; f Cliamberlayne, fellow of King’s college, was one our wrangler, in ignorance of a greater man having en- of the best classical scholars of the University ; he nobly tered, took the compliment to himself, and turning in a acknowledged afterwards the superiority of Paley’s essay, state of confusion to his friend, remarked, “ How extra- J The vanity of another senior wrangler is still ordinary it is that they should know here that I am a among the stock stories of the Universities. Entering a senior wrangler.” side box of a London theatre, as a former duke of Cum- § Meadley, p. 50. berland entered on the opposite side, the audience 8 THE LIFE OF PA LEY. rather of a reproving cast, than soft or moving. Fie certainly approached the ludicrous when he attempted to move by his oratory. In his delivery, that taste and applica¬ tion to the wants and desiderata of his subject, which were conspicuous in his writings, were looked for in vain. His voice is stated to have been rough and inharmonious, and his accent provincial. This is not sufficiently qualified, his voice was not strikingly rough, but, on the contrary, in private sweet and very distinct, but, though deep, it was by no means strong nor very capable of exertion. Its roughness, if any, was on occasional exertion. Neither was his accent peculiarly provincial, it might have been called rather wanting in refinement, but by no means disagreeably so.” His printed sermons are not that portion of his works on which Paley 1 s claims to immor¬ tality are founded; he who excelled in his addresses to the whole Christian and Infidel worlds, and in shewing to them the true faith they should profess, could not, seemingly, concentrate his powers into the circle of a single congregation—in his sermons, therefore, though he is always respectable he is rarely excellent; he ever commands our attention, but never demands our plaudits. Paley^s first preferment was his fellowship of Christ’s college, to which he was elected on the 24tli June 1766? when he was not quite twenty-three years of age. It was then worth not more than one hundred pounds per annum. He continued, however, at Green¬ wich until the October of 1767? when, in company with his pupil Mr. Ord, he took up his residence at the University, became a tutor, and filled certain college offices which brought him annually about eighty pounds. On the 21st December following, he was ordained a priest, by bishop Terriek, at St. James’s chapel. In the succeeding year Mr. Backhouse, one of the tutors of Christ’s college, being ap¬ pointed chaplain to his friend Mr. Cornwallis, then just translated from Lichfield to Can¬ terbury, resigned his tutorship. Dr. Shepherd, the other tutor, being anxious to relieve himself from the entire burthen of his office, engaged Palcy and Mr. Law as assistant tutors, offices which they ably and energetically filled, until at length Dr. Shepherd, rather than lose their services, gladly admitted them to a share in the emoluments. In 1771? Paley was appointed one of the Whitehall preachers, but we have no account of his having ever preached before the king. His name first appears on the register of the chapel on the 21st April of that year. The friendship of Mr. Law was decidedly advantageous to Paley, for the latter was introduced by him to his father, Dr. Law, then master of Peterliouse, and afterwards elevated to the bishopric of Carlisle by the Grafton administration. Mr. Law also intro¬ duced Paley to his talented brother, Edmund Law, afterwards the celebrated Lord Ellen- borough, and the friendship of this talented family materially in after life advanced the interests of our author. When the celebrated Horne Tooke applied, in 1774 ? for his degree of Master of Arts, Paley strenuously, though unsuccessfully, opposed the claims of this extraordinary charac¬ ter, whose fate it was through life to secure to himself opposition in every attempt he made to advance his fortunes. Paley’s objections to Horne Tooke are supposed to have been founded on some violent passages contained in his Political Letters to John Wilkes. The opinion which Paley formed of Tooke, then first coming into public notice, was probably cor¬ rect. He evidently acted on the impression that he was unfit for the office of a clergyman*. * John Horne Tooke was a man of first-rate talents, difficulty obtained his degree—failed in all his attempts hut far too acrimonious and uncompromising. lie with to he called to the bar—and when he obtained, after a THE LIFE OF PALEY. 0 In the next three years of Paley’s life, there is little particularly deserving of notice. He continued labouring in his vocation of college tutor with the highest credit and success, was at once indefatigable and enterprising, and managed in a singular manner to preserve the respect, and even the affections, of his pupils. His convivial qualifications were excel¬ lent, his conversational powers of the first order—full of good humour, an excellent story teller, and the first to promote any harmless mirth. He had a saying in reference to this, that “if a man is not sometimes a fool he is always one.” Some of his early habits continued through life. It has been well said that the boy is the epitome of the man, and Paley was not an exception to the rule. Fie was still slow in his movements—the last to arrive at the dinner table—his letters to his friends were chiefly remarkable for their brevity—his writing was most illegible and awkward, which his correspondents were puzzled to decipher ; and when, to extricate them from these difficulties, the Doctor himself was once or twice appealed to, he was unable to succeed, being set at defiance by his own mystic characters. His epistolary correspondence was very limited ; there is, perhaps, no other celebrated author of the last century, whose letters are so few in number as those of Paley. He had, it appears, a great dislike to such literary efforts ; and hence, his assiduous biographer, Meadley, tells us that he often paid a penny a line in postage for Paley’s letters. Of his manuscripts, his son gives a curious description. “ They are contained,” he tells us, “ in eight or nine thick quarto paper books, with a number of smaller scrap-books, and some for pocket use. These books are full of scrib- blings from one end to the other, in one of the worst and most illegible hands that ever adorned genius, mixed up in a confused and unconnected heap with penmanship of a fair and seemly quality. It is quite impossible to make out any connection in either the pages of his books, the continuations of his sections, or even the scheme of his work. He seems to have filled up in any manner, or in any part of his books, the different divisions of his subject till the very last. The booksellers copy was perhaps the only one perfectly arranged. Of the Moral Philosophy indeed, only one or two books remain besides his lecture book, nor are these wholly devoted even to one work, but present a jumble of Moral Philosophy, and Evidences of Christianity, with many scraps of less importance. To those who write straightforward on any given subject, it might be surprising; to those also who were ac¬ quainted with his way of seizing upon any idea that was of use to him, or have seen him busied and intent upon his work, it is more than amusing to survey the strange mixture of material which is to be found in his other books. For instance, in the midst of the manuscript of his 4 Evidences/ there is one page containing the authenticity of the Historical Books of the New Testament, and on the opposite page to it a memorandum of having added a codicil to his will; then comes three or four pages full of family occurrences of all descriptions, interspersed with a few sentences, or a passage, to be found in some of his works. Any one reading, if he can read, these pages, will find some interesting argu¬ ment interrupted in the next page, by the hiring of servants—the letting of fields—sending his boys to school—reproving the members of an hospital for bad conduct — and epistolary correspondence .... Fie has been heard twenty times to break out into a hearty laugh for strenuous opposition, a seat in the house of commons, visible Junius;” being the only one who foiled this the house with reluctance refrained from expelling him, mighty censor. His was not a “ middle compound and immediately passed an act (41 George III., cap. character,” vulnerable by being publicly attacked in any 63), declaratory of the ineligibility of clergymen to be way. He died in 1 812, and perhaps was well described elected members of parliament. in the sentence of Junius, “ His situation does not coi- Mr. Tookc successfully contended with men of the respond with his intentions.”—See Gen. Biog. Diet, first powers of mind, even with the “ unknown in- 10 THE LIFE OF PALEY. liis folly in this respect. Not the least subject of curiosity, which the inspection of his manuscripts affords, is his hand-writing. We are sometimes told that there are three de¬ scriptions of hand-writing, into some of which most men glide who can write at all; that which every body may read, that which only the writer can read, and that which neither the writer nor any body else can read. Paley’s hand-writing included all these descrip¬ tions* * * § .” His son adds several anecdotes confirmatory of the fact of his writing an unintelligible hand; for instance, on being requested by the lady of the bishop of Lincoln, before whom he had preached at Buckden, to leave his sermon for her private perusal, he replied, “ You may have it, madam, freely, hut it is what neither you nor any body else can make out, for I had much ado to make it out myself +.” ^rt-rln 1774, appeared Paley’s first work. It is in defence of a publication of his friend the Bishop of Carlisle. This was on the then ardently discussed question of the propriety of requiring a subscription to articles of faith. It gained him great applause, and is dis¬ tinguished for the same powers of reasoning and illustration which have immortalized his larger and later publications. Of this work, which has long been bound up with his other works, he never either acknowledged or disowned the authorship ; there is, however, every reason to believe him to have been the author J. Various reasons, probably, conspired to render Paley indifferent about claiming the authorship of this pamphlet; for, written as it was with all the ardent patriotism of youth, its style and sentiments were by no means calculated to please the high-church clergy, who would naturally regard most of its reasonings as far from orthodox §. The promotion of Dr. Law to the see of Carlisle speedily led to the removal of his son from Cambridge, for he soon after received from his father the living of Warksworth, and a prebendal stall in Carlisle cathedral||. Paley soon followed his friend, for upon re¬ ceiving from the bishop the living of Musgrave, near Appleby, he announced an intention of speedily retiring from Cambridge. To this little living, which was barely worth eighty pounds a year, he was inducted on May the 28th, 1785. He staid in Cumberland after his induction long enough to fall in love with the lady who soon after became his wife. Preparatory to this great event in a clergyman’s life, he on the 21st of April preached his last sermon at the chapel royal, at Whitehall; and on the 30th of May resigned his fellowship at Christ’s college ^[. Six days afterwards, the marriage took place in the church of St. Mary’s, Carlisle. Of his bride, few particulars are related. She was the handsome * Paley’s Life of Paley, p. 133. “ In writing he never punctuated.’’—Ibid. p. 138. f Ibid.,p. 108. 1 It is interesting to learn the favourable notice taken of this, Paley’s first work, by the reviewers. “ The Monthly Review,” for 1774, p. 463, thus spoke of it— “ A Defence of the Considerations on the Propriety of requiring a Subscription to Articles of Faith, in reply to a late Answer from the Clarendon Press. By a Friend of Religious Liberty, 8vo., Wilkie, 1774. “ This defence is manly, spirited, and judicious, and the superiority in point of argument is so evidently on the side of the friend of religious liberty, that he must be a prejudiced reader indeed who does not discern it.” The Critical Review for the same year, p. 80, is much more brief in its notice of the work, “ a spirited refuta¬ tion of Dr. Il.’s pamphlet.” § The last sentences of his pamphlet arc eminently characteristic of Paley. “ If we are to wait for im¬ provement till the cool, the calm, the discreet part of mankind begin it •, till church governors solicit, or minis¬ ters of state propose it ; I will venture to pronounce that (without His interposition, with whom nothing is impos¬ sible), we may remain as we are till the renovation of all things.” || While Paley was residing at Cambridge, he often visited his friend Unwin, at Huntingdon, and was intro¬ duced by him to the poet Cowper, whom he afterwards met on several occasions. When Hayley’s Life of Cowper appeared, Paley, in alluding to the trivial nature of some of the details, stated his surprise, that, among other magnificent notices, he did not find recorded the present he made to this excellent poet, of a black cat.—Life by his Son, p. 84. He was succeeded in his fellowship by Dr. Majendie, afterwards bishop of Bangor. THE LIFE OF PALEY. 11 daughter of a spirit-merchant at Carlisle; is described as being inactive and unhealthy, according to her own description “ a mere thread-paper wife*;” yet sensible, mild, and unassuming. So that, although this match was made with more than prudential rapidity, yet Paley never, we believe, had any reason to repent of his choice—but was often ready to acknowledge, that the time he spent amongst his parishioners of Musgrave was the hap¬ piest period of his life. He lived, however, in the adjoining town of Appleby. At this place, he appears to have passed his days cheerfully and happily, dividing his time between study and fishing,—established a ITyson club, in imitation of one, of which he had been the life and soul at Cambridge,—followed his angling occupation in the beautiful river Eden, and was drawn by Romney, in his fishermans dress, with the absurd additions, however, of a clerical wig, and his archdeacon's hat, at which evident incongruities, his family were naturally displeased. Romney, who charged fifty pounds for the picture, was on the other hand evidently displeased with the price; and assured the bishop of Clonfert, for whom it was drawn, that he had been offered twice the sum for it f. Paley was never a successful fisherman, although he was devotedly fond of it; and at one period, used to notice regularly in his journal the result of his fishing endeavours. Bishop Law did not lose sight of Paley, for before the end of the same year, he presented him with the vicarage of Dalston, worth more than ninety pounds per annum. To this he was inducted on the 2nd of December, 1776; and on the J 5th of July following, preached the visitation sermon in the cathedral of Carlisle, soon after published under the title of “ Caution recommended in the Use and Application of Scripture Language:};.” This sermon was eloquent and argumentative—but certain observations in it regarding regeneration, and of being born of the Spirit, excited some little discussion. Dr. Knox in the introduction to his Christian Philosophy strongly condemned, while Dr. Percival in his Letters to his Son warmly applauded, it §. Six weeks after the publication of this sermon, he was appointed by the dean and chapter of Carlisle, to the living of Appleby, a vicarage worth rather more than two hundred a year; he had previously resigned Musgrave, and after his induc¬ tion, on the 10th of September, he divided his time between this place and Dalston. At Appleby, Paley formed an acquaintance with the venerable Yates, master of the grammar- school ; and with Mr. Lee, the celebrated barrister, afterwards attorney-general ||. It was about this time that he published his compilation of Prayers for the use of the Clergy in visiting the Sick, a valuable little work which has passed through many editions, but which has few claims to originality of composition. On the 17th of June, 1760, he was collated to the fourth prebendal stall in the cathedral of Carlisle, from which he received about four hundred pounds a year. In the following year, he published his excellent ordination sermon, preached as chaplain to the bishop at Rose Castle, on the 29tli of July, 1781 f. * Paley’s Life of Paley, p. 91. F Ibid. p. 94.—Meadley, p. 106. J In the Monthly Review for 1778, p. 406, this, Paley’s first acknowledged work, is thus noticed :— “ This is an ingenious and sensible discourse; but the question may be reasonably asked, whether it does not prove too much ? and farther, whether, according to Mr. P.’s method of arguing, the greater part of the New Testament may not be supposed to have no relation to the present times, from whence it may not be very diffi¬ cult to persuade ourselves that we have no concern with Revelation ? Such reflections have arisen in our minds on perusing this sermon, which, though of a liberal cast, may possibly have some dangerous tendency. We do this with real deference to the abilities of the author.” § Percival’s collected Works, vol. 1., p. 306. || Paley was evidently, economical in his early career. His son gives us many characteristic anecdotes confirma¬ tory of this fact,—his knitting bis children’s stockings when vicar of Musgrave, p. 95,—his want of a carpet for the stone floor of his parlour, obliging him to place his pupil, the delicate young Old, on the bellows, p. 63. “ For the justness of its reflections, the propriety of its language, and the benevolence, good sense, and piety which breathe through the whole, we have rarely met with its equal.”—Monthly Review for 1782, p. 240. 12 THE LIFE OF PALEY. In the next year, liis friend Dr. John Law was made bishop of Clonfert, and on the 5th of August, 17^2, Paley succeeded him as archdeacon of Carlisle, with the annexed rectory of Great Salkeld, worth one hundred and forty pounds a year; and, in consequence, he re¬ signed his living of Appleby. He accompanied the bishop to Dublin, where he preached the consecration sermon, which he afterwards published, and then proceeded to visit his friend’s palace and diocese on the banks of the Shannon* . The life of Paley must now consist principally in an account of his greater works, and of the consequent patronage he received from the episcopal bench. The events in the tranquil life of a country clergyman are generally few in number, and that of Paley was not an exception. A well known anecdote erroneously imputes to him that about this time he preached in St. Mary’s church, at Cambridge, before the celebrated William Pitt, “the boy premier of England,” upon the text, “ There is a lad here who hath five barley loaves and two small fishes, but what are they among so many "j~.” But one of his biographers tells us that he replied to a lady who inquired of him the truth of the story, “ I was not at Cam¬ bridge at the time, but I remember, that one day when I was riding out with a friend in the neighbourhood of Carlisle, and we were talking about the bustle and confusion which Mr. Pitt’s appearance would then cause in the University, I said that if I had been there, and asked to preach on the occasion, I would have taken that passage for my text J.” Paley in fact was differently engaged; he was fulfilling the duties of his station in the church, and busily employed in his first great work, “ The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy;” the substance of which he had long before delivered in his lectures to his pupils at Christ’s college. The appearance of this work was some time delayed for want of a publisher. No one could be found hardy enough to undertake the risk, and Paley was at first too poor to venture to do so himself. The copyright was offered in vain to Mr. Faulder, of Bond street, for one hundred guineas ; and at length Paley deemed himself rich enough to take the chance of its success. Its sale from the first was great. Faulder immediately offered two hundred and fifty pounds for the copyright. Paley demanded three hundred ; Faulder hesitated long enough to allow another bookseller to proffer one thousand, and then Faulder did the same, and became the purchaser. The agony of Paley lest his friend, the bishop of Clonfert, who was commissioned to sell to Faulder for three hundred, should in the mean time have concluded the sale, was ludicrous enough, but fortunately Paley’s letter was in time to prevent the sacrifice. This great work appeared in 1785, under the title of “ Principles of Morality and Politics,” and at once established Paley’s reputation as an elegant and profound reasoncr. Its character is that of all his great works; he was never entirely original, but he was rarely indeed a mere compiler. In this publica¬ tion he followed in a great measure the reasonings of Abraham Tucker, in his “ Light of Nature Pursued §.” We do not purpose in this place to enter into a critical exami¬ nation of any of his works. Although it was the first published of his four principal * “A Distinction of Orders in the Church, defended f St. John vi. 9. upon Principles of Public Utility; a Sermon preached in X Meadley’s Paley, p. 122. the Castle Chapel, Dublin, at the Consecration of John § The Monthly Review for 1785, vol. I. p. 182 to Law, D.D., Bishop of Clonfert.—As to the merit of 401, noticed it in the following manner :—“ The Pi'inclpies this sermon in a strictly theological sense, we decline of Moral and Political Philosophy, by William Paley, giving an opinion. But though we decline offering our Archdeacon of Carlisle.—A very useful and valuable opinion of the subject , yet we hesitate not to declare our performance.” sentiments of the manner in which it is discussed. We The Critical Review for 1785, p. 29, 202, remarked think it equally a proof of Mr. Paley’s ingenuity and good of the work in a manner equally just; “ candour, libc- sense, his benevolence and his piety. ‘ May the Lord of rality, and good sense are conspicuous in every page of the harvest send more such labourers into the vineyard.’ ” this important volume.” —Monthly Review for 1783, p. 287. publications, it was, by bis own confession, nearly the last in systematic order which should be read. Of a work so well known, and so celebrated in all countries where the subjects on which it treats are regarded, it is utterly needless for us to speak in terms of approbation. The eloquent Mackintosh, when he was delivering in Lincolns Inn Hall his introductory lecture upon the Law of Nature and Nations, page 28, thus expressed himself with regard to its merits. “ Speaking of the work of Dr. Paley, I am desirous of this public opportunity of professing my gratitude for the instruction and pleasure which I have received from that excellent writer, who possesses in so eminent a degree those invaluable qualities of a moralist, good sense, caution, sobriety, and perpetual reference to convenience and practice, and who certainly is thought less original than he really is, merely because his taste and modesty have led him to disdain 4 the ostentation of novelty,’ and because he generally employs more art to blend his own arguments with the body of received opinions, so as that they are scarce to be distinguished, than other men in the pursuit of a transient popularity have exerted to disguise the most miserable common-places in the shape of paradox.” This eulogium was delivered in the year 1798, when Paley was vicar of Bishop’s Wcarmouth. In 1785 Paley was appointed, on the death of Dr. Burn*, chancellor of the diocese of Carlisle, a situation which, besides fees, produced him about one hundred pounds a year. In 1787, he lost his friend and patron, the venerable bishop of Carlisle, a prelate whose patronage had served him on many great and important occasions. He did justice to his departed friend’s memory, in a concise memoir, which was first inserted in Hutchinson’s History of Cumberland, and was afterwards copied into the Encyclopa3dia Britannica. During this period, he was labouring assiduously in his vocation, for Paley had a mind ever restless and energetic. He edited 44 Collyer’s Sacred Interpreter,” a small volume, intended for persons preparing for deacon’s orders; to this he added 44 A Short Analysis of the Book of Revelations,” chiefly taken from Newton’s Dissertation on the Prophecies, and Daubuz’s Commentaries. In the spring of 1788, the abolition of the slave trade engaged his anxious attention ; he addressed the committee for its abolition, sitting in London +, and afterwards presided as chairman of a meeting at Carlisle, for the promotion of the same object. He had already denounced the system in his 44 Moral and Political Philosophy j,” as 44 an odious institution.” In 1789, Dr. Beadon, master of Jesus college, being advanced to the bishopric of Gloucester, the mastership was offered to Paley, by the visitor (Dr. Philip Yorke), the bishop of Ely. This valuable and flattering offer, however, Paley declined, for reasons which have never been clearly explained, and which, judging by the following letter to his sister, were hardly intelligible to himself: 44 June, —89. I send the enclosed letter for my father to see from the bishop of Ely, a man I know no more of than I do of the Pope. I was never in a greater quandary ; I have the greatest reason to believe that the situation would be a step to the highest preferments; on the other hand, to leave a situation with which I am much satisfied, and in which I am perfectly at ease in my circumstances, is a serious sort of change. I think it will end in declining it §.” * Dr. Burn is still more universally known than Paley, •f* Clarkson’s History of the Abolition, &c. \ ol. I. as the author of “ The Justice of the Peace,” Ct Ecclesi- p. 465. astical Law,” and several other works.—Gen. Biog. + Book iii, p. 2, c. 3. Die. § Paley’s Life of Paley, p. 195. 14 THE LIFE OF PALEY. The manner in which this offer was made Paley did not forget, for when five years afterwards he dedicated to that enlightened prelate his “ Evidences of Christianity,” he eagerly seized the opportunity of expressing his gratitude, and of reminding him publicly of “ the circumstances under which this offer was made.” “ I had never seen your lord- ship,—I possessed no connection which could possibly recommend me to your favour,—I was known to you only by my endeavours in common with many others, to discharge my duty as tutor in the University; and by some imperfect, but certainly well intended, and as you thought useful, publications since.” Various unsatisfactory reasons have been assigned for Paley’s refusal of an office which would in all probability have led him to the episcopal bench—that he was afraid of the expense—that disagreeable compliances would have been expected of him—that he must have quarreled with William Pitt* . Various attempts have been indeed made to insinuate that Pitt hindered his promotion, on account of their political opinions being opposed to each other. There is no part, perhaps, of Paley’s character more doubtful than his real political bias; he was certainly of no party,—was the friend, it is true, of improvements in all sciences, but eloquently denounced several long proposed and popular reformations,—was at the same time the friend of Ellcnborough and Mackintosh, of Barrington and Jebb,—was equally strenuous in his opposition to the claims of lord Lonsdale and Horne Tooke. Of another fact, we are quite certain, that if Pitt did not elevate his talented contemporary, yet the bishops whom Pitt had made, the men whom he did promote, earnestly united in patronising Paley t. The industry of political partisans has succeeded in selecting certain paragraphs from his works, which they imagine were offensive to the ministry of the day. Such persons in¬ stance the story of the Pigeons J,—his interpretation of the oaths of allegiance §,—his remark that the divine right of kings and the divine right of constables were equally certain |],— his limiting the right of civil obedience to certain duties, &c. Sec.; and yet, years after the publication of these passages, we find by the same authority, that William Pitt seriously entertained the idea of elevating Paley to the deanery of Carlisle • • NATURAL THEOLOGY; OR, EVIDENCES OF THE EXISTING ATTRIBUTES OF THE DEITY, COLLECTED FROM THE APPEARANCES OF NATURE. - . ■ ■- • ■' ' ■ \ • * . * TO THE HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND SHUTE BARRINGTON, LL.D. LORD BISHOP OF DURHAM*. My LorB> The following work was undertaken at your Lordship’s recommendation, and, amongst other motives, for the purpose of making the most acceptable return that I could, for a great and important benefit conferred upon me. It may be unnecessary, yet not perhaps quite impertinent, to state to your Lordship, and to the reader, the several inducements that have led me once more to the press. The favour * This excellent bishop, the patron of Paley, and all that was good, talented, and in need of charity throughout his diocese, long survived the object of his patronage. He came of an ancient and noble family of Saxon ori¬ gin, who had been allied to the Plantagenets, to Oliver Cromwell, and to many other distinguished persons. Shute Barrington, the sixth son of John Lord Barring¬ ton, was horn May 26, 1734; ivas educated at Eton, and at Merton college, Oxford. He was twice married ; first, in 1762, to the lady Diana Bcauclerk, daughter of the duke of St. Albans, who died four years afterwards ; and secondly, to Miss Jane Guise, heiress of Sir William Guise, who died in 1808. By neither of these ladies had he any issue. He becamfe bishop of Llandaff in 1768, and was translated to Salisbury (in 1782, through the personal favour of George the Third, who always called him “ his bishop,” for the see was intended by the minister of that day, Lord Shelburne, for another person. His pretensions also were ably supported by William Pitt. The favour of his sovereign followed the bishop into his diocese, for when the extensive repairs of his cathedral required a public subscription, a stranger one day, plainly dressed, walked into the cathedral, and calling for the subscription book-keeper, desired him to take a bank note for 1,000/. ; “ You can enter it,” said George the Third, to the astonished officer, “ in the name of ‘ A Country Gentleman, of Berkshire.’ ” In 1791, on the death of Dr. Thurlow, he was pro¬ moted by the king to the valuable see of Durham, which he held for the long period of thirty years *. He is described as being at once the scholar, the gentle¬ man, and the Christian; dignified, mild, courteous, and fascinating in his manners ; benevolent and charitable in the extreme, yet careful and economical. A warifl enemy to Catholic emancipation, yet the personal friend of Butler p, and of men of all religious tenets. He was consistent to the end of life ; never lost sight of the interests of religion and virtue ; and, although he lived nearly to the great age of ninety-two, preserved his faculties to the last • and his will, which filled the extra¬ ordinary number of forty-three sheets, shews the goodness of his heart; for besides bequeathing his books to the library at Durham, be gave about thirty thousand pounds to various public charities. Ilis patronage of distinguished clergymen was admir¬ able. Paley was not the only man who owed his pro¬ motion by Barrington, solely to Lis talents. The reader will remember among the distinguished names of Bell, Brewster, Badintd, Gray, Phillpotts, Zouch, Burgess, Sumner, Gilly, Collinson, Faber, Hollingsworth, Hodg¬ son, Le Mesurier, Gisborne, Owen, Thorpe, Townsend, all promoted by Barrington, several men whose talents have since elevated them to the episcopal bench. He was the friend not only of learned men, but of learning. The new university of Durham, which his successor Dr. Van Mildert established, was suggested and promoted by Barrington. He was the friend of Bowyer and of Black • stone, the latter of whom Was his neighbour at Mongewell, near Wallingford. Of such a man to whom Paley owed so much, and who will, at least, be known to after ages as his patron, when his other good deeds are perchance forgotten, the reader will, we are sure, pardon this brief notice.—Annual Obituary, 1826, p. 85. Public Characters-Imperial Magazine. Gentleman’s Magazine, 1826, p. 297, 518, 606. Annual Register, 1826, p. 237. * It would seem that there is something peculiarly favourable to longevity in the air of Durham, for there are some very singular instances of the length of time which its former bishops have held it. Thus, Hugh Pudsey held it from 1153 to 1194; Thomas de Hatfield, from 1345 to 1381, or 36 years; and Nathaniel Lord Crewe, from 1674 to 1722, the still longer period of 48 years. L “One hundred thousand pounds,” said this eloquent lawyer, “would not pay the munificent charities in which the bishop had employed me.—Reminiscences, p. 97.” 24 DEDICATION, of my first and ever-honoured Patron liad put me in possession of so liberal a provision in the Church, as abundantly to satisfy my wants, and much to exceed my pretensions. Your Lordship’s munificence, in conjunction with that of some other excellent Prelates, who regarded my services with the partiality with which your Lordship was pleased to consider them, hath since placed me in ecclesiastical situations, more than adequate to every object of reasonable ambition. In the mean time, a weak, and of late a painful, state of health, deprived me of the power of discharging the duties of my station in a manner at all suitable, either to my sense of those duties, or to my most anxious wishes concerning them. My inability for the public functions of my profession, amongst other consequences, left me much at leisure. That leisure was not to be lost. It was only in my study that I could repair my deficiencies in the church ; it was only through the press that I could speak. These circumstances entitled your Lordship in particular to call upon me for the only species of exertion of which I was capable, and disposed me without hesitation to obey the call in the best manner that I could. In the choice of a subject, I had no place left for doubt: in saying which, I do not so much refer, either to the supreme importance of the subject, or to any scepticism concerning it with which the present times are charged, as I do to its connexion with the subjects treated of in my former publications. The following discussion alone was wanted to make up my works into a system : in which works, such as they are, the public have now before them the evidences of Natural Religion, the evidences of Revealed Religion, and an account of the duties that result from both. It is of small importance that they have been written in an order the very reverse of that in which they ought to be read. I commend, therefore, the present volume to your Lordship’s protection, not only as, in all probability, my last labour, but as the completion of a regular and comprehensive design. Hitherto, my Lord, I have been speaking of myself, and not of my Patron. Your Lord- ship wants not the testimony of a Dedication ; nor any testimony from me : I consult therefore the impulse of my own mind alone when I declare, that in no respect has my intercourse with your Lordship been more gratifying to me, than in the opportunities which it has afforded me, of observing your earnest, active, and unwearied solicitude, for the advancement of substantial Christianity; a solicitude, nevertheless, accompanied with that candour of mind, which suffers no subordinate differences of opinion, when there is a coin¬ cidence in the main intention and object, to produce any alienation of esteem, or diminution of favour. It is fortunate for a country, and honourable to its government, when qualities and dispositions like these are placed in high and influencing stations. Such is the sincere judgment which I have formed of your Lordship’s character and of its public value: my personal obligations I can never forget. Under a due sense of both these considerations, I beg leave to subscribe myself, with great respect and gratitude, My Lord, Your Lordship’s faithful And most devoted servant, Bishop's Wearmouth, July , 1802. WILLIAM PALEY. NATURAL THEOLOGY*. CHAPTER I. STATE OF TIIE ARGUMENT. In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone , and were asked how the stone came to he there : I might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the con¬ trary, it had lain there for ever; nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should he inquired how the watch happened to he in that place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given,—that, for any thing I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone? why is it not as admissible in the second case, as in the first ? For this reason, and for no other, viz. that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not dis¬ cover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e. g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other man¬ ner, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. To reckon up a few of the plainest of these parts, and of their offices, all tending to one result: — We see a cylindrical box containing a coiled elastic spring, which by its endeavour to relax itself, turns round the box. We next observe a flexible chain (artificially wrought for the sake of flexure) communicating the action of the spring from the box to the fusee. We then find a series of wheels, the teeth of which catch in, and apply to, each other, conducting the motion from the fusee to the balance, and from the balance to the pointer: and at the same time, by the size and shape of those wheels, so regulating that motion, as to terminate in causing an index, by an equable and measured progression, to pass over a given space in a given time. We take notice that the * Natural Theology is a branch of our reasoned know¬ ledge that must have had its birth contemporary with that of man. As soon as created he must have desired to know his origin, and that of the world around him. Every day’s experience would impress upon him the fact that every thing was beautiful, every thing useful, every thing in regulated order. “ Who made, what sustains, me and them ? ” would be the question of his unsophis¬ ticated mind, and Milton was never truer to nature than when he puts these words into the mouth of Adam: — “-How came I thus ?—how here ? Not of myself;—by some great Maker then, In goodness and in power pre-eminent.” Such would be the conclusion of an innocent mind ; for it was by modern ingenuity, by modern logic, that it was suggested that universal beauty might occur by chance—universal contrivance have had no designer—and universal order exist without a regulator. In the oldest existing writings there were no such deductions as these—their authors in their simplicity, or if you will, in their ignorance, concluded that all things must have had a creator, and that if they are always beauteous, abounding in intricacies, yet never running into disorder, that that creator must be all-wise and all powerful. Thus in two writings allowed to be three thousand years old, it is said, “ The heavens declai’e the glory of God ; and the firmament showeth his handy-work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.” “ O Lord, how manifold are thy 2 G NATURAL THEOLOGY. wheels are made of brass in order to keep them from rust; the springs of steel, no other metal being so elastic; that- over the face of the watch there is placed a glass, a material employed in no other part of the work, but in the room of which, if there had been any other than a transparent substance, the hour could not be seen without opening the case. This mechanism being observed (it requires indeed an examination of the instrument, and perhaps some previous knowledge of the subject, to perceive and understand it; but being once, as we have said, observed and understood), the inference we think is inevitable, that works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches,” (Psalms, xix. and civ.) “ The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth ; by understand¬ ing hath he established the heavens. By his knowledge the depths arc broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew,” (Proverbs, iii. See also the five last chapters of Job.) Now it is true that since those days our know’- lcdge has been continually on the increase—anatomy, chemistry, astronomy, geology, and botany, have since then grown into sciences; but do the discoveries that have been made in each at all tend to disprove the ex¬ istence of a Creator? Do they not, on the contrary, all unite in showing that the whole creation is more com¬ plicate, more teeming with wondrous contrivances, than was suspected by the wisdom of the writers of those books? Have not the same order, the same beauties, recurred with changeless regularity during the thousands of years that have elapsed since they passed to their graves? If so—and the answer must be in the affirmative— then have we more causes than they to perceive and to admire the Creator, in the things created. Neither are we better qualified than those writers to judge of the legitimate inferences. They, to employ one of Paley’s illustrations, were as capable then to conclude as We are, that every watch must have had a maker. This is one of those self-evident conclusions that it would be ridiculous to set about proving, if to deny it had not, under another form, been part of the credulity of Scepticism. .Since the period in which those writings were com¬ posed unto the present time, every age, and every civi¬ lised nation, has produced authors who have perceived the Creator in the wonders of the material world. The most ancient philosophers, however much they differed in opinion as to the eternity of matter, almost unanimously agreed in ascribing the creation of the world to God. Mcrcurius Trismegistus speaks of the Deity as “ the original of the worldHomer denominates him as “ the great artificer—the maker of the world Aristotle, as “ the apparent cause of all things.” “ The w T orld,” said Plato, “is the most excellent of all created beings_the world was made by God.” The belief of the ancient heathens in a constant and particular providence, is demonstrated by the whole of their mythology. The mathematical regularity of the heavenly bodies convinced them that the power and wisdom of a God is there, and they presented their grateful offerings to Phoebus, to Luna, and other deities, whom their mundane notions of a God conceived necessary for the tutelage of the planets. The same finite notions attended their other acknow¬ ledgments of a particular providence ; the seasons, the earth, the winds, the flowers, every good gift, every per¬ sonal endowment, had a presiding Deity assigned, whose favour they endeavoured to propitiate, and whose sup¬ posed anger they strove to assuage. They had no idea of chance having to do with the creation or preservation of the world ; the husbandman thanked Ceres for his bounteous harvests ; and the gardeners of Prestum bowed down to Flora for blessing their roses: the soldier im¬ plored the aid of Mars in the days of battle ; the mariner committed himself to the care of Neptune; the con¬ valescent offered up their hymns of thanks in the temple of Hygeia; and the diseased,'for relief, performed sacri¬ fices upon the altar of AEsculapius. In later days men have appeared professing to doubt the existence of a Great First Cause, or Creator; and it is to be lamented that they had, and have, many disciples. It is not for us in this place to dwell upon the biographies of such men, nor upon the fruits of their creed ; because, though bad moralists, bad relatives, and bad citizens, philosophically considered that is no refutation of their tenets. To controvert these, many works have been written, but none that have obtained such celebrity as those of Ray, Derham, and Paley. Since these have appeared, science has every day yielded some discovery, marking forcibly the wisdom that directed the creation; and to strengthen with these the testimonies collected by our author, has been the wish, as it has been the delight, of the editors. They hope it has not been a needless effort. It was Paley’s design to throw a concentrated light upon each subject, and they have only endeavoured to add a few fresh rays. Some may suggest that that which i& already sufficient, need be added to no farther; and if the object of Natural Theology w r as satisfied as soon as it had demonstrated the agency of God, we should readily acquiesce in the restric¬ tion. But this science, this corollary of the sciences, is not concluded by that demonstration. The age is passed when man was privileged so far as to hold converse with his Maker; but Natural Theology restores us as far as is permitted to that blessing from which we are fallen. Though we are not permitted to walk with Him in the garden, yet it enables us to ti'ace the marks of his foot¬ steps. Every such discovery brings with it not only the pleasure that accompanies the acquirement, of all know¬ ledge, but the pleasure that attends the best of all wisdom the knowledge of God. The proficient in Natural Theology may fully adopt the eloquent address of the psalmist, “ Whither shall I go from thy spirit? whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there ; if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there.” Of such knowledge there can be no satiety. We are never wearied of hearing fresh reports of the wisdom and power of our friends. Now we have no friend equal to God. Natural Theology also is the firm the constant ally of the Christian dispensation. The claim of revelation to universal acceptance is founded upon its being the will of God. The first logical step is therefore to establish his existence. Some minds have a happy facility of belief requiring no such demonstration; they look round upon creation, and require no arguments to prove that it had a maker. Others are constitutionally doubters, require every obstacle to be beaten down in the pathway to con¬ viction, and the far greater portion of mankind arc troubled by difficulties that appear in this most important of inquiries. Moreover every one, in the course of social intercourse, meets with those who impugn the grounds of his belief; to such persons it is important to have an unrefutable reply ; important, for the sake of the objector, important for the mental quietude of the believer. With this the apostle was convincingly impressed, when he wrote, “ Be ready always to*give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.” NATURAL THEOLOGY* 27 the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer : who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. I. Nor would it, I apprehend, weaken the conclusion, that we had never seen a watch made; that we had never known an artist capable of making one; that we were altogether incapable of executing such a piece of workmanship ourselves, or of understanding in what manner it was performed ; all this being no more than what is true of some exquisite remains of ancient art, of some lost arts, and, to the generality of mankind, of the more curious productions of modern manufacture. Does one man in a million know how oval frames are turned ? Ignorance of this kind exalts our opinion of the unseen and unknown artist’s skill, if he be unseen and unknown, but raises no doubt in our minds of the exist¬ ence and agency of such an artist, at some former time, and in some place or other. Nor can I perceive that it varies at all the inference, whether the question arise concerning a human agent, or concerning an agent of a different species, or an agent possessing, in some respects, a different nature. II. Neither, secondly, would it invalidate our conclusion, that the watch sometimes went wrong, or that it seldom w'ent exactly right. The purpose of the machinery, the design, and the designer, might be evident, and in the case supposed would be evident, in whatever way we accounted for the irregularity of the movement, or whether we could account for it or not. It is not necessary that a machine be perfect, in order to shew with what design it was made : still less necessary, where the only question is, whether it were made with any design at all. III. Nor, thirdly, would it bring any uncertainty into the argument, if there were a few' parts of the watch, concerning which we could not discover, or had not yet discovered, in what manner they conduced to the general effect; or even some parts, concerning which we could not ascertain, whether they conduced to that effect in any manner whatover. For, as to the first branch of the case; if by the loss, or disorder, or decay, of the parts in question, the movement of the W'atch w'ere found in fact to be stopped, or disturbed, or retarded, no doubt would remain in our minds as to the utility or intention of these parts, although we should be unable to investigate the manner according to which, or the con¬ nection by which, the ultimate effect depended upon their action or assistance ; and the more complex is the machine, the more likely is this obscurity to arise. Then, as to the second thing supposed, namely, that there were parts which might be spared, without prejudice to the movement of the watch, and that w r e had proved this by experiment,— these superfluous parts, even if we were completely assured that they w'ere such, would not vacate the reasoning which w r e had instituted concerning other parts. The indication of contrivance remained, with respect to them, nearly as it w'as before. IV. Nor, fourthly, would any man in his senses think the existence of the watch, with its various machinery, accounted for, by being told that it wais one out of possible com¬ binations of material forms ; that whatever he had found in the place where he found the W'atch, must have contained some internal configuration or other; and that this configura¬ tion might be the structure now exhibited, viz. of the works of a watch, as well as a different structure. V. Nor, fifthly, w T ould it yield his inquiry more satisfaction, to be answered, that there existed in things a principle of order, which, had disposed the parts of the watch into their present form and situation. He never knew a w r atch made by the principle of order; nor can he even form to himself an idea of what is meant by a principle of order, distinct from the intelligence of the watchmaker. VI. Sixthly, he w T ould be surprised to hear that the mechanism of the watch was no proof of contrivance, only a motive to induce the mind to think so : VII. And not less surprised to be informed, that the watch in his hand was nothing more than the result of the laws of metallic nature. It is a perversion of language to assign any law, as the efficient, operative cause of any thing. A law presupposes an agent; for it is only the mode, according to which an agent proceeds : it implies a pow'er ; for it is the order, according to which that power acts. Without this agent, without this power, 20 NATURAL THEOLOGY. which are both distinct from itself, the law does nothing, is nothing. The expression, “ the law of metallic nature,” may sound strange and harsh to a philosophic ear; but it seems quite as justifiable as some others which are more familiar to him, such as 44 the law of vegetable nature,” 44 the law of animal nature,” or indeed as 44 the law of nature” in general, when assigned as the cause of phenomena, in exclusion of agency and power; or when it is substituted into the place of these. VIII. Neither, lastly, would our observer be driven out of his conclusion, or from his confidence in its truth, by being told that he knew nothing at all about the matter. He knows enough for his argument: he knows the utility of the end: he knows the subser¬ viency and adaptation of the means to the end. These points being known, his ignorance of other points, his doubts concerning other points, affect not the certainty of his reasoning. The consciousness of knowing little, need not beget a distrust of that which he does know. CHAPTER II. STATE OF TIIE ARGUMENT CONTINUED. Suppose, in the next place, that the person who found the watch, should, after some time, discover, that, in addition to all the properties which he had hitherto observed in it, it possessed the unexpected property of producing, in the course of its movement, another watch like itself (the thing is conceivable) : that it contained within it a mechanism, a system of parts, a mould for instance, or a complex adjustment of laths, files, and other tools, evidently and separately calculated for this purpose; let us inquire, what effect ought such a discovery to have upon his former conclusion. I. The first effect would be to increase his admiration of the contrivance, and his con¬ viction of the consummate skill of the contriver. Whether die regarded the object of the contrivance, the distinct apparatus, the intricate, yet in many parts intelligible mechanism, by which it was carried on, he would perceive, in this new observation, nothing but an additional reason for doing what he had already done,—for referring the construction of the watch to design, and to supreme art. If that construction without this property, or which is the same thing, before this property had been noticed, proved intention and art to have been employed about it; still more strong would the proof appear, when he came to the knowledge of this farther property, the crown and perfection of all the rest. II. He would reflect, that though the watch before him were, in some sense , the maker of the watch, which was fabricated in the course of its movements, yet it was in a very different sense from that, in which a carpenter, for instance, is the maker of a chair; the author of its contrivance, the cause of the relation of its parts to their use. With respect to these, the first watch was no cause at all to the second; in no such sense as this was it the author of the constitution and order, either of the parts which the new watch con¬ tained, or of the parts by the aid and instrumentality of which it was produced. We might possibly say, but with great latitude of expression, that a stream of water ground corn: but no latitude of expression would allow us to say, no stretch of conjecture would lead us to think, that the stream of water built the mill, though it were too ancient for us to know who the builder was. What the stream of water does in the affair, is neither more nor less than this; by the application of an unintelligent impulse to a mechanism previously arranged, arranged independently of it, and arranged by intelligence, an effect is produced, viz. the corn is ground. But the effect results from the arrangement. The force of the stream cannot be said to be the cause or author of the effect, still less of the arrangement. Understanding and plan in the formation of the mill were not the less neces¬ sary, for any share which the water has in grinding the corn; yet is the share the same, as that which the watch would have contributed to the production of the new watch, upon the supposition assumed in the last section. Therefore, NATURAL THEOLOGY. 20 III. Though it be now no longer probable, that the individual watch, which our observer had found, was made immediately by the hand of an artificer, yet doth not this alteration in any wise affect the inference, that an artificer had been originally employed and concerned in the production. The argument from design remains as it was. Marks of design and contrivance are no more accounted for now, than they were before. In the same thing, we may ask for the cause of different properties. We may ask for the cause of the colour of a body, of its hardness, of its heat; and these causes may be all different. We are now asking for the cause of that subserviency to a use, that relation to an end, which we have remarked in the watch before us. No answer is given to this question, by telling us that a preceding watch produced it. There cannot be design without a designer; contrivance, without a contriver ; order, without choice; arrangement, without any thing capable of arranging; subserviency and relation to a purpose, without that which could intend a purpose; means suitable to an end, and executing their office in accomplishing that end, without the end ever having been contemplated, or the means accommodated to it. Arrangement, disposition of parts, subserviency of means to an end, relation of instruments to a use, imply the presence of intelligence and mind. No one, therefore, can rationally believe, that the insensible, inanimate watch, from which the watch before us issued, was the proper cause of the mechanism we so much admire in it;—could be truly said to have constructed the instrument, disposed its parts, assigned their office, determined their order, action, and mutual dependency, combined their several motions into one result, and that also a result connected with the utilities of other beings. All these properties, therefore, are as much unaccounted for, as they were before. IY. Nor is any thing gained by running the difficulty farther back, i. e. by supposing the watch before us to have been produced from another watch, that from a former, and so on indefinitely. Our going back ever so far, brings us no nearer to the least degree of satisfaction upon the subject. Contrivance is still unaccounted for. We still want a contriver. A designing mind is neither supplied by this supposition, nor dispensed with. If the difficulty were diminished the farther we went back, by going back indefinitely we might exhaust it. And this is the only case to which this sort of reasoning applies. Where there is a tendency, or, as we increase the number of terms, a continual approach towards a limit, there, by supposing the number of terms to be what is called infinite, we may conceive the limit to be attained : but where there is no such tendency or approach, nothing is effected by lengthening the series. There is no difference as to the point in question (whatever there may be as to many points), between one series and another; between a series which is finite and a series which is infinite. A chain, composed of an infinite number of links, can no more support itself, than a chain composed of a finite number of links. And of this we are assured (though we never can have tried the experiment), because by increasing the number of links, from ten for instance to a hundred, from a hundred to a thousand, &c. we make not the smallest approach, we observe not the smallest tendency, towards self-support. There is no difference in this respect (yet there may be a great difference in several respects) between a chain of a greater or less length, between one chain and another, between one that is finite and one that is infinite. This very much resembles the case before us. The machine which we are inspecting, demonstrates, by its construction, contrivance and design. Contrivance must have had a contriver; design, a designer; whether the machine immediately proceeded from another machine or not. That circumstance alters not the case. That other machine may, in like manner, have proceeded from a former machine : nor does that alter the case; contrivance must have had a contriver. That former one from one preceding it: no alteration still; a con¬ triver is still necessary. No tendency is perceived, no approach towards a diminution of this necessity It is the same with any and every succession of these machines ; a succession of ten, of a hundred, of a thousand; with one series, as with another; a series which is finite, as with a series which is infinite. In whatever other respects they may differ, in this they do not. In all equally, contrivance and design are unaccounted for. The question is not simply, IIow came the first watch into existence ? which question, it may be pretended, is done away by supposing the series of watches thus produced from one another to have been infinite, and consequently to have had no such first, for which it was 30 NATURAL THEOLOGY. necessary to provide a cause. This, perhaps, would have been nearly the state of the question, if nothing had been before us but an unorganised, unmechanised substance, without mark or indication of contrivance. It might be difficult to show that such substance could not have existed from eternity, either in succession (if it were possible, which I think it is not, for unorganised bodies to spring from one another), or by individual perpetuity. But that is not the question now. To suppose it to be so, is to suppose that it made no difference whether he had found a watch or a stone. As it is, the metaphysics of that question have no place; for, in the watch which we are examining, are seen contrivance, design ; an end, a purpose ; means for the end, adaption to the purpose. And the question which irresistibly presses upon our thoughts, is, Whence this contrivance and design ? The thing required is the intending mind, the adapted hand, the intelligence by which that hand was directed. This question, this demand, is not shaken off, by increasing a number or succession of sub¬ stances, destitute of these properties; nor the more, by increasing that number to infinity. If it be said, that, upon the supposition of one watch being produced from another in the course of that other s movements, and by means of the mechanism within it, we have a cause for the watch in my hand, viz. the watch from which it proceeded; I deny, that for the design, the contrivance, the suitableness of means to an end, the adaption of instruments to a use (all which we discover in the watch), we have any cause whatever. It is in vain, therefore, to assign a series of such causes, or to allege that a series may be carried back to infinity; for I do not admit that we have yet any cause at all of the phenomena, still less any series of causes either finite or infinite. Here is contrivance, but no contriver; proofs of design, but no designer. Y. Our observer would farther also reflect, that the maker of the watch before him, was, in truth and reality, the maker of every watch produced from it: there being no difference (except that the latter manifests a more exquisite skill) between the making of another watch with his own hands, by the mediation of files, laths, chisels, &c. and the disposing, fixing, and inserting, of these instruments, or of others equivalent to them, in the body of the watch already made in such a manner, as to form a new watch in the course of the movements which he had given to the old one. It is only working by one set of tools, instead of another. The conclusion which the first examination of the watch, of its works, construction, and movement, suggested, was, that it must have had, for the cause and author of that construc¬ tion, an artificer, who understood its mechanism, and designed its use. This conclusion is invincible. A second examination presents us with a new discovery. The wutch is found, in the course of its movement, to produce another w’atch, similar to itself; and not only so, but we perceive in it a system or organisation, separately calculated for that purpose. What effect would this discovery have, or ought it to have, upon our former inference ? What, as hath already been said, but to increase, beyond measure, our admiration of the skill, which had been employed in the formation of such a machine ? Or shall it, instead of this, all at once turn us round to an opposite conclusion, viz. that no art or skill whatever has been concerned in the business, although all other evidences of art and skill remain as they were, and this last and supreme piece of art be now added to the rest ? Can this be maintained without absurdity? Yet this is atheism # . * One of the greatest of chemical philosophers, the illustrious Davy, who brought to the investigation a talent, and a love of truth never excelled, seems to have had this eloquent and logical statement of Paley’s in his memory, when ho was writing the concluding passages of his chapters “ on the Powers and Properties of Matter.” e, but it was not until after the lapse of years, that Kepler, the im¬ mortal discoverer of those great laws which regulate the periods and motions of the planets, pointed out distinctly the offices performed by the several parts of the eye in the act of vision. From this to the invention of the telescope and microscope, there seems but a small step, yet these were the discoveries of accident, rather than of design, and the re-invention of tho telescope by Galileo, on a mere description of its effects, serves among a thousand similar instances to show that inestimable practical applications lie open to us, if we can only bring ourselves to conceive their possibility.—Herschel, on the Study of Natural Philosophy. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 32 knowledge, his suiting of his means to his end ; I will not say to display the compass or excellence of his skill and art, for in these all comparison is indecorous, but to testify counsel, choice, consideration, purpose ? To some it may appear a difference sufficient to destroy all similitude between the eye and the telescope, that the one is a perceiving organ, the other an unperceiving instrument. The fact is, that they are both instruments. And, as to the mechanism, at least as to mecha¬ nism being employed, and even as to the kind of it, this circumstance varies not the analogy at all. For observe, what the constitution of the eye is. It is necessary, in order to produce distinct vision, that an image or picture of the object be formed at the bottom of the eye. Whence this necessity arises, or how the picture is connected with the sensation, or con¬ tributes to it, it may be difficult, nay, we will confess, if you please, impossible for us to search out. But the present question is not concerned in the inquiry. It may be true, that, in' this, and in other instances, we trace mechanical contrivance a certain way; and that then we come to something which is not mechanical, or which is inscrutable. But this affects not the certainty of our investigation, as far as we have gone. The difference between an animal and an automatic statue, consists in this,—that, in the animal, we trace the mechanism to a certain point, and then we are stopped; either the mechanism becoming too subtle for our discernment, or something else besides the known laws of mechanism taking place ; whereas, in the automaton, for the comparatively few motions of which it is capable, we trace the mechanism throughout. But, up to the limit, the reasoning is as clear and certain in the one case, as in the other. In the example before us, it is a matter of certainty, because it is a matter which experience and observation demon¬ strate, that the formation of an image at the bottom of the eye is necessary to perfect vision. The image itself can be shewn. Whatever affects the distinctness of the image, affects the distinctness of the vision. The formation then of such an image being necessary (no matter how) to the sense of sight, and to the exercise of that sense, the apparatus by which it is formed is constructed and put together, not only with infinitely more art, but upon the self-same principles of art, as in the telescope or the camera-obscura. The per¬ ception arising from the image may bo laid out of the question ; for the production of the image, these are instruments of the same kind. The end is the same; the means are the same. The purpose in both is alike ; the contrivance for accomplishing that purpose is in both alike. The lenses of the telescope, and the humours of the eye, bear a complete resemblance to one another, in their figure, their position, and in their power over the rays of light, viz. in bringing each pencil to a point at the right distance from the lens; namely, in the eye, at the exact place where the membrane is spread to receive it. How is it possible, under circumstances of such close affinity, and under the operation of equal evidence, to exclude contrivance from the one; yet to acknowledge the proof of contrivance having been employed, as the plainest and clearest of all propositions, in the other ? The resemblance between the two cases is still more accurate, and obtains in more points than we have yet represented, or than we are, on the first view of the subject, aware of. In dioptric telescopes there is an imperfection of this nature. Pencils of light, in passing through glass lenses, are separated into different colours, thereby tinging the object, especially the edges of it, as if it were viewed through a prism. To correct this inconvenience, had been long a desideratum in the art. At last it came into the mind of a sagacious optician, to inquire how this matter was managed in the eye ; in which, there was exactly the same difficulty to contend with, as in the telescope His observation taught him, that, in the eye, the evil was cured by combining lenses composed of different substances, i. e. of substances which possessed different refracting powers. Our artist borrowed thence his hint; and produced a correction of the defect by imitating, in glasses made from different * This discovery of the achromatic telescope is not complete and happy execution of the idea. “ It is,” quite accurately stated by Paley. Dollond, the optician observes Mr. Herscliel, “ a memorable case in science, alluded to, was discussing with Klingenstierna, an emi- though not a singular one, where the speculative geometer nent Swedish philosopher, and the celebrated geometer in his chamber, apart from the world, and existing among Euler, some abstract theoretical investigations of the lat- abstractions, has originated views of the noblest practical ter, which led him to speculate on the possibility of ini- application.”—On the Study of Natural Philosophy, proving the telescope, and terminated in our countryman’s NATURAL THEOLOGY. 33 materials, the effects of the different humours through which the rays of light pass before they reach the bottom of the eye. Could this be in the eye without purpose, which sug¬ gested to the optician the only effectual means of attaining that purpose? But farther; there are other points, not so much perhaps of strict resemblance between the two, as of superiority of the eye over the telescope ; yet of a superiority which, being founded in the laws that regulate both, may furnish topics of fair and just comparison. Two things were wanted to the eye, which were not wanted (at least in the same degree) to the telescope; and these were the adaptation of the organ, first, to different degrees of light; and secondly, to the vast diversity of distance, at which objects are viewed by the naked eye, viz. from a few inches to as many miles. These difficulties present not them¬ selves to the maker of the telescope. He wants all the light he can get; and he never directs his instrument to objects near at hand. In the eye, both these cases were to be provided for; and for the purpose of providing for them, a subtile and appropriate mecha¬ nism is introduced. I. In order to exclude excess of light, when it is excessive, and to render objects visible under obscurer degrees of it, when no more can be had, the hole or aperture in the eye, through which the light enters, is so formed, as to contract or dilate itself for the purpose of admitting a greater or less number of rays at the same time. The chamber of the eye is a camera-obscura, which, when the light is too small, can enlarge its opening: when too strong, can again contract it: and that without any other assistance than that of its own exquisite machinery. It is farther also, in the human subject, to be observed, that this hole in the eye, which we call the pupil, under all its different dimensions, retains its exact circular shape. This is a structure extremely artificial. Let an artist only try to execute the same; he will find that his threads and strings must be disposed with great consideration and contrivance, to make a circle which shall continually change its diameter, yet preserve its form. This is done in the eye by an application of fibres, i. e. of strings similar, in their position and action, to what an artist would and must employ, if he had the same piece of workmanship to perform # . II. The second difficulty which has been stated, was the suiting of the same organ to the perception of objects that lie near at hand, within a few inches, we will suppose of the eye, and of objects which are placed at a considerable distance from it, that, for example, of as many furlongs (I speak in both cases of the distance at which distinct vision can be exer¬ cised). Now this, according to the principles of optics, that is, according to the laws by which the transmission of light is regulated (and these laws are fixed), could not be done without the organ itself undergoing an alteration, and receiving an adjustment, that might correspond with the exigency of the case, that is to say, with the different inclination to one another under which the rays of light reached it. Rays issuing from points placed at a small distance from the eye, and which constantly must enter the eye in a spreading or diverging order, cannot, by the same optical instrument in the same state, be brought to a point, i. e. be made to form an image, in the same place with rays proceeding from objects situated at a much greater distance, and which rays arrive at the eye in directions nearly (and physically speaking) parallel. It requires a rounder lens to do it. The point of con¬ course behind the lens must fall critically upon the retina, or the vision is confused ; yet, other things remaining the same, this point, by the immutable properties of light, is carried farther back when the rays proceed from a near object, than when they are sent from one * The exclusion of too great an excess of light was not the only difficulty, humanly speaking, that had to be overcome in the formation of an organ, to be usefully employed by all animals, for some of these are in motion only during the hours of darkness. A change of appara¬ tus was here required to render it available during the greatest absence of light. It has been found the noctur¬ nal animals have eyes with very dilatable pupils; and very little of that dark substance (pigmentum nigrum), so abundant between the retina and the choroid coat of those creatures that appear most in the sunlight hours. The 'consequences are obvious, the eyes of the former are better adapted to receive, and more susceptible of the influence of light. Moreover, the eyes of nocturnal animals have an organisation which reflects light from the back of the eye upon the pupils, and thus gives them the repeated benefit of every ray. It is certain, that those of the cat are luminous in the dark ; and there are not wan ting examples of men in very early periods, as well as in modern times, who, under certain circrmstances of excitement, or after long confinement in darkness, could see during the almost total privation of light.—Pliny, Dr. Willis, Dr. Briggs, Mr. Boyle. D 34 NATURAL THEOLOGY. that is remote. A person who was using an optical instrument would manage this matter by changing, as the occasion required, his lens or his telescope ; or by adjusting the distance of his glasses with his hand or his screw : but how is this to be managed in the eye ? What the alteration was, or in what part of the eye it took place, or by what means it was effected (for if the known laws which govern the refraction of light be maintained, some alteration in the state of the organ there must be), had longed formed a subject of inquiry and conjecture. The change, though sufficient for the purpose, is so minute as to elude ordinary observation. Some very late discoveries, deduced from a laborious and most accu¬ rate inspection of the structure and operation of the organ, seem at length to have ascertained the mechanical alteration which the parts of the eye undergo. It is found, that by the action of certain muscles, called the straight muscles, and which action is the most advan¬ tageous that could be imagined for the purpose,—it is found, I say, that whenever the eye is directed to a near object, three changes are produced in it at the same time, all severally contributing to the adjustment required. The cornea, or outermost coat of the eye, is ren¬ dered more round and prominent : the crystalline lens underneath is pushed forward ; and the axis of vision, as the depth of the eye is called, is elongated. These changes in the eye vary its power over the rays of light in such a manner and degree as to produce exactly the effect which is wanted, viz. the formation of an image upon the retina , whether the rays come to the eye in a state of divergency, which is the case when the object is near to the eye, or come parallel to one another, which is the case when the object is placed at a distance. Can any tiling be more decisive of contrivance than this is ? The most secret laws of optics must have been known to the author of a structure endowed with such a capacity of change. It is as though an optician, when he had a nearer object to view, should rectify his instrument by putting in another glass, at the same time drawing out also his tube to a different length. Observe a new-born child first lifting up its eyelids. What does the opening of the cur¬ tain discover ? The anterior part of two pellucid globes, which, when they come to be examined, arc found to be constructed upon strict optical principles ; the self-same principles upon which we ourselves construct optical instruments. We find them perfect for the pur¬ pose of forming an image by refraction ; composed of parts executing different offices : one part having fulfilled its office upon the pencil of light, delivering it over to the action of another part; that to a third, and so onward : the progressive action depending for its suc¬ cess upon the nicest and minutest adjustment of the parts concerned : yet these parts so in fact adjusted, as to produce, not by a simple action or effect, but by a combination of actions and effects, the result which is ultimately wanted. And forasmuch as this organ would have to operate under different circumstances, with strong degrees of light and with weak degrees, upon near objects and upon remote ones, and these differences demanded, according to the laws by which the transmission of light is regulated, a corresponding diversity of structure ; that the aperture, for example, through which the light passes, should be larger or less ; the lenses rounder or flatter, or that their distance from the tablet, upon which the picture is delineated, should be shortened or lengthened; this, I say, being the case and the difficulty to which the eye was to be adapted, we find its several parts capable of being occa¬ sionally changed, and a most artificial apparatus provided to produce that change. This is far beyond the common regulator of a watch, which requires the touch of a foreign hand to set it: but it is not altogether unlike Harrison’s contrivance for making a watch regulate itself, by inserting within it a machinery, which by the artful use of the different expansion of metals, preserves the equability of the motion under all the various temperatures of heat and cold in which the instrument may happen to be placed. The ingenuity of this last contri¬ vance has been justly praised. Shall, therefore, a structure which differs from it chiefly by surpassing it, be accounted no contrivance at all ? or, if it be a contrivance, that is without a contriver * ? * The motions of the eye, multitudinous in variety, directing the axis of the eye towards different points, and rapid as they are, are not among the phenomena According to their attachments they will elevate or de¬ least worthy of remark in this wondrous organ. The im- press the pupil, turn it towards the nose or the temple, mediate action of the rccti-musclcs arc simply those of By the different combined actions of these muscles, the NATURAL THEOLOGY: 35 But this, though much, is n-ot the whole : by different species of animals the faculty we are describing is possessed, in degrees suited to the different range of vision which their mode of life, and of procuring their food, requires. Birds , for instance, in general procure their food by means of their beak ; and, the distance between the eye and the point of the beak being small, it becomes necessary that they should have the power of seeing very near objects distinctly. On the other hand, from being often elevated much above the ground, living in the air, and moving through it with great velocity, they require for their safety, as well as for assisting them in descrying their prey, a power of seeing at a great distance ; a power of which, in birds of rapine, surprising examples are given. The fact accordingly is, that two peculiarities are found in the eyes of birds, both tending to facilitate the change upon which the adjustment of the eye to different distances depends. The one is a bony, yet, in most species, a flexible rim or hoop, surrounding the broadest part of the eye ; which, confining the action of the muscles to that part, increases the effect of their lateral pres¬ sure upon the orb, by which pressure its axis is elongated for the purpose of looking at very near objects. The other is an additional muscle, called the marsupium, to draw, on occasion, the crystalline lens back , and to fit the same eye for the viewing of very distant objects. By these means, the eyes of birds can pass from one extreme to another of their scale of adjustment, with more ease and readiness than the eyes of other animals *. The eyes of fishes also, compared with those of terrestrial animals, exhibit certain dis¬ tinctions of structure, adapted to their state and element. We have already observed upon the figure of the crystalline compensating by its roundness the density of the medium through which their light passes. To which we have to add, that the eyes of fish, in their natural and indolent state, appear to be adjusted to near objects, in this respect differing from the human eye, as well as those of quadrupeds and birds. The ordinary shape of the fish’s eye being in a much higher degree convex than that of land animals, a corresponding difference attends its muscular conformation, viz. that it is throughout calculated for flatten¬ ing the eye. The iris also in the eyes of fish does not admit of contraction. This is a great difference, of which the probable reason is, that the diminished light in water is never too strong for the retina. In the eel, which has to work its head through sand and gravel, the roughest and eye may be moved in any of the intermediate angles. By the succession of such actions it may be moved rapidly round in the orbit. In all these cases the action of one muscle is moderated by its opposite. The motions of rotation inwards and outwards, motions in which the eye does not move from its place, but only on its axis, are executed, the first by the superior, the last by the inferior oblique. By the united action of the six, we are enabled to preserve the eye in the same relative position with regard to the object, whether it be at motion, or at rest; and whether the head is fixed or moving in any direction, so as to alter its position with respect to any object; in short, we can by their means direct the eye to any point, and keep it fixed there under any change cf the situation of either. To use the expressive words of Mr. Hunter, “ the object becomes as it were the centre of motion, or a fixed point, commanding the direction of the actions of the eye, as the north demands the direction of the needle, let the box in which it is placed be moved in what direc¬ tion it may.’’—(Rees’ Cyclopasdia. Art. “ Eye.” An ad¬ mirable essay.) Now all this arrangement is very mecha¬ nical, and it appears upon deeper investigation that the mechanism is arranged and applied, just as any one perfect¬ ly skilled in mechanics would direct; there is not even the most common of all the attributes of chance connected with it, it is not even occasionally misplaced. For in¬ stance, these muscles that regulate the motions of the eye are placed considerably before the transverse vertical diameter of its globe, thereby obtaining an extent of power which would have been denied them, if attached behind that line. Thus the muscles not only happen to be where they were required, but also happen to be in the best possible place. The human eye is calculated for motion in almost every direction ; indeed, the idea of the universal joint must have been suggested by it. To those animals who have not this mobility of eye, various compensations are given. The snail, the lobster, and others, have the eye placed upon a column, that can be bent towards the object to be observed. Others have the number of their eyes increased. Spiders have from four to eight; scor¬ pions one hundred, and in the minute ephemeron, Swam¬ merdam observed two thousand. The mole, so long supposed to be blind, is now known to have eyes of a very admirable structure. Borrichius, Blasius, &c. have shewn that these organs are preserved from injury dining its underground operations by being deeply seated in the cranium, and the orifices are well protected by powerful eyelids and its fur. When vision would be of service, the animal has the power to protrude them in the same manner as the snail. * JMr. Philip Crampton combats the idea that the marsupium is the agent employed in regulating the focal distance in the eyes of birds ; but in doing so he endea¬ vours to establish, and apparently successfully, the em¬ ployment of another muscle more decidedly connected with the bony hoops of their visual organs, and better cal¬ culated to depress their convexity.—Annals of Philo¬ sophy, 1813. Supposing him to be correct, this does not weaken Paley’s argument; there is still a contrivance for a par¬ ticular purpose. B 2 NATURAL THEOLOGY. m hardest substances, there is placed before the eye, and at some distance from it, a trans¬ parent, horny, convex case or covering, which, without obstructing the sight, defends the organ. To such an animal, could any thing be more wanted or more useful ? Thus, in comparing the eyes of different kinds of animals, we see in their resemblances and distinctions, one general plan laid down, and that plan varied with the varying exigences to which it is to be applied. There is one property however common, I believe, to all eyes, at least to all which have been examined # , namely, that the optic nerve enters the bottom of the eye, not in the centre, or middle, but a little on one side : not in the point where the axis of the eye meets the retina, but between that point and the nose. The difference which this makes is, that no part of an object is unperceived by both eyes at the same time t. In considering vision as achieved by the means of an image formed at the bottom of the eye, we can never reflect without wonder upon the smallness, yet correctness, of the picture, the subtilty of the touch, the fineness of the lines. A landscape of five or six square leagues is brought into a space of half an inch diameter: yet the multitude of objects which it contains, are all preserved, are all discriminated in their magnitudes, positions, figures, colours. The prospect from Hampstead-hill is compressed into the compass of a sixpence, yet circumstantially represented. A stage coach, travelling at its ordinary speed for half an hour, passes, in the eye, over one twelfth of an inch, yet is this change of place in the image distinctly perceived throughout its whole progress ; for it is only by means of that perception that the motion of the coach itself is made sensible to the eye. If any thing can abate our admiration of the smallness of the visual tablet compared with the extent of vision, it is a reflection which the view of nature leads us every hour to make, viz. that, in the hands of the Creator, o’reat and little are nothings. Sturmius held, that the examination of the eye was a cure for atheism. Besides that conformity to optical principles which its internal constitution displays, and which alone amounts to a manifestation of intelligence having been exerted in the structure; besides this, which forms, no doubt, the leading character of the organ, there is to be seen in every thing belonging to it and about it, an extraordinary degree of care, an anxiety for its preservation, due, if we may so speak, to its value and its tenderness. It is lodged in a strong, deep, bony, socket, composed by the junction of seven different bones hollowed out at their edges. In some few species, as that of the coatimondi §, the orbit is not bony throughout; but whenever this is the case, the upper, which is the deficient part, is supplied by a car¬ tilaginous ligament; a substitution which shews the same care. Within this socket it is imbedded in fat, of all animal substances the best adapted both to its repose and motion. It is sheltered by the eye-brows; an arch of hair, which, like a thatched penthouse, pre¬ vents the sweat and moisture of the forehead from running down into it ||. But it is still better protected by its lid. Of the superficial parts of the animal frame, I know none which, in its office and structure, is more deserving of attention than the eyelid. It defends the eye ; it wipes it; it closes it in sleep. Are there, in any work of art what¬ ever, purposes more evident than those which this organ fulfils ? or an apparatus for exe- * The eye of the seal or sea-calf, I understand, is an exception.—Mem. Acad. Paris, 1701, p. 123. T The perfection of the excellence exhibited by this mode of insertion is not fully noticed by our author. “ There is a manifest advantage in the optic nerves being inserted on the inside of the optic axes : for if they had pierced the eye in the axis, then the centre of every object would have been invisible; and where all things conduce to make us see best, there we should not see at all. We must likewise have lost some part of an object, if the optic nerves had been placed on the outside of the optic axes : because an object may be so placed, as that all the rays which come from one point, may fall upon the outside of both eyes : but it is impossible they should fall upon the inside of both eyes, therefore that point which is lost in one eye is visible by the other.”— Taylor’s Mechanism of the Eve. X Heister, sect. 89. § Mem. R. Ac. Paris, p. 117. || “ The eye,” says Robert Dinglev, in his y the name of the u drum of the ear." The compages of bones consists of four, which are so disposed, and so hinge upon one another, as that if the membrane, the drum of the ear, vibrate, all the four are put in motion together; and, by the result of their action, work the base of that which is the last in the series, upon an aperture which it closes, and upon which it plays, and which aperture opens into the tortuous canals that lead to the brain. This last bone of the four is called the stapes. The office of the drum of the ear is to spread out an extended surface, capable of receiving the impressions of sound, and of being put by them into a state of vibration. The office of the stapes is to repeat these vibrations. It is a repeating frigate, stationed more within the line. From which account of its action may be understood, how the sensation of sound will be excited, by any thing which communicates a vibratory motion to the stapes, though not, as in all ordinary cases, through the intervention of the membrana tympani. This is done by solid bodies applied to the bones of the skull, as by a metal bar holden at one end between the teeth, and touch¬ ing at the other end a tremulous body. It likewise appears to be done, in a considerable degree, by the air itself, even when this membrane, the drum of the car, is greatly damaged. Either in the natural or preternatural state of the organ, the use of the chain of bones is to propagate the impulse in a direction towards the brain, and to propagate it with the advantage of a lever; which advantage consists in increasing the force and strength of the vibration, and at the same time diminishing the space through which it oscillates; both of which changes may augment or facilitate the still deeper action of the auditory nerves. The benefit of the eustachian tube to the organ, maybe made out upon known pneumatic principles. Behind the drum of the ear is a second cavity, or barrel, called the tympanum. The eustachian tube is a slender pipe, but sufficient for the passage of air, leading from this cavity into the back part of the mouth. Now, it would not have done to have had a vacuum in this cavity; for, in that case, the pressure of the atmosphere from without would have burst the membrane which covered it. Nor would it have done to have filled the cavity with lymph or any other secretion; which would necessarily have obstructed, both the vibration of the membrane, and the play of the small bones. Nor, lastly, would it have done to have occupied the space with confined air, because the expansion of that air by heat, or its contraction by cold, would have distended or relaxed the covering membrane, in a degree inconsistent with the purpose which it was assigned to execute. The only remaining expedient, and that for which the eustachian tube serves, is to open to this cavity a com¬ munication with the external air. In one word ; it exactly answers the purpose of the hole in a drum. The membrana tympani itself, likewise, deserves all the examination which can be made of it. It is not found in the ears of fish ; which furnishes an additional proof of what indeed is indicated by every thing about it, that it is appropriated to the action of air, or of an elastic medium. It bears an obvious resemblance to the pelt or head of a drum, from which it takes its name. It resembles also a drum head in this principal property, that its use depends upon its tension. Tension is the state essential to it. Now we know, that in a drum, the pelt is carried over a hoop, and braced as occasion requires, by the means of strings attached to its circumference. In the membrane of the ear, the same purpose is provided for, more simply, but not less mechanically, nor less successfully, by a different expedient, viz. by the end of a bone (the handle of the malleus) pressing upon its centre. It is only in very large animals that the texture of this membrane can be discerned. In the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1800 (vol. i.), Mr. Everard Home has given some curious observations upon the ear, and the drum of the ear, of an elephant. He discovered in it, what he calls a radiated muscle, that is, straight muscular fibres, passing along the membrane from the circumference to the centre; from the bony rim which surrounds it towards the handle of the malleus to which the central part is attached. This muscle he supposes to be designed to bring the membrane into unison with different sounds; but then lie also discovered, that this muscle itself cannot act, unless the membrane be drawn to a stretch, and kept in a due state of tightness, by what may be called a foreign force, viz. the action of the muscles of the malleus. Supposing his explanation of the use of the parts to NATURAL THEOLOGY. 41 be just, our author is well founded in the reflection which he makes upon it: “that this mode of adapting the ear to different sounds, is one of the most beautiful applications of muscles in the body ; the mechanism is so simple , arid the variety of effects so great.’' In another volume of the Transactions above referred to, and of the same year, two most curious cases are related, of persons who retained the sense of hearing, not in a perfect, but in a very considerable degree, notwithstanding the almost total loss of the membrane we have been describing. In one of these cases, the use here assigned to that membrane, of modifying the impressions of sound by change of tension, was attempted to be supplied by straining the muscles of the outward ear. “ The external ear,” we are told, “ had acquired a distinct motion upward and backward, which was observable whenever the patient listened to any thing which he did not distinctly hear; when he was addressed in a whisper, the ear was seen immediately to move; when the tone of voice was louder, it then remained altogether motionless.” It appears probable, from both these cases, that a collateral, if not principal, use of the membrane, is to cover and protect the barrel of the ear which lies behind it. Both the patients suffered from cold: one, u a great increase of deafness from catching cold;” the other, “ very considerable pain from exposure to a stream of cold air.” Bad effects therefore followed from this cavity being left open to the external air; yet, had the Author of nature shut it up by any other cover than what was capable, by its texture, of receiving vibrations from sound, and, by its connexion with the interior parts, of transmitting those vibrations to the brain, the use of the organ, so far as can we judge, must have been entirely obstructed *. * Since the period at which Paley composed this work, many philosophical anatomists have engaged in researches relative to the structure of the ear. The chief of these are Weber, Malatides, Majendie, Monro, Lallemand, Deleau, Aland, Itard, Scarpa, and Saissy. Its delicate anatomy, its intricate mechanism, is consequently much more completely demonstrated than it was at the close of the eighteenth century. To enter into their details here, would he misplaced, and the general result is merely mentioned because delicacy and intricacy of workmanship proportionately evince the skill and the design required in the artificer. It may be observed of the conch, or exterior part of the ear, that it is adapted excellently for the office it per¬ forms—the collection of vibrations, or sound. All the art of the tyrant Dionysius, all the ingenuity stimulated into action by his gold, could not devise a better form to render audible the conversation of his state prisoners. He made their dungeon in the form of the human ear, two hundred and fifty feet in length, and eighty feet in height. The sounds within this were directed to a tympanum communicating with an adjoining room, where the regal monster crouched, and was enabled to distinguish even the whispers of those within his toils. When a mechanician has invented an engine, a source of power, his ingenuity has not done all that is required of him ; he has to adapt it to the purposes for which it is needed. The steam-engine, for instance, is made smaller, or increased in size proportionate to the power necessary; it has to be made, when employed for pro¬ pelling carriages on a railway, of a form differing materially from that erected for the drainage of mines. Now this is all a proof of the mechanician’s skill; it is a demonstration of a continuous design. The ear is a complete piece of mechanism ; it is varied in all animals, in all is appropriate to their habits and wants; varies just as is required. Is it rational to say that the inference is not the same ? Birds, it is easy to perceive, would be impeded by an external ear; but its place is suppfied by the feathers around the auditory orifice, which they can erect at pleasure, so as to form a reflector. In some birds this is very remarkable. When passing rapidly through the air, the feathers lie close to the sides of the head. Hares and other animals, whose safety depends upon flight, and whose perception of sound is most required to be directed behind them, have large ears naturally inclined backwards. Beasts of prey, and dogs, animals that are generally pursuing, seldom flying from a pursuer, have the conch of the ear directed forward ; and those animals whose heads, as the ox when feeding, and the hound when in the chase, are held low, have pendulous ears, with the conch so turned as to be best adapted for gathering the sound that vibrates nearest the earth. All animals that have to live partially or entirely under water, have their organs of hearing peculiarly adapted to their habits. The ear of the water shrew is closed against the entrance of water by a very curious valve. The ear of the whale very closely resembles that of the human species. It, like them, passes the chief part of its life in the air; but when safety or hunger requires it to be submerged, the meatus, or opening of the ear, closes, and within the meatus is a small hard body more than an inch in length, attached by its small end to one side of the passage; this serves as a valve when the passage contracts. Fish having no exterior ear, it was considered, until within comparativel) r a few years, that they were deficient in that sense to which it seemed necessary. Subsequent researches have shown the error of this conclusion. The necessity of the conch arises from terrestrial animals living in the air, which is a very imperfect conductor of sounds; an apparatus is required to collect a greater amount of vibrations to compensate for the deficiency of their intensity. To show that animals who live in the water, a denser and therefore better medium for convey¬ ing sounds, require no such exterior parts, let the reader, when diving, have a stone in each hand, and strike them together whilst beneath the water ; he will be comparatively stunned by the concussion.' CHAPTER IV. ON THE SUCCESSION OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS. The (feneration of the animal no more accounts for the contrivance of the eye or ear, than, upon the supposition stated in a preceding chapter, the production of a watch, by the motion and mechanism of a former watch, would account for the skill and intention evidenced in the watch, so produced; than it would account for the disposition of the wheels, the catching of their teeth, the relation of the several parts of the works to one another, and to their common end; for the suitableness of their forms and places to their offices, for their connexion, their operation, and the useful result of that operation. I do insist most strenuously upon the correctness of this comparison; that it holds as to every mode of specific propagation; and that whatever was true of the watch, under the hypothesis above mentioned, is true of plants and animals. • I. To begin with the fructification of plants. Can it be doubted but that the seed contains a particular organisation ? Whether a latent plantule with the means of temporary nutrition, or whatever else it be, it encloses an organisation suited to the germination of a new plant. Has the plant which produced the seed any thing more to do with that organisation, than the watch would have had to do with the structure of the watch which was produced in their course of its mechanical movement ? I mean, Has it any thing at all to do with the contrivance ? The maker and contriver of one watch, when he inserted within it a mechanism suited to the production of another watch, was, in truth, the maker and contriver of that other watch. All the properties of the new watch were to be referred to his agency: the design manifested in it, to his intention: the art, to him as the artist: the collocation of each part, to his placing: the action, effect, and use, to his counsel, intelligence, and workmanship. In producing it by the intervention of a former watch, he was only working by one set of tools instead of another. So it is with the plant, and the seed produced by it. Can any distinction be assigned between the two cases; between the producing watch, and the producing plant; both passive, unconscious substances; both, by the organisation which was given to them, producing their like, without understanding or design; both, that is, instruments ? II. From plants we may proceed to oviparous animals : from seed to eggs. Now I say, that the bird has the same concern in the formation of the egg which she lays, as the plant has in that of the seed which it drops : and no other, nor greater. The internal constitution of the egg is as much a secret to the hen, as if the hen were inanimate. Her will cannot alter it, or change a single feather of the chick. She can neither foresee nor determine of which sex her brood shall be, or how many of either: yet the thing produced shall be, from the first, very different in its make, according to the sex which it bears. So far, therefore, from adapting the means, she is not beforehand apprised of the effect. If there be concealed within that smooth shell a provision and a preparation for the production and nourishment of a new animal, they are not of her providing or preparing: if there be contrivance, it is none of hers. Although, therefore, there be the difference of life and perceptivity between the animal and the plant, it is a difference which enters not into the account. It is a foreign circumstance. It is a difference of properties not employed. The animal function and the vegetable function are alike destitute of any design which can operate upon the form of the thing produced. The plant has no design in producing the seed, no comprehension of the nature or use of what it produces : the bird with respect to its egg, is not above the plant with respect to its seed. Neither the one nor the other bears that sort of relation to what proceeds from them, which a joiner does to the chair which he makes. Now a cause, which bears this relation to the effect, is what we want, in order to account for the suitableness of means to an end, the fitness and fitting of one thing to another ; and this cause the parent plant or animal does not supply. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 43 It is farther observable concerning the propagation of plants and animals, that the appa¬ ratus employed exhibits no resemblance to the thing produced : in this respect holding an analogy with instruments and tools of art. The filaments, antliera?, and stigmata, of flowers, bear no more resemblance to the young plant, or even to the seed, which is formed by their intervention, than a chisel or a plane does to a table or chair. What then are the filaments, antlieree, and stigmata, of plants, but instruments strictly so called ? * III. We may advance from animals which bring forth eggs, to animals which bring forth their young alive: and of this latter class, from the lowest to the highest; from irrational to rational life, from brutes to the human species: without perceiving, as we proceed, any alteration whatever in the terms of the comparison. The rational animal does not produce its offspring with more certainty or success than the irrational animal: a man than a qua¬ druped, a quadruped than a bird; nor (for we may follow the gradation through its whole scale) a bird than a plant; nor a plant than a watch, a piece of dead mechanism would do, upon the supposition which has already so often been repeated. Rationality, therefore, has nothing to do in the business. If an account must be given of the contrivance which we observe ; if it be demanded, whence arose either the contrivance by which the young animal is produced, or the contrivance manifested in the young animal itself, it is not from the reason of the parent that any such account can be drawn. He is the cause of his offspring, in the same sense as that in which a gardener is the cause of the tulip which grows upon his parterre, and in no other. We admire the flower ; we examine the plant; we perceive the conduciveness of many of its parts to their end and office : we observe a provision for its nourishment, growth, protection, and fecundity; but we never think of the gardener in all this. We attribute nothing of this to his agency; yet it may still be true, that without the gardener, we should not have had the tulip : just so it is with the succession of animals even of the highest order. For the contrivance discovered in the structure of the thing produced, we want a contriver. The parent is not that contriver. His consciousness decides that question. He is in total ignorance why that which is produced took its present form rather than any other. It is for him only to be astonished, by the effect. We can no more look therefore to the intelligence of the parent animal for what we are in search of, a cause of relation, and of subserviency of parts to their use, which relation and subserviency we see in the procreated body, than we can refer the internal conformation of an acorn to the intelligence of the oak from which it dropped, or the structure of the watch to the intelli¬ gence of the watch which produced it ; there being no difference, as far as argument is concerned, between an intelligence which is not exerted, and an intelligence which does not exist. CHAPTER V. APPLICATION OF THE ARGUMENT CONTINUED. Every observation which was made in our first chapter, concerning the watch, may be repeated with strict propriety, concerning the eye ; concerning animals; concerning plants; concerning, indeed, all the organised parts of the works of nature. As, * One remarkable fact in the eggshells of birds to which Paley does not allude, is the existence in them of chalk and phosphate of lime, a presence, it would seem, to which the hen contributes by her instinctive habits. One hun¬ dred parts of hens’ eggshells contain Carbonate of lime (chalk) . . 89 6 Phosphate of lime . . 5 7 Animal matter .... 47 100 0 To supply to her eggs the necessary earthy substances, the hen regularly swallows a quantity of calcareous matter, which she selects from old mortar, coal ashes, or other rubbish, with unvaried industry. How essential this practice is to the formation of the shell, is shewn by the well ascertained fact, that when the hen is debarred access to calcareous matters, she lays her eggs without shells. The hen then swallows, not by chance, but instinc¬ tively, two kinds of earth, flint-pebbles for the use of her gizzard, and chalk, for her eggshells. Both to us unin¬ viting, tasteless substances, yet both essential to her health; and this i3 not the action of a single hen, but of all. Is not this an adaptation of the instinct of the bird to its wants?—Vauquelin, Ann. de Ghim. vol.xxxiv. p. 71. 44 NATURAL THEOLOGY. I. When we are inquiring simply after the existence of an intelligent Creator, imperfection, inaccuracy, liability to disorder, occasional irregularities may subsist in a considerable degree, without inducing any doubt into the question: just as a watch may frequently go wrong, seldom perhaps exactly right, may be faulty in some parts, defective in some, with¬ out the smallest ground of suspicion from thence arising that it was not a watch ; not made; or not made for the purpose ascribed to it. When faults are pointed out, and when a ques¬ tion is started concerning the skill of the artist, or dexterity with which the work is executed, then indeed, in order to defend these qualities from accusation, wejmust be able, either to expose some intractableness and imperfection in the materials, or point out some invincible difficulty in the execution, into which imperfection and difficulty the matter of complaint may be resolved ; or, if we cannot do this, we must adduce such specimens of consummate art and contrivance proceeding from the same hand, as may convince the inquirer, of the existence, in the case before him, of impediments like those which we have mentioned, although, what from the nature of the case is very likely to happen, they be unknown and unperceived by him. This we must do in order to vindicate the artist’s skill, or, at least, the perfection of it; as we must also judge of his intention, and of the provisions employed in fulfilling that intention, not from an instance in which they fail, but from the great plurality of instances in which they succeed. But, after all, these are different questions from the question of the artist’s existence : or, which is the same, whether the thing before us be a work of art or not; and the questions ought always to be kept separate in the mind. So likewise it is in the works of nature. Irregularities and imperfections are of little or no weight in the consideration, when that consideration relates simply to the existence of a Creator. When the argument respects his attributes, they are of weight; but are then to be taken in conjunction (the attention is not to rest upon them, but they are to be taken in conjunction) with the unexceptionable evidences which we possess, of skill, power, and bene¬ volence, displayed in other instances; which evidences may, in strength, number, and variety, be such, and may so overpower apparent blemishes, as to induce us, upon the most reasonable ground, to believe, that these last ought to be referred to some cause, though we be ignorant of it, other than defect of knowledge or of benevolence in the author. II. There may be also parts of plants and animals, as there were supposed to be of the watch, of which, in some instances, the operation, in others, the use, is unknown. These form different cases; for the operation may be unknown, yet the use be certain. Thus it is with the lungs of animals. It does not, I think, appear that we are acquainted with the action of the air upon the blood, or in what manner that action is communicated by the lungs : yet we find that a very short suspension of their office destroys the life of the animal. In this case, therefore, we may be said to know the use, nay we experience the necessity of the organ, though we be ignorant of its operation. Nearly the same thing may be observed of what is called the lymphatic system. We suffer grievous inconveniences from its disorder, without being informed of the office which it sustains in the economy of our bodies. There may possibly also be some few examples of the second class, in which not only the operation is unknown, but in which experiments may seem to prove that the part is not necessary; or may leave a doubt, how far it is even useful to the plant or animal in which it is found. This is said to be the case with the spleen ; which has been extracted from dogs, without any sensible injury to their vital functions. Instances of the former kind, namely, in which we cannot explain the operation, may be numerous; for they will be so in proportion to our ignorance. They will be more or fewer to different persons, and in different stages of science. Every improvement of knowledge diminishes their number. There is hardly perhaps a year passes, that does not, in the works of nature, bring some operation, or some mode of opera¬ tion, to light, which was before undiscovered—probably unsuspected. Instances of the second kind, namely, where the part appears to be totally useless, I believe to be extremely rare; compared with the number of those, of which the use is evident, they are beneath any assignable proportion ; and, perhaps, have never been submitted to a trial and examination sufficiently accurate, long enough continued, or often enough repeated. No accounts which I have seen are satisfactory. The mutilated animal may live and grow fat, (as was the case of the dog deprived of its spleen), yet may be defective in some other of its functions; NATURAL THEOLOGY. 4o which, whether they can all, or in what degree of vigour and perfection, be performed, or how long preserved, without the extirpated organ, does not seem to be ascertained by expe¬ riment. But to this case, even were it fully made out, may be applied the consideration which we suggested concerning the watch, viz. that these superfluous parts do not negative the reasoning which we instituted concerning those parts which are useful, and of which we know the use ; the indication of contrivance, with respect to them, remains as it was before. III. One atheistic way of replying to our observations upon the works of nature, and to the proofs of a Deity, which we think that we perceive in them, is to tell us, that all which we see must necessarily have had some form, and that it might as well be its present form as any other. Let us now apply this answer to the eye, as we did before to the watch. Something or other must have occupied that place in the animal’s head; must have filled up, we will say, that socket : we will say also, that it must have been of that sort of substance which we call animal substance, as flesh, bone, membrane, cartilage, &c. But that it should have been an eye, knowing as we do what an eye comprehends,—viz. that it should have consisted, first, of a series of transparent lenses (very different by-the-by, even in their substance, from the opaque materials of which the rest of the body is, in general at least, composed; and with which the whole of its surface, this single portion of it excepted, is covered) : secondly, of a black cloth or canvas (the only membrane of the body which is black) spread out behind these lenses, so as to receive the image formed by pencils of light transmitted through them; and placed at the precise geometrical distance, at which, and at which alone, a distinct image could be formed, namely, at the concourse of the refracted rays: thirdly, of a large nerve communicating between this membrane and the brain ; without which, the action of light upon the membrane, however modified by the organ, would be lost to the purposes of sensation:—that this fortunate conformation of parts should have been the lot, not of one individual out of many thousand individuals, like the great prize in a lottery, or like some singularity in nature, but the happy chance of a whole species : nor of one species out of many thousand species, with which we are acquainted, but of by far the greatest number of all that exist; and that under varieties, not casual or capricious, but bearing marks of being suited to their respective exigencies :—that all this should have taken place, merely because something must have occupied these points in every animal’s forehead; —or, that all this should be thought to be accounted for, by the short answer, “ that what¬ ever was there must have had some form or other,” is too absurd to be made more so by any augmentation. We are not contented with this answer; we find no satisfaction in it, by way of accounting for appearances of organization far short of those of the eye, such as we observe in fossil shells, petrified bones, or other substances which bear the vestiges of animal or vegetable recrements, but which, either in respect of utility, or of the situation in which they are discovered, may seem accidental enough. It is no way of accounting even for these things, to say, that the stone, for instance, which is shewn to us (supposing the question to be concerning a petrification), must have contained some internal conformation or other. Nor does it mend the answer to add, with respect to the singularity of the conformation, that after the event, it is no longer to be computed what the chances were against it. This is always to be computed when the question is, whether a useful or imitative conformation be the produce of chance, or not: I desire no greater certainty in reasoning, than that by which chance is excluded from the present disposition of the natural world. Universal experience is against it. What does chanoe ever do for us ? In the human body, for instance, chance, i. e. the operation of causes without design, may produce a wen, a wart, a mole, a pimple; but never an eye. Amongst inanimate substances, a clod, a pebble, a liquid drop, might be ; but never, was a watch, a telescope, an organised body of any kind, answering a valuable purpose by a complicated mechanism, the effect of chance. In no assignable instance hath such a thing existed without intention somewhere. o o 9 IV. There is another answer which has the same effect as the resolving of things into chance ; which answer would persuade us to believe, that the eye, the animal to which it belongs, every other animal, every plant, indeed every organised body which we see, are only so many out of the possible varieties and combinations of being, which the lapse of infinite ages has brought into existence ; that the present world is the relic of that variety ; 46 NATURAL THEOLOGY. millions of other bodily forms and other species having perished, being by the defect of their constitution incapable of preservation, or of continuance by generation. Now there is no foundation whatever for this conjecture in any thing which we observe in the works of nature ; no such experiments are going on at present; no such energy operates, as that which is here supposed, and which should be constantly pushing into existence new varieties of beings. Nor are there any appearances to support an opinion, that every possible combina¬ tion of vegetable or animal structure has formerly been tried. Multitudes of conformations, both of vegetables and animals, may be conceived capable of existence and succession, which yet do not exist. Perhaps almost as many forms of plants might have been found in the fields, as figures of plants can be delineated upon paper. A countless variety of animals might have existed, which do not exist. Upon the supposition here stated, we should see unicorns and mermaids, sylphs and centaurs, the fancies of painters, and the fables of poets, realised by examples. Or, if it be alleged that these may transgress the bounds of possible life and propagation, we might, at least, have nations of human beings without nails upon their fingers, with more or fewer fingers and toes than ten, some with one eye, others with one ear, with one nostril, or without the sense of smelling at all. All these, and a thousand other imaginable varieties, might live and propagate. We may modify any one species many different ways, all consistent with life, and with the actions necessary to preservation, although affording different degrees of conveniency and enjoyment to the animal. And if we carry these modifications through the different species which are known to subsist, their number would be incalculable. No reason can be given why, if these deperdits ever existed, they have now disappeared. Y'et, if all possible existences have been tried, they must have formed part of the catalogue. But, moreover, the division of organised substances into animals and vegetables, and the distribution and sub-distribution of each into genera and species, which distribution is not an arbitrary act of the mind, but founded in the order which prevails in external nature, appear to me to contradict the supposition of the present world being the remains of an indefinite variety of existences ; of a variety which rejects all plan. The hypothesis teaches, that every possible variety of being hath, at one time or other, found its way into existence (by what cause or in what manner is not said), and that those which were badly formed, perished; but how* or why those which survived should be cast, as we sec that plants and animals are cast, into regular classes, the hypothesis does not explain; or rather the hypothesis is inconsistent with this phenomenon. The hypothesis, indeed, is hardly deserving of the consideration which we have given to it. What should we think of a man who, because we had never ourselves seen watches, telescopes, stocking-mills, steam-engines, &c. made, knew not how they were made, nor could prove by testimony when they were made, or by whom,—would have 11s believe that these machines, instead of deriving their curious structures from the thought and design of their inventors and contrivers, in truth derive them from no other origin than this ; viz. that a mass of metals and other materials having run when melted into all possible figures, and combined themselves in all possible forms, and shapes, and proportions, these things which we see, are what were left from the accident, as best were worth preserving; and, as such, are become the remaining stock of a magaziije, which, at one time or other, has by this means contained every mechanism, useful and useless, convenient and inconvenient, into which such-like materials could be thrown ? I cannot distinguish the hypothesis as applied to the works of nature, from this solution, which no one would accept, as applied to a collection of machines *. * That in a former state of the earth, ages before it was tenanted by man, many animals and vegetables existed, supposed to be long since extinct, is very certain. The bones and other remains of extinct species, are continually discovered in all parts of the world ; their skeletons have been carefully arranged by geological labourers, and their size, habits, food, and many other particulars readily ascertained. “ In these curious inquiries,” says Lord Brougham, “we are conversant, not merely with the world before the flood, but with a world which before the flood was covered with water, and which in far earlier ages had been the habitation of birds, and beasts, and reptiles. We are carried, as it were, several worlds back, and we reach a period when all was water and slime and mud, and the waste, without either man or plants, gave resting-place to enormous beasts like lions and elephants, and river horses, while the water was tenanted by lizards, the size of a NATURAL THEOLOGY, 47 V. To the marks of contrivance discoverable in animal bodies, and to the argument deduced from them, in proof of design, and of a designing Creator, this turn is sometimes attempted to be given, namely, that the parts were not intended for the use, but that the use arose out of the parts. This distinction is intelligible. A cabinet-maker rubs his mahogany with fish-skin; yet it would be too much to assert that the skin of the dog-fish was made rough and granulated on purpose for the polishing of wood, and the use of cabinet-makers. Therefore the distinction is intelligible. But I think that there is very little place for it in the works of nature. When roundly and generally affirmed of them, as it hath sometimes been, it amounts to such another stretch of assertion, as it would be to say, that all the implements of the cabinet-makers work-shop, as well as his fish-skin, were substances accidentally configurated, which he had picked up, and converted to his use ; that his adzes, saws, planes, and gimlets, were not made, as we suppose, to hew, cut, smooth, shape out, or bore wood with; but that these things being made, no matter with what design, or whether with any, the cabinet-maker perceived that they were applicable to his purpose, and turned them to account. But, again. So far as this solution is attempted to be applied to those parts of animals, the action of which does not depend upon the will of the animal, it is fraught with still more evident absurdity. Is it possible to believe that the eye was formed without any regard to vision; that it was the animal itself which found out, that, though formed with no such intention, it would serve to see with; and that the use of the eye, as an organ of sight, resulted from this discovery, and the animals application of it ? The same question may be asked of the ear ; the same of all the senses. None of the senses fundamentally depend upon the election of the animal; consequently neither upon his sagacity, nor his experience. It is the impression which objects make upon them, that constitutes their use. Under that impression, he is passive. He may bring objects to the sense, or within its reach; he may select these objects; but over the impression itself he has no power, or very little; and that properly is the sense. Secondly; there are many parts of animal bodies which seem to depend upon the will of the animal in a greater degree than the senses do, and yet with respect to which, this solution is equally unsatisfactory. If wo apply the solution to the human body, for instance, it forms whale, sixty or seventy feet long, See .”—Preliminary Discourse, p. 47. It is probable that many animals, fishes, &c. do yet exist on our globe which we have not seen. Saying nothing of the unexplored portions of the earth’s surface, our investigations have been, as it were, almost entirely confined to that surface. The, to us, unfathomable depths of the ocean are probably inhabited by fish, adapted to withstand the enormous pressure of water to which they are necessarily exposed, and the interior of our globe probably contains great inland lakes tenanted by fish and other living animals. We are not indeed without in¬ stances of occasional glimpses of these hidden creatures. As an instance, Davy, in his “ Last Days of a Philoso¬ pher,” has given us the description of a curious fish, th% Proteus Anguinus, found only in the waters of the natural cave, or grotto of the Maddalena at Adelsbcrg, and one at Sittieh in Illyria, and that only after par¬ ticular seasons of rain. “ At first view you might suppose this animal to be a lizard, but it has the motions of a fish. Its head, and the lower part of its body and its tail, bear a strong re¬ semblance to those of the eel, but it has no fins, and its curious bronchial organs are not like the gills of fishes .... It is furnished with lungs ; it can live either above or below the surface of the water. Its fore feet resemble hands, but they have only three claws or fingers, and are too feeble to be of use in grasping, or supporting the weight of the animal. In dry seasons they arc seldom found here, but after great rains they are often abundant. I think it cannot be doubted that their natural residence is in an extensive deep subterranean lake, from which, in great floods, they are sometimes forced through the crevices of the rocks, into this place where they are found. They have been noticed of various sizes, from that of the thickness of a quill to that of the thumb; their form of organs i3 always the same. It is surely a perfect animal of a peculiar species. And it adds one instance more to the number already known of the wonderful manner in which life is produced and perpetuated in every part of our globe, even in places which seem the least suited to organized existences. And the same infinite power and wisdom which has fitted the camel and the ostrich for the deserts of Africa . . . has given the proteus to the deep and dark subterraneous lakes of Illyria; an animal to whom the presence of light is not essential, and who can live indifferently in air and in water, on the surface of the rock, or in the depths of the mud.” Whatever may be the number of extinct or hid¬ den animals, the existence of these in no way alters the conclusion to be derived from the fact that the remains of those supposed to be extinct still bear the same marks of contrivance in their formation, as others which are now universally inhabiting the earth. Thus, by the teeth and cloven hoofs of several animals known to us only in the fossil state, we are enabled to determine that their owners lived upon vegetables, had a mouth adapted for grazing, and were fitted to inhabit marshy places, where the grass grew most luxuriantly, and of a size best adapted to the necessities of an enormous 'animal.— Buckland, Cuvier, Davy. 48 NATURAL THEOLOGY. itself into questions, upon which no reasonable mind can doubt; such as, whether the teeth were made expressly for the mastification of food, the feet for walking, the hands for holding? or whether, these things being as they are, being in fact in the animal’s possession, his own ingenuity taught him that they were convertible to these purposes, though no such purposes were contemplated in their formation ? All that there is of the appearance of reason in this way of considering the subject is, that in some cases the organisation seems to determine the habits of the animal, and its choice to a particular mode of life ; which, in a certain sense, may be called “ the use arising out of the part.” Now to all the instances, in which there is any place for this suggestion, it may be replied, that the organisation determines the animal to habits beneficial and salutary to itself; and that this effect would not be seen so regularly to follow, if the several organisations did not bear a concerted and contrived relation to the substance by which the animal was surrounded. They would, otherwise, be capacities without objects; powers without employ¬ ment. The web-foot determines, you say, the duck to swim; but what would that avail, if there were no water to swim in ? The strong, hooked bill, and sharp talons, of one species of bird, determine it to prey upon animals ; the soft, straight bill, and weak claws of another species, determine it to pick up seeds : but neither determination could take effect in pro¬ viding for the sustenance of the birds, if animal bodies and vegetable seeds did not lie within their reach. The peculiar conformation of the bill and tongue and claws of the woodpecker, determines that bird to search for his food amongst the insects lodged behind the bark, or in the wood, of decayed trees ; but what should this profit him, if there were no trees, no decayed trees, no insects lodged under their bark, or in their trunk ? The proboscis with which the bee is furnished, determines him to seek for honey : but what would that signify, if flowers supplied none? Faculties thrown down upon animals at random, and without reference to the objects amidst which they are placed, would not produce to them the services and benefits which we see: and if there be that reference, then there is intention. Lastly; the solution fails entirely when applied to plants. The parts of plants answer their uses, without any concurrence from the will or choice of the plant. YI. Others have chosen to refer every thing to a principle of order in nature. A principle of order is the word : but what is meant by a principle of order, as different from an intelli¬ gent Creator, has not been explained either by definition or example ; and, without such explanation, it should seem to be a mere substitution of words for reasons, names for causes. Order itself is only the adaptation of means to an end : a principle of order there¬ fore can only signify the mind and intention which so adapts them. Or, were it capable of being explained in any other sense, is there any experience, any analogy, to sustain it ? Was a watch ever produced by a principle of order ? and why might not a watch be so produced, as well as an eye ? Furthermore, a principle of order, acting blindly and without choice, is negatived by the observation, that order is not universal; which it would be, if it issued from a con¬ stant and necessary principle: nor indiscriminate, which it would be, if it issued from an unintelligent principle. Where order is wanted, there we find it : where order is not wanted, i. e. where, if it prevailed, it would be useless, there we do not find it. In the structure of the eye (for we adhere to our example), in the figure and position of its several parts, the most exact order is maintained. In the forms of rocks and moun¬ tains, in the lines which bound the coasts of continents and islands, in the shape of bays and promontories, no order whatever is perceived, because it would have been superfluous. No useful purpose would have arisen from moulding rocks and mountains into regular solids, bounding the channel of the ocean by geometrical curves ; or from the map of the world resembling a table of diagrams in Euclid’s Elements, or Simpson’s Conic Sections. VII. Lastly : the confidence which we place in our observations upon the works of nature, in the marks which we discover of contrivance, choice, and design; and in our reasoning upon the proofs afforded us ; ought not to be shaken, as it is sometimes attempted to be done, by bringing forward to our view our own ignorance, or rather the general imper¬ fection of our knowledge of nature. Nor in many cases, ought this consideration to affect us, even when it respects some parts of the subject immediately under our notice. True NATURAL THEOLOGY. 40 fortitude of understanding consists in not suffering what we know to be disturbed by what we do not know. If we perceive a useful end, and means adapted to that end, we perceive enough for our conclusion. If these things be clear, no matter what is obscure. The argu¬ ment is finished. For instance ; if the utility of vision to the animal which enjoys it, and the adaptation of the eye to this office, be evident and certain (and I can mention nothing which is more so), ought it to prejudice the inference which we draw from these premises, that we cannot explain the use of the spleen? Nay, more : if there be parts of the eye, viz. the cornea, the crystalline, the retina, in their substance, figure, and position manifestly suited to the formation of an image by the refraction of rays of light, at least, as manifestly as the glasses and tubes of a dioptric telescope are suited to that purpose; it concerns not the proof which these afford of design, and of a designer, that there may perhaps be other parts, certain muscles for instance, or nerves in the same eye, of the agency or effect of which we can give no account; any more than we should be inclined to doubt, or ought to doubt, about the construction of a telescope, viz. for what purpose it was constructed, or whether it were constructed at all, because there belonged to it certain screws and pins, the use or action of which we did not comprehend. I take it to be a general way of infusing doubts and scruples into the mind, to recur to its own ignorance, its own imbecility: to tell us that upon these subjects we know little ; that little imperfectly ; or rather, that we know nothing properly about the matter. These suggestions so fall in with our conscious¬ ness, as sometimes to produce a general distrust of our faculties and our conclusions. But this is an unfounded jealousy. The uncertainty of one thing does not necessarily affect the certainty of another thing. Our ignorance of many points need not suspend our assurance of a few. Before we yield, in any particular instance, to the scepticism which this sort of insinuation would induce, we ought accurately to ascertain, whether our ignorance or doubt concern those precise points upon which our conclusion rests. Other points are nothing. Our ignorance of other points may be of no consequence to these, though they be points, in various respects, of great importance. A just reasoner removes from his consideration, not only what he knows, but what he does not know, touching matters not strictly connected with his argument, i. e. not forming the very steps of his deduction : beyond these, his knowledge and his ignorance are alike relative. CHAPTER VI. THE ARGUMENT CUMULATIVE. Were there no example in the world, of contrivance, except that of the eye, it would be alone sufficient to support the conclusion which we draw from it, as to the necessity of an intelligent Creator. It could never be got rid of ; because it could not be accounted for by any other supposition, which did not contradict all the principles we possess of knowledge; the principles according to which, things do, as often as they can be brought to the test of experience, turn out to be true or false. Its coats and humours, constructed, as the lenses of a telescope are constructed, for the refraction of rays of light to a point, which forms the proper action of the organ; the provision in its muscular tendons for turning its pupil to the object, similar to that which is given to the telescope by screws, and upon which power of direction in the eye, the exercise of its office as an optical instrument depends ; the farther provision for its defence, for its. constant lubricity and moisture, which we see in its socket and its lids, in its gland for the secretion of the matter of tears, its outlet or communication with the nose for carrying off the liquid after the eye is washsed with it; these provisions compose altogether an apparatus, a system of parts, a preparation of means, so manifest in their design, so exquisite in their contrivance, so successful in their issue, so precious, and so infinitely beneficial in their use, as, in my E 50 NATURAL THEOLOGY. opinion, to bear down all doubt that can be raised upon the subject. And what I wish, under the title of the present chapter, to observe, is, that if other parts of nature were inaccessible to our inquiries, or even if other parts of nature presented nothing to our exami¬ nation but disorder and confusion, the validity of this example would remain the same. If there were but one watch in the world, it would not be less certain that it had a maker. If we had never in our lives seen any but one single kind of hydraulic machine, yet, if of that one kind we understood the mechanism and use, we should be as perfectly assured that it proceeded from the hand, and thought, and skill of a workman, as if we visited a museum of the arts, and saw collected there twenty different kinds of machines for drawing water, or a thousand different kinds for other purposes. Of this point, each machine is a proof independently of all the rest. So it is with the evidences of a Divine agency. The proof is not a conclusion which lies at the end of a chain of reasoning, of which chain each instance of contrivance is only a link, and of which, if one link fail, the whole falls; but it is an argument separately supplied by every separate example. An error in stating an example, affects only that example. The argument is cumulative, in the fullest sense of that term. The eye proves it without the ear ; the ear without the eye. The proof in each example is complete; for when the design of the part, and the conduciveness of its structure to that design, is shewn, the mind may set itself at rest; no future consideration can detract any thing from the force of the example. CHAPTER VII. OF THE MECHANICAL AND IMMECHANICAL PARTS AND FUNCTIONS OF ANIMALS AND VEGETABLES. It is not that every part of an animal or vegetable has not proceeded from a contriving mind ; or that every part is not constructed with a view to its proper end and purpose, ac¬ cording to the laws belonging to, and governing the substance or the action made use of in that part; or that each part is not so constructed as to effectuate its purpose whilst it ope¬ rates according to these laws; but it is because these laws themselves are not in all cases equally understood; or, what amounts to nearly the same thing, are not equally exemplified in more simple processes, and more simple machines; that we lay down the distinction, here proposed, between the mechanical parts and other parts of animals and vegetables *. * The immechanical properties of plants are just as full of instances of contrivance as those of animals. Thus, in their juices, which are always so regular and so uni¬ form—so sweet in some, so acid or bitter in others, tasteless in many, yet saline in several; the order and the regularity are alike incomprehensible. Neither by any contrivance of ours can this order of things be altered. Thus, the wild sorrel still secretes its acid, if nourished with sugar and water only. The sea-kale (crambe maritima ) which grows wild on the sea-shore, will yet secrete in its juices common salt when growing in our most inland gardens. Neither can a plant be made to absorb one salt in preference to another. If common salt, and Glauber salt, and muriate of lime, in equal proportions, are dissolved in water; and a plant of mint placed in the solution ; the vegetable will readily absorb a considerable proportion of common salt, and less of the Glauber ; but the muriate of lime is entirely rejected. The plant will not imbibe a particle. The very power which the plant thus exercises is totally incomprehensible by any of our chemical investi¬ gations ; for to effect the same separation of the salts, the chemical analyst has to perform a series of decomposi¬ tions, and many other chemical operations must be gone through before the desired result can be obtained ; a pro¬ cess which the sprig of mint performs at once. The unchemical reader is not to imagine that this separation, by the plant, of the salts is the effect of mere filtration, or some other simple process; since by no manipulation of this kind can the effect be produced. The most delicate filters in the world are utterly useless in an attempt to separate a salt from its solution. Then again, certain plants shew a decided preference for particular salts. The sun-flower and the nettle grow most luxuriantly in those soils which contain saltpetre 0 nitrate of potash), and as this salt is produced in old walls, and under buildings, there the nettle is sure to be found. Lucern, sainfoin, or red clover, have less fondness for saltpetre, but they absorb sulphate of lime (gypsum ) readily, and only flourish Avhere it is found in the land. Other plants care for neither. Thus the wheat, or the oat plant, do not grow more luxuriantly by their addition to the soils on which they are cultivated. The absorbent powers of the plant are not confined to soluble matteis, for the most insoluble substances, such as clay, flint, chalk, manganese, and phosphate of lime, NATURAL THEOLOGY. 51 For instance : the principle of muscular motion, viz. upon wliat cause the swelling of the belly of the muscle, and consequent contraction of its tendons, either by an act of the will, or by involuntary irritation, depends, is wholly unknown to us. The substance employed, whether it be fluid, gaseous, elastic, electrical, or none of these, or nothing resembling these, is also unknown to us : of course, the laws belonging to that substance, and which regulate its action, are unknown to us. We see nothing similar to this contraction in any machine which we can make, or any process which we can execute. So far (it is confessed) we are in ignorance, but no farther. This power and principle, from whatever cause it proceeds, being assumed, the collocation of the fibres to receive the principle, the disposition of the muscles for the use and application of the power, is mechanical: and is as intelligible as the adjustment of the wires and strings by which a puppet is moved. We see, therefore, as far as respects the subject before us, what is not mechanical in the animal frame, and what is. The nervous influence (for we are often obliged to give names to things which we know little about)—I say, the nervous influence, by which the belly, or middle of the muscle, is swelled, is not mechanical. The utility of the effect we perceive ; the means, or the pre¬ paration of means, by which it is produced, we do not. But obscurity as to the origin of muscular motion brings no doubtfulness into our observations, upon the sequel of the pro¬ cess. Which observations relate, 1st, to the constitution of the muscle; in consequence of which constitution, the swelling of the belly or middle part is necessarily and mechanically followed by a contraction of the tendons : 2dly, to the number and variety of the muscles, and the corresponding number and variety of useful powers which they supply to the ani¬ mal ; which is astonishingly great : 3dly, to the judicious (if we may be permitted to use that term in speaking of the Author, or of the works, of nature), to the wise and well-con¬ trived disposition of each muscle for its specific purpose ; for moving the joint this way, and that way, and the other w r ay ; for pulling and drawing the part, to which it is attached, in a determinate and particular direction ; which is a mechanical operation, exemplified in a multi¬ tude of instances. To mention only one : The tendon of the trochlear muscle of the eye, to the end that it may draw in the line required, is passed through a cartilaginous ring, at which it is reverted, exactly in the same manner as a rope in a ship is carried over a block or round a stay, in order to make it pull in the direction which is wanted. All this, as we have said, is mechanical; and is as accessible to inspection, as capable of being ascertained, as the 'me¬ chanism of the automaton in the Strand. Supposing the automaton to be put in motion by a magnet (which is probable), it will supply us with a comparison very apt for our present purpose. Of the magnetic effluvium, we know perhaps as little as we do of the nervous fluid. But, magnetic attraction being assumed (it signifies nothing from what cause it pro¬ ceeds), we can trace, or there can be pointed out to us, with perfect clearness and certainty, the mechanism, viz. the steel bars, the wheels, the joints, the wires, by which the motion so much admired is communicated to the fingers of the image; and to make any obscurity, or difficulty, or controversy in the doctrine of magnetism, an objection to our knowledge or our certainty, concerning the contrivance, or the marks of contrivance, displayed in the automaton, would be exactly the same thing, as it is to make our ignorance (which we acknowledge) of the cause of nervous agency, or even of the substance and structure of the are found in plants, and not in minute proportions only. Flint, for instance, abounds to such an extent in the Dutch rush, that it is employed by the turners, to polish wood, horn, and even brass. Flint ( silex ) is found also in the wheat plant, abound¬ ing in the straw , where its presence imparts the requisite firmness to enable it to support the loaded ear, but is hardly traceable in the seed where it is not required. Is not this contrivance ? or is all this arrangement also chance ? The progress of chemistry since Paley wrote, and Dr. Black, his chemical instructor, experimentalized, has unfolded many a beautiful vegetable phenomenon, just as mystic, just as astonishing as any thing met with in animal chemistry ; one vegetable principle after another has been discovered. Quinine, iodine, morphia, and many others, have been made subservient to our use, and the field is yet not nearly exhausted, but still the conclusion is the same ; the deeper the chemist penetrates, the more numerous are the contrivances he observes. The ablest, the most unwearied of chemists have devoted themselves to the investigation with an energy worthy of such a re¬ search ; but none of these philosophers have arisen from their toils, with the conclusion that chance had any thing to do with the formation of a plant. It is true that the celebrated and vain-glorious natu¬ ralist Buffon had a different opinion, that he saw none of these mysteries, and that he ignorantly inscribed under a statue of himself, “ A genius equal to the majesty of na¬ ture.” Yet, as was well observed by Sir J. E. Smith, the late president of the Linnsean Society, “ a blade of grass is amply sufficient to confound all his preten¬ sions.” E 2 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS library NATURAL THEOLOGY. r-,9 r) -j nerves themselves, a ground of question or suspicion as to the reasoning which we institute concerning the mechanical part of our frame. That an animal is a machine, is a proposition neither correctly true nor wholly false. The distinction which we have been discussing will serve to show how far the comparison, which this expression implies, holds; and wherein it fails. And whether the distinction he thought of importance or not, it is certainly of importance to remember, that there is neither truth nor justice in endeavouring to bring a cloud over our understandings, or a distrust into our reasonings upon this subject, by suggesting that we know nothing of voluntary motion, of irritability, of the principle of life, of sensation, of animal heat, upon all which the animal functions depend; for our ignorance of these parts of the animal frame concerns not at all our knowledge of the mechanical parts of the same frame. I contend, therefore, that there is mechanism in animals; that this mechanism is as properly such, as it is in machines made by art; that this mechanism is intelligible and certain ; that it is not the less so, because it often begins or terminates with something which is not mechanical; that whenever it is intelligible and certain, it demonstrates intention and contrivance, as well in the works of nature, as in those of art; and that it is the best demonstration which either can afford. But whilst I contend for these propositions, I do not exclude myself from asserting, that there may be, and that there are, other cases, in which, although we cannot exhibit me¬ chanism, or prove indeed that mechanism is employed, we want not sufficient evidence to conduct us to the same conclusion. There is what may be called the chemical part of our frame ; of which, by reason of the imperfection of our chemistry, we can attain to no distinct knowledge ; I mean, not to a knowledge, either in degree or kind, similar to that which we possess of the mechanical part of our frame. It does not, therefore, afford the same species of argument as that which mechanism affords ; and yet it may afford an argument in a high degree satisfac¬ tory # . The gastric juice , or the liquor which digests the food in the stomach of animals, is of this class. Of all menstrua, it is the most active, the most universal. In the human stomach, for instance, consider what a variety of strange substances, and how widely dif¬ ferent from one another, it, in a few hours, reduces to a uniform pulp, milk, or mucilage. * The remark of Paley as to the superiority of me¬ chanism to chemistry for the purposes of popular illustra¬ tion needs no confirmation, although there are certain chemical investigations into the composition of the “ ele¬ ments,” as they were formerly called, which in an ad¬ mirable manner demonstrate the contrivance and skill of their divine Author. Thus, in the air we breathe, many and vague were the notions originally entertained with regard to its composition. It was soon, however, deter¬ mined that in the act of breathing, only a portion of the air inspired was retained by the lungs; and to this, in consequence, the name of vital air, or oxygen gas, was given. To the respired or rejected portion the name of azote, or nitrogen gas, was applied ; and by careful analysis it has been determined that these two gases constitute the atmosphere in which we live and breathe, in the pro¬ portion of twenty-one parts oxygen, and seventy-nine parts nitrogen. The oxygen is alone necessary to main¬ tain the breathing of animals and to support combustion. The nitrogen is merely added, as far as our knowledge extends, as a dilutant to modify the otherwise too active action of the oxygen upon the lungs, and upon our fires. If w r e attempt to breathe pure oxygen gas, the lungs are so strongly excited that death speedily ensues ; and if any ignited body is placed in the same gas, the combus¬ tion is so rapid that hardly any substance can be burnt with sufficient slowness or the required regularity. Had our atmosphere been formed entirely of oxygen, our pre¬ sent easily manageable fires would have burnt with an un- controulable violence. The addition of a large proportion of nitrogen, by diluting the oxygen, modifies its active powers without destroying their effect. The careful proportion too in which this mixture is made commands our serious atten¬ tion ; chance had no hand in its composition, for if the proportion only of the two gases are altered, and they are then combined, strangely'different substances are produced. Thus, twenty-six parts nitrogen, and seventy-four parts oxygen, form nitric-acid or aqua-fortis; and sixty-three and a half parts nitrogen, and thirty - six and a half parts oxygen, form nitrous oxyde, the laughing gas of chemists (Davy’s Researches, p. 291. Henry’s Chem., vol. xviii. p. 359. Thomson, vol. ii. p. 90) ; and by merely varying the proportions, the chemist pro¬ duces many other substances, such as nitrous gas, and nitrous acid. The regular proportion of the two gases existing in the atmosphere of all parts of the world equally commands our astonishment. Repeated and careful examinations by the most eminent chemists have demonstrated that these never vary. The composition of air taken in the open country and in the centre of the most populous cities, whether collected upon the summits of the most elevated mountains or in the lowest valleys, is exactly the same. Probably the means by which this unvarying proportion is preserved, is only partially known to us ; but this we do know, the oxygen consumed by animals, and by our fires, is constantly and copiously restored to the atmosphere by the leaves of all vegetables growing in the light. Winds, if they served no other beneficial purpose, would be advantageous in preserving the uniform composition of our atmosphere. They hurry away the vitiated air of towns, and bring in its place that which has been purified by vegetation in the agricultural districts. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 53 .It seizes upon every thing, it dissolves the texture of almost every thing, that comes in its way. The flesh of perhaps all animals ; the seeds and fruits of the greatest number of plants ; the roots, and stalks, and leaves of many, hard and tough as they are, yield to its powerful pervasion. The change wrought by it is different from any chemical solution which we can produce, or with which we are acquainted, in this respect as well as many others, that, in our chemistry, particular menstrua act only upon particular substances. Consider moreover that this fluid, stronger in its operation than a caustic alkali or mineral acid, than red precipitate, or aqua-fortis itself, is nevertheless as mild, and bland, and inof¬ fensive to the touch or taste, as saliva or gum-water, which it much resembles. Consider, I say, these several properties of the digestive organ, and of the juice with which it is sup¬ plied, or rather with which it is made to supply itself, and you will confess it to be entitled to a name, which it has sometimes received, that of “ the chemical wonder of animal nature Still we are ignorant of the composition of this fluid, and of the mode of its action ; by which is meant that we are not capable, as we are in the mechanical part of our frame, of collating it with the operations of art. And this I call the imperfection of our chemistry ; for, should the time ever arrive, which is not perhaps to be despaired of, when we can com¬ pound ingredients, so as to form a solvent which will act in the manner in which the gastric juice acts, we may be able to ascertain the chemical principles upon which its efficacy depends, as well as from what part, and by what concoction, in the human body, these principles are generated and derived. In the meantime, ought that, which is in truth the defect of our chemistry, to hinder us from acquiescing in the inference, which a production of nature, by its place, its properties, its action, its surprising efficacy, its invaluable use, authorises us to draw in respect of a creative design ? Another most subtile and curious function of animal bodies is secretion. This function is semi-chemical and semi-meclianical; exceedingly important and diversified in its effects, but obscure in its process and in its apparatus. The importance of the secretory organs is but too well attested by the diseases, which an excessive, a deficient, or a vitiated secretion is almost sure of producing. A single secretion being wrong, is enough to make life miserable, or sometimes to destroy it. Nor is the variety less than the importance. From one and the same blood (I speak of the human body) about twenty different fluids are separated; in their sensible properties, in taste, smell, colour, and consistency, the most unlike one another that is possible ; thick, thin, salt, bitter, sweet : and, if from our own we pass to other species of animals, we find amongst their secretions not only the most various, but the most opposite properties ; the most nutritious aliment, the deadliest poison ; the sweetest per¬ fumes, the most foetid odours. Of these the greater part, as the gastric juice, the saliva, the bile, the slippery mucilage which lubricates the joints, the tears which moisten the eye, the wax which defends the ear, are, after they are secreted, made use of in the animal economy ; are evidently subservient, and are actually contributing, to the utilities of the animal itself t. * The gastric liquid and the phemonena of digestion are more fully described in the tenth chapter. t The simplicity of design, which characterises the works of the great Architect of the world, is well dis¬ played in the variety of forms and effects which the same ingredients are made to produce, as their proportions are varied. For this purpose, the chemical comparison of blood, with four of the secretions formed from it, is not devoid of interest. Serum of blood has been carefully analysed by M. Berzelius ; he found in it the following ingredients :— Water, albumen, muriate of potash and soda, lactate of soda, soda, phosphate of soda. The same distinguished chemist found saliva to be com¬ posed of water, animal matter, mucus, muriate of potash, salts of soda, pure soda* ; and human bile, of water, picromel (a peculiar animal matter), albumen, soda, phos¬ phate of lime, common salt, phosphate of soda, with some lime. Tears are composed of water, mucus, common salt, soda, phosphate of lime, phosphate of soda. The liquid which lubricates the joints, of water, fibrous matter, albumen, muriate of soda, soda, phosphate of lime.—Thomson’s Chemistry, vol. iv. p. 500,7, 12,23. Tn the analysis of vegetable substances, a still more extraordinary simplicity of design is developed : thus many substances, such as gum, sugar, starch, wax, cam¬ phor, wood, oxalic acid, and many others, arc made entirely out of the same substances. It was a wild dream of some of the Greek philosophers, that of one substance only the world was originally formed ; and to this opinion, Dr. Ilook, Sir Isaac Newton, Ann. of Phil. vol. ii.j>. 202, 3‘ 54 NATURAL THEOLOGY. Other fluids seem to be separated only to he rejected. That this also is necessary (though why it was originally necessary, we cannot tell), is shewn by the consequence of the sepa¬ ration being long suspended ; which consequence is disease and death. Akin to secretion, if not the same thing, is assimilation, by which one and the same blood is converted into bone, muscular flesh, nerves, membranes, tendons ; things as different as the wood and iron, canvass and cordage, of which a ship with its furniture is composed. AYe have no operation of art wherewith exactly to compare all this, for no other reason perhaps than that all operations of art are exceeded by it. No chemical election, no chemical analysis or reso¬ lution of a substance into its constituent parts, no mechanical sifting or division, that we are acquainted with, in perfection or variety come up to animal secretion. Nevertheless, the apparatus and process are obscure; not to say absolutely concealed from our inquiries. In a few, and only a few instances, we can discern a little of the constitution of a gland. In the kidneys of large animals, we corn trace the emulgent artery dividing itself into an infinite number of branches ; their extremities every where communicating with little round bodies, in the substance of which bodies, the secret of the machinery seems to reside, for there the change is made. AYe can discern pipes laid from these round bodies towards the pelvis, which is a basin within the solid of the kidney, AYe can discern these pipes joining and collecting together into larger pipes : and when so collected, ending in innumerable papillae, through which the secreted fluid is continually oozing into its receptacle. This is all we know of the mechanism of a gland, even in the case in which it seems most capable of being investigated. Y r et to pronounce that we know nothing of animal secretion, or nothing satisfactorily, and with that concise remark to dismiss the article from our argument, would be to dispose of the subject very hastily and very irrationally. For the purpose which we want, that of evincing intention, we know a great deal. And what we know is this. AYe see the blood carried by a pipe, conduit, or duct, to the gland. AYe see an organised appa¬ ratus, be its construction or action what it will, which we call that gland. AYe see the blood, or part of the blood, after it has passed through and undergone the action of the gland, coming from it by an emulgent vein or artery, i. e. by another pipe or conduit. And we see also at the same time a new and specific fluid issuing from the same gland by its excretory duct, i. e. by a third pipe or conduit; which new fluid is in some cases discharged out of the body, in more cases retained within it, and there executing some important and intelligent office. Now supposing, or admitting, that we know nothing of the proper internal constitution of a gland, or of the mode of its acting upon the blood ; then our situa¬ tion is precisely like that of an unmechanical looker-on, who stands by a stocking-loom, a corn-mill, a carding-machine, or a threshing-machine, at work, the fabric and mechanism of which, as well as all that passes within, is hidden from his sight by the outside case ; or, if seen, would be too complicated for his uninformed, uninstructed understanding to compre¬ hend. And what is that situation ? This spectator, ignorant as he is, sees at one end a material enter the machine, as unground grain the mill, raw cotton the carding-machine, sheaves of unthreslied corn the threshing-machine; and when he casts his eye to the other end of the apparatus, he sees the material issuing from it in a new state; and, what is more, in a state manifestly adapted to future uses ; the grain in meal fit for the making of bread, the wool in rovings ready for spinning into threads, the sheaf in com dressed for the mill. Is it necessary that this man, in order to be convinced that design, that intention, that con¬ trivance has been employed about the machine, should be allowed to pull it to pieces ; should be enabled to examine the parts separately; explore their action upon one another, or their operation, whether simultaneous or successive, upon the material which is presented to them; he may long to do this to gratify his curiosity; he may desire to do it to improve his and Boscovich, evidently inclined. Davy, who certainly design, and the more wonderful the wisdom and power thought it probable, well denominates such an hypothesis of their Author f.” Davy, in early youth, was a sceptic: a “ sublime chemical speculation*;” and in another he describes his conversion, and the X’easons for it, in his place he adds, “ the more the phenomena of the universe beautiful little work, “ The last Days of a Philosopher,” are studied, the more distinct their connection appears, p. 153. the more simple their causes, the more magnificent their * Chemical Philosophy, p. 489. f Ibid. GO. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 55 theoretic knowledge ; or lie may have a more substantial reason for requesting it, if he happen, instead of a common visiter, to be a mill-wright by profession, or a person some¬ times called in to repair sucli-like machines when out of order; but for the purpose of ascertaining the existence of counsel and design in the formation of the machine, he wants no such intromission or privity. What he sees, is sufficient. The effect upon the material, the change produced in it, the utility of that change for future application, abundantly testify, be the concealed part of the machine or of its construction what it will, the hand and agency of a contriver. If any confirmation were wanting to the evidence which the animal secretions afford of design, it may be derived, as has been already hinted, from their variety, and from their appropriation to their place and use. They all come from the same blood; they are all drawn off by glands; yet the produce is very different, and the difference exactly adapted to the work which is to be done, or the end to be answered. No account can be given of this, without resorting to appointment. Why, for instance, is the saliva, which is diffused over the seat of taste, insipid, whilst so many others of the secretions, the urine, the tears, and the sweat, are salt ? Why does the gland within the ear separate a viscid substance, which defends that passage ; the gland in the upper angle of the eye, a thin brine, which washes the ball ? Why is the synovia of the joints mucilaginous; the bile bitter, stimu¬ lating, and soapy ? Why does the juice, which flows into the stomach, contain powers, which make that bowel the great laboratory, as it is by its situation the recipient, of the materials of future nutrition ? These are all fair questions : and no answer can be given to them, but what calls in intelligence and intention. My object in the present chapter has been to teach three things : first, that it is a mistake to suppose that, in reasoning from the appearances of nature, the imperfection of our knowledge proportionably affects the certainty of our conclusion ; for in many cases it does not affect it at all : secondly, that the different parts of the animal frame may be classed and distributed, according to the degree of exactness with which we can compare them with works of art: thirdly, that the mechanical parts of our frame, or those in which this comparison is most complete, although constituting, probably, the coarsest portions of nature’s workmanship, are the most proper to be alleged as proofs and specimens of design. CHAPTER VIII. OF MECHANICAL ARRANGEMENT IN THE HUMAN FRAME. We proceed, therefore, to propose certain examples taken out of this class ; making choice of such as, amongst those which have come to our knowledge, appear to be the most striking and the best understood; but obliged, perhaps, to postpone both these re¬ commendations to a third ; that of the example being capable of explanation without plates, or figures, or technical language. OF THE BONES. I.—I challenge any man to produce in the joints and pivots of the most complicated or the most flexible machine that was ever contrived, a construction more artificial, or more evidently artificial, than that which is seen in the vertebrae of the human neck .—Two things were to be done. The head was to have the power of bending forward and backward, as in the act of nodding, stooping, looking upward or downward; and, at the same time, of turning itself round upon the body to a certain extent, the quadrant we will say, or rather, perhaps, a hundred-and-twenty degrees of a circle. For these two purposes, two distinct contrivances are employed : First, the head rests immediately upon the upper- 56 NATURAL THEOLOGY. most part of the vertebras, and is united to it by a hinge- joint; upon which joint the head plays freely forward and backward, as far either way as is necessary, or as the ligaments allow ; which was the first thing required.—But then the rotatory motion is unprovided for : Therefore, secondly, to make the head capable of this, a farther mechanism is intro¬ duced ; not between the head and the uppermost bone of the neck, where the hinge is, but between that bone and the bone next underneath it. It is a mechanism resembling a tenon and mortice. This second, or uppermost bone but one, has what anatomists call a pro¬ cess, viz. a projection, somewhat similar, in size and shape, to a tooth ; which tooth, enter¬ ing a corresponding hole or socket in the bone above it, forms a pivot or axle, upon which that upper bone, together with the head which it supports, turns freely in a circle; and as far in the circle as the attached muscles permit the head to turn. Tims are both motions perfect without interfering with each other. When we nod the head, we use the hinge- joint, which lies between the head and the first bone of the neck. When we turn the head round, we use the tenon and mortice, which runs between the first bone of the neck and the second. We see the same contrivance and the same principle employed in the frame or mounting of a telescope. It is occasionally requisite, that the object-end of the instru¬ ment be moved up and down, as well as horizontally, or equatorially. For the vertical motion, there is a hinge, upon which the telescope plays ; for the horizontal or equatorial motion, an axis upon which the telescope and the hinge turn round together. And this is exactly the mechanism which is applied to the motion of the head : nor will any one here doubt of the existence of counsel and design, except it be by that debility of mind, which can trust to its own reasonings in nothing. We may add, that it was, on another account also, expedient, that the motion of the head backward and forward should be performed upon the upper surface of the first vertebra : for, if the first vertebra itself had bent forward, it would have brought the spinal marrow, at the very beginning of its course, upon the point of the tooth*.. II. Another mechanical contrivance, not unlike the last in its object, but different and original in its means, is seen in what anatomists call the fore-arm; that is, in the arm between the elbow and the wrist. Here, for the perfect use of the limb, two motions are wanted; a motion at the elbow backward and forward, which is called a reciprocal motion ; and a rotatory motion, by which the palm of the hand, as occasion requires, may be turned upward. How is this managed ? The fore-arm, it is well known, consists of two bones, lying alongside each other, but touching only towards the ends. One, and only one, of these bones, is joined to the cubit, or upper part of the arm, at the elbow ; the other alone, to the hand at the wrist. The first, by means, at the elbow, of a hinge-joint (which allows only of motion in the same plane), swings backward and forward, carrying along with it the other bone, and the whole fore-arm. In the mean time, as often as there is occasion to turn the palm upward, that other bone to which the hand is attached, rolls upon the .first, by the help of a groove or hollow near each end of one bone, to which is fitted a correspond¬ ing prominence in the other. If both bones had been joined to the cubit or upper arm, at the elbow, or both to the hand at the wrist, the thing could not have been done. The first was to be at liberty at one end, and the second at the other ; by which means the two actions may be performed together. The great bone which carries the fore-arm, may be swinging upon its hinge at the elbow, at the very time that the lesser bone, which carries the hand, may be turning round it in the grooves. The management also of these grooves, or rather of the tubercles and grooves, is very observable. The two bones are called the * The same curious mechanism, the same adaptation of parts to the habits of the individual, are observed in the necks of other animals. It is elongated in the camelopard, whose pasturage is the foliage of trees ; it is shortened and strong in the pig and mole, who uproot the earth. Where the long muzzle and heavy head require extra strength and support at its junction with the neck, then, as in the pongo, the spinous processes arc very long. In carnivorous animals, who seize and bear oil' their prey in their mouths, still greater security from dislocation is required, and in these the spinous process of the axis is very high, and is prolonged both upwards upon the atlas, and downwards upon the third vertebra, thus furnishing the requisite enlarged points of insertion for the muscles that move and support the head. In the camel, camelopard and others, the spinous processes are almost effaced ; if this had not been done their necks could not have been bent backward, and to these animals cer¬ vical flexibility is more necessary than cervical strength_* Cuvier’s Lectures on Comparative Anatomy. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 5 7 radius and the ulna. Above, i. e. towards the elbow, a tubercle of the radius plays into a socket of the ulna ; whilst below, i. e. towards the wrist, the radius finds the socket, and the ulna the tubercle. A single bone in the fore-arm, with a ball and socket joint at the elbow, which admits of motion in all directions, might, in some degree, have answered the purpose of both moving the arm and turning the hand. But how much better it is accom¬ plished by the present mechanism, any person may convince himself, who puts the ease and quickness with which he can shake his hand at the wrist circularly (moving likewise, if lie pleases, his arm at the elbow at the same time), in competition with the comparatively slow and laborious motion, with which his arm can be made to turn round at the shoulder, by the aid of a ball and socket-joint. III. The spine , or back-bone, is a chain of joints of very wonderful construction. Various, difficult, and almost inconsistent offices were to be executed by the same instrument. It was to be firm, yet flexible (now I know no chain made by art, which is both these ; for by firmness I mean, not only strength, but stability) ; firm , to support the erect position of the body ; flexible, to allow of the bending of the trunk in all degrees of curvature. It was farther also (which is another, and quite a distinct purpose from the rest) to become a pipe or conduit for the safe conveyance from the brain, of the most important fluid of the animal frame, that, namely, upon which all voluntary motion depends, the spinal marrow; a sub¬ stance not only of the first necessity to action, if not to life, but of a nature so delicate and tender, so susceptible and so impatient of injury, as that any unusual pressure upon it, or any considerable obstruction of its course, is followed by paralysis or death. Now the spine was not only to furnish the main trunk for the passage of the medullary substance from the brain, but to give out, in the course of its progress, small pipes therefrom, which, being afterward indefinitely subdivided, might, under the name of nerves, distribute this exquisite supply to every part of the body. The same spine was also to serve another use not less wanted than the preceding, viz. to afford a fulcrum, stay, or basis (or, more pro¬ perly speaking, a series of these), for the insertion of the muscles which are spread over the trunk of the body; in which trunk there are not, as in the limbs, cylindrical bones, to which they can be fastened: and likewise, which is a similar use, to furnish a support for the ends of the ribs to rest upon. Bespeak of a workman a piece of mechanism which shall comprise all these purposes, and let him set about to contrive it ; let him try his skill upon it; let him feel the difficulty of accomplishing the task, before he be told how the same thing is effected in the animal frame. Nothing will enable him to judge so well of the wisdom which has been employed; nothing will dispose him to think of it so truly. First, for the firmness, yet flexibility, of the spine ; it is composed of a great number of bones (in the human subject, of twenty-four) joined to one another, and compacted by broad bases. The breadth of the bases upon which the parts severally rest, and the closeness of the junction, give to the chain its firmness and stability; the number of parts, and consequent frequency of joints, its flexibility. Which flexibility, we may also observe, varies in different parts of the chain ; is least in the back, where strength, more than flexure, is wanted : greater in the loins, which it was necessary should be more supple than the back ; and greatest of all in the neck, for the free motion of the head. Then, secondly, in order to afford a passage for the descent of the medullary substance, each of these bones is bored through in the middle in such a manner as that, when put together, the hole in one bone falls into a line, and corresponds with the holes in the two bones contiguous to it. By which means, the perforated pieces, when joined, form an entire, close, uninterrupted channel; at least, whilst the spine is upright, and at rest. But, as a settled posture is inconsistent with its use, a great difficulty still remained, which was to prevent the vertebrae shifting upon one another, so as to break the line of the canal as often as the body moves or twists : or the joints gaping externally, whenever the bodyjs bent forward, and the spine thereupon made to take the form of a bow. These dangers, which are mechanical, are mechanically provided against. The vertebrae, by means of their processes and projections, and of the articulations which some of these form with one another at their extremities, are so locked in and confined, as to maintain, in what are called the bodies or broad surfaces of the bones, the relative position nearly unaltered ; and to 50 NATURAL THEOLOGY. throw the change and the pressure, produced by flexion, almost entirely upon the intervening cartilages, the springiness and yielding nature of whose substance admits of all the motion which is necessary to be performed upon them, without any chasm being produced by a separation of the parts. I say, of all the motion which is necessary; for although we bend our backs to every degree almost of inclination, the motion of each vertebra is very small : such is the advantage we receive from the chain being composed of so many links, the spine of so many bones. Had it consisted of three or four bones only ; in bending the body, the spinal marrow must have been bruised at every angle. The reader need not be told, that these intervening cartilages are gristles ; and he may see them in perfection in a loin of veal. Their form also favours the same intention. They are thicker before than behind ; so that when we stoop forward, the compressible substance of the cartilage, yielding in its thicker and anterior part to the force which squeezes it, brings the surfaces of the adjoining vertebras nearer to the being parallel with one another than they were before, instead of increasing the inclination of their planes, which must have occasioned a fissure or opening between them. Thirdly, for the medullary canal giving out in its course, and in a convenient order, a supply of nerves to different parts of the body, notches are made in the upper and lower edge of every vertebra; two on each edge ; equi-distant on each side from the middle line of the back. When the vertebras are put together, these notches, exactly fitting, form small holes, through which the nerves, at each articulation, issue out in pairs, in order to send their branches to every part of the body, and with an equal bounty to both sides of the body. The fourth purpose assigned to the same instrument, is the insertion of the bases of the muscles, and the support of the ends of the ribs ; and for this fourth purpose, especially the former part of it, a figure, specifically suited to the design, and unnecessary for the other purposes, is given to the constituent bones. Whilst they are plain, and round, and smooth, towards the front, where any roughness or projection might have wounded the adjacent viscera, they run out, behind, and on each side, into long processes, to which processes the muscles necessary to the motions of the trunk are fixed ; and fixed with such art, that, whilst the vertebrae supply a basis for the muscles, the muscles help to keep these bones in their position, or by their tendons to tie them together. That most important, however, and general property, viz. the strength of the compages, and the security against luxation, was to be still more specially consulted; for, where so many joints were concerned, and where, in every one, derangement would have been fatal, it became a subject of studious precaution. For this purpose the vertebrae are articulated, that is, the moveable joints between them are formed by means of those projections of their substance, which we have mentioned under the name of processes : and these so lock in with, and overwrap one another, as to secure the body of the vertebra, not only from accidentally slipping, but even from being pushed out of its place by any violence short of that which would break the bone. I have often remarked and admired this structure in the chine of a hare. In this, as in many instances, a plain observer of the animal economy may spare himself the disgust of being present at human dissections, and yet learn enough for his information and satisfaction, by even examining the bones of the animals which come upon his table. Let him take for example, into his hands, a piece of the clean-picked bone of a hare’s back; consisting, we will suppose, of three vertebrae. He will find the middle bone of the three so implicated, by means of its projections or processes, with the bone on each side of it, that no pressure which he can use, will force it out of its place between them. It will give way neither forward, nor backward, nor on either side. In whichever direction he pushes, lie perceives, in the form, or junction, or overlapping, of the bones, an impediment opposed to his attempt; a check and guard against dislocation. In one part of the spine, lie will find a still farther fortifying expedient, in the mode according to which the ribs are annexed to the spine. Each rib rests upon two vertebrae. That is the thing to be remarked, and any one may remark it in carving a neck of mutton. The manner of it is this : the end of the rib is divided by a middle ridge into two surfaces; which surfaces are joined to the bodies of two contiguous vertebrae, the ridge applying itself to the intervening cartilage. Now this is the very contrivance which is employed in the famous iron bridge at my $loor at Bishop-Wearmoutli; and for the same purpose of stability ; viz. the cheeks of the bars, NATURAL THEOLOGY. 59 which pass between the arches, ride across the joints, by which the pieces composing each arch are united. Each cross-bar rests upon two of these pieces at their place of junction • and by that position resists, at least in one direction, any tendency in either piece to slip out of its place. Thus perfectly, by one means or the other, is the danger of slipping laterally, or of being drawn aside out of the line of the back, provided against: and, to withstand the bones being pulled asunder longitudinally, or in the direction of that line, a strong membrane runs from one end of the chain to the other, sufficient to resist any force which is ever likely to act in the direction of the back, or parallel to it, and consequently to secure the whole combination in their places. The general result is, that not only the motions of the human body necessary for the ordinary offices of life are performed with safety, but that it is an accident hardly ever heard of, that even the gesticulations of a harlequin distort his spine. Upon the whole, and as a guide to those who may be inclined to carry the consideration of this subject farther, there are three views under which the spine ought to be regarded, and in all which, it cannot fail to excite our admiration. These views relate to its articulations, its ligaments, and its perforation ; and to the corresponding advantages which the body derives from it, for action, for strength, and for that which is essential to every part, a secure communication with the brain. The structure of the spine is not in general different in different animals. In the serpent tribe, however, it is considerably varied; but with a strict reference to the conveniency of the animal. For, whereas in quadrupeds the number of vertebrae is from thirty to forty, in the serpent it is nearly one hundred and fifty : whereas in men and quadrupeds the surfaces of the bones are flat, and these flat surfaces laid one against the other, and bound tight by sinews ; in the serpent, the bones play one within another like a ball and socket # , so that they have a free motion upon one another in every direction: that is to say, in men and quadrupeds, firmness is more consulted; in serpents, pliancy. Yet even pliancy is not obtained at the expense of safety. The back bone of a serpent, for coherence and flexibility, is one of the most curious pieces of animal mechanism with which we are acquainted. The chain of a watch (I mean the chain which passes between the spring-barrel and the fusee), which aims at the same properties* is but a bungling piece of workmanship in comparison with that of which we speak f. IY. The reciprocal enlargement and contraction of the chest to allow for the play of the lungs, depends upon a simple yet beautiful mechanical contrivance, referable to the structure of the bones which enclose it. The ribs are articulated to the back-bone, or rather to its side projections, obliquely: that is, in their natural position they bend or slope from the place of articulation downwards. But the basis upon which they rest at this end being fixed, the consequence of the obliquity, or the inclination downwards, is, that when they come to move, whatever pulls the ribs upwards, necessarily, at the same time, draws them out; and that, whilst the ribs are brought to a right angle with the spine behind, the sternum, or part of the chest to which they are attached in the front, is thrust forward. The simple action, therefore, of the elevating muscles does the business; whereas, if the ribs had been articulated with the bodies of the vertebrae at right angles, the cavity of the thorax could never have been farther enlarged by a change of their position. If each rib had been a rigid bone, articulated at both ends to fixed bases, the whole chest had been immoveable. Keill has observed, that the breast-bone, in an easy inspiration, is thrust out one tenth of an inch : and he calculates that this, added to what is gained to the space * I)er. Pliys. Theol. p. 396. L The spine is the most complicated, therefore most demonstrative of design, of all the parts of the animal frame. In the back bones of different animals there is a considerable variety in the mechanism employed for the motion of the vertebral upon each other, fitting the animals for the sphere in which they move. In considering the articulating cartilages of these joints which admit of much motion, we find that they have a structure of a particular kind, unlike any other in the body ; it is compact, elastic, and its fibres are all placed at right angles to the surfaces of the bones, so as to have the full effects of its elasticity when they are pressed together, thus preventing the jar that would otherwise be produced at every footstep. Its external surface is polished, and lubricated with synovia to enable the bones more readily to play on one another. This is a provision of nature given to all joints with capsular ligaments, and is met with whatever may be the particular form of the joint.—Sir Everard Home’s Lectures on Comparative Anatomy. GO NATURAL THEOLOGY. within the chest by the flattening or descent of the diaphragm, leaves room for forty-two cubic inches of air to enter at every drawing-in of the breath. Where there is a necessity for a deeper and more laborious inspiration, the enlargement of the capacity of the chest may be so increased by effort, as that the lungs may be distended with seventy or a hundred such cubic inches *. The thorax, says Schelhammer, forms a kind of bellows, such as never have been, nor probably will be, made by any artificer. V. The patella , or knee-pan, is a curious little bone ; in its form and office, unlike any other bone in the body. It is circular ; the size of a crown-piece; pretty thick ; a little convex on both sides, and covered with a smooth cartilage. It lies upon the front of the knee ; and the powerful tendons, by which the leg is brought forward, pass through it (or rather it makes a part of their continuation), from their origin in the thigh to their insertion in the tibia. It protects both the tendon and the joint from any injury which either might suffer, by the rubbing of one against the other, or by the pressure of unequal surfaces. It also gives to the tendons a very considerable mechanical advantage, by altering the line of their direction, and by advancing it farther out from the centre of motion ; and this upon the principles of the resolution of force, upon which principles all machinery is founded. These are its uses. But what is most observable in it is, that it appears to be supplemental, as it were, to the frame ; added, as it should almost seem, afterward ; not quite necessary, but very convenient. It is separate from the other bones; that is, it is not connected with any other bones by the common mode of union. It is soft, or hardly formed, in infancy ; and produced by an ossification, of the inception or progress of which no account can be given from the structure or exercise of the part. VI. The shoulder-blade is, in some material respects, a very singular bone; appearing to be made so expressly for its own purpose, and so independently of every other reason. In such quadrupeds as have no collar-bones, which are by far the greater number, the shoulder- blade has no bony communication with the trunk, either by a joint, or process, or in any other way. It does not grow to, or out of, any other bone of the trunk. It does not apply to any other bone of the trunk (I know not whether this be true of any second bone in the body, except perhaps the os liyoi’des) : in strictness, it forms no part of the skeleton. It is bedded in the flesh; attached only to the muscles. It is no other than a foundation bone for the arm, laid in, separate as it were, and distinct, from the general ossification. The lower limbs connect themselves at the hip with bones which form part of the skeleton : but this connexion, in the upper limbs, being wanting, a basis, whereupon the arm might be articulated, was to be supplied by a detached ossification for the purpose'!'. * Anat. p. 229. T Bones differ exceedingly in their texture, yet they are upon all occasions adapted to the circumstances in which they are placed ; the structure always corresponds to the purposes for which they are employed. The ribs of newly-born creatures are the only bones that are hard, for these only at that period havo occasion for a superior degree of strength. All the other bones are mere carti¬ lage, yielding to the pressure attendant upon parturition, and affording security against the falls and accidents to which all young creatures are liable. The bones of the fore-foot of a race-horse and of a deer are unusually hard, though small: qualities necessary to be combined to sus¬ tain the force with which they strike the ground when the animal is at its full speed, and yet to offer no unneces¬ sary extent of surface to the opposing air. The hardness of these bones is scarcely equal to that of the lion's fore¬ leg, his great weapon of attack and defence. This is so remarkable that it was thought to have a peculiar chemical composition ; but Mr. Hatchett has shown this to be not the case. It only contains a greater proportion of phos¬ phate of lime than other bones ; its strength arises chiefly from superior compactness of structure. When the bones are enlarged for the purposes of strength, or to give attachment to muscles, the contri¬ vances are most perfect. Galilee, on strict mathematical principles, has shown, that when solid bodies are increased in dimensions, the destroying power proceeds in a quadru¬ plicate proportion, while the preserving power rises only in a triplicate ratio. The all-wise Creator provided against this law by making all large bones hollow, and thus at the same time removed the centre of motion to the greatest practicable distance from the centre of gravity, giving the utmost possible strength that can be obtained from the given quantity of materials. Bones which have neither weight to support nor great resistance to make are formed proportionably slight; but then they are light because hollow. Independently of this variation in the structure of bones, fitting them for their several offices, they are also adapted to the medium in which the animal lives. The bones of all aquatic animals are of small specific gravity. This is provided in various modes. Cartilaginous fishes have very little phosphate of lime in their bones. In the whale tribe, as the bones must be strong as well as have an ex¬ tended surface, their internal cavities are filled with oil. The enormous head of the spermaceti whale has its blow¬ holes kept above the surface of the water, by means of a peculiar large cavity filled with spermaceti, which is so much specifically lighter than water.—Sir Everard Home’s Lectures on Comparative Anatomy. The bones connected with the ear are among the hard- NATURAL THEOLOGY. Cl OF THE JOINTS. I. The above are a few examples of bones made remarkable by their configuration: but to almost all the bones belong joints; and in these, still more clearly than in the form or shape of the bones themselves, are seen both contrivance and contriving wisdom. Every joint is a curiosity, and is also strictly mechanical. There is the hinge-joint and the mortice and tenon-joint; each as manifestly such, and as accurately defined, as any which can be produced out of a cabinet-maker s shop ; and one or the other prevails, as either is adapted est in the animal economy; in the whale and the cachalot their density is greater than that of marble. Conse¬ quently they are more sonorous, better assisting the sense of hearing, than if less compact. The bones of birds have a very particular structure. Almost without exception they are hollow, but tbe cavi¬ ties contain only air and never marrow. These cavities have a direct communication with the lungs, the air which is forced into the trachea arteria, escaping and returning reciprocally by a perforation in some one of the bones. This organisation, says Cuvier, unites in their bones that levity and strength required by the kind of motion as¬ signed to them.—Cuvier’s Lectures on Comparative Anatomy. The researches of the chemist, since Paley wrote this admirable work, still farther confirm the same conclusion, —that the closest examination of a bone can detect no “ clumsiness” of construction, no composition inadequate to their required services. Thus it has been discovered that all bones are princi¬ pally composed of a peculiar earthy salt, totally insoluble in water, and found hardly anywhere but in the bones of animals, or in the vegetables on which these animals feed. Thus 100 parts calcined human bones are composed, according to M.Berzelius, an illustrious Swedish chemist, of— cartilage is entirely withdrawn, and a strong cement of gelatine substituted, and substituted in this bony sub¬ stance only. 100 parts of the enamel of teeth are com¬ posed of— Phosphate of lime . . .73 parts. Gelatine (glue) . . .27 100 It is moreover most remarkable, that this enamel en¬ crusts only the exposed portions of the tooth—the fangs and neck are entirely devoid of it. The supply, therefore, of hardening ingredients to the teeth, and to the bones, is exactly adapted to the neces¬ sity, and that too with a regularity which must command our serious attention. Thus (to give another instance) the yielding and tough bones of children are composed almost entirely of carti¬ lage and gelatine. The phosphate and carbonate of lime, which abound in those of adults, are gradually deposited as increasing age requires increased hardness in the bone. But it was necessary that this deposition should not be in excess, or deficient in proportion—for those diseased per¬ sons, whose bones are brittle, are instances of the first, and rickety children of the last, malformations. The bones and shells of fish are composed of the same substances as other bones. But the gelatine is with¬ drawn, and replaced w r ith cartilage ; since the first would Phosphate of lime . 82 parts. soften or dissolve in the water, which cartilage will not. Fluate of lime (Derby spar) 3 Thus 100 parts of lobster shells are composed of— Lime .... . 10 Phosphate of lime . 14 parts. Phosphate of magnesia . . 1 Cartilage . 26 Soda .... . ' 2 Carbonate of lime (chalk) . 60 Carbonic acid (fixed air) . 2 100 100 Most persons believe that the horns of animals are Such is the chemical composition of our bones. These ingredients, however, are united together by being com¬ bined with 7 per cent, of cartilage, which imparts to all bones the requisite toughness. And probably, to give ad¬ ditional hardness to the bones, there is also added to them a small quantity of fluate of lime, which is known in commerce as the hard spar of Derbyshire. In teeth a still greater hardness was required than in other bones, to enable them to withstand the pressure to which they are constantly exposed by coming in imme¬ diate contact w 7 ith the food they are required to masticate. This want is met by the withdrawal of 17 per cent, of cartilage—there being only 20 per cent, of this substance in teeth, while there is 37 in all other bones of the human body. 100 parts of teeth are composed of— Phosphate of lime . . .64 parts. Carbonate of lime . . .6 Cartilage . . • .20 Loss . . . . .10 100 added to which there is a considerable proportion of fluate of lime in teeth. The enamel of teeth required still greater hardness than the teeth themselves ; and to meet this necessity the similar in composition to bones, but they are in fact totally different; thus, 100 parts of the horns of black cattle were found by Dr. John to contain 90 parts of coagulated albumen (hardened white of egg) ; and thus constituted they possess a degree of toughness and strength amply sufficient to withstand the blows to which they are continually exposed. Had these projecting exposed weapons been composed of the same ingredients as the other bones of the animal, their brittleness would have rendered them incessantly liable to fractures; as now constituted, they generally endure amid all vicissi¬ tudes. A cow with only one horn is remarkable for its singularity. The same remarks apply in a great measure to the nails of the human hand, which, like the horns of cattle, are composed almost entirely of albumen—and whose office requires toughness rather than hardness : pliancy piotects them from fracture; if they had been stubborn they must have been clumsy. No cause can be given for these devi¬ ations in the composition of bony substances, which does not assign contrivance and design as the real motive—and that this is the true explanation, no man who looks at the nails of his own hand need for one moment doubt. But this is an instance of the adaptation of the means to an end too familiar to our senses to be noticed so univer- C>2 NATURAL THEOLOGY. to the motion which is wanted : e. g. a mortice and tenon, or ball and socket joint, is not required at the knee, the leg standing in need only of a motion backward and forward in the same plane, for which a liinge-joint is sufficient; a mortice and tenon, or ball and socket joint, is wanted at the hip, that not only the progressive step may be provided for, but the interval between the limbs may be enlarged or contracted at pleasure. Now observe what would have been the inconveniency, i. e. both the superfluity and the defect of articulation, if the case had been inverted: if the ball and socket joint had been at the knee, and the hinge-joint at the hip. The thighs must have been kept constantly together, and the legs had been loose and straddling. There would have been no use, that we know of, in being able to turn the calves of the legs before; and there would have been great confinement by restraining the motion of the thighs to one plane. The disadvantage would not have been less, if the joints at the hip and the knee had been both of the same sort; both balls and sockets, or both hinges: yet why, independently of utility, and of a Creator who consulted that utility, should the same bone (the thigh-bone) be rounded at one end, and channelled at the other ? The hxngegoint is not formed by a bolt passing through the two parts of the hinge, and thus keeping them in their places; but by a different expedient. A strong, tough, parcli- ment-like membrane, rising from the receiving bones, and inserted all round the received bones a little below their heads, encloses the joint on every side. This membrane ties, con¬ fines, and holds, the ends of the bones together ; keeping the corresponding parts of the joint, i. e. the relative convexities and concavities, in close application to each other. For the ball and socket joint, besides the membrane already described, there is in some important j oints, as an additional security, a short, strong, yet flexible ligament, inserted by one end into the head of the ball, by the other into the bottom of the cup ; which ligament keeps the two parts of the joint so firmly in their place, that none of the motions which the limb naturally performs, none of the jerks and twists to which it is ordinarily liable, nothing less indeed than the utmost and the most unnatural violence, can pull them asunder. It is hardly imaginable, how great a force is necessary, even to stretch, still more to break, this ligament: yet so flexible is it, as to oppose no impediment to the suppleness of the joint. By its situation also, it is inaccessible to injury from sharp edges. As it cannot be ruptured (such is its strength) ; so it cannot be cut, except by an accident which would sever the limb. If I had been permitted to frame a proof of contrivance, such as might satisfy the most dis¬ trustful inquirer, I know not whether I could have chosen an example of mechanism more unequivocal, or more free from objection, than this ligament. Nothing can be more mechanical; nothing, however subservient to the safety, less capable of being generated by the action of the joint. I would particularly solicit the readers attention to this provision, as it is found in the head of the thigh-bone ; to its strength, its structure, and its use. It is an instance upon which I lay my hand. One single fact, weighed by a mind in earnest, leaves oftentimes the deepest impression. For the purpose of addressing different under¬ standings and different apprehensions,—for the purpose of sentiment, for the purpose of exciting admiration of the Creator’s works, we diversify our views, we multiply examples ; but for the purpose of strict argument, one clear instance is sufficient; and not only suffi- sally as it ought : for, as it is well observed by Sir Charles Bell, in bis Bridgewater Treatise, “ there is inconsistency and something of the child’s propensities still in mankind.” “A piece of mechanism, as a watch, a barometer, or a dial, will fix attention: a man will make journeys to see an engine stamp a coin, or turn a block ; yet the organs through which he has a thousand sources of enjoy¬ ment, and which are in themselves more exquisite in design, and more curious both in contrivance and in mechanism, do not enter his thoughts; and if he admire a living action, that admiration will probably be more excited, by what is uncommon and monstrous, than by what is natural and perfectly adjusted to its office, by the elephant’s trunk than by the human hand. ( t is the effect of habit. The human hand is so beautifully formed, it has so fine a sensibility, that sensibility governs its motions so correctly, every effort of the will is answered so instantly, as if the hand itself were the seat of that will ; its actions are so powerful, so free, and yet so delicate, that it seems to possess a quality instinct in itself, and there is no thought of its complexity as an instrument, or of the relations which make it subservient to the mind; we use it as we draw our breath, unconsciously, and have lost all recollection of the feeble and ill-directed efforts of its first exercise, by which it has been perfected.”—Bell on the Hand, p. 12 ; Pepys—Nicholson, vol. xiii., p. 216 ; Geh? Jour., vol. iii., p. 1 ; vol. vi., p. 591 ; Hatchett, Phil. Trans. 1799, p. 328 ; Fourcroy and Vauquelin Memoirs, Institute, vol. ii., p. 284; Ann. Phil. vol. ix., p. 55; Dr. Thomson, vol. iv., p. 461 ; Davy, Agri. Chem., p. 291; Sir E. Home’s Lectures on Comparative Anatomy. NATURAL THEOLOGY. G3 cient, but capable perhaps of generating a firmer assurance than what can arise from a divided attention. The ginglymus, or hinge-joint, docs not, it is manifest, admit of a ligament of the same kind with that of the ball and socket joint, but it is always fortified by the species of fioa- ment of which it does admit. The strong, firm, investing membrane, above described, accompanies it in every part: and in particular joints, this membrane, which is properly a ligament, is considerably stronger on the sides than either before or behind, in order that the convexities may play true in their concavities, and not be subject to slip sideways, which is the chief danger; for the muscular tendons generally restrain the parts from going farther than they ought to go in the plane of their motion. In the knee, which is a joint of this form, and of great importance, there are superadded to the common provisions for the stability of the joint, two strong ligaments which cross each other : and cross each other in such a manner, as to secure the joint from being placed in any assignable direction. u I think,” says Cheselden, “ that the knee cannot be completely dislocated without breaking the cross ligaments*.” We can hardly help comparing this with the binding up of a fracture, where the fillet is almost always strapped across, for the sake of giving firmness and strength to the bandage. Another no less important joint, and that also of the ginglymus sort, is the ankle; yet though important (in order, perhaps, to preserve the symmetry and lightness of the limb), small , and, on that account, more liable to injury. Now this joint is strengthened, i. e. is defended from dislocation, by two remarkable processes or prolongations of the bones of the leg, which processes form the protuberances that we call the inner and outer ankle. It is part of each bone going down lower than the other part, and thereby overlapping the joint: so that, if the joint be in danger of slipping outward, it is curbed by the inner projection, i. e. that of the tibia; if inward, by the outer projection, i. e. that of the fibula. Between both, it is locked in its position. I know no account that can be given of this structure, except its utility. Why should the tibia terminate, at its lower extremity, with a double end, and the fibula the same,—but to barricade the joint on both sides by a continuation of part of the thickest of the bone over it? The joint at the shoulder , compared with the joint at the hip, though both ball and socket joints, discovers a difference in their form and propor¬ tions, well suited to the different offices which the limbs have to execute. The cup or socket at the shoulder is much shallower and flatter than it is at the hip, and is also in part formed of cartilage set round the rim of the cup. The socket, into which the head of the thigh-bone is inserted, is deeper, and made of more solid materials. This agrees with the duties assigned to each part. The arm is an instrument of motion, principally, if not solely. Accordingly the shallowness of the socket at the shoulder, and the yieldingness of the cartilaginous sub¬ stance with which its edge is set round, and which in fact composes a considerable part of its concavity, are excellently adapted for the allowance of a free motion and a wide range; both which the arm wants. Whereas, the lower limb, forming a part of the column of the body ; having to support the body, as well as to be the means of its locomotion ; firmness was to be consulted, as well as action. With a capacity for motion, in all directions indeed, as at the shoulder, but not in any direction to the same extent as in the arm, was to be united stabi¬ lity, or resistance to dislocation. Hence the deeper excavation of the socket; and the pre¬ sence of a less proportion of cartilage upon the edge. The suppleness and pliability of the joints, we every moment experience; and th a firmness of animal articulation, the property we have hitherto been considering, may be judged of from this single observation, that, at any given moment of time, there are millions of animal joints in complete repair and use, for one that is dislocated; and this, notwithstanding the contortions and wrenches to which the limbs of animals are continually subject. II. Th q joints, or rather the ends of the bones which form them, display also, in their con¬ figuration, another use. The nerves, blood-vessels, and tendons, which are necessary to the life, or for the motion, of the limbs, must, it is evident, in their way from the trunk of the body to the place of their destination, travel over the moveable joints ; and it is no less * Chcseklen’s Anatomy, ed. 7th, p. 45. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 64 evident, that, in this part of their course, they will have, from sudden motions, and from abrupt changes of curvature, to encounter the danger of compression, attrition, or laceration. To guard fibres so tender against consequences so injurious, their path is in those parts pro¬ tected with peculiar care ; and that by a provision, in the figure of the bones themselves. The nerves which supply tli q fore-arm, especially the inferior cubical nerves, are at the elbow conducted, by a kind of covered way, between the condyls, or rather under the inner extu- berances of the bone, which composes the upper part of the arm*. At the knee, the extremity of the thigh-bone is divided by a sinus or cliff into two heads or protuberances: and these heads on the back part stand out beyond the cylinder of the bone. Through the hollow, which lies between the hind-parts of these two heads, that is to say, under the ham, between the ham-strings, and within the concave recess of the bone formed by the extuberances on each side; in a word, along a defile, between rocks, pass the great vessels and nerves which go to the legf. Who led these vessels by a road so defended and secured? In the joint at the shoulder , in the edge of the cup which receives the head of the bone, is a notch , which is joined or covered at the top with a ligament. Through this hole, thus guarded, the blood¬ vessels steal to their destination in the arm, instead of mounting over the edge of the concavity J. III. In all joints, the ends of the bones which work against each other, are tipped with gristle. In the ball and socket joint, the cup is lined, and the ball capped with it. The smooth surface, the elastic and unfriable nature of cartilage, render it of all substances the most proper for the place and purpose. I should, therefore, have pointed this out amongst the foremost of the provisions which have been made in the joints for the facilitating of their action, had it not been alleged, that cartilage in truth is only nascent or imperfect bone ; and that the bone in these places is kept soft and imperfect, in consequence of a more complete and rigid ossification being prevented from taking place by the continual motion and rubbing of the surfaces; which being so, what we represent as a designed advantage, is an unavoid¬ able effect. I am far from being convinced that this is a true account of the fact; or that, if it were so, it answers the argument. To me, the surmounting of the ends of the bones with gristle, looks more like a plating with a different metal, than like the same metal kept in a different state by the action to which it is exposed. At all events, we have a great parti¬ cular benefit, though arising from a general constitution : but this last not being quite what my argument requires, lest I should seem by applying the instance to overrate its value, I have thought it fair to state the question which attends it. IV. In some joints, very particularly in the knees, there are loose cartilages or gristles between the bones, and within the joint, so that the ends of the bones, instead of working upon one another, work upon the intermediate cartilages. Cheselden has observed §, that the contrivance of a loose ring is practised by mechanics, where the friction of the joints of any of their machines is great; as between the parts of crook-hinges of large gates, or under the head of the male screw of large vices. The cartilages of which we speak, have very much of the form of these rings. The comparison moreover shews the reason why we find them in the knees rather than in other joints. It it an expedient, we have seen, which a mechanic resorts to, only when some strong and heavy work is to be done. So here the thigh-bone has to achieve its motion at the knee, with the whole weight of the body pressing upon it, and often, as in rising from our seat, with the whole weight of the body to lift. It should seem also, from Cheselden’s account, that the slipping and sliding of the loose carti¬ lages, though it be probably a small and obscure change, humoured the motion at the end of the thigh-bone, under the particular configuration which was necessary to be given to it for the commodious action of the tendons; (and which configuration requires what he calls a variable socket, that is, a concavity, the lines of which assume a different curvature in diffe¬ rent inclinations of the bones) || . * Cheselden’s Anatomy, p. 255, ed. 7. modern professors ; hut those who consider this as a crime, 4“ Ibid. p. 35. have been very slow in adducing any instances where the'fee J Ibid. p. 30. two great anatomists have led him into error. The § Ibid. p. 13. talented Keill was the earlier writer of the two, and || Palev has been charged with taking Cheselden and his work, “ The Anatomy of the Human Body,” was Keill for his authorities in anatomy, in preference to more long the vadc mecum of the medical student. He NATURAL THEOLOGY. (15 V. We have now done with the configuration; but there is also in the joints, and that common to them all, another exquisite provision, manifestly adapted to their use, and con¬ cerning which there can, I think, be no dispute, namely, the regular supply of a mucilage , more emollient and slippery than oil itself, which is constantly softening and lubricating the parts that rub upon each other, and thereby diminishing the effect of attrition in the highest possible degree. For the continual secretion of this important liniment, and for the feeding of the cavities of the joint with it, glands are fixed near each joint; the excretory ducts of which glands dripping with their balsamic contents, hang loose like fringes within the cavity of the joints. A late improvement in what are called friction-wheels, which consist of a mechanism so ordered, as to be regularly dropping oil into a box, which encloses the axis, the nave, and certain balls upon which the nave revolves, may be said, in some sort, to repre¬ sent the contrivance in the animal joint; with this superiority, however, on the part of the joint, viz. that here, the oil is not only dropped, but made. In considering the joints, there is nothing, perhaps, which ought to move our gratitude more than the reflection, how well they icear. A limb shall swing upon its hinge, or play in its socket, many hundred times in an hour, for sixty years together, without diminution of its agility; which is a long time for any thing to last, for any thing so much worked and exercised as the joints are. This durability, I should attribute, in part, to the provision which is made for the preventing of wear and tear, first, by the polish of the cartilaginous surfaces; secondly, by the healing lubrication of the mucilage; and, in part, to that asto¬ nishing property of animal constitutions, assimilation, by which, in every portion of the body, let it consist of what it will, substance is restored, and waste repaired. Moveable joints, I think, compose the curiosity of bones; but their union, even where no motion is intended or wanted, carries marks of mechanism and of mechanical wisdom. The teeth, especially the front teeth, are one bone fixed in another, like a peg driven into a board. The sutures ef the skull are like the edges of two saws clapped together, in such a manner as that the teeth of one enter the intervals of the other. We have sometimes one bone lap¬ ping over another, and planed down at the edges ; sometimes also the thin lamella of one bone received into a narrow furrow of another. In all which varieties, we seem to discover the same design, viz. firmness of juncture, without clumsiness in the seam *. died at Northampton, where he practised as a physician, in 1719. The great Cheselden was a later authority, for he lived till 1752. His work, which had the same title as Keill’s, passed through many editions, and tended materially to raise the reputation of its author. Cheselden was certainly the first anatomist of his day, and his opinions are still regarded with reverence by the professors of medicine; and though his works were attacked with much asperity by Dr. Douglas and others, yet the great German physician, Laurence Heistei’, did ample justice to their merits. The celebrated John Hun¬ ter was one of his pupils.—Dr. Rees’ Encyclop. Biog. Brit. * The ingenuity of mechanics has not devised a joint or hinge, to which the anatomist cannot point out either a parallel, or superior example in the animal frame. To exhaust this subject, so replete in facts commanding admira¬ tion, would occupy a volume : our observations in addition to those in the text, must therefore be desultory. Of the universal joint, that which permits motion in every direc¬ tion, the hip and the shoulder are examples, the mechanic approaches nearest to it in the ball and socket joint. In man the moveable bone has a rounded head ; the corres- ponding hollow is in the supporting bone. Let it be remarked that not only is this the most appropriate joint for attaching the limbs to the trunk, but that it is placed in the most advantageous situation. By being at the upper part of the limbs, the whole of those members par¬ take of the same extensive motion. Plow inelegant, how awkward, how restricting the powers of the limbs, if the hips and shoulders permitted only a forward and backward motion, whilst the ball and socket joints were at the knees and elbows ; how much stronger are the more delicate joints by not being of that universal mobility. This proves, then, not only that there is design in the human skeleton, but design, directed by perfect wisdom. It is found that the joint of the lower jaw always varies in the most apt accordance with the food of the animal to which it belongs. In the whalebone whale, which has no teeth, and whose mouth is employed as a net and strainer for catching, and separating from the water, the fish upon which the animal feeds, the joint is very simple, it may be compared to a piece of leather attaching the jaw to the basis of the skull. On the contrary, in the sea otter, living upon shell-fish, great crushing power is required; but as no mastication is employed by the animal, any lateral motion of the jaw would be unnecessary. The joint is adapted to the purpose, the hinge of the jaw, each condyle, is locked so fast into the skull, that even after death, and all the soft parts are removed, the jaw can scarcely be sepai’ated from it: its strength is prodigious. In the lion, hyaena, and others of that class, the joint is like the last described; but as they require to open their mouths more widely, the joint of the jaw has more play. In grami¬ nivorous animals, and those which, like man, constantly, or occasionally employ mastication, the jaw requires not only the motion requisite for opening and closing, but a lateral motion for grinding: the demand is not unattended to ; but, to give the power, the condyle must be occasionally moved out of its natural socket upon an eminence, in which situa¬ tion it would be so unsteady as readily to admit of disloca¬ tion, was there not in all such animals a protecting pro¬ vision. There is an elastic substance interposed between the condyles of the lower jaw and the skull, making a kind of P NATURAL THEOLOGY. GG CHAPTER IX. OF THE MUSCLES. Muscles, with their tendons, are the instruments by which animal motion is performed. It will be our business to point out instances in which, and properties with respect to which, the disposition of these muscles is as strictly mechanical, as that of the wires and strings of a puppet. I. We may observe, what I believe is universal, an exact relation between the joint and the muscles which move it. Whatever motion the joint, by its mechanical construction, is capable of performing, that motion, the annexed muscles, by their position, are capable of producing. For example; if there be, as at the knee and elbow, a hinge-joint, capable of motion only in the same plane, the leaders, as they are called, i. e. the muscular tendons, are placed in directions parallel to the bone, so as, by the contraction, or relaxation, of the muscles to which they belong, to produce that motion and no other. If these joints were capable of a freer motion, there are no muscles to produce it. Whereas at the shoulder and the hip, where the ball and socket joint allows, by its construction, of a rotatory or sweeping motion, tendons are placed in such a position, and pull in such a direction, as to produce the motion of which the joint admits. For instance, the sartorius or tailors muscle, rising from the spine, running diagonally across the thigh, and taking hold of the inside of the main bone of the leg a little below the knee, enables us, by its contraction, to throw one leg and thigh over the other; giving effect, at the same time, to the ball and socket joint at the hip, and the hinge-joint at the knee. There is, as we have seen, a specific mechanism in the bones, for the rotatory motions of the head and hands : there is, also, in the oblique direction of the muscles belonging to them, a specific provision for the putting of this mechanism of the bones into action. And mark the consent of uses, the oblique muscles would have been inefficient without that particular articulation : that particular articulation would have been lost, without the oblique muscles. It may be proper, however, to observe with respect to the head , although I think it does not vary the case, that its oblique motions and inclinations are often motions in a diagonal , produced by the joint action of muscles lying in straight direc¬ tions. But whether the pull be single or combined, the articulation is always such, as to be capable of obeying the action of the muscles. The oblique muscles attached to the head, are likewise so disposed, as to be capable of steadying the globe, as well as of moving, it. The head of a new-born infant is often obliged to be filleted up. After death, the head drops and rolls in every direction. So that it is by theequilibre of the muscles, by the aid of a consider¬ able and equipollent muscular force in constant exertion, that the head maintains its erect posture. The muscles here supply what would otherwise be a great defect in the articula¬ tion : for the joint in the neck, although admirably adapted to the motion of the head, is insufficient for its support. It is not only by the means of a most curious structure of the bones that a man turns his head, but by virtue of an adjusted muscular power, that he even holds it up. As another example of what we are illustrating, viz. conformity of use between the bones and the muscles, it has been observed of the different vertebrae, that their processes are exactly proportioned to the quantity of motion which the other bones allow of, and which the respective muscles are capable of producing. II. A muscle acts only by contraction. Its force is exerted in no other way. When the double joint; and as the elastic substance moves along with the condyle, to which its concave surface is well adapted, it is carried with it to the eminence, and while there provides for it a secure resting place. This is very distinct in man, but still more so in the elephant. It has been thought a very ingenious contrivance lately proposed for a carriage to carry its own rail-road with it: is not this as worthy of admiration ? The beautiful mechanism of the human knee is detailed by Palcy. It has a similar structure in most animals requiring the same variety of movements. However, in some swimming birds, as the passage-duck, instead of a patella, or knee-cap, there is at the joint a process three inches long, proceeding from the lower bone of the leg. To the end of this process the muscles ai'e attached, and it is easy to see what an increased power of motion, what an additional leverage is thus obtained to aid the progress of the bird when swimming.—See Sir Everard Home’s and Cuvier’s Lectures. NATURAL THEOLOGY. G7 exertion ceases, it relaxes itself, that is, it returns by relaxation to its former state ; but without energy. This is the nature of the muscular fibre: and being so, it is evident that the reciprocal energetic motion of the limbs, by which we mean motion with force in oppo¬ site directions, can only be produced by the instrumentality of opposite or antagonist muscles ; of flexors and extensors answering to each other. For instance, the biceps and brachiseus interims muscles, placed in the front part of the upper arm, by their contraction, bend the elbow; and with such degree of force, as the case requires, or the strength admits of. The relaxation of these muscles, after the effort, would merely let the fore-arm drop down. For the hack stroke , therefore, and that the arm may not only bend at the elbow, but also extend and straighten itself with force, other muscles, the longus and brevis brachiasus externus and the anconseus, placed on the hinder part of the arms, by their contractile twitch fetch back the fore-arm into a straight line with the cubit, with no less force than that with which it was bent out of it. The same thing obtains in all the limbs, and in every moveable part of the body. A finger is not bent and straightened, without the contraction of two muscles taking place. It is evident, therefore, that the animal functions require that particular dis¬ position of the muscles which we describe by the name of antagonist muscles. And they are accordingly so disposed. Every muscle is provided with an adversary. They act, like two sawyers in a pit, by an opposite pull: and nothing surely can more strongly indicate design and attention to an end, than their being thus stationed, than this collocation. The nature of the muscular fibre being what it is, the purposes of the animal could be answered by no other. And not only the capacity for motion, but the aspect and symmetry of the body is preserved by the muscles being marshalled according to this order, e. g. the mouth is holden in the middle of the face, and its angles kept in a state of exact correspondency, by two muscles drawing against, and balancing each other. In a hemiplegia, when the muscle on one side is weakened, the muscle on the other side draws the mouth awry. Ill, Another property of the muscles, which could only be the result of care, is, their being almost universally so disposed, as not to obstruct or interfere with one another’s action. I know but one instance in which this impediment is perceived. We cannot easily swallow whilst we gape. This, I understand, is owing to the muscles employed in the act of deglu¬ tition being so implicated with the muscles of the lower jaw, that whilst these last are con¬ tracted, the former cannot act with freedom. The obstruction is, in this instance, attended with little inconvenience ; but it shews what the effect is where it does exist; and what loss of faculty there would be if it were more frequent. Now, when we reflect upon the number of muscles, not fewer than four hundred and forty-six in the human body, known and named*, how contiguous they lie to each other, in layers, as it were, over one another, crossing one another, sometimes imbedded in one another, sometimes perforating one another : an arrange¬ ment, which leaves to each its liberty, and its full play, must necessarily require meditation and counsel. IY. The following is oftentimes the case with the muscles. Their action is wanted where their situation would be inconvenient. In which case, the body of the muscle is placed in some commodious position at a distance, and made to communicate with the point of action by slender strings or wires. If the muscles which move the fingers, had been placed in the palm or back of the hand, they would have swelled that part to an awkward and clumsy thick¬ ness. The beauty, the proportions of the part, would have been destroyed. They are there¬ fore disposed in the arm, and even up to the elbow; and act by long tendons, strapped down at the wrist, and passing under the ligaments to the fingers, and to the joints of the fingers, which they are severally to move. In like manner, the muscles which move the toes, and many of the joints of the foot, how gracefully are they disposed in the calf of the leg, instead of forming an unwieldy tumefaction in the foot itself! The observation may be repeated of the muscle which draws the nictitating membrane over the eye. Its office is in the front of the eye ; but its body is lodged in the back part of the globe, where it lies safe, and where it encumbers nothing, Y. The great mechanical variety in the figure of the muscles may be thus stated. It appears to be a fixed law, that the contraction of a muscle shall be towards its centre, * Krill’s Anatomy, p. 295. ed, 3, F 2 08 NATURAL THEOLOGY. Therefore the subject for mechanism on each occasion is, so to modify the figure, and adjust the position of the muscle, as to produce the motion required, agreeably with this law. This can only be done by giving to different muscles a diversity of configuration, suited to their several offices, and to their situation with respect to the work which they have to perform. On which account we find them under a multiplicity of forms and attitudes ; sometimes with double, sometimes with treble tendons, sometimes with none: sometimes one tendon to several muscles, at other times one muscle to several tendons. The shape of the organ is susceptible of an incalculable variety, whilst the original property of the muscle, the law and line of its contraction, remains the same, and is simple. Herein the muscular system may be said to bear a perfect resemblance to our works of art. An artist does not alter the native quality of his materials, or their laws of action. He takes these as he finds them. His skill and ingenuity are employed in turning them, such as they are, to his account, by giving to the parts of his machine a form and relation, in which these unalterable properties may operate to the production of the effects intended. YI. The ejaculations can never too often be repeated ;—how many things must go right for us to be an hour at ease! how many more for us to be vigorous and active ! Yet vigour and activity are, in a vast plurality of instances, preserved in human bodies, notwithstanding that they depend upon so great a number of instruments of motion, and notwithstanding that the defect or disorder sometimes of a very small instrument, of a single pair, for instance, out of the four hundred and forty-six muscles which are employed, may be attended with grievous inconveniency. There is piety and good sense in the following observation, taken out of the Religious Philosopher : “ With much compassion,” says this writer, “ as well as astonish¬ ment at the goodness of our loving Creator have I considered the sad state of a certain gentleman, who, as to the rest, was in pretty good health, but only wanted' the use of these two little muscles that serve to lift up the eyelids, and so had almost lost the use of his sight, being forced, as long as this defect lasted, to shove up his eyelids every moment with his own hands* !” In general, we may remark, in how small a degree those, who enjoy the perfect use of their organs, know the comprehensiveness of the blessing, the variety of their obligation. They perceive a result, but they think little of the multitude of concurrences and rectitudes which go to form it. Besides these observations, which belong to the muscular organs as such, we may notice some advantages of structure which are more conspicuous in muscles of a certain class or description than in others. Thus : I. The variety, quickness, and precision, of which muscular motion is capable, are seen, I think, in no part so remarkably as in the tongue . It is worth any man’s while to watch the agility of his tongue ; the wonderful promptitude with which it executes changes of position, and the perfect exactness. Each syllable of articulated sound requires for its utterance a specific action of the tongue, and of the parts adjacent to it. The disposition and configu¬ ration of the mouth, appertaining to every letter and word, is not only peculiar, but, if nicely and accurately attended to, perceptible to the sight; insomuch, that curious persons have availed themselves of this circumstance to teach the deaf to speak, and to understand what is said by others. In the same person, and after his habit of speaking is formed, one, and only one, position of the parts, will produce a given articulate sound correctly. How instan¬ taneously are these positions assumed and dismissed; how numerous are the permutations, how various, yet how infallible ! Arbitrary and antic variety is not the thing we admire; but variety obeying a rule, conducing to an effect, and commensurate with exigencies infi¬ nitely diversified. I believe also that the anatomy of the tongue corresponds with these observations upon its activity. The muscles of the tongue are so numerous, and so impli¬ cated with one another, that they cannot be traced by the nicest dissection; nevertheless (which is a great perfection of the organ), neither the number, nor the complexity, nor what might seem to be the entanglement of its fibres, in any wise impede its motion, or render the determination, or success, of its efforts uncertain. * “The Religions Philosopher; or the right use of English by John Charnberlayne, esq., F. R. S. It has contemplating the works of the Creator,” was written in passed through several editions, the Dutch language, by Dr Nieuwentyt, and translated into NATURAL THEOLOGY. 69 I here entreat the reader s permission to step a little out of my way, to consider the parts of the mouthy in some of their other properties. It has been said, and that by an eminent physiologist, that whenever nature attempts to work two or more purposes by one instrument, she does both, or all, imperfectly. Is this true of the tongue, regarded as an instrument of speech, and of taste; or regarded as an instrument of speech, of taste, and of deglutition ? So much otherwise, that many persons, that is to say, nine hundred and ninety-nine persons out of a thousand, by the instrumentality of this one organ, talk, and taste, and swallow, very well. In fact, the constant warmth and moisture of the tongue, the thinness of the skin, the papillae upon its surface, qualify this organ for its office of tasting, as much as its inextricable multiplicity of fibres do for the rapid movements which are necessary to speech. Animals which feed upon grass have their tongues covered with a perforated skin, so as to admit the dissolved food to the papillae underneath, which, in the mean time remain defended from the rough action of the unbruised spicuke. There are brought together within the cavity of the mouth more distinct uses, and parts executing more distinct offices, than I think can be found lying so near to one another, or within the same compass, in any other portion of the body : viz. teeth of different shape, first for cutting, secondly for grinding; muscles most artificially disposed for carrying on the compound motion of the lower jaw, half lateral and half vertical, by which the mill is worked : fountains of saliva, springing up in different parts of the cavity for the moistening of the food, whilst the mastication is going on : glands, to feed the fountains ; a muscular construc¬ tion of a very peculiar kind in the back part of the cavity, for the guiding of the prepared aliment into its passage towards the stomach, and in many cases for carrying it along that passage; for, although we may imagine this to be done simply by the weight of the food itself, it in truth is not so, even in the upright posture of the human neck ; and most evi¬ dently is not the case with quadrupeds, with a horse for instance, in which, when pasturing, the food is thrust upward by muscular strength, instead of descending of its own accord. In the mean time, and within the same cavity, is going on another business, altogether different from what is here described,—that of respiration and speech. In addition, therefore, to all that has been mentioned, we have a passage opened from this cavity to the lungs, for the admission of air, exclusively of every other substance ; we have muscles, some in the larynx, and without number in the tongue, for the purpose of modulating that air in its passage, with a variety, a compass, and precision, of which no other musical instrument is capable. And lastly, which in my opinion crowns the whole as a piece of machinery, we have a specific contrivance for dividing the pneumatic part from the mechanical, and for pre¬ venting one set of actions interfering with the other. Where various functions are united, the difficulty is to guard against the inconveniences of a too great complexity. In no appa¬ ratus put together by art, and for the purposes of art, do I know such multifarious uses so aptly combined, as in the natural organization of the human mouth ; or where the structure, compared with the uses, is so simple. The mouth, with all these intentions to serve, is a single cavity ; is one machine; with its parts neither crowded nor confused, and each unem¬ barrassed by the rest: each at liberty in a degree sufficient for the end to be attained. If we cannot eat and sing at the same moment, we can eat one moment and sing the next: the respiration proceeding freely all the while. There is one case, however, of this double office, and that of the earliest necessity, which the mouth alone could not perform; and that is, carrying on together the two actions of sucking and breathing. Another route therefore is opened for the air, namely, through the nose, which lets the breath pass backward and forward, whilst the lips, in the act of sucking, are necessarily shut close upon the body from which the nutriment is drawn. This is a circum¬ stance which always appeared to me worthy of notice. The nose would have been necessai^, although it had not been the organ of smelling. The making it the seat of a sense, was super¬ adding a new use to a part already wanted ; was taking a wise advantage of an antecedent and a constitutional necessity. But to return to that which is the proper subject of the present section, the celeiity and precision of muscular motion. These qualities may be particularly obsened in the execution 70 NATURAL THEOLOGY. of many species of instrumental music , in which the changes produced by the hand of the musician are exceedingly rapid ; are exactly measured, even when most minute ; and display, on the part of the muscles, an obedience of action, alike wonderful for its quickness and its correctness. Or let a person only observe his own hand whilst he is writing ; the number of muscles, which are brought to bear upon the pen ; how the joint and adjusted operation of several tendons is concerned in every stroke, yet that five hundred such strokes are drawn in a minute. Not a letter can be turned without more than one, or two, or three tendinous con¬ tractions, definite, both as to the choice of the tendon, and as to the space through which the contraction moves; yet how currently does the work proceed ! And when we look at it, how faithful have the muscles been to their duty, how true to the order which endeavour or habit hath inculcated ! For let it be remembered, that whilst a man’s hand-writing is the same, an exactitude of order is preserved, whether he write well or ill. These two instances of music and writing, shew not only the quickness and precision of muscular action, but the docility. II. Regarding the particular configuration of muscles, sphincter , or circular muscles, appear to me admirable pieces of mechanism. It is the muscular power most happily applied; the same quality of the muscular substance, but under a new modification. The circular dispo¬ sition of the fibres is strictly mechanical; but, though the most mechanical, is not the only thing in sphincters which deserves our notice. The regulated degree of contractile force with which they are endowed, sufficient for retention, yet vincible when requisite, together with their ordinary state of actual contraction, by means of which their dependence upon the will is not constant, but occasional, gives to them a constitution, of which the conveniency is ines¬ timable. This, their semi-voluntary character, is exactly such as suits with the wants and functions of the animal. III. We may also, upon the subject of muscles, observe, that many of our most important actions are achieved by the combined help of different muscles. Frequently, a diagonal motion is produced by the contraction of tendons pulling in the direction of the sides of the parallelogram. This is the case, as hath been already noticed, with some of the oblique nutations of the head. Sometimes the number of co-operating muscles is very great. Dr. Nieuentyt, in the Leipsic Transactions, reckons up a hundred muscles that are employed every time we breathe; yet we take in, or let out, our breath, without reflecting what a work is thereby performed; what an apparatus is laid in of instruments for the service, and how many such contribute their assistance to the effect. Breathing with ease, is a blessing of every moment : yet, of all others, it is that which we possess with the least consciousness. A man in an asthma is the only man who knows how to estimate it. IY. Mr. Home has observed # , that the most important and the most delicate actions are performed in the body by the smallest muscles ; and he mentions, as his examples, the muscles which have been discovered in the iris of the eye, and the drum of the ear. The tenuity of these muscles is astonishing. They are microscopic hairs ; must be magnified to be visible ; yet are they real, effective muscles: and not only such, but the grandest and most precious of our faculties, sight and hearing, depend upon their health and action. Y. The muscles act in the limbs with what is called a mechanical disadvantage. The muscle at the shoulder, by which the arm is raised, is fixed nearly in the same manner as the load is fixed upon a steelyard, within a few decimals, we will say, of an inch from the centre upon which the steelyard turns. In this situation, we find that a very heavy draught is no more than sufficient to countervail the force of a small lead plummet, placed upon the long- arm of the steelyard, at the distance of perhaps fifteen or twenty inches from the centre and on the other side of it. And this is the disadvantage which is meant. And an absolute dis- advantage, no doubt, it would be, if the object were to spare the force of muscular contrac¬ tion. But observe how conducive is this constitution to animal conveniency. Mechanism has always in view one or other of these two purposes ; either to move a great weight slowly, and through a small space, or to move a light weight rapidly, through a considerable sweep. For the former of these purposes, a different species of lever, and a different collocation of the * Phil. Trans, part i. 1800, p. 8 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 71 muscles, might be better than the present; but for the second, the present structure is the true one. Now it happens that the second, and not the first, is that which the occasions of animal life principally call for. In what concerns the human body, it is of much more consequence to any man to be able to carry his hand to his head with due expedition, than it would be to have the power of raising from the ground a heavier load (of two or three more hundred weight, we will suppose), than he can lift at present. This last is a faculty, which, on some extraordinary occasions, he may desire to possess ; but the other is what he wants and uses every hour or minute. In like manner, a husbandman or a gardener will do more execution, by being able to carry his scythe, his rake, or his flail, with a sufficient dis¬ patch through a sufficient space, than if, with greater strength, his motions were proportion- ably more confined, and slow. It is the same with a mechanic in the use of his tools. It is the same also with other animals in the use of their limbs. In general, the vivacity of their motions would be ill exchanged for greater force under a clumsier structure. We have offered our observations upon the structure of muscles in general; we have also noticed certain species of muscles; but there are also single muscles, which bear marks of mechanical contrivance, appropriate as well as particular. Out of many instances of this kind, we select the following. I. Of muscular actions, even of those which are well understood, some of the most curious are incapable of popular explanation; at least, without the aid of plates and figures. This is in a great measure the case, with a very familiar, but, at the same time, a very compli¬ cated motion,—that of the lower jaw ; and with the muscular structure by which it is pro¬ duced. One of the muscles concerned may, however, be described in such a manner, as to be, I think, sufficiently comprehended for our present purpose. The problem is to pull the lower jaw down. The obvious method should seem to be, to place a straight muscle, viz. to fix a string from the chin to the breast, the contraction of which would open the mouth, and produce the motion required at once. But it is evident that the form and liberty of the neck forbid a muscle being laid in such a position; and that, consistently with the preserva¬ tion of this form, the motion, which we want, must be effectuated by some muscular mecha¬ nism disposed farther back in the jaw. The mechanism adopted is as follows. A certain muscle called the diagastric , rises on the side of the face, considerably above the insertion of the lower jaw, and comes down, being converted in its progress into a round tendon. Now it is manifest that the tendon, whilst it pursues a direction descending towards the jaw, must, by its contraction, pull the jaw up, instead of down. What then was to be done ? This, we find, is done: the descending tendon, when it is got low enough, is passed through a loop, or ring, or pulley, in the os liyoides, and then made to ascend; and, having thus changed its line of direction, is inserted into the inner part of the chin : by which device, viz. the turn at the loop, the action of the muscle (which in all muscles is contraction) that before would have pulled the jaw up, now as necessarily draws it down. u The mouth/’ says Heister, u is opened by means of this trochlea in a most wonderful and elegant manner.” II. What contrivance can be more mechanical than the following, viz. a slit in one tendon to let another tendon pass through it ? This structure is found in the tendons which move the toes and fingers. The long tendon, as it is called, in the foot, which bends the first joint of the toe, passes through the short tendon which bends the second joint; which course allows to the sinew more liberty, and a more commodious action than it would otherwise have been capable of exerting *. There is nothing, I believe, in a silk or cotton mill, in the belts, or straps, or ropes, by which motion is communicated from one part of the machine to another, that is more artificial, or more evidently so, than this perforation. III. The next circumstance which I shall mention under this head of muscular arrange¬ ment, is so decisive a mark of intention, that it always appeared to me to supersede, in some measure, the necessity of seeking for any other observation upon the subject: and that circumstance is, the tendons which pass from the leg to the foot, being bound down by a ligament at the ankle. The foot is placed at a considerable angle with the leg. It is manifest, therefore, that the flexible strings, passing along the interior of the angle, if left to themselves, would, when stretched, start from it. The obvious preventive is to tie them * Ches. Anat. p. 1 ] 9. 72 NATURAL THEOLOGY. down. And this is done in fact. Across the instep, or rather just above it, the anatomist finds a strong ligament, under which the tendons pass to the foot. The effect of the liga¬ ment as a bandage, can be made evident to the senses ; for if it be cut, the tendons start up. The simplicity, yet the clearness of this contrivance, its exact resemblance to established re¬ sources of art, place it amongst the most indubitable manifestations of design with which we are acquainted. There is also a farther use to be made of the present example, and that is, as it precisely contradicts the opinion, that the parts of animals may have been all formed by what is called appeteyicy , i. e. endeavour, perpetuated, and imperceptibly working its effect, through an incalculable series of generations. We have here no endeavour, but the reverse of it ; a constant renitency and reluctance. The endeavour is all the other way. The pressure of the ligament constrains the tendons ; the tendons react upon the pressure of the ligament. It is impossible that the ligament should ever have been generated by the exercise of the tendon, or in the course of that exercise, forasmuch as the force of the tendon perpendicu¬ larly resists the fibre which confines it, and is constantly endeavouring, not to form, but to rupture and displace, the threads of which the ligament is composed. Keill has reckoned up, in the human body, four hundred and forty six muscles, dissectible and describable ; and hath assigned a use to every one of the number. This cannot be all imagination. Bishop Wilkins hath observed from Galen, that there are, at least, ten several qualifica¬ tions to be attended to in each particular muscle ; viz. its proper figure ; its just magnitude ; its fulcrum; its point of action, supposing the figure to be fixed; its collocation, with re¬ spect to its two ends, the upper and the lower; the place ; the position of the whole muscle ; the introduction into it of nerves, arteries, veins. How are things, including so many ad¬ justments, to be made ; or, when made, how are they to be put together, without intelli¬ gence ? I have sometimes wondered, why we are not struck with mechanism in animal bodies, as readily and as strongly as we are struck with it, at first sight, in a watch or a mill. % One reason of the difference may be, that animal bodies are, in a great measure, made up of soft, flabby substances, such as muscles and membranes ; whereas we have been accustomed to trace mechanism in sharp lines, in the configuration of hard materials, in the moulding, chiseling, and filing into shapes, of such articles as metals or wood. There is something therefore of habit in the case ; but it is sufficiently evident, that there can be no proper reason for any distinction of the sort. Mechanism may be displayed in the one kind of substance, as well as in the other. Although the few instances we have selected, even as they stand in our description, are nothing short perhaps of logical proofs of design, yet it must not be forgotten, that in every part of anatomy, description is a poor substitute for inspection. It is well said of an able anatomist*, and said in reference to the very part of the subject which we have been treat¬ ing of:—“ Imperfecta litcc musculorum descriptio, non minus arida est legentibus, quam inspectantibus fuerit jucunda eorundem prasparatio. Elegantissima enim mechanices arti- ficia, creberrime in illis obvia, verbis nonnisi obscure exprimuntur : carnium autem ductu, tendinum colore, insertionum proportione, et trochlearium distributione, oculis exposita, omnem superant admiration-emt,” * Steno, in Bias. Anat. Animal, p. 2, c. 4. •j~ (“ This description of the muscles is imperfect, being not less uninteresting to those reading it, than the prepa¬ ration of the same parts was satisfactory to those inspect¬ ing them. For their intricate mechanisms are most ele¬ gant, and, though very often remarkably apparent, they are obscurely described in words : thus the form of the fleshy parts, the colour of the tendons, the proportion of the insertions, and the distribution of the joints, when exposed to the eye, are superior to any praise.”) A few more phenomena of the construction and action of the muscles, than have been noticed by our author, seem well worthy of observation. The most important muscular structure in the animal frame is the heart. If its ventricles are superficially examined, the muscular fibres by which they are united seem to belong equally to both. But this is not so, for the septum is almost en¬ tirely a portion of the left ventricle, giving it a great supe¬ riority of strength over the right, and consequently fitting it for its office of propelling the blood through the arteries. 73 NATURAL THEOLOGY. CHAPTER X. OF THE VESSELS OF ANIMAL BODIES. The circulation of the blood, through the bodies of men and quadrupeds, and the appa¬ ratus by which it is carried on, compose a system, and testify a contrivance, perhaps the best understood of any part of the animal frame. The lymphatic system, or the nervous system, may be more subtle and intricate ; nay, it is possible that in their structure they may be even more artificial than the sanguiferous; but we do not know so much about them*. The utility of the circulation of the blood, I assume as an acknowledged point. One grand purpose is plainly answered by it; the distributing to every part, every extremity, every nook and corner of the body, the nourishment which is received into it by one aper¬ ture. What enters at the mouth, finds its way to the fingers’ ends. A more difficult mechanical problem could hardly I think be proposed, than to discover a method of con- It is impossible to make the peculiar arrangement of its muscular fibres understood by an unprofessional reader without drawings, and a lengthened description. We must be content, therefore, merely to quote Sir Everard Home’s concluding observations :—“ By this beautiful mechanism, the muscular fibres of the left ventricle per¬ form their office with a smaller quantity of contraction, compared to their length (although in themselves propor¬ tionally longer) than those of any other muscle in the body, and consequently produce a greater effect in a shorter time. By this disposition of the fibres, an ad¬ vantage is gained over every other arrangement, and adapt¬ ing the ventricle so perfectly to its office, that it would appear almost impossible to construct it in any other way, so as to answer the purpose for which it is intended.” The rapidity of muscular motion is among one of the greatest wonders of the animal frame. In the race horse, when going with its greatest speed, each leg must move in the T^th part of a second. When a man is rapidly run¬ ning, the rectus femoris in the leg is shortened three inches every ^-g-oths of a second. But the quickest movements are of the tongue in speaking. Haller pronounced 1500 letters-in a minute, therefore each muscular contraction to effect this must, on an average, occupy no more than the gboft th of a minute; and still less time in such letters as R, which require repeated contractions of the same muscle. If the tremors occurring in its pronunciation are ten, the styloglossi muscles must contract in the 30 o 00 th of a minute, or in of a third. Pigeons have performed distances so rapidljq that an agitation of their wings must have been made in the -Jjth of a third. (Haller’s Elem. Physiolog. iv. 483.) The accuracy with which the muscles regulate motion is as admirable as the rapidity with which they effect it. In producing the several musical notes by minute changes in the small aperture of the glottis, or in balancing the body on the tight or slack rope, the muscles of the singer and the dancer must contract with an accuracy which demands that there shall not be an error in the admeasure¬ ment equal to the ^croVoo^ P ar t °f an inch. (Barclay’s Muscular Motions of the Human Body, 299). The muscles capable of such rapid, and yet such accu¬ rate motions, are not thereby disabled to exert extreme power. A weight of 300 pounds has been elevated by the lower jaw; and Topham lifted with his mouth a table six feet long, with 50 pounds attached to the furthest ex¬ tremity. (Haller’s Elem. Phys. xi. s. 2.) * Though the circulation of the blood, as our author states, is among the best understood phenomena of the animal economy, yet it is of comparatively modern disco¬ very. To our countryman, Dr William Harvey, man¬ kind is indebted for its demonstration. It was a discovery that advanced our knowledge of the animal economy more in one day than it had been during many preceding ages. All the disputes about phlebotomy, some of which ran very high, especially in the early part of the 15th century ; all the theories of the ancients relating to the subject were exposed in all their error by this single demonstration. “ The circulation of the blood, and the ductus thoraci- cus ,” exclaimed the delighted Gasseridus, “ are the two poles upon which all physic for the future must turn.” It is one of the few discoveries which, being demonstrated by unvarying experiments, was at once forced into belief, and acquired unbounded fame to the discoverer. As the fact cannot be confuted, or its importance be diminished, the only mode of lessening Harvey’s merit is to deny the originality of the discovery. It is to be regretted, that even so great a man as Dr William Hunter is among the number of his detractors. A plain statement of truths will put the subject in its just position. Hippocrates, Aristotle, Plato, Apuleius, the Alexandrian anatomists, and others, have been cited as cognisant of the blood’s circulation, but these declare in their writings, that they believed the blood to ebb and flow like the ocean’3 tides ; and that the blood is confined to the veins, whilst the arteries merely contain air. Galen denied that the latter did not contain blood, but he was as ignorant as his pre¬ decessors of its circulation. Servetus subsequently was aware that the blood passed through the lungs; and Fa- bricius ab Aquapendente, the tutor of Harvey, demon¬ strated the valves of the veins; but it was this his pupil who first discovered, or even guessed, that the blood flows from the heart through the arteries, and returns to it through the veins. Some have declared that this circu¬ lation was known to St Ambrose ; and others, from Eccle¬ siastes xii. 6, that Solomon had this knowledge among his other stores of wisdom. These, at the utmost, noticed that the blood moved in living creatures, a fact which every child must have observed. When the course of the motion came to be described, we have seen nothing was offered but erroneous surmises. Harvey’s discovery was the legitimate result of anatomical research,—a discovery which has been further illustrated, but which has not been, cannot be, changed. 74 NATURAL THEOLOGY. stantly repairing the waste, and of supplying an accession of substance to every part of a complicated machine, at the same time. This system presents itself under two views : first, the disposition of the blood-vessels, i. e. the laying of the pipes ; and, secondly, the construction of the engine at the centre, viz. the heart, for driving the blood through them. I. The disposition of the blood-vessels, as far as regards the supply of the body, is like that of the water-pipes in a city, viz. large and main trunks branching off by smaller pipes (and these again by still narrower tubes) in every direction, and towards every part in which the fluid, which they convey, can be wanted. So far the water-pipes which serve a town may represent the vessels which carry the blood from the heart. But there is another thing necessary to the blood, which is not wanted for the water; and that is, the carrying of it back again to its source. For this office, a reversed system of vessels is prepared, which, uniting at their extremities with the extremities of the first system, collects the divided and subdivided streamlets, first by capillary ramifications into larger branches, secondly, by these branches into trunks; and thus returns the blood (almost exactly invert¬ ing the order in which it went out) to the fountain whence its motion proceeded. All which is evident mechanism. The body, therefore, contains two systems of blood-vessels, arteries and veins. Between the constitution of the systems there are also two differences, suited to the functions which the systems have to execute. The blood, in going out, passing always from wider into narrower tubes ; and, in coming back, from narrower into wider; it is evident, that the impulse and pressure upon the sides of the blood-vessel, will be much greater in one case than the other. Accordingly, the arteries which carry out the blood, are formed of much tougher and stronger coats, than the veins which bring it back. That is one difference : the other is still more artificial, or, if I may so speak, indicates, still more clearly, the care and anxiety of the artificer. Forasmuch as in the arteries, by reason of the greater force with which the blood is urged along them, a wound or rupture would be more dangerous than in the veins, these vessels are defended from injury, not only by their texture, but by their situation ; and by every advantage of situation which can be given to them. They are buried in sinuses, or they creep along grooves, made for them in the bones : for instance, the under-edge of the ribs is sloped and furrowed solely for the passage of these vessels. Sometimes they proceed in channels, protected by stout parapets on each side; which last description is remarkable in the bones of the fingers, these being hollowed out, on the under¬ side, like a scoop, and with such a concavity, that the finger may be cut across to the bone, without hurting the artery which runs along it. At other times, the arteries pass in canals wrought in the substance, and in the very middle of the substance, of the bone: this takes place in the lower jaw ; and is found where there would, otherwise, be danger of compres¬ sion by sudden curvature. All this care is wonderful, yet not more than what the import¬ ance of the case required. To those who venture their lives in a ship, it has been often said, that there is only an inch-board between them and death; but in the body itself, espe¬ cially in the arterial system, there is, in many parts, only a membrane, a skin, a thread. For which reason, this system lies deep under the integuments; whereas the veins, in which the mischief that ensues from injuring the coats is much less, lie in general above the arte¬ ries ; come nearer to the surface ; are more exposed. It may be farther observed concerning the two systems taken together, that though the arterial, with its trunk and branches and small twigs, may be imagined to issue or proceed ; in other words, to grow from the heart; like a plant from its root, or the fibres of a leaf from its foot-stalk (which, however, were it so, would be only to resolve one mechanism into another) ; yet the venal, the returning system, can never be formed in this manner. The arteries might go on shooting out from their extremities, i. e. lengthening and subdivid¬ ing indefinitely ; but an inverted system, continually uniting its streams, instead of dividing, and thus carrying back what the other system carried out, could not be referred to the same process. II. The next thing to be considered is the engine which works this machinery, viz. the heart. For our purpose it is unnecessary to ascertain the principle upon which the heart NATURAL THEOLOGY. 75 acts. Whether it be irritation excited by the contact of the blood, by the influx of the nervous fluid, or whatever else be the cause of its motion, it is something which is capable of producing, in a living muscular fibre, reciprocal contraction and relaxation. This is the power we have to work with : and the inquiry is, how this power is applied in the instance before us. There is provided, in the central part of the body, a hollow muscle, invested with spiral fibres, running in both directions, the layers intersecting one another ; in some animals, however, appearing to be semicircular rather than spiral. By the contraction of these fibres, the sides of the muscular cavities are necessarily squeezed together, so as to force out from them any fluid which they may at that time contain: by the relaxation of the same fibres, the cavities are in their turn dilated, and, of course, prepared to admit every fluid which may be poured into them. Into these cavities are inserted the great trunks, both of the arteries which carry out the blood, and of the veins which bring it back. This is a general account of the apparatus; and the simplest idea of its action is, that, by each contraction, a portion of blood is forced by a syringe into the arteries; and, at each dilatation, an equal portion is received from the veins. This produces, at each pulse, a motion, and change in the mass of blood, to the amount of what the cavity contains, which in a full grown human heart I understand is about an ounce, or two table-spoons full. How quickly these changes succeed one another, and by this succession how sufficient they are to support a stream or circulation throughout the system, may be understood by the following computation, abridged from Keill’s Anatomy, p. 117, ed. 3 : “ Each ventricle will at least contain one ounce of blood. The heart contracts four thousand times in one hour; from which it follows, that there pass through the heart, every hour, four thousand ounces, or three hundred and fifty pounds of blood. Now the whole mass of blood is said to be about twenty-five pounds; so that a quantity of blood, equal to the whole mass of blood, passes through the heart fourteen times in one hour; which is about once in four minutes.” Consider what an affair this is, when we come to very large animals. The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the waterworks at London-Bridge ; and the water roaring in its passage through that pipe is inferior, in impetus and velocity, to the blood gushing from the whale’s heart. Hear Dr. Hunter’s account of the dissection of a whale:—“ The aorta measured a foot diameter. Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thown out of the heart at a stroke with an immense velocity, through a tube of a foot diameter. The whole idea fills the mind with wonder*.” The account which we have here stated, of the injection of blood into the arteries by the contraction, and of the corresponding reception of it from the veins by the dilatation of the cavities of the heart, and of the circulation being thereby maintained through the blood¬ vessels of the body, is true, but imperfect. The heart performs this office, but it is in con¬ junction with another of equal curiosity and importance. It was necessary that the blood should be successively brought into contact, or contiguity, or proximity with the air. I do not know that the chymical reason, upon which this necessity is founded, has been yet sufficiently explored. It seems to be made appear, that the atmosphere which we breathe is a mixture of two kinds of air ; one pure and vital, the other, for the purposes of life, effete, foul, and noxious ; that when we have drawn in our breath, the blood in the lungs imbibes from the air, thus brought into a contiguity with it, a portion of its pure ingredient, and at the same time gives out the effete or corrupt air which it contained, and which is carried away, along with the lialitus, every time we expire. At least, by comparing the air which is breathed from the lungs, with the air that enters the lungs, it is found to have lost some of its pure part, and to have brought away with it an addition of its impure part. Whether these experiments satisfy the question, as to the need which the blood stands in of being visited by continual accesses of air, is not for us to enquire into, nor material to our argument: it is sufficient to know, that, in the constitution of most animals, such a necessity exists, and that the air, by some means or other, must be introduced into a near communication with the blood. The lungs of animals are constructed for this purpose. They consist of blood¬ vessels and air-vessels, lying close to each other; and whenever there is a branch of the * Dr. Hunter's Account of the Dissection of a Whale. (Phil. Trans.) NATURAL THEOLOGY. 7 C> trachea or windpipe, there is a branch accompanying it of the vein and artery, and the air- vessel is always in the middle between the blood-vessels *. The internal surface of these vessels, upon which the application of the air to the blood depends, would, if collected and expanded, be, in a man, equal to a superficies of fifteen feet square. Now, in order to give the blood in its course the benefit of this organization (and this is the part of the subject with which we are chiefly concerned), the following operation takes place. As soon as the blood is received by the heart from the veins of the body, and before that is sent out again into its arteries, it is carried, by the force of the contraction of the heart, and by means of a separate and supplementary artery, to the lungs, and made to enter the vessels of the lungs; from which, after it has undergone the action, whatever it be, of that viscus, it is brought back by a large vein once more to the heart, in order, when thus concocted and prepared, to be thence distributed anew into the system. This assigns to the heart a double office. The pulmonary circulation is a system within a system; and one action of the heart is the origin of both. For this complicated function, four cavities become necessary; and four are accordingly provided: two, called ventricles, which send out the blood, viz. one into the lungs, in the first instance; the other into the mass, after it has returned from the lungs; two others also, called auricles, which receive the blood from the veins; viz. one, as it comes immediately from the body ; the other, as the same blood comes a second time after its circulation through the lungs. So that there are two receiving cavities, and two forcing cavities. The structure of the heart has reference to the lungs; for without the lungs, one of each would have been sufficient. The translation of the blood in the heart itself is after this manner. The receiving cavities respectively communicate with the forcing cavities, and, by their contraction, unload the received blood into them. The forcing cavities, when it is their turn to contract, compel the same blood into the mouths of the arteries j'. The account here given will not convey to a reader, ignorant of anatomy, any thing like an accurate notion of the form, action, or use, of the parts (nor can any short and popular account do this) ; but it is abundantly sufficient to testify contrivance; and although imper¬ fect, being true as far as it goes, may be relied upon for the only purpose for which we offer it, the purpose of this conclusion. “ The wisdom of the Creator,” saitli Hamburgher, u is in nothing seen more gloriously than in the heart.” And how well doth it execute its office ! An anatomist, who understood the structure of the heart, might say beforehand that it would play; but he would expect, I think, from the complexity of its mechanism, and the delicacy of many of its,parts, that it should always be liable to derangement, or that it would soon work itself out. Yet shall this wonderful machine go, night and day, for eighty years together, at the rate of a hundred thousand strokes every twenty-four hours, having, at every stroke, a great resistance to overcome; and shall continue this action for this length of time, without disorder, and without weariness j ! * Keill’s Anatomy, p. 121. The doubts of Paley as to the then chemical expla¬ nations of the action of the atmospheric air upon the blood being founded in truth, time has not yet removed. The ablest Philosophers since his days, such as Davy, Black, Lavoisier, and others, have examined the question with a success by no means commensurate with the talent employed. But although much yet remains that is unexplained, much that is mysterious, yet many discoveries have been made, demonstrating how well all animals are adapted to the atmosphere in which they dwell; that none can exist in air devoid of oxygen gas ; and that, if this is by any pro¬ cess removed, even worms perish, which are perhaps more retentive of life than any other animals. Frogs and fish, of all kinds, do the same. It has been found, too, that the proportion of vital air present in the atmosphere, is precisely that which is best adapted to their existence ; for if by any means the proportion is diminished or increased, the animal becomes uneasy, or perishes. It was once considered certain, from the researches of Dr. Crawford, that even animal warmth was owing to the action of the atmosphere on the blood, as it passed through the lungs. And this is probably the case, although some more recent experiments of Dr. Davy and others have rendered it doubtful. “ The fact,’’ says Dr. Thomson, “ that all animals which respire regularly are hot blooded, while amphibious animals and fishes are cold blooded, seems to me to establish a connection between respiration and heat; though, we are unable to explain in what way the heat is evolved. ” In spite of all these mysteries, the chemist can still see how well all animals are adapted to the medium in which they dwell, he is the first to be convinced that not a particle of matter was created in vain ; but that every atom of air has its use, and is in turn employed with a regularity and harmony which amply betrays the skill of the artist. Thomson’s Chem., Yol. 4, p.620. Phil.Trans., 1812, 378. J Sir E. Home, examining the anatomical structure of the great shark (Squalus maximus), found the heart very NATURAL THEOLOGY, 77 But farther: from the account which has been given of the mechanism of the heart, it is evident that it must require the interposition of valves ; that the success, indeed, of its action must depend upon these; for when any one of its cavities contracts, the necessary tendency of the force will be to drive the enclosed blood, not only into the mouth of the artery where it ought to go, but also back again into the mouth of the vein from which it flowed. In like manner, when by the relaxation of the fibres the same cavity is dilated, the blood would not only run into it from the vein, which was the course intended, but back from the artery, through which it ought to be moving forward. The way of preventing a reflux of the fluid, in both these cases, is to fix valves, which, like flood-gates, may open a way to the stream in one direction, and shut up the passage against it in another. The heart, constituted as it is, can no more work without valves, than a pump can. When the piston descends in a pump, if it were not for the stoppage by the valve beneath, the motion would only thrust down the water which it had before drawn up. A similar consequence would frustrate the action of the heart. Valves, therefore, properly disposed, i. e. properly with respect to the course of the blood which it is necessary to promote, are essential to the contrivance. And valves so disposed , are accordingly provided. A valve is placed in the communication between each auricle and its ventricle, lest, when the ventricle contracts, part of the blood should get back again into the auricle, instead of the whole entering, as it ought to do, the mouth of the artery. A valve is also fixed at the mouth of each of the great arteries which take the blood from the heart; leaving the passage free, so long as the blood holds its proper course forward; closing it, whenever the blood, in consequence of the relaxation of the ventricle, would attempt to flow back. There is some variety in the construction of these valves, though all the valves of the body act nearly upon the same principle, and are destined to the same use. In general they consist of a thin membrane, lying close to the side of the vessel, and consequently allowing an open passage whilst the stream runs one way, but thrust out from the side by the fluid getting behind it, and opposing the passage of the blood, when it would flow the other way. Where more than one membrane is employed, the different membranes only compose one valve. Their joint action fulfils the office of a valve: for instance; over the entrance of the right auricle of the heart into the right ventricle, three of these skins or membranes are fixed, of a triangular figure, the bases of the triangles fastened to the flesh ; the sides and summits loose ; but, though loose, connected by threads of a determinate length, with certain small fleshy prominences adjoining. The effect of this construction is, that, when the ventricle contracts, the blood endeavouring to escape in all directions, and amongst other directions pressing upwards, gets between these membranes and the sides of the passage; and thereby forces them up into such a position, as that, together, they con¬ stitute, when raised, a hollow cone (the strings, before spoken of, hindering them from proceeding or separating farther) ; which cone, entirely occupying the passage, prevents the return of the blood into the auricle. A shorter account of the matter may be this : so long as the blood proceeds in its proper course, the membranes which compose the valve are pressed close to the side of the vessel, and occasion no impediment to the circulation: when the blood would regurgitate, they are raised from the side of the vessel, and, meeting in the middle of its cavity, shut up the channel. Can any one doubt of contrivance here; or is it possible to shut our eyes against the proof of it ? This valve, also, is not more curious in its structure, than it is important in its office. Upon the play of the valve, even upon the proportioned length of the strings or fibres which check the ascent of the membranes, depends, as it should seem, nothing less than the life itself of the animal. We may here likewise repeat, what we before observed concerning some of the ligaments of the body, that they could not be formed by any action of the parts themselves. There are cases in which, although good uses appear to arise from the shape or configuration of a part, yet that shape or configuration itself may seem to be produced by powerfully muscular; connected with its valves is a This is what every mechanist does daily in the construc- peculiar muscle, which lie considered was intended to tion of his engines : he adapts their power and substance impel the blood more powerfully through the gills when to the work they are required to perform. I his is the the animal is in great depths, and the weight of water result of reason and foresight; but the logic of atheism consequently impedes its circulation. (Phil. Trans.,1 813). declares the shark’s heart to be the work of chance. 7a NATURAL THEOLOGY. the action of the part, or by the action or pressure of adjoining parts. Thus the bend and the internal smooth concavity of the ribs may be attributed to the equal pressure of the soft bowels; the particular shape of some bones and joints, to the traction of the annexed muscles, or to the position of contiguous muscles. But valves could not be so formed. Action and pressure are all against them. The blood, in its proper course, has no tendency to produce such things; and in its improper or reflected current, has a tendency to prevent their production. Whilst we see, therefore, the use and necessity of this machinery, we can look to no other account of its origin or formation than the intending mind of a Creator. Nor can we without admiration reflect, that such thin membranes, such weak and tender instru¬ ments as these valves are, should be able to hold out for seventy or eighty years. Here also we cannot consider but with gratitude, how happy it is that our vital motions are involuntary. We should have enough to do, if we had to keep our hearts beating, and our stomachs at work. Did these things depend, we will not say upon our effort, but upon our bidding, our care, or our attention, they would leave us leisure for nothing else. We must have been continually upon the watch, and continually in fear; nor would this consti¬ tution have allowed of sleep. It might perhaps be expected, that an organ so precious, of such central and primary importance as the heart is, should be defended by a case. The fact is, that a membranous purse or bag, made of strong, tough materials, is provided for it; holding the heart within its cavity; sitting loosely and easily about it; guarding its substance, without confining its motion; and containing likewise a spoonful or two of water, just sufficient to keep the sur¬ face of the heart in a state of suppleness and moisture. How should such a loose covering be generated by the action of the heart ? Does not the enclosing of it in a sack, answering no other purpose but that enclosure, shew the care that has been taken of its preservation ? One use of the circulation of the blood probably (amongst other uses) is, to distribute nourishment to the different parts of the body. How minute and multiplied the ramifi¬ cations of the blood-vessels, for that purpose, are; and how thickly spread, over at least the superficies of the body, is proved by the single observation, that we cannot prick the point of a pin into the flesh without drawing blood, i. e. without finding a blood-vessel. Nor, internally is their diffusion less universal. Blood-vessels run along the surface of membranes, pervade the substance of muscles, penetrate the bones. Even into every tooth, we trace, through a small hole in the root, an artery to feed the bone, as well as a vein to bring back the spare blood from it; both which, with the addition of an accompanying nerve, form a thread only a little thicker than a horse-hair. Wherefore, when the nourishment taken in at the mouth has once reached, and mixed itself with, the blood, every part of the body is in the way of being supplied with it. And this introduces another grand topic, namely, the manner in which the aliment gets into the blood; which is a subject distinct from the preceding, and brings us to the consideration of another entire system of vessels. II. For this necessary part of the animal economy, an apparatus is provided, in a great measure capable of being, what anatomists call, demonstrated, that is, shewn in the dead body;—and a line or course of conveyance, which we can pursue by our examinations. First, The food descends by a wide passage into the intestines, undergoing two great preparations on its way: one, in the mouth by mastication and moisture,— (can it be doubted with what design the teeth were placed in the road to the stomach, or that there was choice in fixing them in this situation?) the other, by digestion in the stomach itself. Of this last surprising dissolution I say nothing; because it is chymistry, and I am endeavouring to display mechanism. The figure and position of the stomach (I speak all along with a reference to the human organ) are calculated for detaining the food long enough for the action of its digestive juice. It has the shape of the pouch of a bag-pipe; lies across the body; and the pylorus, or passage by which the food leaves it, is somewhat higher in the body than the cardia, or orifice by which it enters ; so that it is by the contraction of the muscular coat of the stomach, that the contents, after having undergone the application of the gastric menstruum, are gradually pressed out. In dogs and cats, this action of the coats of the stomach has been displayed to the eye. It is a slow and gentle undulation, propa- NATURAL THEOLOGY. 79 gated from one orifice of the stomach to the other. For the same reason that I omitted, for the present, offering any observation upon the digestive fluid, I shall say nothing concernino- the bile or the pancreatic juice, farther than to observe upon the mechanism, viz. that from the glands in which these secretions are elaborated, pipes are laid into the first of the intes¬ tines, through which pipes the product of each gland flows into that bowel, and is there mixed with the aliment, as soon almost as it passes the stomach; adding also as a remark, how grievously this same bile offends the stomach itself, yet cherishes the vessel that lies next to it. Secondly, We have now’ the aliment in the intestines, converted into pulp; and though lately consisting of ten different viands, reduced to nearly a uniform substance, and to a state fitted for yielding its essence, which is called chyle, but which is milk, or more nearly resem¬ bling milk than any other liquor with which it can be compared. For the straining off this fluid from the digested aliment in the course of its long progress through the body, myriads of capillary tubes, i. e. pipes as small as hairs, open their orifices into the cavity of every part of the intestines. These tubes, which are so fine and slender as not to be visible unless when distended with chyle, soon unite into larger branches. The pipes, formed by this union, terminate in glands, from which other pipes of a still larger diameter arising, carry the chyle, from all parts, into a common reservoir or receptacle. This receptacle is a bag of size enough to hold about two table-spoons full; and from this vessel a duct or main pipe proceeds, climbing up the back part of the chest, and afterward creeping along the gullet till it reach the neck. Here it meets the river: here it discharges itself into a large vein, which soon conveys the chyle, now flowing along with the old blood, to the heart. This whole route can be exhibited to the eye; nothing is left to be supplied by imagination or conjecture. Now, beside the subserviency of this structure, collectively considered, to a manifest and necessary purpose, we may remark tw’o or three separate particulars in it, which show, not only the contrivance, but the perfection of it. We may remark, first, the length of the intestines, which, in the human subject, is six times that of the body. Simply for a passage, these voluminous bowels, this prolixity of gut, seems in no wise necessary; but in order to allow time and space for the successive extraction of the chyle from the digestive aliment, namely, that the chyle which escapes the lacteals of one part of the guts may be taken up by those of some other part, the length of the canal is of evident use and conduciveness. Secondly, we must also remark their peristaltic motion; which is made up of contractions, following one another like waves upon the surface of a fluid, and not unlike what we observe in the body of an earth-worm crawling along the ground; and which is effected by the joint action of longitudinal and of spiral, or rather perhaps of a great number of separate semi¬ circular fibres. This curious action pushes forw’ard the grosser part of the aliment, at the same time that the more subtile parts, which we call chyle, are, by a series of gentle com¬ pressions, squeezed into the narrow orifices of the lacteal veins. Thirdly, it was necessary that these tubes, which we denominate lacteals, or their mouths at least, should be made as narrow as possible, in order to deny admission into the blood to any particle which is of size enough to make a lodgment afterward in the small arteries, and thereby to obstruct the cir¬ culation ; and it was also necessary that this extreme tenuity should be compensated by multitude; for a large quantity of chyle (in ordinary constitutions, not less, it has been com¬ puted, than two or three quarts in a day) is, by some means or other, to be passed through them. Accordingly, we find the number of the lacteals exceeding all powers of computation ; and their pipes so fine and slender, as not to be visible, unless filled, to the naked eye ; and their orifices, which open into the intestines, so small as not to be discernible even by the best microscope. Fourthly, the main pipe which carries the chyle from the reservoir to the blood, viz. the thoracic duct, being fixed in an almost upright position, and wanting that advantage of propulsion which the arteries possess, is furnished with a succession of valves to check the ascending fluid, when once it has passed them, from falling back. These valves look upward, so as to leave the ascent free, but to prevent the return of the chyle, if, for want of sufficient force to push it on, its weight should at any time cause it to descend. Fifthly, the chyle enters the blood in an odd place, but perhaps the most commodious place possible, viz. at a large vein in the neck, so situated with respect to the circulation, as 80 NATURAL THEOLOGY. speedily to bring the mixture to the heart. And this seems to be a circumstance of great moment; for had the chyle entered the blood at an artery, or at a distant vein, the fluid, composed of the old and the new materials, must have performed a considerable part of the circulation, before it received that churning in the lungs, which is, probably, necessary for the intimate and perfect union of the old blood with the recent chyle. Who could have dreamt of a communication between the cavity of the intestines and the left great vein of the neck? Who could have suspected that this communication should be the medium through which all nourishment is derived to the body; or this the place, where, by a side inlet, the important junction is formed between the blood and the material which feeds it ? We postponed the consideration of digestion , lest it should interrupt us in tracing the course of the food to the blood ; but, in treating of the alimentary system, so principal a part of the process cannot be omitted. Of the gastric juice, the immediate agent by which that change which food undergoes in our stomachs is effected, we shall take our account from the numerous, careful, and varied experiments of the Abbe Spallanzani *. 1. It is not a simple diluent, but a real solvent. A quarter of an ounce of beef had scarcely touched the stomach of a crow, when the solution began. 2. It has not the nature of saliva ; it has not the nature of bile; but is distinct from both. By experiments out of the body it appears, that neither of these secretions acts upon alimen¬ tary substances, in the same manner as the gastric juice acts. 3. Digestion is not putrefaction : for the digesting fluid resists putrefaction most pertina¬ ciously ; nay, not only checks its farther progress, but restores putrid substances. 4. It is not a fermentative process: for the solution begins at the surface, and proceeds towards the centre, contrary to the order in which fermentation acts and spreads. 5. It is not the digestion of heat: for the cold maw of a cod or sturgeon will dissolve the shells of crabs or lobsters, harder than the sides of the stomach which contains them. In a word, animal digestion carries about it the marks of being a power and a process completely sui generis : is distinct from every other ; at least from every chymical process with which we are acquainted. And the most wonderful thing about it is its appropriation; its subserviency to the particular economy of each animal. The gastric juice of an owl, falcon, or kite, will not touch grain ; no, not even to finish the macerated and half-digested pulse which is left in the crops of the sparrows that the bird devours. In poultry, the trituration of the gizzard, and the gastric juice, conspire in the work of digestion. The gastric juice will not dissolve the grain whilst it is whole. Entire grains of barley, enclosed in tubes or spherules, are not affected by it. But if the same grain be by any means broken or ground, the gastric juice immediately lays hold of it. Here then is wanted, and here we find, a combination of mechanism and chymistry. For the preparatory grinding, the gizzard lends its mill. And as all millwork should be strong, its structure is so, beyond that of any other muscle belonging to the animal. The internal coat also, or lining of the gizzard, is, for the same purpose, hard and cartilaginous. But, forasmuch as this is not the sort of animal sub¬ stance suited for the reception of glands, or for secretion, the gastric juice, in this family, is not supplied, as in membranous stomachs, by the stomach itself, but by the gullet, in which the feeding glands are placed, and from which it trickles down into the stomach. * Lazarus Spallanzani, whom Paley so often quotes, long devoted himself to the study of animal chymistry; but his success in the research, although very considera¬ ble, was by no means equal to the talents he possessed; he had, moreover, the fate shared by all those who have experimented upon living animals, to wade through many very disagreeable examinations, to perpetrate many cruel¬ ties, and some of them such as must make the most callous shudder. The history of Spallanzani is not destitute of romance. He was originally intended for the law, for which he studied at Modena; but on his arrival at Bologna, the talents of his cousin, the celebrated Laura Bassani give him a distaste for his profession. He attended her public lectui'cs, and acquired a taste for experimental philosophy. He, in consequence, abandoned the law, and was made professor of Greek, at Reggio, afterwards filling the chair of natural philosophy at Modena, and finally at Padua. Pie was one of Paley’s greatest chemical contemporaries, for he was born in 1729, and died in 1798, only seven years before our author. His character was that of many men of genius : with great mental powers he had an insatiable thirst for knowledge, dabbled in many sciences, had a restlessness and curiosity which carried him over most parts of Europe and even Asia, visited most men of science, and was a member of many distinguished philo¬ sophical societies.—Thomson.—Diet. Hist. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 81 In slieep, the gastric fluid has no effect in digesting plants, unless they have been previously •masticated. It only produces a slight maceration ; and nearly such as common water would produce, in a degree of heat somewhat exceeding the medium temperature of the atmosphere. But provided that the plant has been reduced to pieces by chewing, the gastric juice then proceeds with it, first, by softening its substance : next, by destroying its natural consistency; and lastly, by dissolving it so completely, as not even to spare the toughest and most stringy parts, such as the nerves of the leaves. So far our accurate and indefatigable Abbe.—Dr. Stevens, of Edinburgh, in 1777? found, by experiments tried with perforated balls, that the gastric juice of the sheep and the ox speedily dissolved vegetables, but made no impression upon beef, mutton, and other animal bodies. Dr. Hunter discovered a property of this fluid, of a most curious kind ; viz. that in the stomachs of animals which feed upon flesh, irresistibly as this fluid acts upon animal sub¬ stances, it is only upon the dead substance that it operates at all. The living fibre suffers no injury from lying in contact with it. Worms and insects are found alive in the stomachs of such animals. The coats of the human stomach, in a healthy state, are insensible to its pre¬ sence ; yet in cases of sudden death (wherein the gastric juice, not having been weakened by disease, retains its activity), it has been known to eat a hole through the bowel which con¬ tains it*. How nice is this discrimination of action, yet how necessary!! But to return to our hydraulics. III". The gall-bladder is a very remarkable contrivance. It is the reservoir of a canal. It does not form the channel itself, i. e. the direct communication between the liver and the intestine, which is by another passage, viz. the ductus liepaticus, continued under the name of the ductus communis; but it lies adjacent to this channeljoining it by a duct of its own, the ductus cysticus; by which structure it is enabled, as occasion may require, to add its contents to, and increase, the flow of bile into the duodenum. And the position of the gall-bladder is such as to apply this structure to the best advantage. In its natural situation, it touches the exterior surface of of the stomach, and consequently is compressed by the distention of that vessel: the effect of which compression is to force out from the bag, and send into the duodenum, an extraordinary quantity of bile, to meet the extraordinary demand which the repletion of the stomach by food is about to occasion^. Cheselden describes § the gall-bladder as seated against the duodenum, and thereby liable to have its fluid pressed out, by the passage of the aliment through that cavity; which likewise will have the effect of causing it to be received into the intestine, at a right time, and in a due proportion. There may be other purposes answered by this contrivance ; and it is probable that there are. The contents of the gall-bladder are not exactly of the same kind as what passes from the liver through the direct passage ||. It is possible that the gall may be changed, and for some purposes meliorated, by keeping. The entrance of the gall-duct into the duodenum furnishes another observation. When¬ ever either smaller tubes are inserted into larger tubes, or tubes into vessels and cavities, such * Phil. Trans, vol. lxii. p. 447. -j- So corrosive is the action ot the gastric juice upon the dead coats of the stomach, that there have been seve¬ ral cases in which innocent persons have been accused of poisoning those who have died suddenly, whose stomachs w’ere found corroded. The importance of this mystic fluid to all animals, has rendered the most eminent of chemists anxious to investi¬ gate its properties. Vauquelin, Sennebier, Hunter, Stevens, JBrugnatelli, and others have, however, in vain laboured for that purpose; and our knowledge of its chemical composition is not now much more accurate than in the days of Paley and the Abb£ Spalanzani. The result of their labours does not afford any “ explanation, to use the words of Dr. Henry, “of the solvent power which it exerts on all animal and vegetable substances. Even out of the body it appears to retard the putrefaction of animal substances, and to reduce them to a state some¬ what similar to that in which they are found after having been for some time in the stomach.” The appearance of this fluid would excite little suspi¬ cion of its powers. That of carnivorous animals, accord¬ ing to Brugnatelli, has “ an acid and resinous odour, is very bitter, but is not watery”—contains an acid, a resin, an animal substance, and a small quantity of com¬ mon salt. That of herbivorous animals, on the other hand, is of a watery nature : its taste is bitter and saltish, contains ammonia, an animal extract, and a considerable proportion of common salt. But all these ingredients of the gastric juice afford no explanation to the chemist of the powers possessed by this almost universal solvent — he would have rather expected to have found in its composition powerful alkalies and acids, something more like the re-agents he is wont to employ in his laboratory, than a bitter solution resembling gum-water in appearance. —Elements of Exp. Cliem. vol. ii. p. 3o0 ; lhomson s System, vol. iv. 8. 594 ; Hunter, Phil. Trans, vol. 62 ; Baillie’s Morbid Anatomy, p. 75. + Keill’s Anat. p. 64. § Anat. p. 164. |1 Keill (from Malpighi us), p. 63. 82 NATURAL THEOLOGY. receiving tubes, vessels, or cavities, being subject to muscular constriction, we always find a contrivance to prevent regurgitation. In some cases, valves are used ; in other cases, amongst which is that now before us, a different expedient is resorted to, which may be thus described : The gall-duct enters the duodenum obliquely; after it has pierced the first coat, it runs near two fingers’ breadth between the coats before it opens into the cavity of the intes¬ tine # . The same contrivance is used in another part, where there is exactly the same occa¬ sion for it, viz. in the insertion of the ureters in the bladder. These enter the bladder near its neck, running obliquely for the space of an inch between its coatsf. It is, in both cases, sufficiently evident, that this structure has a necessary mechanical tendency to resist regur¬ gitation ; for whatever force acts in such a direction as to urge the fluid back into the orifices of the tubes, must, at the same time, stretch the coats of the vessels, and thereby compress that part of the tube which is included between them. IY. Amongst the vessels of the human body, the pipe which conveys the saliva from the place where it is made, to the place where it is wanted, deserves to be reckoned amongst the most intelligible pieces of mechanism with which we are acquainted. The saliva, we all know, is used in the mouth ; but much of it is manufactured on the outside of the cheek, by the parotid gland, which lies between the ear and the angle of the lower jaw. In order to carry the secreted juice to its destination, there is laid from the gland on the outside, a pipe, about the thickness of a wheat straw, and about three fingers’ breadth in length; which, after riding over the masseter muscle, bores for itself a hole through the very middle of the cheek ; enters by that hole, which is a complete perforation of the buccinator muscle, into the mouth ; and there discharges its fluid very copiously. Y. Another exquisite structure, differing indeed from the four preceding instances, in that it does not relate to the conveyance of fluids, but still belonging, like these, to the class of pipes or conduits of the body, is seen in the larynx. We all know that there go down the throat two pipes, one leading to the stomach, the other to the lungs ; the one being the pas¬ sage for the food, the other for the breath and voice: we know also that both these passages open into the bottom of the mouth ; the gullet, necessarily, for the conveyance of food ; and the wind-pipe, for speech and the modulation of sound, not much less so : therefore the difficulty was, the passages being so contiguous, to prevent the food, especially the liquids, which we swallow into the stomach, from entering the wind-pipe, i. e. the road to the lungs; the con¬ sequence of which error, when it does happen, is perceived by the convulsive throes that are instantly produced. This business, which is very nice, is managed in this manner. The gullet (the passage for food) opens into the mouth like the cone or upper part of a funnel, the capacity of which forms indeed the bottom of the mouth. Into the side of this funnel, at the part which lies the lowest, enters the wind-pipe, by a chink or slit, with a lid or flap, like a little tongue, accurately fitted to the orifice. The solids or liquids which we swallow, pass over this lid or flap, as they descend by the funnel into the gullet. Both the weight of the food, and the action of the muscles concerned in swallowing, contribute to keep the lid close down upon the aperture, whilst anything is passing ; whereas, by means of its natural cartilaginous spring, it raises itself a little, as soon as the food is passed, thereby allowing a free inlet and outlet for the respiration of air by the lungs. Such is its structure : And we may here remark the almost complete success of the expedient, viz. how seldom it fails of its purpose, compared with the number of instances in which it fulfils it. Reflect how fre¬ quently we swallow, how constantly we breathe. In a city-feast, for example, what degluti¬ tion, what anhelation! yet does this little cartilage, the epiglottis, so effectually interpose its office, so securely guard the entrance of the wind-pipe, that whilst morsel after morsel, draught after draught, are coursing one another over it, an accident of a crumb or a drop slipping into this passage (which nevertheless must be opened for the breath every second of time), excites in the whole company, not only alarm by its danger, but surprise by its novelty. Not two guests are choked in a century. There is no room for pretending that the action of the parts may have gradually formed the epiglottis ; I do not mean in the same individual, but in a succession of generations. Not * Krill’s Anat. p, 62. t dies. Anat. p. 260. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 83 only the action of the parts has no such tendency, but the animal could not live, nor conse¬ quently the parts act, either without it, or with it in a half-formed state. The species was not to wait for the gradual formation or expansion of a part which was, from the first, necessary to the life of the individual. Not only is the larynx curious, but the whole wind-pipe possesses a structure adapted to its peculiar office. It is made up (as any one may perceive by putting his fingers to his throat) of stout cartilaginous ringlets, placed at small and equal distances from one another. Now this is not the case with any other of the numerous conduits of the body. The use of these cartilages is to keep the passage for the air constantly open ; which they do mechani¬ cally. A pipe with soft membranous coats, liable to collapse and close when empty, would not have answered here; although this be the general vascular structure, and a structure which serves very well for those tubes which are kept in a state of perpetual distention by the fluid they enclose, or which afford a passage to solid and protruding substances. Nevertheless (which is another particularity well worthy of notice), these rings are not complete, that is, are not cartilaginous and stiff all round; but their hinder part, which is contiguous to the gullet, is membranous and soft, easily yielding to the distentions of that organ occasioned by the descent of solid food. The same rings are also bevelled off at the upper and lower edges, the better to close upon one another, when the trachea is compressed or shortened. The constitution of the trachea may suggest likewise another reflection. The membrane which lines its inside, is, perhaps, the most sensible, irritable membrane of the body. It rejects the touch of a crumb of bread, or a drop of water, with a spasm which convulses the whole frame; yet, left to itself, and its proper office, the intromission of air alone, nothing can be so quiet. It does not even make itself felt; a man does not know that he has a trachea. This capacity of perceiving with such acuteness, this impatience of offence, yet perfect rest and ease when let alone, are properties, one would have thought, not likely to reside in the same subject. It is to the junction, however, of these almost inconsistent qua¬ lities, in this, as well as in some other delicate parts of the body, that we owe our safety and our comfort;—our safety to their sensibility, our comfort to their repose. The larynx, or rather the whole wind-pipe taken together (for the larynx is only the upper part of the wind-pipe), besides its other uses, is also a musical instrument, that is to say, it is mechanism expressly adapted to the modulation of sound; for it has been found upon trial, that, by relaxing or tightening the tendinous bands at the extremity of the wind-pipe, and blowing in at the other end, all the cries and notes might be produced of which the living animal was capable. It can be sounded, just as a pipe or flute is sounded. Birds, says Bonnet, have, at the lower end of the wind-pipe, a conformation like the reed of a hautboy, for the modulation of their notes, A tuneful bird is a ventriloquist. The seat of the song is in the breast. The use of the lungs in the system has been said to be obscure ; one use, however, is plain, though, in some sense, external to the system, and that is, the formation, in conjunction with the larynx, of voice and speech. They are, to animal utterance, what the bellows are to the organ*. * The apparatus, the various organs, employed for the formation of the human voice, afford a most interesting subject for investigation. The trachea, or wind-pipe ; the larynx, at its summit; the glottis, a small oval cleft, with its appendages ; the epiglottis, or valve, and the various regulating ligaments, are all subservient to the production of that modulation of the human voice which is the chief charm of life, and bond of social intercourse. The sound, which may be called the basis of the voice, is formed by the vibrations of the glottis, as the air is forced through it from the lungs. The sound thus formed passes into the cavity of the mouth and nostrils, where, by its reflec¬ tions and resoundings, the modulations are formed, which constitute our articulate voice : and on these reflections the agreeableness of the voice entirely depends. If the Great Artificer of this apparatus had not designed our happiness, had not aimed at our gratification, why should there ho this intricacy to secure a pleasing modulation of the voice? —a melody surpassing in sweetness and effect any that can be produced from an instrument by the most skilful musician. Yet how little is required to make the voice dissonant, and displeasing—close but the nostrils; let the tongue be disproportioned ; let the palate be defective, and all the harmony is gone. But how rarely is the voice unpleasing ; so rare is it, that the occurrence is remark¬ able as a seldom-occurring exception. At the same time, to secure this agreeableness of sound, movements the most delicate are required to be faultless. M. Dodart has shewn that to perform all the tones and semi-tones of a common voice, the minute diameter of the glottis, which does not exceed y^th of an inch, must be capable of 9G32 different degrees of closure, and many of them being G 2 84 NATURAL THEOLOGY. For tlie sake of method, we have considered animal bodies under three divisions ; their bones, their muscles, and their vessels: and we have stated our observations upon these parts separately. But this is to diminish the strength of the argument. The wisdom of the Creator is seen, not in their separate but their collective action; in their mutual subser¬ viency and dependance ; in their contributing together to one effect and one use. It has been said, that a man cannot lift his hand to his head, without finding enough to convince him of the existence of a God. And it is well said; for he has only to reflect, familiar as this action is, and simple as it seems to be, how many things are requisite for the performing of it: how many things which we understand, to say nothing of many more, probably, which we do not ; viz. first, a long, hard, strong cylinder, in order to give to the arm its firmness and tension ; but which, being rigid, and in its substance inflexible, can only turn upon joints : secondly, therefore, joints for this purpose; one at the shoulder to raise the arm, another at the elbow to bend it; these joints continually fed with a soft mucilage to make the parts slip easily upon one another, and held together by strong braces, to keep them in their position: then, thirdly, strings and wires, i. e. muscles and tendons, artificially inserted for the purpose of drawing the bones in the directions in which the joints allow them to move. Hitherto we seem to understand the mechanism pretty well; and, understanding this, we possess enough for our conclusion : nevertheless, we have hitherto only a machine standing still; a dead organization,—an apparatus. To put the system in a state of activity; to set it at work; a farther provision is necessary, viz. a communication with the brain by means of nerves. We know the existence of this communication, because we can see the commu¬ nicating threads, and can trace them to the brain : its necessity we also know, because if the thread be cut, if the communication be intercepted, the muscle becomes paralytic : but beyond this, we know little ; the organization being too minute and subtile for our inspection. To what has been enumerated, as officiating in the single act of a man’s raising his hand to his head, must be added likewise, all that is necessary, and all that contributes to the growth, nourishment, and sustentation, of the limb, the repair of its waste, the preservation of its health : such as the circulation of the blood through every part of it; its lymphatics, exhalants, absorbents ; its excretions and integuments. All these share in the result; join in the effect: and how all these, or any of them, come together without a designing, disposing intelligence, it is impossible to conceive. CHAPTER XI. OF THE ANIMAL STRUCTURE REGARDED AS A MASS. Contemplating an animal body in its collective capacity, we cannot forget to notice, what a number of instruments are brought together, and often within how small a compass. It is a cluster of contrivances. In a canary bird, for instance, and in the single ounce of matter which composes its body (but which seems to be all employed), we have instruments for eating, for digesting, for nourishment, for breathing, for generation, for running, for flying, for seeing, for hearing, for smelling ; each appropriate,—each entirely different from all the rest. The human, or indeed the animal frame, considered as a mass or assemblage, exhibits in very unequal, sometimes the open fissure cannot exceed in their organs, that animals are denied the faculty of the ^-g-rAno^ 1 part an inch. speech. Several animals may be taught to pronounce Speech, an articulate voice, is one cause of man’s rapid words, and even repeat sentences; hut to make them con- advance in civilisation, as it is also a token of his high ceive the ideas which these words express, is beyond the prerogative over other created being3. It is not owing, power of art: they articulate and repeat like an echo or says Mr. Lawrence, as some have imagined, to any defect machine. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 85 its composition three properties, which have long struck my mind as indubitable evidences not only of design, but of a great deal of attention and accuracy in prosecuting the design I. The first is, the exact correspondency of the two sides of the same animal; the right hand answering to the left, leg to leg, eye to eye, one side of the countenance to the other; and with a precision, to imitate which in any tolerable degree, forms one of the difficulties of statuary, and requires, on the part of the artist, a constant attention to this property of his work, distinct from every other. It is the most difficult thing that can be to get a wig made even ; yet how seldom is the face awry ? And what care is taken that it should not be so, the anatomy of its bones demonstrates. The upper part of the face is composed of thirteen bones, six on each side, answering each to each, and the thirteenth, without a fellow, in the middle; the lower part of the face is in like manner composed of six bones, three on each side respectively corre¬ sponding, and the lower jaw in the centre. In building an arch, could more be done in order to make the curve true , i. e. the parts equi-distant from the middle, alike in figure and position ? The exact resemblance of the eyes , considering how compounded this organ is in its struc¬ ture, how various and how delicate are the shades of colour with which its iris is tinged ; how differently, as to effect upon appearance, the eye may be mounted in its socket, and how differently in different heads eyes actually are set,—is a property of animal bodies much to be admired. Of ten thousand eyes, I do not know that it would be possible to match one, except with its own fellow; or to distribute them into suitable pairs by any other selection than that which obtains. This regularity of the animal structure is rendered more remarkable by the three following considerations.—First, the limbs, separately taken, have not this correlation of parts, but the contrary of it. A knife drawn down the chine, cuts the human body into two parts, exter¬ nally equal and alike; you cannot draw a straight line which will divide a hand, a foot, the leg, the thigh, the cheek, the eye, the ear, into two parts equal and alike. Those parts which are placed upon the middle or partition line of the body, or which traverse that line, as the nose, the tongue, the lips, may be so divided, or, more properly speaking, are double organs ; but other parts cannot. This shews that the correspondency which we have been describing does not arise by any necessity in the nature of the subject : for, if necessary, it would be universal; whereas it is observed only in the system or assemblage: it is not true * Paley has not dwelt, in this chapter, upon the com¬ parative chemical composition of animals regarded as a mass, yet this very composition in its general features differs widely from all other organic substances. The branches of a tree do not differ much from its foliage in chemical composition. The stalk of grass, and its seeds and leaves, are nearly identical in composition ; being fixed to one spot, the stem is sufficiently strong to sup¬ port the weight of the plant, and the large size of the main trunk is no inconvenience to the growth of the in¬ dividual. The composition, however, of the flesh and bones of animals differs very widely ; there is hardly an ingredient common to both. We know of no substance made of the same substances as the muscular part of animals ; which are sufficiently strong, and light, and tough, to an¬ swer as a substitute for bones; and yet the adoption of the peculiar and chief ingredient of bones could hardly have been the effect of blind chance, since this, phosphate of lime of the chemists, is only met with in minute propor¬ tions in other substances; it is rarely found in the earth, even in a fossil state, and then only in specimens or remains of former organic formations ; hardly ever in masses ; and yet all animals, every sparrow, every sprat, every whale, has its bones almost entirely composed of this substance, with undeviating regularity. The very introduction of bones into the animal mass is symptomatic of a contriving power, solicitous for the comfort and ac¬ tivity of his creatures. The awkward and confined mo¬ tions of the inferior animals, without these supports and assistants to motion, must convince the most thoughtless of the advantages derived from their use; and if any one doubts the peculiar skill noticeable in the choice of their composition, let that person convince himself of the exist¬ ence of any other substance which w'ould in all respects he equally serviceable. This mass has, moreover, another great and valuable power, that of repairing itself; a cut finger, or a broken bone, has 'speedily conveyed to it a deposit peculiarly adapted to repair the injury sustained, and the conveyance of the matter to be deposited is totally unconnected with the will of the animal, and only adapted to the repair of the peculiar injury. The albumen deposited in the cut will not cement the broken bone, and the gelatine of the cement employed for a broken bone is equally useless in a wound. The regularity, too, in which these secretions are conveyed to the injured spot is equally surprising, and a proof of the Divine contriver’s wisdom; for it is c.ear that the secretion is only according to the necessary demand; it ceases with the wound. And, although we see no directing agent, no power equal to the regula¬ tion of the processes necessarily brought into temporary action by an accidental fracture, yet still all these arrange¬ ments are made, not in one animal, or a solitary plant, but in all living substances. The limb of the tiee, when broken, heals, and barks over, just as uniformly as the wound of an animal. 86 NATURAL THEOLOGY. of the separate parts ; that is to say, it is found where it conduces to beauty or utility ; it is not found, where it would subsist at the expense of both. The two wings of a bird always correspond : the two sides of a feather frequently do not. In centipedes, millepedes, and that whole tribe of insects, no two legs on the same side are alike ; yet there is most exact parity between the legs opposite to one another. 2. The next circumstance to be remarked is, that, whilst the cavities of the body are so configurated, as externally to exhibit the most exact correspondency of the opposite sides, the contents of these cavities have no such correspondency. A line drawn down the middle of the breast, divides the thorax into two sides exactly similar ; yet these two sides enclose very different contents. The heart lies on the left side : a lobe of the lungs on the right; balancing each other, neither in size nor shape. The same thing holds of the abdomen. The liver lies on the right side, without any similar viscus opposed to it on the left. The spleen indeed is situated over-against the liver; but agreeing with the liver neither in bulk nor form. There is no equipollency between these. The stomach is a vessel, both irregular in its shape, and oblique in its position. The foldings and doublings of the intes¬ tines do not present a parity of sides. Yet that symmetry which depends upon the correla¬ tion of the sides, is externally preserved throughout the whole trunk ; and is the more remarkable in the lower parts of it, as the integuments are soft; and the shape, consequently, is not, as the thorax is by its ribs, reduced by natural stays. It is evident, therefore, that the external proportion does not arise from any equality in the shape or pressure of the internal contents. What is it indeed but a correction of inequalities: an adjustment, by mutual compensation, of anomalous forms into a regular congeries ? the effect, in a word, of artful, and if we might be permitted so to speak, of studied collocation ? 3. Similar also to this, is the third observation; that an internal inequality in the feeding vessels is so managed, as to produce no inequality in parts which were intended to correspond. The right arm answers accurately to the left, both in size and shape; but the arterial branches, which supply the two arms, do not go off from their trunk, in a pair, in the same manner, at the same place, or at the same angle. Under which wnnt of similitude, it is very difficult to conceive how the same quantity of blood should be pushed through each artery: yet the result is right; the two limbs, which are nourished by them, perceive no difference of supply, no effects of excess or deficiency. Concerning the difference of manner, in which the subckivian and carotid arteries, upon the different sides of the body, separate themselves from the aorta, Clieselden seems to have thought, that the advantage which the left gain by going off at an angle much more acute than the right, is made up to the right, by their going off together in one branch*. It is very possible that this may be the compensating contrivance: and if it be so, how curious, how liydrostatical! II. Another perfection of the animal mass is the package. I know nothing which is so surprising. Examine the contents of the trunk of any large animal. Take notice how soft, how tender, how intricate, they are ; how constantly in action, how necessary to life! Re¬ flect upon the danger of any injury to their substance, any derangement of their position, any obstruction to their office. Observe the heart pumping at the centre, at the rate of eighty strokes in a minute; one set of pipes carrying the stream away from it, another set bringing, in its course, the fluid back to it again ; the lungs performing their elaborate office, viz. distending and contracting their many thousand vesicles, by a reciprocation which cannot cease for a minute ; the stomach exercising its powerful chemistry; the bowels silently propelling the changed aliment; collecting from it, as it proceeds, and transmitting to the blood, an incessant supply of prepared and assimilated nourishment; that blood pur¬ suing its course ; the liver, the kidneys, the pancreas, the parotid, with many other known and distinguishable glands, drawing off from it, all the while, their proper secretions. These several operations, together with others more subtile but less capable of being investigated, are going on within us, at one and the same time. Think of this ; and then observe how the body itself, the case which holds this machinery, is rolled, and jolted, and tossed about, * dies. Anat. p. 104, cd. 7. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 87 the mechanism remaining unhurt, and with very little molestation even of its nicest motions. Observe a rope-dancer, a tumbler, or a monkey; the sudden inversions and contortions which the internal parts sustain by the postures into which their bodies are thrown ; or rather observe the shocks which these parts, even in ordinary subjects, sometimes receive from falls and bruises, or by abrupt jerks and twists, without sensible, or with soon reco¬ vered, damage. Observe this, and then reflect how firmly every part must be secured, how carefully surrounded, how well tied down and packed together. This property of animal bodies has never, I think, been considered under a distinct head, or so fully as it deserves. I may be allowed therefore, in order to verify my observation concerning it, to set forth a short anatomical detail, though it oblige me to use more tech¬ nical language than I should wish to introduce into a work of this kind. 1. The heart (such care is taken of the centre of life) is placed between two soft lobes of the lungs : is tied to the mediastinum and to the pericardium ; which pericardium is not only itself an exceedingly strong membrane, but adheres firmly to the duplicature of the me¬ diastinum, and, by its point, to the middle tendon of the diaphragm. The heart is also sustained in its place by the great blood-vessels which issue from it *. 2. The lungs are tied to the sternum by the mediastinum before; to the vertebra? by the pleura, behind. It seems indeed to be the very use of the mediastinum (which is a mem¬ brane that goes straight through the middle of the thorax, from the breast to the back), to keep the contents of the thorax in their places ; in particular to hinder one lobe of the lungs from incommoding another, or the parts of the lungs from pressing upon each other when we lie on one side j'. 3. The liver is fastened in the body by two ligaments : the first, which is large and strong, comes from the covering of the diaphragm, and penetrates the substance of the liver ; the second is the umbilical vein, which, after birth, degenerates into a ligament. The first, which is the principal, fixes the liver in its situation, whilst the body holds an erect posture ; the second prevents it from pressing upon the diaphragm when we lie down : and both together sling or suspend the liver when we lie upon our backs, so that it may not compress or obstruct the ascending vena cava to which belongs the important office of returning the blood from the body to the heart. 4. The bladder is tied to the navel by the urachus; transformed into a ligament: thus, what was a passage for urine to the foetus, becomes, after birth, a support or stay to the bladder. The peritonaeum also keeps the viscera from confounding themselves with, or pressing irregularly upon, the bladder; for the kidneys and bladder are contained in a dis¬ tinct duplicature of that membrane, being thereby partitioned off from the other contents of the abdomen. 5. The kidneys are lodged in a bed of fat. 6. The pancreas , or sweetbread, is strongly tied to the peritonaeum, which is the great wrapping sheet, that encloses all the bowels contained in the lower belly §. 7- The spleen also is confined to its place by an adhesion to the peritonaeum and dia¬ phragm, and by a connexion with the omentum ||. It is possible, in my opinion, that the spleen may be merely a stuffing, a soft cushion to fill up a vacancy or hollow, which, unless occupied, would leave the package loose and unsteady: for, supposing that it answers no other purpose than this, it must be vascular, and admit of a circulation through it, in order to be kept alive, or be a part of a living body. 8. The omentum , epiploon, or caul, is an apron tucked up, or doubling upon itself, at its lowest part. The upper edge is tied to the bottom of the stomach, to the spleen, as hath been already observed, and to part of the duodenum. The reflected edge also, after forming the doubling, comes up behind the front flap, and is tied to the colon and adjoining viscera^. 9. The septa of the brain probably prevent one part of that organ from pressing with too great a weight upon another part. The processes of the dura mater divide the cavity of the skull, like so many inner partition walls, and thereby confine each hemisphere and lobe of the brain to the chamber which is assigned to it, without its being liable to rest upon, or in- * Keill's Anat. p. 107, ed. ?. + lb. p. 119, ed. 3. J Ches. Anat. p. 162. § Kiell's Anat. p. 57. J| Ches. Anat. p. 167. II Ches. Auat. p. 147. 88 NATURAL THEOLOGY. termix with, the neighbouring parts. The great art and caution of packing, is to prevent one thing hurting another. This, in the head, the chest, and the abdomen, of an animal body, is, amongst other methods, provided for by membranous partitions and wrappings, which keep the parts separate. The above may serve as a short account of the manner in which the principal viscera are sustained in their places. But of the provisions for this purpose, by far, in my opinion, the most curious, and where also such a provision was most wanted, is in the guts. It is pretty evident, that a long narrow tube (in man, about five times the length of the body) laid from side to side in folds upon one another, winding in oblique and circuitous directions, composed also of a soft and yielding substance, must, without some extraordinary precaution for its safety, be continually displaced by the various, sudden, and abrupt motions of the body which contains it. I should expect that, if not bruised or wounded by every fall, or leap, or twist, it would be entangled, or be involved with itself; or, at the least, slipped and shaken out of the order in which it is disposed, and which order is necessary to be pre¬ served, for the carrying on of the important functions which it has to execute in the animal economy. Let us see, therefore, how a danger so serious, and yet so natural to the length, narrowness, and tubular form of the part, is provided against. The expedient is admirable : and it is this. The intestinal canal, throughout its whole process, is knit to the edge of a broad fat membrane called the mesentery. It forms the margin of this mesentery, being stitched and fastened to it like the edging of a ruffle : being four times as long as the mesentery itself, it is what a sempstress would call, “ puckered or gathered on” to it. This is the nature of the connexion of the gut with the mesentery ; and being thus joined to, or rather made a part of, the mesentery, it is folded and wrapped up together with it. Now the mesentery, having a considerable dimension in breadth, being in its substance, withal, both thick and suety, is capable of a close and safe folding, in comparison of what the in¬ testinal tube would admit of, if it had remained loose. The mesentery likewise not only keeps the intestinal canal in its proper place and position under all the turns and windings of its course, but sustains the numberless small vessels, the arteries, the veins, the lympheducts, and, above all, the lacteals, which] lead from or to almost every point of its coats and cavity. This membrane, which appears to be the great support and security of the alimen¬ tary apparatus, is itself strongly tied to the first three vertebras of the loins # . III. A third general property of animal forms is beauty. I do not mean relative beauty, or that of one individual above another of the same species, or of one species compared with another species; but I mean, generally, the provision which is made in the body of almost every animal, to adapt its appearance to the perception of the animals with which it con¬ verses. In onr own species, for example, only consider what the parts and materials are, of which the fairest body is composed ; and no farther observation will be necessary to shew how well these things are wrapped up, so as to form a mass which shall be capable of sym¬ metry in its proportion, and of beauty in its aspect; how the bones are covered, the bowels concealed, the roughnesses of the muscle smoothed and softened; and how over the whole is drawn an integument, which converts the disgusting materials of a dissecting-room into an object of attraction to the sight, or one upon which it rests, at least, with ease and satisfac¬ tion. Much of this effect is to be attributed to the intervention of the cellular or adipose membrane, which lies immediately under the skin; is a kind of lining to it; is moist, soft, slippery, and compressible : every where filling up the interstices of the muscles, and form¬ ing thereby their roundness and flowing line, as well as the evenness and polish of the whole surface. All which seems to be a strong indication of design, and of a design studiously directed to this purpose. And it being once allowed, that such a purpose existed with respect to any of the productions of nature, we may refer, with a considerable degree of probability, other particulars to the same intention; such as the tints of flowers, the plumage of birds, the furs of beasts, the bright scales of fishes, the’ painted wings of butterflies and beetles, the rich colours and spotted lustre of many tribes of insects. * ICeill’s Anat. p. 45. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 89 There are parts also of animals ornamental, and the properties by which they are so, not subservient, that we know of, to any other purpose. The irides of most animals are very beautiful, without conducing at all, by their beauty, to the perfection of vision ; and nature could in no part have employed her pencil to so much advantage, because no part presents itself so conspicuously to the observer, or communicates so great an effect to the whole aspect. In plants, especially in the flowers of plants, the principle of beauty holds a still more considerable place in their composition ; is still more confessed than in animals. Why, for one instance out of a thousand, does the corolla of the tulip, when advanced to its size and maturity, change its colour ? The purposes, so far as we can see, of vegetable nutrition, might have been carried on as well by its continuing green. Or, if this could not be, con¬ sistently with the progress of vegetable life, why break into such a variety of colours ? This is no proper effect of age, or of declension in the ascent of the sap ; for that, like the autumnal tints, would have produced one colour in one leaf, with marks of fading and withering. It seems a lame account to call it, as it has been called, a disease of the plant. Is it not more probable, that this property, which is independent, as it should seem, of the wants and utilities of the plant, was calculated for beauty, intended for display ? A ground, I know, of objection has been taken against this whole topic of argument, namely, that there is no such thing as beauty at all; in other words, that whatever is useful and familiar, comes of course to be thought beautiful; and that things appear to be so, only by these alliance with these qualities. Our idea of beauty is capable of being in so great a degree modified by habit, by fashion, by the experience of advantage or pleasure, and by associations arising out of that experience, that a question has been made, whether it be not altogether generated by these causes, or would have any proper existence without them. It seems, however, a carrying of the conclusion too far, to deny the existence of the principle, viz. a native capacity of perceiving beauty, on account of the influence, or of the varieties proceeding from that influence, to which it is subject, seeing that principles the most acknow¬ ledged are liable to be affected in the same manner. I should rather argue thus: The question respects objects of sight. Now every other sense hath its distinction of agreeable and disagreeable. Some tastes offend the palate, others gratify it. In brutes and insects, this distinction is stronger and more regular than in man. Every horse, ox, sheep, swine, when at liberty to choose, and when in a natural state, that is, when not vitiated by habits forced upon it, eats and rejects the same plants. Many insects which feed upon particular plants, will rather die than change their appropriate leaf. All this looks like a determina¬ tion in the sense itself to particular tastes. In like manner, smells affect the nose with sen¬ sations pleasurable or disgusting. Some sounds, or compositions of sound, delight the ear : others torture it. Habit can do much in all these cases (and it is well for us that it can ; for it is this power which reconciles us to many necessities) : but has the distinction, in the mean time, of agreeable and disagreeable, no foundation in the sense itself ? What is true of the other senses, is most probably true of the eye (the analogy is irresistible), viz. that there belongs to it an original constitution, fitted to receive pleasure from some impressions, and pain from others. I do not however know, that the argument which alleges beauty as a final cause, rests upon this concession. We possess a sense of beauty, however we come by it. It in fact exists. Things are not indifferent to this sense ; all objects do not suit it; many, which we see, are agreeable to it ; many others disagreeable. It is certainly not the effect of habit upon the particular object, because the most agreeable objects are often the most rare; many which are very common, continue to be offensive. If they be made supportable by habit, it is all which habit can do; they never become agreeable. If this sense, therefore, be acquired, it is a result; the produce of numerous and complicated actions of external ob¬ jects upon the senses, and of the mind upon its sensations. With this result , there must be a certain congruity to enable any particular object to please ; and that congruity, we con¬ tend, is consulted in the aspect which is given to animal and vegetable bodies. IV. The skin and covering of animals is that upon which their appearance chiefly de¬ pends ; and it is that part which, perhaps, in all animals, is most decorated, and most free from impurities. But were beauty, or agreeableness of aspect, entirely out of the question, there is another purpose answered by this integument, and by the collocation of the parts of 90 NATURAL THEOLOGY. tlie body beneatli it, which is of still greater importance : and that purpose is concealment. Were it possible to view through the skin the mechanism of our bodies, the sight would frighten us out of our wits. “ Durst we make a single movement,” asks a lively French writer, u or stir a step from the place we were in, if we saw our blood circulating, the tendons pulling, the lungs blowing, the humours filtrating, and all the incomprehensible assemblage of fibres, tubes, pumps, valves, currents, pivots, which sustain an existence at once so frail, and so presumptuous?” V. Of animal bodies, considered as masses, there is another property, more curious than it is generally thought to be ; which is the faculty of standing ; and it is more remarkable in two-legged animals than in quadrupeds, and most of all, as being the tallest, and resting upon the smallest base, in man. There is more, I think, in the matter than we are aware of. The statue of a man, placed loosely upon its pedestal, would not be secure of standing half an hour. You are obliged to fix its feet to the block by bolts and solder; or the first shake, the first gust of wind, is sure to throw it down. Yet this statue shall express all the mechanical proportions of a living model. It is not therefore the mere figure, or merely placing the centre of gravity within the base, that is sufficient. Either the law of gravita¬ tion is suspended in favour of living substances, or something more is done for them, in order to enable them to uphold their posture. There is no reason whatever to doubt, but that their parts descend by gravitation in the same manner as those of dead matter. The gift therefore appears to me to consist in a faculty of perpetually shifting the centre of gravity, by a set of obscure, indeed, but of quick-balancing actions, so as to keep the line of direc¬ tion, which is a line drawn from that centre to the ground, within its prescribed limits. Of these actions it may be observed, first, that they in part constitute what we call strength. The dead body drops down. The mere adjustment therefore of weight and pressure, which may be the same the moment after death as the moment before, does not support the column. In cases also of extreme weakness, the patient cannot stand upright. Secondly, that these actions are only in a small degree voluntary. A man is seldom conscious of his voluntary powers in keeping himself upon his legs. A child learning to walk is the greatest posture- master in the world : but art, if it may be so called, sinks into habit; and he is soon able to poise himself in a great variety of attitudes, without being sensible either of caution or effort. But still there must be an aptitude of parts, upon which habit can thus attach; a previous capacity of motions which the animal is thus taught to exercise : and the facility with which this exercise is acquired, forms one object of our admiration. What parts are principally employed, or in what manner each contributes to its office, is, as hath already been confessed, difficult to explain. Perhaps the obscure motion of the bones of the feet may have their share in this effect. They are put in action by every slip or vacillation of the body, and seem to assist in restoring its balance. Certain it is, that this circumstance in the structure of the foot, viz. its being composed of many small bones, applied to and articulating with one another, by diversely shaped surfaces, instead of being made of one piece, like the last of a shoe, is very remarkable. I suppose also that it would be difficult to stand firmly upon stilts or wooden legs, though their base exactly imitated the figure and dimensions of the sole of the foot. The alternation of the joints, the knee-joint bend¬ ing backward, the liip-joint forward : the flexibility, in every direction, of the spine, espe¬ cially in the loins and neck, appear to be of great moment in preserving the equilibrium of the body. With respect to this last circumstance, it is observable, that the vertebra? are so confined by ligaments as to allow no more slipping upon their bases, than what is just sufficient to break the shock which any violent motion may occasion to the body. A certain degree also of tension of the sinews appears to be essential to an erect posture; for it is by the loss of this, that the dead or paralytic body drops down. The whole is a wonderful result of combined powers, and of very complicated operations. Indeed, that standing is not so simple a business as we imagine it to be, is evident from the strange gesticulations of a drunken man, who has lost the government of the centre of gravity. We have said that this property is the most worthy of observation in the human body : but a bird resting upon its perch, or hopping upon a spray, affords no mean specimen of the same faculty. A chicken runs off as soon as it is hatched from the egg ; yet a chicken, considered geometrically, and with relation to its centre of gravity, its line of direction, NATURAL THEOLOGY. 91 and its equilibrium, is a very irregular solid. Is this gift, therefore, or instruction ? May it not be said to be with great attention, that nature hath balanced the body upon its pivots ? I observe also in the same bird a piece of useful mechanism of this kind. In the trussing of a fowl, upon bending the legs and thighs up towards the body, the cook finds that the claws close of their own accord. Now let it be remembered, that this is the position of the limbs, in which the bird rests upon its perch. And in this position it sleeps in safety ; for the claws do their office in keeping hold of the support, not by any exertion of voluntary power, which sleep might suspend, but by the traction of the tendons in consequence of the attitude which the legs and thighs take by the bird sitting down, and to which the mere weight of the body gives the force that is necessary. YI. Regarding the human body as a mass ; regarding the general conformations which obtain in it; regarding also particular parts in respect to those conformations ; we shall be led to observe what I call “ interrupted analogies.” The following are examples of wdiat I mean by these terms; and I do not know how such critical deviations can, by any possible hypothesis, be accounted for without design. 1. All the bones of the body are covered with a periosteum , except the teeth, where it ceases; and an enamel of ivory, which saws and files will hardly touch, comes into its place. No one can doubt of the use and propriety of this difference ; of the “ analogy” being thus “interruptedof the rule, which belongs to the formation of the bones, stop¬ ping where it does stop : for, had so exquisitely sensible a membrane as the periosteum in¬ vested the teeth, as it invests every other bone of the body, their action, necessary exposure, and irritation, would have subjected the animal to continual pain. General as it is, it was not the sort of integument which suited the teeth ; what they stood in need of, was a strong, hard, insensible, defensive coat : and exactly such a covering is given to them, in the ivory enamel which adheres to their surface. 2. The scarf-skin, which clothes all the rest of the body, gives way, at the extremities of the toes and fingers, to nails. A man has only to look at his hand, to observe with what nicety and precision that covering, which extends over every other part, is here superseded by a different substance, and a different texture. Now, if either the rule had been necessary, or the deviation from it accidental, this effect would not be seen. When I speak of the rule being necessary, I mean the formation of the skin upon the surface being produced by a set of causes constituted without design, and acting, as all ignorant causes must act, by a general operation. Were this the case, no account could be given of the operation being suspended at the fingers’ ends, or on the back part of the fingers, and not on the fore part. On the other hand; if the deviation were accidental, an error, an anomalism; were it any thing else than settled by intention ; we should meet with nails upon other parts of the body. They would be scattered over the surface, like warts or pimples. 3. All the great cavities of the body are enclosed by membranes, except the skull. Why should not the brain be content with the same covering as that which serves for the other principal organs of the body ? The heart, the lungs, the liver, the stomach, the bowels, have all soft integuments, and nothing else. The muscular coats are all soft and membranous. I can see a reason for this distinction in the final cause, but in no other. The importance of the brain to life (which experience proves to be immediate), and the extreme tenderness of its substance, make a solid case more necessary for it than for any other part: and such a case the hardness of the skull supplies. When the smallest portion of this natural casket is lost, how carefully, yet how imperfectly, is it replaced by a plate of metal! If an anatomist should say, that this bony protection is not confined to the brain, but is extended along the course of the spine, I answer, that he adds strength to the argument. If he remark, that the chest also is fortified by bones; I reply, that I should have alleged this instance myself, if the ribs had not appeared subservient to the purpose of motion as well as of defence. What distinguishes the skull from every other cavity is, that the bony covering completely surrounds its contents, and is calculated, not for motion, but solely for defence. Those hollows, likewise, and inequalities which we observe in the inside of the skull, and which exactly fit the folds of the brain, answer the important design of keeping the substance of the brain steady, and of guarding it against concussions. 92 NATURAL THEOLOGY. CHAPTER XII. COMPARATIVE ANATOMY. Whenever we find a general plan pursued, yet with such variations in it, as are, in each case, required by the particular exigency of the subject to which it is applied, we possess, in such a plan and such adaptation, the strongest evidence that can be afforded of intelligence and design; an evidence which the most completely excludes every other hypothesis. If the general plan proceeded from any fixed necessity in the nature of things, how could it accom¬ modate itself to the various wants and uses which it had to serve under different circum¬ stances, and on different occasions? Arkwright's mill was invented for the spinning of cotton. We see it employed for the spinning of wool, flax, and hemp, with such modifica¬ tions of the original principle, such variety in the same plan, as the texture of those different materials rendered necessary. Of the machine’s being put together with design, if it were possible to doubt, whilst we saw it only under one mode, and in one form; when we came to observe it in its different applications, with such changes of structure, such additions and supplements, as the special and particular use in each case demanded, we could not refuse any longer our assent to the proposition, “ that intelligence, properly and strictly so called (including under that name, foresight, consideration, reference to utility), had been employed, as well in the primitive plan, as in the several changes and accommodations which it is made to undergo.” Very much of this reasoning is applicable to what has been called Comparative Anatomy. In their general economy, in the outlines of the plan, in the construction as well as offices of their principal parts, there exists between all large terrestrial animals a close resemblance. In all, life is sustained, and the body nourished, by nearly the same apparatus. The heart, the lungs, the stomach, the liver, the kidneys, are much alike in all. The same fluid (for no distinction of blood has been observed) circulates through their vessels, and nearly in the same order. The same cause, therefore, whatever that cause was, has been concerned in the origin, has governed the production, of these different animal forms. When we pass on to smaller animals, or to the inhabitants of a different element, the resemblance becomes more distant and more obscure; but still the plan accompanies us. And, what we can never enough commend, and which it is our business at present to exemplify, the plan is attended, through all its varieties and deflections, by subserviences to special occasions and utilities. 1. The covering of different animals (though whether I am correct in classing this under their anatomy, I do not know) is the first tiling which presents itself to our observation; and is, in truth, both for its variety and its suitableness to their several natures, as much to be admired as any part of their structure. We have bristles, hair, wool, furs, feathers, quills, prickles, scales; yet in this diversity both of material and form, we cannot change one animal’s coat for another, without evidently changing it for the worse; taking care' however to remark, that these coverings are, in many cases, armour as well as clothing; intended for protection as well as warmth. The human animal is the only one which is naked, and the only one which can clothe itself. This is one of the properties which renders him an animal of all climates, and of all seasons. He can adapt the warmth or lightness of his covering to the temperature of his habitation. Had he been born with a fleece upon his back, although he might have been comforted by its warmth in high latitudes, it would have oppressed him by its weight and heat, as the species spread towards the equator. What art, however, does for men, nature has, in many instances, done for those animals NATURAL THEOLOGY. 93 which are incapable of art. Their clothing, of its own accord, changes with their necessities. This is particularly the case with that large tribe of quadrupeds, which are covered with furs. Every dealer in hare-skins and rabbit-skins, knows how much the fur is thickened by the approach of winter. It seems to he a part of the same constitution and the same design, that wool, in hot countries, degenerates, as it is called, but in truth (most happily for the animal’s ease) passes into hair; whilst, on the contrary, that hair, in the dogs of the polar regions, is turned into wool, or something very like it. To which may he referred, what naturalists have remarked, that bears, wolves, foxes, hares, which do not take the water, have the fur much thicker on the back than the belly; whereas in the beaver it is the thickest upon the belly; as are the feathers in water-fowl. We know the final cause of all this; and we know no other. The covering of birds cannot escape the most vulgar observation. Its lightness, its smooth¬ ness, its warmth;—the disposition of the feathers all inclined backward, the down about their stem, the overlapping of their tips, their different configuration in different parts, not to mention the variety of their colours, constitute a vestment for the body, so beautiful, and so appropriate to the life which the animal is to lead, as that, I think, we should have had no conception of any thing equally perfect, if we had never seen it, or can now imagine any thing more so. Let us suppose (what is possible only in supposition) a person who had never seen a bird, to be presented with a plucked pheasant, and hid to set his wits to work, how to contrive for it a covering which shall unite the qualities of warmth, levity, and least resistance to the air, and the highest degree of each; giving it also as much of beauty and ornament as he could afford. He is the person to behold the work of the Deity, in this part of his creation, with the sentiments which are due to it *. The commendation, which the general aspect of the feathered world seldom fails of exciting, will be increased by farther examination. It is one of those cases in which the philosopher has more to admire, than the common observer. Every feather is a mechanical wonder. If we look at the quill, we find properties not easily brought together—strength and lightness. I know few things more remarkable than the strength and lightness of the very pen with which I am writing. If we cast our eye to the upper part of the stem, we see a material, made for the purpose, used in no other class of animals, and in no other parts of birds ; tough, light, pliant, elastic. The pith, also, which feeds the feather, is, amongst animal substances, sui generis ; neither hone, flesh, membrane, nor tendon t. But the artificial part of the feather is the beard , or, as it is sometimes, I believe, called, the vane. By the beards are meant, what are fastened on each side of the stem, and what constitute the breadth of the feather ; what we usually strip off from one side or both, when we make a pen. The separate pieces or lamina3, of which the beard is composed, are called threads, sometimes filaments, or rays. Now the first thing which an attentive observer will remark is, how much stronger the beard of the feather shews itself to be, when pressed in a direction perpendicular to its plane, than when rubbed, either up or down, in the line of the stem; and he will soon discover the structure which occasions this difference, viz. that the laminae whereof these beards are composed, are flat, and placed with their flat sides towards each other; by which means, whilst they easily bend for the approaching of each other, as * Even tlie chemical composition of feathers marks an adaptation of means to an end. They are composed almost entirely of albumen (white of egg) and are con¬ sequently little affected by moisture. By the most long continued boiling, Mr. Hatchett was unable to dissolve them : hence the feathers of the water fowl are totally unaffected by the divings, and other habits of the bird. The very pen, with which I am writing, though it slightly softens, yet never dissolves in the ink. The effect of water upon hair, on the contrary, is much more decisive ; in a con¬ tinued and elevated temperature, as in a Papin’s digester, it is entirely dissolved : every lady is aware of the con¬ siderable effect of a moist atmosphere upon her curls, however inoperative upon her ostrich feathers. Hair is composed principally of gelatine (isinglass, glue, &c.), and is rarely required to withstand that degree of moisture, so requisite in the feathers of birds. It is remarkable that the composition of all descriptions of hair differs but very slightly in whatever form it appears. Bristles, hair, wool, and down, are not perceptibly different in compo¬ sition ; these not being the ordinary clothing of the inhabi¬ tants of the water, are not rendered insensible to moisture, it is only in the instance of feathers that the demand occurs, and the necessity is provided for by a change in composition.—Yauquelin. Nich. Jour., xv. p. 141 ; Ber- thollet. Ann. de Chiin., v. 47, p. 267; Thomson, iv. p. 483. f The quill part of a feather is composed of circular and longitudinal fibres. In making a pen, you must scrape off the coat of circular fibres, or the quill will split in a ragged manner, making what boys call cat's teeth. 94 NATURAL THEOLOGY. any one may perceive by drawing liis finger ever so liglitly upwards, they are much harder to bend out of their plane, which is the direction in which they have to encounter the impulse and pressure of the air, and in which their strength is wanted, and put to the trial. This is one particularity in the structure of a feather : a second is still more extraordinary. Whoever examines a feather, cannot help taking notice, that the threads or laminae of which we have been speaking, in their natural state unite* j that their union is something more than the mere apposition of loose surfaces; that they are not parted asunder without some degree of force ; that nevertheless there is no glutinous cohesion between them; that, therefore, by some mechanical means or other, they catch or clasp among themselves, thereby giving to. the beard or vane its closeness and compactness of texture. Nor is this all : when two laminae, which have been separated by accident or force, are brought together again, they immediately reclasp : the connexion, whatever it was, is perfectly recovered, and the beard of the feather becomes as smooth and firm as if nothing had happened to it. Draw your finger down the feather, which is against the grain, and you break, probably, the junction of some of the con¬ tiguous threads; draw your finger up the feather, and you restore all things to their former state. This is no common contrivance ; and now for the mechanism by which it is effected. The threads or laminae above mentioned are interlaced with one another; and the interlacing is performed by means of a vast number of fibres, or teeth, which the laminae shoot forth on each side , which hook and grapple together. A friend of mine counted fifty of these fibres in one-twentieth of an inch. These fibres are crooked ; but curved after a different manner : for those which proceed from the thread on the side towards the extremity of the feather, are lono-er, more flexible, and bent downward; whereas those which proceed from the side towards the beginning, or quill-end of the feather, are shorter, firmer, and turn upwards. The process then which takes place is as follows : when two laminae are pressed together, so that these long fibres are forced far enough over the short ones, their crooked parts fall into the cavity made by the crooked parts of the others; just as the latch that is fastened to a door, enters into the cavity of the catch fixed to the door-post, and there hooking itself, fastens the door ; for it is properly in this manner, that one thread of a feather is fastened to the other. This admirable structure of the feather, which it is easy to see with the microscope, suc¬ ceeds perfectly for the use to which nature has designed it; which use was, not only that the laminae might be united, but that when one thread or lamina has been separated from another by some external violence, it might be reclasped with sufficient facility and expedition *. In the ostrich , this apparatus of crotchets and fibres, of hooks and teeth, is wanting; and we see the consequence of the want. The filaments hang loose and separate from one another, forming only a kind of down ; which constitution of the feathers, however it may fit them for the flowing honours of a lady’s head-dress, may be reckoned an imperfection in the bird, inasmuch as wings, composed of these feathers, although they may greatly assist it in running, do not serve for flight. But under the present division of our subject, our business with feathers is, as they are the covering of the bird. And herein a singular circumstance occurs. In the small order of birds which winter with us, from a snipe downwards, let the external colour of the feathers be what it will, their Creator has universally given them a bed of black down next their bodies. Black, we know, is the warmest colour; and the purpose here is, to keep-in the heat, arising from the heart and circulation of the blood. It is farther likewise remarkable, that this is not found in larger birds ; for which there is also a reason : — small birds are much more exposed to the cold than large ones; forasmuch as they present, in proportion to their bulk, a much larger surface to the air. If a turkey were divided into a number of wrens (supposing the shape of the turkey and the wren to be similar), the surface of all the wrens would exceed the surface of the turkey, in the proportion of the length, breadth (or of any homologous line), of a turkey to that of a wren; which would be, perhaps, a pro- * The above account is taken from Memoirs for a Natural History of Animals, by the Royal Academy of Paris, published in 1701, p. 219. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 95 portion of ten to one. It was necessary therefore, that small birds should he more warmly clad than large ones : and this seems to be the expedient by which that exigency is provided for. II. In comparing different animals, I know no part of their structure which exhibits greater variety, or, in that variety, a nicer accommodation to their respective conveniency, than that which is seen in the different formation of their mouths. Whether the purpose be the reception of aliment merely, or the catching of prey, the picking up of seeds, the crop¬ ping of herbage, the extraction of juices, the suction of liquids, the breaking and grinding of food, the taste of that food, together with the respiration of air, and, in conjunction with it, the utterance of sound; these various offices are assigned to this one part, and, in different species, provided for, as they are wanted, by its different constitution. In the human species, forasmuch as there are hands to convey the food to the mouth, the mouth is flat, and by reason of its flatness, fitted only for reception ; whereas the projecting jaws, the wide rictus, the pointed teeth of the dog and his affinities, enable them to apply their mouths to snatch and seize the objects of their pursuit. The full lips, the rough tongue, the corrugated cartilaginous palate, the broad cutting teeth of the ox, the deer, the horse, and the sheep, qualify this tribe for broicsing upon their pasture; either gathering large mouth¬ fuls at once, where the grass is long, which is the case with the ox in particular; or biting close, where it is short, which the horse and the sheep are able to do, in a degree that one could hardly expect. The retired under-jaw of a swine works in the ground , after the pro¬ truding snout, like a prong or plough-share, has made its way to the roots upon which it feeds. A conformation so happy, was not the gift of chance. I n birds, this organ assumes a new character; new both in substance and in form; but in both, wonderfully adapted to the wants and uses of a distinct mode of existence. We have no longer the fleshy lips, the teeth of enamelled bone ; but we have, in the place of these two parts, and to perform the office of both, a hard substance (of the same nature with that which composes the nails, claws, and hoofs, of quadrupeds), cut out into proper shapes, and mecha¬ nically suited to the actions which are wanted. The sharp edge and tempered point of the sparrow s bill picks almost every kind of seed from its concealment in the plant; and not only so, but hulls the grain, breaks and shatters the coats of the seed, in order to get at the kernel. The hooked beak of the hawk-tribe separates the flesh from the bones of the ani¬ mals which it feeds upon, almost with the cleanness and precision of a dissector’s knife. The butcher-bird transfixes its prey upon the spike of a thorn, whilst it picks its bones. In some birds of this class, we have the cross-bill, i. e. both the upper and lower bill hooked, and their tips crossing. The spoon- bill enables the goose to graze, to collect its food from the bottom of pools, or to seek it amidst the soft or liquid substances with which it is mixed. The long taper¬ ing bill of the snipe and woodcock, penetrates still deeper into moist earth, which is the bed in which the food of that species is lodged. This is exactly the instrument which the animal wanted. It did not want strength in its bill, which was inconsistent with the slender form of the animal’s neck, as well as unnecessary for the kind of aliment upon which it subsists; but it wanted length to reach its object. But the species of bill which belongs to the birds that live by suction , deserves to be described in its particular relation to that office. They are what naturalists call serrated or dentated bills; the inside of them, towards the edge, being thickly set with parallel or concentric rows of short, strong, sharp-pointed prickles. These, though they should be called teeth, are not for the purpose of mastication, like the teeth of quadrupeds; nor yet, as in fish, for the seizing and retaining of their prey ; but for a quite different use. They form a filtre. The duck by means of them discusses the mud ; examining with great accuracy the puddle, the brake, every mixture which is likely to contain her food. The operation is thus carried on :— The liquid or semi-liquid substances, in which the animal has plunged her bill, she draws, by the action of her lungs, through the narrow interstices which lie between these teeth ; catch¬ ing, as the stream passes across her beak, whatever it may happen to bring along with it, that proves agreeable to her choice, and easily dismissing all the rest. Now, suppose the purpose to have been, out of a mass of confused and heterogeneous substances, to separate for the use of the animal, or rather to enable the animal to separate for its own, those few par- 96 NATURAL THEOLOGY. tides which suited its taste and digestion; what more artificial, or more commodious, instru¬ ment of selection, could have been given to it, than this natural filtre ? It has been observed also (what must enable the bird to choose and distinguish with greater acute¬ ness, as well, probably, as what greatly increases its luxury), that the bills of this species are furnished with large nerves,—that they are covered with a skin,—and that the nerves run down to the very extremity. In the curlew, woodcock, and snipe, there are three pairs of nerves, equal almost to the optic nerve in thickness, which pass first along the roof of the mouth, and then along the upper chap down to the point of the bill, long as the bill is. But to return to the train of our observations—The similitude between the bills of birds and the mouths of quadrupeds is exactly such, as for the sake of the argument, might be wished for. It is near enough to shew the continuation of the same plan : it is remote enough to exclude the supposition of the difference being produced by action or use. A more prominent contour, or a wider gape, might be resolved into the effect of continued efforts, on the part of the species, to thrust out the mouth, or open it to the stretch. But by what course of action, or exercise, or endeavour, shall we get rid of the lips, the gums, the teeth; and acquire, in the place of them, pincers of horn ? By what habit shall we so completely change, not only the shape of the part, but the substance of which it is composed ? The truth is, if we had seen no other than the mouths of quadrupeds, we should have thought no other could have been formed: little could we have supposed, that all the purposes of a mouth, furnished with lips, and armed with teeth, could be answered by an instrument which had none of these; could be supplied, and that with many additional advantages, by the hard¬ ness, and sharpness, and figure, of the bills of birds. Every thing about the animal mouth is mechanical. The teeth of fish have their points turned backward, like the teeth of a wool or cotton card. The teeth of lobsters work one against another, like the sides of a pair of shears. In many insects, the mouth is converted into a pump or sucker, fitted at the end sometimes with a wimble, sometimes with a forceps; by which double provision, viz. of the tube, and the penetrating form of the point, the insect first bores through the integuments of its prey, and then extracts the juices. And, what is most extraordinary of all, one sort of mouth, as the occasion requires, shall be changed into another sort. The caterpillar could not live without teeth; in several species,the butterfly formed from it could not use them. The old teeth therefore are cast off with the exuviae of the grub; a new and totally different apparatus assumes their place in the fly. Amid these novelties of form, we sometimes forget that it is, all the while, the animal’s mouth ; that, whether it be lips, or teeth, or bill, or beak, or shears, or pump, it is the same part diversified : and it is also remarkable, that, under all the varieties of configuration with which we are acquainted, and which are very great, the organs of taste and smelling are situated near each other. III. To the mouth adjoins the gullet: in this part also, comparative anatomy discovers a difference of structure, adapted to the different necessities of the animal. In brutes, because the posture of their neck conduces little to the passage of the aliments, the fibres of the gullet, which act in this business, run into close spiral lines, crossing each other : in men, these fibres run only a little obliquely from the upper end of the oesophagus to the stomach, into which by a gentle contraction, they easily transmit the descending morsels; that is to say, for the more laborious deglutition of animals, which thrust their food up instead of down, and also through a longer passage, a proportionably more powerful apparatus of muscles is provided; more powerful, not merely by the strength of the fibres, which might be attributed to the greater exercise of their force, but in their collocation, which is a determinate circumstance, and must have been original. IV. The gullet leads to the intestines j here, likewise, as before, comparing’ quadrupeds with man, under a general similitude we meet with appropriate differences. The valvulcv conniventes , or, as they are by some called, the semilunar valves, found in the human intes¬ tine, are wanting in that of brutes. These are wrinkles or plates of the innermost coat of the guts, the effect of which is to retard the progress of the food through the alimentary canal It is easy to understand how much more necessary such a provision may be to the body of an animal of an erect posture, and in which, consequently, the weight of the food is added to NATU11AL THEOLOGY. or the action of the intestine, than in that of a quadruped, in which the course of the food, from its entrance to its exit, is nearly horizontal: but it is impossible to assign any cause, except the final cause, for this distinction actually taking place. So far as depends upon the action of the part, this structure was more to be expected in a quadruped than in a man. In truth, it must in both have been formed, not by action, but in direct opposition to action and to pressure ; but the opposition which would arise from pressure, is greater in the upright trunk than in any other. That theory therefore is pointedly contradicted by the example before us. The structure is found where its generation, according to the method by which the theorist would have it generated, is the most difficult; but ( observe ) it is found where its effect is most useful The different length of the intestines in carnivorous and herbivorous animals, has been noticed on a former occasion. The shortest, I believe, is that of some birds of prey, in which the intestinal canal is little more than a straight passage from the mouth to the vent. The longest is in the deer-kind. The intestines of a Canadian stag, four feet high, measured ninety-six feet f. The intestines of a sheep, unravelled, measured thirty times the length of the body. The intestine of a wild cat is only three times the length of the body. Univer¬ sally, where the substance upon which the animal feeds is of slow concoction, or yields its chyle with more difficulty, there the passage is circuitous and dilatory, that time and space may be allowed for the change and the absorption which are necessary. Where the food is soon dissolved, or already half assimilated, an unnecessary or, perhaps, hurtful detention is avoided, by giving to it a shorter and a readier route. Y. In comparing the bones of different animals, we are struck, in the bones of birds, with a propriety, which could only proceed from the wisdom of an intelligent and designing Creator. In the bones of an animal which is to fly, the two qualities required are strength and lightness. Wherein, therefore, do the bones of birds (I speak of the cylindrical bones) differ, in these respects, from the bones of quadrupeds ? In three properties: first, their cavities are much larger in proportion to the weight of the bone, than in those of quadrupeds ; secondly, these cavities are empty ; thirdly, the shell is of a firmer texture than the substance of other bones. It is easy to observe these particulars, even in picking the leg or wing of a chicken. Now, the weight being the same, the diameter, it is evident, will be greater in a hollow bone than in a solid one, and with the diameter, as every mathematician can prove, is increased, cceteris paribus , the strength of the cylinder, or its resistance to breaking. In a wmrd, a bone of the same 'weight would not have been so strong in any other form; and, to have made it heavier, would have incommoded the animals flight. Yet this form could not be acquired by use, or the bone become hollow' or tubular by exercise. What appetency could excavate a bone ? YI. The lungs also of birds, as compared with the lungs of quadrupeds, contain in them a provision, distinguishingly calculated for this same purpose of levitation; namely, a com¬ munication (not found in other kinds of animals) between the air-vessels of the lungs and the cavities of the body : so that by the intromission of air from one to the other (at the will, as it should seem, of the animal), its body can be occasionally puffed out, and its ten¬ dency to descend in the air, or its specific gravity, made less. The bodies of birds are blown up from the lungs (which no other animal bodies are), and thus rendered buoyant. YII. All birds are oviparous. This likewise carries on the work of gestation with as little increase as possible of the weight of the body. A gravid uterus would have been a trouble¬ some burden to a bird in its flight. The advantage, in this respect, of an oviparous procre- ation, is, that, whilst the whole brood are hatched together, the eggs are excluded singly, and at considerable intervals. Ten, fifteen, or twenty young birds may be produced in one * Sir Everard Horae, in a paper on the digestive organs land, where the food is more scanty, the glands and giz- of birds, has demonstrated how admirably they are varied zard are larger, and the entrails shorter. In one of the and adapted to the situation in which they are placed, same species in the deserts of Africa, where food is still Thus the cassowary of Java, one of the most fertile more scarce, the glands and gizzard are proportionately islands in the world, where food consequently is abundant, enlarged, and the entrails diminished.—Phil. r l rails. 18111. has small digestive glands, a small gizzard, and an enor- T Mem, Acad. Paris, 170], p. 170. mous length of entrails. In the cassowary of New Hol- II 03 NATURAL THEOLOGY. cletch or covey, yet tlie parent bird have never been encumbered by the load of more than one full-grown egg at one time. VIII. A principal topic of comparison between animals, is, in their instruments of motion. These come before us under three divisions ; feet, wings, and fins. I desire any man to say, which of the three is best fitted for its use; or whether the same consummate art be not conspicuous in them all. The constitution of the elements, in which the motion is to be performed, is very different. The animal action must necessarily follow that constitution. The Creator therefore, if we might so speak, had to prepare for different situations, for different difficulties; yet the purpose is accomplished not less successfully in one case than in the other. And, as between wings and the corresponding limbs of quadrupeds, it is accomplished without deserting the general idea. The idea is modified, not deserted. Strip a wing of its feathers, and it bears no obscure resemblance to the fore-leg of a quadruped. The articulations at the shoulder and the cubitus are much alike; and, what is a closer circumstance, in both cases the upper part of the limb consists of a single bone, the lower part of two. But, fitted up with its furniture of feathers and quills, it becomes a wonderful instrument, more artificial than its first appearance indicates, though that be very striking: at least, the use, which the bird makes of its wings in flying, is more complicated, and more curious, than is generally known. One thing is certain, that if the flapping of the wings in flight were no more than the reciprocal motion of the same surface in opposite directions, either upwards and downwards, or estimated in any oblique line, the bird would lose as much by one motion, as she gained by another. The sky-lark could never ascend by such an action as this : for, though the stroke upon the air by the underside of her wing would carry her up, the stroke from the upperside, when she raised her wing again, would bring her down. In order, therefore, to account for the advantage which the bird derives from her wing, it is necessary to suppose, that the surface of the wing, measured upon the same plane, is contracted, whilst the wing is drawn up; and let out to its full expansion, when it descends upon the air for the purpose of moving the body by the reaction of that element. Now the form and struc¬ ture of the wing, its external convexity, the disposition, and particularly the overlapping, of its larger feathers, the action of the muscles, and joints of the pinions, are all adapted to this alternate adjustment of its shape and dimensions. Such a twist, for instance, or semirotatory motion, is given to the great feathers of the wing, that they strike the air with their flat side, but rise from the stroke slantwise. The turning of the oar in rowing, whilst the rower advances his hand for a new stroke, is a similar operation to that of the feather, and takes its name from the resemblance. 0 I believe that this faculty is not found in the great feathers of the tail. This is the place also for observing, that the pinions are so set upon the body, as to bring down the wings not vertically, but in a direction obliquely tending towards the tail; which motion, by virtue of the common resolution of forces, does two things at the same time; supports the body in the air, and carries it forward. The steerage of a bird in its flight is effected partly by the wings, but in a principal degree by the tail. And herein we meet with a circumstance not a little remarkable. Birds with long legs have short tails; and, in their flight, place their legs close to their bodies, at the same time stretching them out backwards, as far as they can. In this position, the legs extend beyond the rump, and become the rudder; supplying that steerage which the tail could not. From the wings of birds, the transition is easy to the jins of fish. They are both, to their respective tribes, the instruments of their motion ; but, in the work which they have to do, there is a considerable difference, founded in this circumstance. Fish, unlike birds, have very nearly the same specific gravity with the element in which they move. In the case of fish, therefore, there is little or no weight to bear up ; what is wanted, is only an impulse suffi¬ cient to carry the body through a resisting medium, or to maintain the posture, or to support or restore the balance of the body, which is always the most unsteady where there is no weight to sink it. For these offices, the fins are as large as necessary, though much smaller than wings, their action mechanical, their position, and the muscles by which they are moved, in the highest degree convenient. The following short account of some experiments NATURAL THEOLOGY. 99 upon fish, made for the purpose of ascertaining the use of their fins, will he the host con¬ firmation of what we assert. In most fish, beside the great fin the tail, we find two pairs of fins upon the sides, two single fins upon the back, and one upon the belly, or rather between the belly and the tail. The balancing use of these organs is proved in this manner. Of the large-headed fish, if you cut off the pectoral fins, i. e. the pair which lies close behind the gills, the head falls prone to the bottom: if the right pectoral fin only be cut off, the fish leans to that side; if the ventral fin on the same side be cut away, then it loses its equilibrium entirely: if the dorsal and ventral fins be cut off, the fish reels to the right and left. When the fish dies, that is, when the fins cease to play, the belly turns upwards. The use of the same parts for motion is seen in the following observation upon them when put in action. The pectoral, and more particularly the ventral fins, serve to raise and depress the fish; when the fish desires to have a retrograde motion, a stroke forward with the pec¬ toral fin effectually produces it; if the fish desire to turn either way, a single blow with the tail the opposite way, sends it round at once: if the tail strike both ways, the motion produced by the double lash is progressive , and enables the fish to dart forwards with an astonishing velocity*. The result is, not only, in some cases, the most rapid, but, in all cases, the most gentle, pliant, easy, animal motion, with which we are acquainted. However, when the tail is cut off, the fish loses all motion, and gives itself up to where the water impels it. The rest of the fins, therefore, so far as respects motion, seems to be merely subsidiary to this. In their mechanical use, the anal fin may be reckoned the keel; the ventral fins, out-riggers; the pectoral muscles, the oars; and if there be any similitude between these parts of a boat and a fish, observe, that it is not the resemblance of imitation, but the likeness which arises from applying similar mechanical means to the same purpose. We have seen that the tail in the fish is the great instrument of motion. Now, in cetaceous or warm-blooded fish, which are obliged to rise every two or three minutes to the surface to take breath, the tail, unlike what it is in other fish, is horizontal; its stroke, consequently, perpendicular to the horizon, which is the right direction for sending the fish to the top, or carrying it down to the bottom. Regarding animals in their instruments of motion, we have only followed the comparison through the first great division of animals into beasts, birds, and fish. If it were our intention to pursue the consideration farther, I should take in that generic distinction amongst birds, the web-foot of water-fowl. It is an instance which may be pointed out to a child. The utility of the web to water-fowl, the inutility to land-fowl, are so obvious, that it seems impossible to notice the difference without acknowledging the design. I am at a loss to know, how those, who deny the agency of an intelligent Creator, dispose of this example. There is nothing in the action of swimming, as carried on by a bird upon the surface of the water, that should generate a membrane between the toes. As to that membrane, it is an exercise of constant resistance. The only supposition I can think of is, that all birds have been originally water-fowl, and web-footed; that sparrows, hawks, linnets, &c. which frequent the land, have, in process of time, and in the course of many generations, had this part worn away by hard ground. To such evasive assumptions must atheism always have recourse ! and, after all, it confesses that the structure of the feet of birds, in their original form, was critically adapted to their original destination! The web-feet of amphibious quadrupeds, seals, otters, &c. fall under the same observationf. * Goldsmith, Hist, of An. Nat. Vol. vi. p. 151. T Sir Everard Home very justly remarks, that the means of motion are so various in animals, and so per¬ fectly adapted to the particular circumstances of the animal, as to excite the highest admiration of the power, skill, and wisdom of the Creator. A few instances will suffice :—■ Sailing is exemplified by the Portuguese man-of-war (Holotliuria physalis). The body of this molluscous ani¬ mal floats on the surface of the sea, from which it raises, at pleasure, an oval bag to catch the favouring breeze, and is thus wafted to new localities. Rowing is a mode of transport familiar to all aquatic fowls, and some animals. Their feet are webbed, the better to enable them to present a resisting surface to the water; yet are of a mechanism superior to artificial paddles, because, as soon as the expanded foot has pressed back to the extent of its stroke, the toes collapse, and whilst drawn forward to repeat the propelling effort, present a very small surface to the opposing water. Every means arc super- added to facilitate the passage of these aquatics through the liquid in which they swim, the water glides over their surfaces without adhering: the duck and the beaver are not even damp when they emerge. Flying is facilitated by appropriate peculiar apparatus. Birds have the power of inflating their bones, and even the ii 2 100 NATURAL TilEOLOGY. IX. The Jive senses are common to most large animals; nor have we much difference to remark in their constitution, or much, however, which is referable to mechanism. The superior sagacity of animals which hunt their prey, and which, consequently, depend for their livelihood upon their nose , is well known in its use ; but not at all known in tne organization which produces it. The external ears of beasts of prey, of lions, tigers, wolves, have their trumpet-part, or concavity, standing forwards, to seize the sounds which are before them, viz. the sounds of the animals which they pursue or watch. The ears of animals of flight are turned backward, to give notice of the approach of their enemy from behind, whence he may steal upon them unseen. This is a critical distinction, and is mechanical; but it may be suggested, and I think, not without probability, that it is the effect of continual habit. The eyes of animals which follow their prey by night, as cats, owls, &c. possess a faculty not given to those of other species, namely, of closing the pupil entirely. The final cause of which seems to be this :—It was necessary for such animals to be able to descry objects with very small degrees of light. This capacity depended upon the superior sensibility of the retina ; that is, upon its being affected by the most feeble impulses. But that tenderness of structure, which rendered the membrane thus exquisitely sensible, rendered it also liable to be offended by the access of stronger degrees of light. The contractile range therefore of the pupil is increased in these animals, so as to enable them to close the aperture entirely, which includes the power of diminishing it in every degree; whereby at all times such portions, and only such portions, of light are admitted, as may be received without injury to the sense. There appears also in the figure, and in some properties of the pupil of the eye, an appro¬ priate relation to the wants of different animals. In horses, oxen, goats, sheep, the pupil of the eye is elliptical; the transverse axis being horizontal; by which structure, although the eye be placed on the side of the head, the anterior elongation of the pupil catches the forward rays, or those which come from objects immediately in front of the animal’s face. CHAPTER XIII. PECULIAR ORGANIZATIONS. I believe that all the instances which I shall collect under this title, might, consistently enough with technical language, have been placed under the head of Comparative Anatomy. But there appears to me an impropriety in the use which that term hath obtained ; it being, in some sort, absurd to call that a case of comparative anatomy, in which there is nothing to “ comparein which a conformation is found in one animal, which hath nothing properly answering to it in another. Of this kind are the examples which I have to propose in the present chapter ; and the reader will see that, though some of them be the strongest, perhaps, he will meet with under any division of our subject, they must necessarily be of an uncon¬ nected and miscellaneous nature. To dispose them, however, into some sort of order, we will notice, first, particularities of structure which belong to quadrupeds, birds, and fish, as abdominal cavity, by means of openings communicating with their lungs; and this internal air, when heated by their natural warmth, tends to render them specifically lighter than the atmosphere. Every quill is similarly inflated. The concave form of the wing is adapted to raising the bitd perpendicularly; its down strokes present a more resisting form than when it is raised. Creeping and walking have their curious attendant phenomena; but many of them have incidentally been mentioned in other pages. How incomparably inferior the science and the ingenuity of man are to those of the divine Architect, is shown by the superior speed of a fish or a water-fowl to every ves¬ sel that he can construct : all the powers of the most powerful steam-boat are unequal to the speed of a stickle¬ back or a sprat: by no well-contrived paddle-wheel can the engineer equal the comparative power exerted in a fish’s tail, or even in the web foot of a water-fowl : and the superiority of nature in the race is not confined to one element; the fastest railway engine is left behind by the race horse; the balloon, even in a gale, cannot compete with a swallow. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 201 such, or to many of the kinds included in these classes of animals; and then, such particu¬ larities as are confined to one or two species. I. Along each side of the neck of large quadrupeds , runs a stiff, robust, cartilage, which butchers call the pax-wax. No person can carve the upper end of a crop of beef with¬ out driving his knife against it. It is a tough, strong, tendinous substance, braced from the head to the middle of the back : its office is to assist in supporting the weight of the head. It is a mechanical provision, of which this is the undisputed use ; and it is suffi¬ cient, and not more than sufficient, for the purpose which it has to execute. The head of an ox or a horse is a heavy weight, acting at the end of a long lever (consequently with a great purchase), and in a direction nearly perpendicular to the joints of the supporting neck. From such a force, so advantageously applied, the bones of the neck would be in constant danger of dislocation, if they were not fortified by this strong tape. No such organ is found in the human subject, because, from the erect position of the head (the pressure of it acting nearly in the direction of the spine), the junction of the vertebrae appears to be sufficiently secure without it. This cautionary expedient, therefore, is limited to quadrupeds : the care of the Creator is seen where it is wanted. II. The oil with which birds prune their feathers, and the organ which supplies it, is a specific provision for the winged creation. On each side of the rump of birds, is observed a small nipple, yielding upon pressure a butter-like substance, which the bird extracts by pinching the pap with its bill. With this oil, or ointment, thus procured, the bird dresses its coat; and repeats the action as often as its own sensations teach it that it is in any part wanted, or as the excretion may be sufficient for the expense. The gland, the pap, the nature and quality of the excreted substance, the manner of obtaining it from its lodgment in the body, the application of it when obtained, form, collectively, an evidence of inten¬ tion which it is not easy to withstand. Nothing similar to it is found in unfeathered animals. What blind conatus of nature should produce it in birds ; should not produce it in beasts ? III. The air-bladder also of a fish affords a plain and direct instance, not only of con¬ trivance, but strictly of that species of contrivance which we denominate mechanical. It is a philosophical apparatus in the body of an animal. The principle of the contrivance is clear : the application of the principle is also clear. The use of the organ to sustain, and, at will, also to elevate, the body of the fish in the water, is proved by observing, what has been tried, that, when the bladder is burst, the fish grovels at the bottom; and also, that flounders, soles, skates, which are without the air-bladder, seldom rise in the water, and that with effort. The manner in which the purpose is attained, and the suitableness of the means to the end, are not difficult to be apprehended. The rising and sinking of a fish in water, so far as it is independent of the stroke of the fins and tail, can only be regulated by the specific gravity of the body. When the bladder, contained in the body of the fish, is contracted, which the fish probably possesses a muscular power of doing, the bulk of the fish is contracted along with it; whereby, since the absolute weight remains the same, the spe¬ cific gravity, which is the sinking force, is increased, and the fish descends : on the contrary, when, in consequence of the relaxation of the muscles, the elasticity of the enclosed and now compressed air restores the dimensions of the bladder, the tendency downwards becomes pro- portionably less than it was before, or is turned into a contrary tendency. These are known properties of bodies immersed in a fluid. The enamelled figures, or little glass bubbles, in a jar of water, are made to rise and fall by the same artifice. A diving machine might be made to ascend and descend, upon the like principle ; namely, by introducing into the inside of it an air-vessel, which, by its contraction, would diminish, and by its distension enlarge, the bulk of the machine itself, and thus render it specifically heavier or specifically lighter, than the water which surrounds it. Suppose this to be done, and the artist to solicit a patent for his invention : the inspectors of the model, whatever they might think of the use or value of the contrivance, could by no possibility entertain a question in their minds, whether it were a contrivance or not. No reason has ever been assigned,—no reason can be assigned, why the conclusion is not as certain in the fish, as it is in the machine ; why the argument is not as firm in one case as the other* 102 NATURAL THEOLOGY. It would be very worthy of inquiry, if it were possible to discover, by what method an animal which lives constantly in water, is able to supply a repository of air. The expedient, whatever it be, forms part, and perhaps the most curious part, of the provision. Nothing similar to the air-bladder is found in land animals ; and a life in the water has no natural tendency to produce a bag of air. Nothing can be farther from an acquired organization than this is. These examples mark the attention of the Creator to the three great kingdoms of his ani¬ mal creation, and to their constitution as such.—The example which stands next in point of generality, belonging to a large tribe of animals, or rather to various species of that tribe, is the poisonous tooth of serpents. I. Th q fang of the viper is a clear and curious example of mechanical contrivance. It is a perforated tooth, loose at the root : in its quiet state lying down flat upon the jaw, but furnished with a muscle, which, with a jerk, and by the pluck, as it were, of a string, sud¬ denly erects it. Under the tooth, close to its root, and communicating with the perforation, lies a small bag containing the venom. When the fang is raised, the closing of the jaw presses its root against the bag underneath ; and the force of this compression sends out the fluid with a considerable impetus through the tube in the middle of the tooth. What more unequivocal or effectual apparatus could be devised for the double purpose of at once inflict¬ ing the wound and injecting the poison ? Yet, though lodged in the mouth, it is so con¬ stituted, as, in its inoffensive and quiescent state, not to interfere with the animal’s ordinary office of receiving its food. It has been observed also, that none of the harmless serpents, the black snake, the blind worm, &c. have these fangs, but teeth of an equal size; not moveable, as this is, but fixed into the jaw. II. In being the property of several different species, the preceding example is resembled by that which I shall next mention, which is the bag of the opossum. This is a mechanical contrivance, most properly so called. The simplicity of the expedient renders the con¬ trivance more obvious than many others, and by no means less certain. A false skin under the belly of the animal, forms a pouch, into which the young litter are received at their birth; where they have an easy and constant access to the teats ; in which they are tran¬ sported by the dam from place to place; where they are at liberty to run in and out; and where they find a refuge from surprise and danger. It is their cradle, their asylum, and the machine for their conveyance. Can the use of this structure be doubted of? Nor is it a mere doubling of the skin; but it is a new organ, furnished with bones and muscles of its own. Two bones are placed before the os pubis, and joined to that bone as their base. These support, and give a fixture to, the muscles which serve to open the bag. To these muscles there are antagonists, which serve in the same manner to shut it; and this office they perform so exactly, that in the living animal the opening can scarcely be discerned, except when the sides are forcibly drawn asunder*. Is there any action in this part of the animal, any process arising from that action, by which these members could be formed ? any account to be given of the formation, except design ? III. As a particularity, yet appertaining to more species than one; and also as strictly mechanical; we may notice a circumstance in the structure of the claws of certain birds. The middle claw of the heron and cormorant is toothed and notched like a saw. These birds are great fishers, and these notches assist them in holding their slippery prey. The use is evident; but the structure such, as cannot at all be accounted for by the effort of the animal, or the exercise of the part. Some other fishing birds have these notches in their bills; and for the same purpose. The ganet, or Soland goose, has the side of its bill irregu¬ larly jagged, that it may hold its prey the faster. Nor can the structure in this, more than in the former case, arise from the manner of employing the part. The smooth surfaces, and soft flesh of fish, were less likely to notch the bills of birds, than the hard bodies upon which many other species feed. We now come to particularities strictly so called, as being limited to a single species of animal. Of these, I shall take one from a quadruped, and one from a bird. * Goldsmith, Nat. Hist. vol. iv. p. 244. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 103 I. The stomach of the camel is well known to retain large quantities of water, and to retain it unchanged for a considerable length of time. This property qualifies it for living in the desert. Let us see, therefore, what is the internal organization, upon which a faculty so rare, and so beneficial, depends. A number of distinct sacs or bags (in a dromedary thirty of these have been counted), are observed to lie between the membranes of the second stomach, and to open in the stomach near the top by small square apertures. Through these orifices, after the stomach is full, the annexed bags are filled from it : and the water so deposited is, in the first place, not liable to pass into the intestines; in the second place, is kept separate from the solid aliment ; and, in the third place, is out of the reach of the digestive action of the stomach, or of mixture with the gastric juice. It appears probable, or rather certain, that the animal, by the conformation of its muscles, possesses the power of squeezing back this water from the adjacent bags into the stomach, whenever thirst excites it to put this power in action. II. The tongue of the woodpecker is one of those singularities, which nature presents us with, when a singular purpose is to be answered. It is a particular instrument for a par¬ ticular use; and what, except design, ever produces such ? The woodpecker lives chiefly upon insects, lodged in the bodies of decayed or decaying trees. For the purpose of boring into the wood, it is furnished with a bill straight, hard, angular, and sharp. When, by means of this piercer, it has reached the cells of the insects, then comes the office of its tongue; which tongue is, first, of such a length that the bird can dart it out three or four inches from the bill,—in this respect differing greatly from every other species of bird ; in the second place, it is tipped with a stiff, sharp, bony thorn; and, in the third place (which appears to me the most remarkable property of all), this tip is dentated on both sides, like the beard of an arrow or the barb of a hook. The description of the part declares its uses. The bird, having exposed the retreats of the insects by the assistance of its bill, with a motion inconceivably quick, launches out at them this long tongue ; transfixes them upon the barbed needle at the end of it; and thus draws its prey within its mouth. If this be not mechanism, what is ? Should it be said, that, by continual endeavours to shoot out the tongue to the stretch, the woodpecker species may by degrees have lengthened the organ itself, beyond that of other birds, what account can be given of its form, of its tip ? how, in particular, did it get its barb, its dentation ? These barbs, in my opinion, wherever they occur, are decisive proofs of mechanical contrivance. III. I shall add one more example, for the sake of its novelty. It is always an agreeable discovery, when, having remarked in an animal an extraordinary structure, we come at length to find out an unexpected use for it. The following narrative furnishes an instance of this kind. The babyrouessa, or Indian hog, a species of wild boar, found in the East Indies, has two bent teeth, more than half a yard long, growing upwards, and (which is the singularity) from the upper jaw. These instruments are not wanted for offence : that ser¬ vice being provided for by two tusks issuing from the upper jaw, and resembling those of the common boar: nor does -the animal use them for defence. They might seem therefore to be both a superfluity and an encumbrance. But observe the event : the animal sleeps standing; and, in order to support its head, hooks its upper tusks upon the branches of trees*. * More accurate observations have proved, that in this to those with which we ai’e acquainted, and it has been trifling instance Paley was misled by his authority ; the suggested that they may be intended to guard the head of Indian Hog not being in the habit of reposing in the way the animal from the hard and thick brush-wood, as it thus described. rushes through the forests, the most impervious parts of Its tusks are adapted most probably to other uses than which it inhabits. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 104 CHAPTER XIV. PROSPECTIVE CONTRIVANCES. I can hardly imagine to myself a more distinguishing mark, and, consequently, a more certain proof of design, than preparation, i. e. the providing of things beforehand, which are not to be used until a considerable time afterward : for this implies a contemplation of the future, which belongs only to intelligence. Of these prospective contrivances, the bodies of animals furnish various examples. I. The human teeth afford an instance, not only of prospective contrivance, but of the completion of the contrivance being designedly suspended. They are formed within the gums, and there they stop; the fact being, that their farther advance to maturity would not only be useless to the new-born animal, but extremely in its way; as it is evident that the act of sucking , by which it is for some time to be nourished, will be performed with more ease both to the nurse and to the infant, whilst the inside of the mouth, and edges of the gums, are smooth and soft, than if set with hard pointed bones. By the time they are wanted, the teeth are ready. They have been lodged within the gums for some months past, but detained, as it were, in their sockets, so long as their farther protrusion would in¬ terfere with the office to which the mouth is destined. Nature, namely, that intelligence which was employed in creation, looked beyond the first year of the infant’s life ; yet, whilst she was providing for functions which were after that term to become necessary, was careful not to incommode those which preceded them. What renders it more probable that this is the effect of design, is, that the teeth are imperfect, whilst all other parts of the mouth are perfect. The lips are perfect, the tongue is perfect; the cheeks, the jaws, the palate, the pharynx, the larynx, are all perfect : the teeth alone are not so. This is the fact with respect to the human mouth : the fact also is, that the parts above enumerated, are called into use from the beginning ; whereas the teeth would be only so many obstacles and annoyances, if they were there. When a contrary order is necessary, a contrary order prevails. In the worm of the beetle, as hatched from the egg, the teeth are the first things which arrive at perfection. The insect begins to gnaw as soon as it escapes from the shell, though its other parts be only gradually advancing to their maturity. What has been observed of the teeth, is true of the horns of animals ; and for the same reason. The horn of a calf or a lamb does not bud, or at least does not sprout to anv con¬ siderable length, until the animal be capable of browsing upon its pasture; because such a substance upon the forehead of the young animal, would very much incommode the teat of the dam in the office of giving suck. But in the case of the teeth, — of the human teeth at least, the prospective contrivance looks still farther. A succession of crops is provided, and provided from the beginning ; a second tier being originally formed beneath the first, which do not come into use till several years afterward. And this double or suppletory provision meets a difficulty in the mechanism of the mouth, which would have appeared almost insurmountable. The expansion of the jaw (the consequence of the proportionable growth of the animal, and of its skull) neces¬ sarily separates the teeth of the first set, however compactly disposed, to a distance from one another, which would be very inconvenient. In due time, therefore, i. e. when the jaw has attained a great part of its dimensions, a new set of teeth springs up (loosening and pushing out the old ones before them), more exactly fitted to the space which they are to occupy, and rising also in such close ranks as to allow for any extension of line which the subsequent enlargement of the head may occasion*. * No part of the animal frame is more strictly media- food of tlie animal to which they belong, that anatomists, nical than the teeth. They are for mechanical purposes; from an inspection of an animal’s teeth, can always foretel they are made for holding, cutting, and grinding; and so the aliment on which it subsists. admirably are they varied and fitted for the particular Thus the crown of the molares, or grinders of the lion, NATURAL THEOLOGY. 105 II. It is not very easy to conceive a more evidently prospective contrivance, than that which, in all viviparous animals, is found in the milk of the female parent. At the moment the young animal enters the world, there is its maintenance ready for it. The particulars to be remarked in this economy, are neither few nor slight. We have, first, the nutritious quality of the fluid, unlike, in this respect, e very other excretion of the body ; and in which nature hitherto remains unimitated, neither cookery nor cliymistry having been able to make milk out of grass : we have, secondly, the organ for its reception and retention : we have, thirdly, the excretory duct, annexed to that organ : and we have, lastly, the determi¬ nation of the milk to the breast, at the particular juncture when it is about to be wanted. We have all these properties in the subject before us: and they are all indications of design. The last circumstance is the strongest of any. If I had been to guess beforehand, I should have conjectured, that at the time when there was an extraordinary demand for nourishment in one part of the system, there would be the least likelihood of a redundancy to supply another part. The advanced pregnancy of the female has no intelligible tendency to fill the breasts with milk. The lacteal system is a constant wonder : and it adds to other causes of our admiration, that the number of the teats or paps in each species is found to bear a pro¬ portion to the number of the young. In the sow, the bitch, the rabbit, the cat. the rat, which have numerous litters, the paps are numerous, and are disposed along the whole length of the belly ; in the cow and mare, they are few. The most simple account of this, is to refer it to a designing Creator*. © © But in the argument before us, we are entitled to consider not only animal bodies when framed, but the circumstances under which they are framed : and, in this view of the sub¬ ject, the constitution of many of their parts is most strictly prospective. III. The eye is of no use, at the time when it is formed. It is an optical instrument made in a dungeon; constructed for the refraction of light to a focus, and perfect for its purpose, before a ray of light has had access to it; geometrically adapted to the properties and action of an element, with which it has no communication. It is about indeed to enter into that communication: and this is precisely the thing which evidences intention. It is providing for the future in the closest sense which can be given to these terms; for it is pro¬ viding for a future change ; not for the then subsisting condition of the animal; not for any gradual progress or advance in that same condition ; but for a new state, the consequence of a great and sudden alteration, which the animal is to undergo at its birth. Is it to be be- and all the truly carnivorous animals, has an irregular, cutting edge; in man, monkeys, and bears, the crown is flat, with numerous points on the margin ; while, in the sea otter, the knobbed form of the crowns peculiarly fits them for crushing shells. Those which feed upon insects have points remarkably pointed, and suitable for piercing their scaly envelopes. Some animals have teeth with a chisel edge. To in¬ sure their permanent sharpness, they have enamel only on their anterior surface, so that one part being softer than the other wears faster, and thus constantly preserves a projecting acute edge. The grinders of some animals are composed of alternate perpendicular layers of bone and enamel, the bone wears away faster than the enamel, and consequently that rough surface is preserved which fits them for the mastication of the substances on which they feed. IIow admirably are the front, or incisor teeth of the beaver, squirrel, &c. adapted for the purpose of chiselling off pieces of the wood, nuts, &c., that are their peculiar food! How suitably are the teeth of the skate made acutely pointed, and the points turned towards the throat of the fish, their chief use being to retain its prey, and crack the slight shells of the animals on which it subsists. The shark, whose voracious habits render its teeth per¬ petually liable to be broken or torn away, has several ranges of them, and these constantly renewed. The teeth of the walrus, says Sir Everard Home, are particularly well adapted for breaking shells, as its tusks are for dislodging the shell-fish from the sand or mud. In the crocodile and other animals of that class, which do not masticate or tear their food, there are no molares, but the teeth, sharp-pointed, are particularly well adapted to the purpose for which alone they are required, the seizing and retaining of their prey.—(Blake on the Teeth —Home’s Lectures—Cuvier sur les Dents). * The composition of milk, which has been accurately ascertained by Berzelius, and other skilful chemists, since Paley wrote, shows the same prospective contrivance. Thus it is found that milk contains a very sensible pro¬ portion of the earthy matter of bones (phosphate of lime), so essential to their rapid growth, in young animals; and that the proportion present in milk is greatest immediately after parturition, when it is most needed. It afterwards gradually decreases in amount. The quality of milk also is much richer at the same period than afterwards ; a fact well known to every dairy keeper. Thus, the young animal, just struggling into life, is assisted and strengthened by his nourishment being greater than at any other period of his infancy.—Annals of Phil. vol. iii. p. 27. 106 NATURAL THEOLOGY. lieved that the eye was formed, or, which is the same thing, that the series of causes was fixed by which the eye is formed, without a view to this change; without a prospect of that condition, in which its fabric, of no use at present, is about to be of the greatest; without a consideration of the qualities of that element, hitherto entirely excluded, but with which it was hereafter to hold so intimate a relation ? A young man makes a pair of spectacles for himself against he grows old; for which spectacles he has no want or use whatever at the time he makes them. Could this be done without knowing and considering the defect of vision to which advanced age is subject ? Would not the precise suitableness of the instru¬ ment to its purpose, of the remedy to the defect, of the convex lens to the flattened eye, establish the certainty of the conclusion, that the case, afterward to arise, had been considered beforehand, speculated upon, provided for ? all which are exclusively the acts of a reasoning mind. The eye formed in one state, for use only in another state, and in a different state, affords a proof no less clear of destination to a future purpose : and a proof proportionably stronger, as the machinery is more complicated, and the adaptation more exact. IV. What has been said of the eye, holds equally true of the lungs. Composed of air- vessels, where there is no air; elaborately constructed for the alternate admission and expul¬ sion of an elastic fluid, where no such fluid exists ; this great organ, with the whole apparatus belonging to it, lies collapsed in the foetal thorax; yet in order, and in readiness for action, the first moment that the occasion requires its service. This is having a machine locked up in store for future use ; which incontestably proves, that the case was expected to occur, in which this use might be experienced ; but expectation is the proper act of intelligence. Considering the state in which an animal exists before its birth, I should look for nothing less in its body than a system of lungs. It is like finding a pair of bellows in the bottom of the sea ; of no sort of use in the situation in which they are found; formed for an action which was impossible to be exerted ; holding no relation of fitness to the element which sur¬ rounds them, but both to another element in another place. As part and parcel of the same plan, ought to be mentioned, in speaking of the lungs, the provisionary contrivances of the foramen ovale and ductus arteriosus . In the foetus, pipes are laid for the passage of the blood through the lungs; but, until the lungs be inflated by the inspiration of air, that passage is impervious, or in a great degree obstructed. What then is to be done ? What would an artist, what would a master, do upon the occasion ? He would endeavour, most probably, to provide a temporary passage, which might carry on the communication required, until the other was open. Now this is the thing which is actually done in the heart :—Instead of the circuitous route, through the lungs, which the blood afterward takes, before it gets from one auricle of the heart to the other; a portion of the blood passes immediately from the right auricle to the left, through a hole, placed in the partition, which separates these cavities. This hole anatomists call the foramen ovale. There is likewise another cross cut, answering the same purpose, by what is called the ductus arte¬ riosus , lying between the pulmonary artery and the aorta. But both expedients are so strictly temporary, that, after birth, the one passage is closed, and the tube which forms the other shrivelled up into a ligament. If this be not contrivance, what is ? But, forasmuch as the action of the air upon the blood in the lungs appears to be neces¬ sary to the perfect concoction of that fluid, i. e. to the life and health of the animal (otherwise the shortest route might still be the best), how comes it to pass that the foetus lives, and grows, and thrives, without it ? The answer is, that the blood of the foetus is the mother’s; that it has undergone that action in her habit; that one pair of lungs serves for both. When the animals are separated, a new necessity arises ; and, to meet this necessity as soon as it occurs, an organisation is prepared. It is ready for its purpose : it only waits for the atmosphere : it begins to play the moment the air is admitted to it. NATURAL THEOLOGY, 107 CHAPTER XV, RELATIONS. When several different parts contribute to one effect, or, which is the same thing, when an effect is produced by the joint action of different instruments ; the fitness of such parts or instruments to one another, for the purpose of producing, by their united action, the effect, is what I call relation; and wherever this is observed in the works of nature or of man, it appears to me to carry along with it decisive evidence of understanding, intention, art. In examining, for instance, the several parts of a watch , the spring, the barrel, the chain, the fusee, the balance, the wheels of various sizes, forms, and positions, what is it which would take an observer’s attention, as most plainly evincing a construction, directed by thought, deliberation, and contrivance ? It is the suitableness of these parts to one another ; first in the succession and order in which they act; and, secondly, with a view to the effect finally pro¬ duced. Thus, referring the spring to the wheels, our observer sees in it that which origi¬ nates and upholds their motion; in the chain, that which transmits the motion to the fusee; in the fusee, that which communicates it to the wheels ; in the conical figure of the fusee, if he refer to the spring, he sees that which corrects the inequality of its force. Referring the wheels to one another, he notices, first, their teeth, which would have been without use or meaning, if there had been only one wheel, or if the wheels had no connexion between themselves, or common bearing upon some joint effect ; secondly, the correspondency of their position, so that the teeth of one wheel catch into the teeth of another; thirdly, the pro¬ portion observed in the number of teeth in each wheel, which determines the rate of going. Referring the balance to the rest of the works, he saw, when he came to understand its action, that which rendered their motions equable. Lastly, in looking upon the index and face of the watch, he saw the use and conclusion of the mechanism, viz. marking the succession of minutes and hours; but all depending upon the motions within, all upon the system of intermediate actions between the spring and the pointer. What thus struck his attention in the several parts of the watch, he might probably designate by one general name of u relation and observing with respect to all cases whatever, in which the origin and formation of a thing could be ascertained by evidence, that these relations were found in things produced by art and design, and in no other things, he would rightly deem of them as characteristic of such productions.—To apply the reasoning here described to the works of nature. The animal economy is full, is made up, of these relations. I. There are, first, what, in one form or other, belong to all animals, the parts and powers which successively act upon their food. Compare this action with the process of a manufac¬ tory. In men and quadrupeds, the aliment is, first, broken and bruised by mechanical instruments of mastication, viz. sharp spikes or hard knobs, pressing against or rubbing upon one another; thus ground and comminuted, it is carried by a pipe into the stomach, where it waits to undergo a great chemical action, which we call digestion: when digested, it is delivered through an orifice, which opens and shuts, as there is occasion, into the first intes¬ tine ; there, after being mixed with certain proper ingredients, poured through a hole in the side of the vessel, it is farther dissolved: in this state, the milk, chyle, or part which is wanted, and which is suited for animal nourishment, is strained off by the mouths of very small tubes, opening into the cavity of the intestines ; thus freed from its grosser parts, the percolated fluid is carried by a long, winding, but traceable course, into the main stream of the old circulation; which conveys it, in its progress, to every part of the body. Now I say again, compare this with the process of a manufactory ; with the making of cider, for example ; with the bruising of the apples in the mill, the squeezing of them when so bruised in the press, the fermentation in the vat, the bestowing of the liquor thus fermented in the 108 NATURAL THEOLOGY. hogsheads, the drawing off into bottles, the pouring out for use into the glass. Let any one shew me any difference between these two cases, as to the point of contrivance. That which is at present under our consideration, the “ relation” of the parts successively employed, is not more clear in the last case, than in the first. The aptness of the jaws and teeth to pre¬ pare the food for the stomach, is, at least, as manifest, as that of the cider-mill to crush the apples for the press. The concoction of the food in the stomach is as necessary for its future use, as the fermentation of the stum in the vat is to the perfection of the liquor. The dis¬ posal of the aliment afterward ; the action and change which it undergoes; the route which it is made to take, in order that, and until that, it arrive at its destination, is more complex indeed and intricate, but, in the midst of complication and intricacy, as evident and certain, as is the apparatus of cocks, pipes, tunnels, for transferring the cider from one vessel to an¬ other ; of barrels and bottles, for preserving it till fit for use ; or of cups and glasses, for bringing it, when wanted, to the up of the consumer. The character of the machinery is in both cases this; that one part answers to another part, and every part to the final result. This parallel between the alimentary operation and some of the processes of art, might be carried farther into detail. Spallanzani has remarked* a circumstantial resemblance be¬ tween the stomachs of gallinaceous fowls and the structure of corn-mills. Whilst the two sides of the gizzard perform the office of mill-stones, the craw or crop supplies the place of the hopper. AVhen our fowls are abundantly supplied with meat, they soon fill their craw : but it does not immediately pass thence into the gizzard ; it always enters in very small quantities, in proportion to the progress of trituration ; in like manner as, in a mill, a receiver is fixed above the two large stones which serve for grinding the corn; which receiver, although the corn be put into it by bushels, allows the grain to dribble only in small quantities into the central hole in the upper mill-stone. But we have not done with the .alimentary history. There subsists a general relation between the external organs of an animal by which it procures its food, and the internal powers by which it digests it. Birds of prey, by their talons and beaks, are qualified to seize and devour many species, both of other birds, and of quadrupeds. The constitution of the stomach agrees exactly with the form of the members. The gastric juice of a bird of prey, of an owl, a falcon, or a kite, acts upon the animal fibre alone; it will not act upon seeds or grasses at all. On the other hand, the conformation of the mouth of the sheep or the ox is suited for browsing upon herbage. Nothing about these animals is fitted for the pursuit of living prey. Accordingly it has been found by experiments, tried not many years ago, with perforated balls, that the gastric juice of ruminating animals, such as the sheep and the ox, speedily dissolves vegetables, but makes no impression upon animal bodies. This accordancy is still more particular. The gastric juice, even of granivorous birds, will not act upon the grain, whilst whole and entire. In performing the experiment of digestion with the gastric juice in vessels, the grain must be crushed and bruised, before it be submit¬ ted to the menstruum, that is to say, must undergo by art, without the body, the preparatory action which the gizzard exerts upon it within the body ; or no digestion will take place. So strict, in this case, is the relation between the offices assigned to the digestive organ, between the mechanical operation and the chymical process. II. The relation of the kidneys to the bladder, and of the ureters to both, i. e. of the secreting organ to the vessel receiving the secreted liquor, and the pipe laid from one to the other for the purpose of conveying it from one to the other, is as manifest, as it is amongst the different vessels employed in a distillery, or in the communications between them. The animal structure, in this case, being simple, and the parts easily separated, it forms an instance of correlation which may be presented by dissection to every eye, or which indeed, without dissection, is capable of being apprehended by every understanding. This correla¬ tion of instruments to one another fixes intention somewhere. Especially when every other solution is negatived by the conformation. If the bladder had been merely an expansion of the ureter, produced by retention of the fluid, there ought * Disc. T. sec. liv. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 109 to have been a bladder for each ureter. One receptacle, fed by two pipes, issuing from dif¬ ferent sides of the body, yet from both conveying the same fluid, is not to be accounted for by any such supposition as this. III. Relation of parts to one another accompanies us throughout the whole animal eco¬ nomy. Can any relation be more simple, yet more convincing, than this, that the eyes are so placed as to look in the direction in which the legs move and the hands work ? It might have happened very differently, if it had been left to chance. There were, at least, three quarters of the compass out of four to have erred in. Any considerable alteration in the position of the eye, or the figure of the joints, would have disturbed the line, and destroyed the alliance between the sense and the limbs. IV. But relation perhaps is never so striking as when it subsists, not between different parts of the same thing, but between different things. The relation between a lock and a key is more obvious, than it is between different parts of the lock. A bow was designed for an arrow, and an arrow for a bow : and the design is more evident for their being separate implements. Nor do the works of the Deity want this clearest species of relation. The sexes are mani¬ festly made for each other. They form the grand relation of animated nature; universal, organic, mechanical; subsisting like the clearest relations of art, in different individuals ; une¬ quivocal, inexplicable without design. So much so, that, were every other proof of contrivance in nature dubious or obscure, this alone would be sufficient. The example is complete. Nothing is wanting to the argument. I see no way whatever of getting over it. V. The teats of animals which give suck, bear a relation to the mouth of the suckling- progeny ; particularly to the lips and tongue. Here also, as before, is a correspondency of parts, which parts subsist in different individuals. These are general relations, or the relations of parts which are found, either in all animals, or in large classes and descriptions of animals. Particular relations, or the relations which subsist between the particular configuration of one or more parts of certain species of ani¬ mals, and the particular configuration of one or more other parts of the same animal (which is the sort of relation that is, perhaps, most striking), are such as the following : I. In the swan ; the web-foot, the spoon-bill, the long neck, the thick down, the gramini¬ vorous stomach, bear all a relation to one another, inasmuch as they all concur in one design, that of supplying the occasions of an aquatic fowl, floating upon the surface of shallow pools of water, and seeking its food at the bottom. Begin with any one of these particularities of structure, and observe how the rest follow it. The web-foot qualifies the bird for swim¬ ming : the spoon-bill enables it to graze. But how is an animal, floating upon the surface of pools of water, to graze at the bottom, except by the mediation of a long neck ? A long- neck accordingly is given to it. Again, a warm-blooded animal, which was to pass its life upon water, required a defence against the coldness of that element. Such a defence is furnished to the swan, in the muff in which its body is wrapped. But all this outward apparatus would have been in vain, if the intestinal system had not been suited to the diges¬ tion of vegetable substances. I say suited to the digestion of vegetable substances ; for it is well known, that there are two intestinal systems found in birds: one with a membranous stomach and gastric juice, capable of dissolving animal substances alone ; the other with a crop and gizzard, calculated for the moistening, bruising, and afterward digesting, of vegeta¬ ble aliment. Or set off with any other distinctive part in the body of the swan ; for instance with the long neck. The long neck, without the web-foot, would have been an encumbrance to the bird; yet there is no necessary connexion between a long neck and a web-foot. In fact, they do not usually go together. How happens it, therefore, that they meet, only when a par¬ ticular design demands the aid of both ? III. This mutual relation, arising from a subserviency to a common purpose, is very observable also in the parts of a mole. The strong short legs of that animal, the palmated feet armed with sharp nails, the pig-like nose, the teeth, the velvet coat, the small external ear, the sagacious smell, the sunk protected eye, all conduce to the utilities or to the safety no NATURAL THEOLOGY. of its underground life. It is a special purpose, specially consulted throughout. The form of the feet fixes the character of the animal. They are so many shovels ; they determine its action to that of rooting in the ground ; and every thing about its body agrees with this des¬ tination. The cylindrical figure of the mole, as well as the compactness of its form, arising from the terseness of its limbs, proportionably lessens its labour; because, according to its bulk, it thereby requires the least possible quantity of earth to be removed for its progress. It has nearly the same structure of the face and jaws as a swine, and the same office for them. The nose is sharp, slender, tendinous, strong; with a pair of nerves going down to the end of it. The plush covering, which, by the smoothness, closeness, and polish of the short piles that compose it, rejects the adhesion of almost every species of earth, defends the animal from cold and wet, and from the impediment which it would experience by the mould sticking to its body. From soils of all kinds the little pioneer comes forth bright and clean. Inhabiting dirt, it is, of all animals, the neatest. But what I have always most admired in the mole is its eyes. This animal occasionally visiting the surface, and wanting, for its safety and direction, to be informed when it does so, or when it approaches it, a perception of light was necessary. I do not know that the clearness of sight depends at all upon the size of the organ. TYliat is gained by the large¬ ness or prominence of the globe of the eye, is width in the field of vision. Such a capacity would be of no use to an animal which was to seek its food in the dark. The mole did not want to look about it ; nor would a large advanced eye have been easily defended from the annoyance to which the life of the animal must constantly expose it. How indeed was the mole, working its way under ground, to guard its eyes at all ? In order to meet this diffi¬ culty, the eyes are made scarcely larger than the head of a corking-pin; and these minute globules are sunk so deeply in the skull, and lie so sheltered within the velvet of its covering, as that any contraction of what may be called the eye-brows, not only closes up the apertures which lead to the eyes, but presents a cushion, as it were, to any sharp or protruding sub¬ stance which might push against them. This aperture, even in its ordinary state, is like a pin-hole in a piece of velvet, scarcely pervious to loose particles of earth. Observe then, in this structure, that which we call relation. There is no natural connexion between a small sunk eye and a shovel palmated foot. Palmated feet might have been joined with goggle eyes ; or small eyes might have been joined with feet of any other form. What was it, therefore, which brought them together in the mole ? That which brought together the barrel, the chain, and the fusee, in a watch ; design ; and design, in both cases, inferred from the relation which the parts bear to one another in the prosecution of a com¬ mon purpose. As hath already been observed, there are different ways of stating the rela¬ tion, according as we set out from a different part. In the instance before us, we may either consider the shape of the feet, as qualifying the animal for that mode of life and habitation to which the structure of its eyes confines it; or we may consider the structure of the eye, as the only one which would have suited with the action to which the feet are adapted. The relation is manifest, whichever of the parts related we place first in the order of our consideration. In a word, the feet of the mole are made for digging; the neck, nose, eyes, ears, and skin, are peculiarly adapted to an underground life; and that is what I call relation. CHAPTER XVI. COMPENSATION. Compensation is a species of relation. It is relation when the defects of one part, or of one organ, are supplied by the structure of another part or of another organ. Thus, I. The short unbending neck of the elephant , is compensated by the length and flexibility of his proboscis. He could not have reached the ground without it; or, if it be supposed NATURAL THEOLOGY. Ill that lie might have fed upon the fruit, leaves, or branches, of trees, how was he to drink ? Should it be asked, Why is the elephant’s neck so short ? it may be answered, that the weight of a head so heavy could not have been supported at the end of a longer lever. To a form, therefore, in some respects necessary, but in some respects also inadequate to the occasion of the animal, a supplement is added, which exactly makes up the deficiency under which he laboured. If it be suggested that this proboscis may have been produced, in a long course of genera¬ tions, by the constant endeavour of the elephant to thrust out its nose (which is the general hypothesis by which it has lately been attempted to account for the forms of animated nature), I would ask, How was the animal to subsist in the mean time, during the process ; until this prolongation of snout were completed ? What was to become of the individual, whilst the species was perfecting ? Our business at present is, simply to point out the relation which this organ bears to the peculiar figure of the animal to which it belongs. And herein all things correspond. The necessity of the elephant’s proboscis arises from the shortness of his neck; the shortness of the neck is rendered necessary by the weight of the head. Were we to enter into an exami¬ nation of the structure and anatomy of the proboscis itself, we should see in it one of the most curious of all examples of animal mechanism. The disposition of the ringlets and fibres, for the purpose, first, of forming a long cartilaginous pipe; secondly, of contracting and lengthening that pipe ; thirdly, of turning it in every direction at the will of the animal; with the superaddition at the end of a fleshy production, of about the length and thickness of a finger, and performing the office of a finger, so as to pick up a straw from the ground; these properties of the same organ, taken together, exhibit a specimen, not only of design (which is attested by the advantage), but of consummate art, and, as I may say, of elaborate preparation, in accomplishing that design. II. The hook in the wing of a bat is strictly a mechanical, and also a compensating con¬ trivance. At the angle of its wing there is a bent claw, exactly in the form of a hook, by which the bat attaches itself to the sides of rocks, caves, and buildings, laying hold of crevices, joinings, chinks, and roughnesses. It hooks itself by this claw ; remains suspended by this hold ; takes its flight from this position: which operations compensate for the decrepitude of its legs and feet. Without her hook, the bat would be the most helpless of all animals. She can neither run upon her feet, nor raise herself from the ground. These inabilities are made up to her by the contrivance in her wing : and, in placing a claw on that part, the Creator has deviated from the analogy observed in winged animals.—A singular defect required a singular substitute. III. The crane -kind are to live and seek their food amongst the waters; yet, having no web-feet, are incapable of swimming. To make up for this deficiency, they are furnished with long legs for wading, or long bills for groping ; or usually with both. This is compen¬ sation. But I think the true reflection upon the present instance is, how every part of nature is tenanted by apj^ropriate inhabitants. Not only is the surface of deep waters peopled by numerous tribes of birds that swim, but marshes and shallow pools are furnished with hardly less numerous tribes of birds that wade. IY. The common parrot has, in the structure of its beak, both an inconveniency, and a compensation for it. When I speak of an inconveniency, I have a view to a dilemma which frequently occurs in the works of nature, viz. that the peculiarity of structure by which an organ is made to answer one purpose, necessarily unfits it for some other purpose. This is the case before us. The upper bill of the parrot is so much hooked, and so much overlaps the lower, that if, as in other birds, the lower chap alone had motion, the bird could scarcely gape wide enough to receive its food : yet this hook and overlapping of the bill could not be spared, for it forms the very instrument by which the bird climbs; to say nothing of the use which it makes of it in breaking nuts and the hard substances upon which it feeds. How, therefore, has nature provided for the opening of this occluded mouth ? By making the upper chap moveable, as well as the lower. In most birds, the upper chap is connected, and makes but one piece, with the skull; but in the parrot, the upper chap is joined to the bone 112 NATURAL THEOLOGY. of the head by a strong membrane placed on each side of it, which lifts and depresses it at pleasure # . V. The spider s web is a compensating contrivance. The spider lives upon flies, without wings to pursue them ; a case, one would have thought, of great difficulty, yet provided for, and provided for by a resource which no stratagem, no effort of the animal, could have pro¬ duced, had not both its external and internal structure been specifically adapted to the operation t. VI. In many species of insects the eye is fixed ; and consequently without the power of turning the pupil to the object. This great defect is, however, perfectly coynpensated ; and by a mechanism which we should not suspect. The eye is a multiplying-glass, with a lens looking in every direction and catching every object. By which means, although the orb of the eye be stationary, the field of vision is as ample as that of other animals, and is commanded on every side. When this lattice work was first observed, the multiplicity and minuteness of the surfaces must have added to the surprise of the discovery. Adams tells us, that fourteen hundred of these reticulations have been counted in the two eyes of a drone-bee. In other cases the compensation is effected by the number and position of the eyes them¬ selves. The spider has eight eyes, mounted upon different parts of the head : two in front, two in the top of the head, two on each side. These eyes are without motion; but, by their situation, suited to comprehend every view which the wants or safety of the animal render it necessary for it to take. VII. The Memoirs for the Natural History of Animals, published by the French Academy, A. D. 1687, furnish us with some curious particulars in the eye of a chameleon. Instead of two eyelids, it is covered by an eyelid with a hole in it. This singular structure appears to be compensatory , and to answer to some other singularities in the shape of the animal. The neck of the chameleon is inflexible. To make up for this, the eye is so prominent, as that more than half of the ball stands out of the head ; by means of which extraordinary projection, the pupil of the eye can be carried by the muscles in every direction, and is capable of being pointed towards every object. But then, so unusual an exposure of the globe of the eye requires, for its lubricity and defence, a more than ordinary protection of eyelid, as well as a more than ordinary supply of moisture; yet the motion of an eyelid, formed according to the common construction, would be impeded, as it should seem, by the convexity of the organ. The aperture in the lid meets this difficulty. It enables the animal to keep the principal part of the surface of the eye under cover, and to preserve it in a due state of humidity without shutting out the light; or without performing every moment a nictitation, which, it is probable, would be more laborious to this animal than to others. VIII. In another animal, and in another part of the animal economy, the same Memoirs describe a most remarkable substitution. The reader will remember what we have already observed concerning the intestmal canal; that its length, so many times exceeding that of the body, promotes the extraction of the chyle from the aliment, by giving room for the lacteal vessels to act upon it through a greater space. This long intestine, wherever it occurs, is, in other animals, disposed in the abdomen from side to side in returning folds. But, in the animal now under our notice, the matter is managed otherwise. The same intention is mechanically effectuated; but by a mechanism of a different kind. The animal of which I speak is an amphibious quadruped, which our authors call the alopecias, or sea- fox. The intestine is straight, from one end to the other : but in this straight, and conse¬ quently short, intestine is a winding, corkscrew, spiral passage, through which the food, not * Goldsmith’s Natural History, vol. v. 274. neret, and calculated in each of these the orifices amount •j- The artful mechanism of the spider’s web, and the to more than one thousand, and, consequently, that each curious structure of the apparatus by which its mateiial is thread of the spider is compounded of five thousand fibres, prepared, deserve a less cursory notice. Near the ex- Yet the thickness of the ordinary thread of this insect is tremity of the spider’s abdomen are five teats, or spin- only xoooo^ 1 that of a human hair. The spinnerets of nerets, furnished with apertures, which it can voluntarily the spider communicate by a tube with four reservoirs close or expand. The apertures are too numerous and within its abdomen, containing the glutinous matter of minute to be reckoned even by the aid of a microscope, which the thread is formed. M. Reaumur frequently observed seventy in each spin- NATURAL THEOLOGY. 113 without several circumvolutions, and in fact by a long route, is conducted to its exit. Here the shortness of the gut is compensated by the obliquity of the perforation. IX. But the works of the Deity are known by expedients. Where we should look for absolute destitution ; where we can reckon up nothing but wants; some contrivance always comes in to supply the privation. A snails without wings, feet, or thread, climbs up the stalks of plants, by the sole aid of a viscid humour discharged from her skin. She adheres to the stems, leaves, and fruits, of plants, by means of a sticking-plaster. A muscle , which might seem, by its helplessness, to lie at the mercy of every wave that went over it, has the singular power of spinning strong, tendinous threads, by which she moors her shell to rocks and timbers. A cockle , on the contrary, by means of its stiff tongue, works for itself a shelter in the sand. The provisions of nature extend to cases the most desperate. A lobster has in its constitution a difficulty so great, that one could hardly conjecture beforehand how nature would dispose of it. In most animals, the skin grows with their growth. If instead of a soft skin, there be a shell, still it admits of a gradual enlargement. If the shell, as in the tortoise, consists of several pieces, the accession of substance is made at the sutures. Bivalve shells grow bigger by receiving an accretion at their edge; it is the same with spiral shells at their mouth. The simplicity of their form admits of this. But the lobster’s shell being applied to the limbs of the body, as well as to the body itself, allows not of either of the modes of growth which are observed to take place in other shells. Its hardness resists expansion ; and its complexity renders it incapable of increasing its size by addition of substance to its edge. How then was the growth of the lobster to be provided for ? Was room to be made for it in the old shell, or was it to be successively fitted with new ones ? If a change of shell became necessary, how was the lobster to extricate himself from his present confinement ? How was he to uncase his buckler, or draw his legs out of his boots ? The process, which fishermen have observed to take place, is as follows:—At certain seasons, the shell of the lobster grows soft; the animal swells its body; the seams open, and the claws burst at the : oints. When the shell has thus become loose upon the body, the animal makes a second effort, and by a tremulous, spasmodic motion, casts it off. In this state, the liberated but defenceless fish retires into holes in the rock. The released body now suddenly pushes its growth. In about eight-and-forty hours a fresh concretion of humour upon the surface, i. e. a new shell is formed, adapted in every part to the increased dimensions of the animal. This wonderful mutation is repeated every year. If there be imputed defects without compensation, I should suspect that they were defects only in appearance. Thus, the body of the sloth has often been reproached for the slowness of its motions, which has been attributed to an imperfection in the formation of its limbs. But it ought to be observed, that it is this slowness which alone suspends the voracity of the animal. He fasts during his migration from one tree to another : and this fast may be neces¬ sary for the relief of his over-charged vessels, as well as to allow time for the concoction of the mass of coarse and hard food which he has taken into his stomach. The tardiness of his pace seems to have reference to the capacity of his organs, and to his propensities with respect to food ; i. e. is calculated to counteract the effects of repletion. Or there may be cases, in which a defect is artificial, and compensated by the very cause which produces it. Thus the sheep , in the domesticated state in which we see it, is destitute of the ordinary means of defence or escape ; is incapable either of resistance or flight. But ' this is not so with the wild animal. The natural sheep is swift and active : and, if it lose these qualities when it comes under the subjection of man, the loss is compensated by his protection. Perhaps there is no species of quadruped whatever which suffers so little as this does from the depredation of animals of prey. For the sake of making our meaning better understood, we have considered this business of compensation under certain particularities of constitution, in which it appears to be most conspicuous. This view of the subject necessarily limits the instances to single species of animals. But there are compensations, perhaps not less certain, which extend over large classes, and to large portions of living nature. I. In quadrupeds, the deficiency of teeth is usually compensated by the faculty of rumina- i 114 NATURAL THEOLOGY. tion. The sheep, deer, and ox tribe, are without fore teeth in the upper jaw. These rumi¬ nate. The horse and ass are furnished with teeth in the upper jaw, and do not ruminate. In the former class, the grass and hay descend into the stomach, nearly in the state in which they are cropped from the pasture, or gathered from the bundle. In the stomach, they are softened by the gastric juice, which in these animals is unusually copious. Thus softened and rendered tender, they are returned a second time to the action of the mouth, where the grinding teeth complete at their leisure the trituration which is necessary, but which was before left imperfect. I say the trituration which is necessary; for it appears from experi¬ ments, that the gastric fluid of sheep, for example, has no effect in digesting plants, unless they have been previously masticated; that it only produces a slight maceration, nearly as common water would do in a like decree of heat ; but that when once vegetables are reduced to pieces by mastication, the fluid then exerts upon them its specific operation. Its first effect is to soften them, and to destroy their natural consistency ; it then goes on to dissolve them ; not sparing even the toughest parts, such as the nerves of the leaves I think it very probable, that the gratification also of the animal is renewed and prolonged by this faculty. Sheep, deer, and oxen, appear to be in a state of enjoyment whilst they are chewing the cud. It is then, perhaps, that they best relish their food. II. In birds, the compensation is still more striking. They have no teeth at all. What have they then to make up for this severe want ? I speak of graminivorous and herbivorous birds; such as common fowls, turkeys, ducks, geese, pigeons, &c. ; for it is concerning these alone that the question need be asked. All these are furnished with a peculiar and most powerful muscle, called the gizzard ; the inner coat of which is fitted up with rough plaits, which, by a strong friction against one another, break and grind the hard aliment as effec¬ tually, and by the same mechanical action, as a coffee-mill would do. It has been proved by the most correct experiments, that the gastric juice of these birds will not operate upon the entire grain ; not even when softened by water or macerated in the crop. Therefore without a grinding machine within its body, without the trituration of the gizzard, a chicken would have starved upon a heap of corn. Y r et why should a bill and a gizzard go together? Why should a gizzard never be found where there are teeth ? Nor does the gizzard belong to birds as such. A gizzard is not found in birds of prey. Tlieir food requires not to be ground down in a mill. The compensatory contrivance goes no farther than the necessity. In both classes of birds, however, the digestive organ within the body bears a strict and mechanical relation to the external instruments for procuring food. The soft membranous stomach accompanies a hooked notched beak : the short, muscular legs : the strong, sharp, crooked talons ; the cartilaginous stomach attends that conformation of bill and toes, which restrains the bird to the picking of seeds, or the cropping of plants t. * Spall. Dis. iii. sect. cxl. T 4 he gizzards of those birds that live on flesh approach nearest to the stomach of the mammalia ; whilst those which live upon grain are especially distinguished by the strength of the digastric muscle, which enables the gizzard to break down the harder substances upon which it is re¬ quired to act. If a bird of prey is compelled to subsist upon grain for any length of time, by a provident kindness of the Creator, the digastric muscle becomes so strength¬ ened, that an anatomist would not recognize it as belong¬ ing to a carnivorous bird. The sea-parrot, or diver, has its gizzard lined with a horny coat, evidently rendering it appropriate for crushing the shells of the Crustacea upon which it feeds. The woodpecker may be said to have both a stomach and a gizzard, and from actual observation, sir E. Home states, that the soft insects upon which the bird feeds are digested in the stomach, or enlargement of the oesophagus ; whilst the insects having hard cuticular coverings are passed to the gizzard. In the turkey, the surfaces of the gizzard have a rota¬ tory motion. In the goose, the motion more nearly resembles that of the grinding teeth of ruminating ani¬ mals, in which the teeth of the under jaw slide upwards within those of the upper, pressing the food between them. —Sir E. Home. The digestive organs of granivorous birds closely resem¬ ble a mill, the crop and upper part of the gizzard receive in succession the grain : from thence it is conveyed to the inner surfaces which act as mill-stones ; and the first in¬ testine receives the substance in its reduced form. The experiments of the Cimento academicians, of Reaumur, Spallanzani, and others, prove that the gizzard has extraordinary powers. They compelled turkeys and common fowls to swallow various hard and dangerous bodies. The results were as follows :—Balls of glass were rapidly reduced to powder; metals and precious stones were indented and abraded ; leaden balls, armed with sharp needles and lancet points, in eighteen hours were found with these apparently destructive weapons broken off, and the balls themselves indented ; yet the coats of the gizzard were perfectly uninjui'ed. The giz¬ zard is unquestionably assisted in producing these power¬ ful effects by the pebbles which are invariably found in them. They vary in size with the bird, and in number probably from accidental causes. Two hundred have NATURAL THEOLOGY. 115 III. But to proceed with our compensations. —A very numerous and comprehensive tribe of terrestrial animals are entirely without feet; yet locomotive : and in a very considerable degree swift in their motion. IIow is the want of feet compensated ? It is done by the dis-. position of the muscles and fibres of the trunk. In consequence of the just collocation, and by means of the joint action of longitudinal and annular fibres, that is to say, of strings and rings, the body and train of reptiles are capable of being reciprocally shortened and length¬ ened, drawn up and stretched out. The result of this action is a progressive, and in some cases, a rapid movement of the whole body, in any direction to which the will of the animal determines it. The meanest creature is a collection of wonders. The play of the rings in an earth-icorni , as it crawls; the undulatory motion propagated along the body ; the beards or prickles with which the annuli are armed, and which the animal can either shut up close to its body, or let out to lay hold of the roughnesses of the surface upon which it creeps; and the power arising from all these, of changing its place and position, afford, Avlien compared with the provisions for motion in other animals, proofs of new and appropriate mechanism. Suppose that we had never seen an animal move upon the ground without feet, and that the problem was; Muscular action, i. e. reciprocal contraction and relaxation being given, to describe how such an animal might be constructed, capable of voluntarily changing place. Something, perhaps, like the organization of reptiles, might have been hit upon by the inge¬ nuity of an artist: or might have been exhibited in an automaton, by the combination of springs, spiral wires, and ringlets: but to the solution of the problem would not be denied, surely, the praise of invention and of successful thought : least of all could it ever be ques¬ tioned, whether intelligence had been employed about it, or not. CHAPTER XVII. TIIE RELATION OF ANIMATED BODIES TO INANIMATE NATURE. We have already considered relation , and under different views; but it was the relation of parts to parts, of the parts of an animal to other parts of the same animal, or of another individual of the same species. But the bodies of animals hold, in their constitution and properties, a close and important relation to natures altogether external to their own : to inanimate substances, and to the specific qualities of these; e. g. they hold a strict relation to the elements by which they are surrounded *. been found in the gizzard of a turkey-hen, and more than one thousand in that of a goose. However varying in size and number, some are invariably found there. Spal¬ lanzani could never procure a bird so young that it had not some pebbles in its gizzard, and to obtain them with that deficiency, he was obliged to rear turkeys and pigeons even from the shell. The parent bird always supplies its young with appi’opriately-sized pebbles, even whilst they are in the nest. All the varieties in the structure of the digestive organs of birds, whether living on animal or vegetable substances, appear adapted to their food and mode of life. All the varieties of structure in the attached glands are calculated to produce a secretion appropriate to their food; and any complexity in such structures is only for the purpose of economising the food. Nothing in nature, concludes sir E. Home, can be more beautiful, nothing can show more conspicuously the dispensing hand of an all-wise Creator, than the means with which different birds are provided, to enable them to subsist in the best possible manner in the situations upon the globe for which they were des¬ tined. The cassowary of Java may devour the stores so lavishly provided for it, without injury to its health, since its means of retaining and digesting its food are so small; whilst the African ostrich, whose provision is so scanty, has such large means of economizing it, that, cii’cumstanced as it is, it yet can procure a subsistence. * The power possessed by man, of inhabiting all parts of the earth, bearing all degrees of heat and cold, and dif¬ ferences in atmospheric pressure, is another instance of the adaptation of animated bodies to inanimate nature, worthy of particular consideration ; this natural power is alone possessed by man, who, having by the will of his creator dominion over the earth, and over all animals, was of necessity obliged to be endowed with superior powers to resist the extremes of heat and cold in all parts of the globe. He is accordingly constituted in a manner different from all other animals : he can dwell in all climates, and at all elevations of the earth’s surface. “ The situations occupied by our species,” says Mr. Lawrence, “ extend as far as the known surface of the earth. The Greenlanders and the Esquimaux have reached between 70° and 80° of north latitude, and Danish settle¬ ments have been formed in Greenland. “ Three Russians lived between six and seven years on Spitzbergen, between 77° and 80°. The Negro lives i 2 11G NATURAL THEOLOGY. I. Can it be doubted, whether the wings of birds bear a relation to air, and the fins of fish to water ? They are instruments of motion, severally suited to the properties of the medium in which the motion is to be performed : which properties are different. Was not this difference contemplated, when the instruments were differently constituted ? II. The structure of the animal ear depends for its use, not simply upon being surrounded by a fluid, but upon the specific nature of that fluid. Every fluid would not serve ; its particles must repel one another; it must form an elastic medium : for it is by the successive pulses of such a medium, that the undulations excited by the surrounding body are carried to the organ; that a communication is formed between the object and the sense ; which must be done, before the internal machinery of the ear, subtile as it is, can act at all. III. The organs of speech and voice and respiration are, no less than the ear, indebted, for the success of their operation, to the peculiar qualities of the fluid in which the animal is immersed. They, therefore, as well as the ear, are constituted upon the supposition of such a fluid, i. e. of a fluid with such particular properties, being always present. Change the properties of the fluid, and the organ cannot act: change the organ, and the properties of the fluid would be lost. The structure, therefore, of our organs, and the properties of our atmosphere, are made for one another. Nor does it alter the relation, whether you allege the organ to be made for the element (which seems the most natural way of considering it), or the element as prepared for the organ. IY. But there is another fluid with which we have to do ; with properties of its own ; with laws of acting, and of being acted upon, totally different from those of air and water : under the equator, and all America is inhabited even to Terra del Fuego. Thus we find that man can exist and propagate his species in the hottest and coldest countries of the earth.” M Gmelin in 1735 observed the greatest natural cold; the quicksilver froze in the thermometer, the sparrows and other birds were all killed. The same was observed by Pallas. At the English settlements in Hudson's Bay, the cold is just as extreme; brandy freezes even in rooms where there is a fire. Yet in such a temperature as this, the Canadian savages hunt and fish. “ Some of the Dutch,” continues Mr. Lawrence, “ who wintered in Nova Zembla, under Heemskerk, perished ; but those who moved enough, and were in good health at first, withstood the dreadful cold, which the Polar bear (Ursus maritimus) apparently born for these climes, seems to have been incapable of supporting, for their journal states, that as soon as the sun sinks below the horizon, the cold is so intense, that the bears are no longer seen, and the white fox (Isatis Canis Lagopus) alone braves the weather."* “The power of the human body to withstand severe cold, will seem the more remarkable when we observe what heat it is capable of bearing. The mean temperature of Sierra Leone is 84°. The thermometer is frequently at 100, and even 102, and 103° in the shade. Adanson saw it at 108° in the sun, at Senegal: and, accord¬ ing to Buffon,it has been seen at 117°. When the sirocco blows in Sicily, the thermometer rises to 112°. Dr. Chal¬ mers saw it at 115° in the shade, in South Carolina ; and Humboldt, at 110 to 115° in the deserts, on the banks of the Orinoco.” In some experiments of Dr. Fordyce, Sir Joseph Banks, and others, a room was artificially heated to 260° ; into this room these gentlemen walked, in company with several others, and remained some time, without incon¬ venience, although their watch chains were too much heated to be touched without pain ; and eggs were cooked in a few minutes by merely remaining on a plate in the room. The oven girls of Germany sustain even still higher temperatures, and this is the true secret of many a feat of legerdemain. Then, again, as regards resisting diminutions of atmo¬ spheric pressure, man is singularly endowed. The ordi¬ nary pressure upon the surface of an adult’s body, is cal¬ culated by Mr. Lawrence to be equal to 32,325 lbs. on a level with the sea, when the barometer is at 30 inches; but at a height of twelve thousand feet, or that of many inhabited plains in South America, the barometer sinks to 20^- inches, and the pressure is then only equal to 21,750 lbs. : yet Condamine and Bouguer lived for three weeks more than two thousand feet higher than this. The city of Mexico is 7475, and Quito 9550 feet above the level of the ocean; the hamlet of Antisana, in South America, is supposed to be the most elevated inhabited spot in the world, being 13,500 feet above the sea. M. Humboldt ascended Chimborazo, to more than 19,000 feet. Gay Lussac, in a balloon, attained to 23,000 ; and yet some of the peaks of the Himalaya Mountains in India exceed even this great elevation. The power of the human body to withstand increased pressure, is equally extraordinary, the barometer often ranges considerably above 30° ; and in diving into deep waters, as, for instance, in the diving bell, a pressure is sustained equal to several atmospheres. Thus is man unrestrained by temperature, or atmo¬ spheric pressure to any particular section of the globe ; a freedom which no other being possesses—even vegetation is located to particular spots.—the fruits and palms of the equator gradually disappear as we approach the temperate regions of the earth, as those of our climate are equally unknown in the tropics—and as we still progress in a northerly direction, we find one vegetable product leaves us after another. The rose and the violet, the oak and the elm speedily depart; the pine and the birch cling to us much longer; but as we travel northward, these are no longer seen. The heath and the arctic raspberry (the Rubus Arcticus), at last are our only vegetable com¬ panions ; but even they cannot live beyond a certain lati¬ tude : they, too, disappear ; and yet man is still seen hunt¬ ing and fishing, as if in defiance of the climate, and triumphing over all the obstacles of nature. Lawrence’s Lectures, p. 189 ; Phil. Trans. 1775, p. Ill, 484; Dr. Aiken, Manchester, S. M., vol. 1, p. 95; Barrow’s Voyages, chap. 2; Chalmers on the Diseases of South Carolina; Winterbottom on the Native Africans, vol. 1, p. 32 ; Mthnoires de l’Acad. 1744, p. 262. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 117 and tliat is light. To this new, this singular element; to qualities perfectly peculiar, per¬ fectly distinct and remote from the qualities of any other substance with which we are acquainted, an organ is adapted, an instrument is correctly adjusted, not less peculiar amongst the parts of the body, not less singular in its form, and in the substance of which it is com¬ posed, not less remote from the materials, the model, and the analogy, of any other part of the animal frame, than the element to which it relates, is specific amidst the substances with which we converse. If this does not prove appropriation, I desire to know what would prove it. Yet the element of light and the organ of vision, however related in their office and use, have no connexion whatever in their original. The action of rays of light upon the surfaces of animals, has no tendency to breed eyes in their heads. The sun might shine for ever upon living bodies, without the smallest approach towards producing the sense of sight. On the other hand also, the animal eye does not generate or emit light. Y. Throughout the universe there is a wonderful proportioning of one thing to another. The size of animals, of the human animal especially, when considered with respect to other animals, or to the plants which grow around him, is such, as a regard to his conveniency would have pointed out. A giant or a pigmy could not have milked goats, reaped corn, or mowed grass; we may add, could not have rode a horse, trained a vine, shorn a sheep, with the same bodily ease as we do, if at all. A pigmy would have been lost amongst rushes, or carried off by birds of prey. It may be mentioned likewise, that the model and the materials of the human body being what they are, a much greater bulk would have broken down by its own weight. The per¬ sons of men who much exceed the ordinary stature, betray this tendency. YI. Again (and which includes a vast variety of particulars, and those of the greatest importance) ; how close is the suitableness of the earth and sea to their several inhabitants ; and of these inhabitants, to the places of their appointed residence ! Take the earth as it is ; and consider the correspondency of the powers of its inhabitants with the properties and condition of the soil which they tread. Take the inhabitants as they are; and consider the substances which the earth yields for their use. They can scratch its surface; and its surface supplies all which they want. This is the length of their faculties : and such is the constitution of the globe, and their own, that this is sufficient for all their occasions. When we pass from the earth to the sea , from land to water, we pass through a great change ; but an adequate change accompanies us, of animal forms and functions, of animal capacities and wants, so that correspondency remains. The earth in its nature is very dif¬ ferent from the sea, and the sea from the earth: but one accords with its inhabitants as exactly as the other. YII. The last relation of this kind which I shall mention, is that of sleep to night; and it appears to me to be a relation which was expressly intended. Two points are manifest, first, that the animal frame requires sleep ; secondly, that night brings with it a silence, and a cessation of activity, which allows of sleep being taken without interruption, and without loss. Animal existence is made up of action and slumber ; nature has provided a season for each. An animal which stood not in need of rest, would always live in day-light. An animal, which, though made for action, and delighting in action, must have its strength repaired by sleep, meets, by its constitution, the returns of day and night. In the human species, for instance, were the bustle, the labour, the motion of life, upheld by the constant presence of light, sleep could not be enjoyed without being disturbed by noise, and without expense of that time which the eagerness of private interest would not contentedly resign. It is happy therefore for this part of the creation, I mean that it is conformable to the frame and wants of their constitution, that nature, by the very disposition of her elements, has com¬ manded, as it were, and imposed upon them, at moderate intervals, a general intermission of their toils, their occupations, and pursuits. But it is not for man, either solely or principally, that night is made. Inferior, but less perverted natures, taste its solace, and expect its return, with greater exactness and advan¬ tage than he does. I have often observed, and never observed but to admire, the satisfac- 118 NATURAL THEOLOGY. tion, no less than the regularity, with which the greatest part of the irrational world yield to this soft necessity, this grateful vicissitude ; how comfortably the birds of the air, for example, address themselves to the repose of the evening; with what alertness they resume the activity of the day. Nor does it disturb our argument to confess, that certain species of animals are in motion during the night, and at rest in the day. With respect even to them, it is still true, that there is a change of condition in the animal, and an external change corresponding with it. There is still the relation, though inverted. The fact is, that the repose of other animals sets these at liberty, and invites them to their food or their sport. If the relation of sleep to night , and, in some instances, its converse, be real, we cannot reflect without amazement upon the extent to which it carries us. Day and night are things close to us; the change applies immediately to our sensations; of all the phenomena of nature, it is the most obvious and the most familiar to our experience ; but, in its cause, it belongs to the great motions which are passing in the heavens. Whilst the earth glides round her axle, she ministers to the alternate necessities of the animals dwelling upon her surface, at the same time that she obeys the influence of those attractions which regulate the order of many thousand worlds. The relation therefore of sleep to night, is the relation of the inhabitants of the earth to the rotation of their globe; probably it is more; it is a rela¬ tion to the system of which that globe is a part: and, still farther, to the congregation of systems, of which theirs is only one. If this account be true, it connects the meanest indi¬ vidual with the universe itself; a chicken roosting upon its perch, with the spheres revolv¬ ing in the firmament. VIII. But if any one object to our representation, that the succession of day and night, or the rotation of the earth upon which it depends, is not resolvable into central attraction, we will refer him to that which certainly is,—to the change of the seasons. Now the con¬ stitution of animals susceptible of torpor, bears a relation to winter, similar to that which sleep bears to night. Against not only the cold, but the want of food, which the approach of winter induces, the Preserver of the world has provided in many animals by migration, in many others by torpor. As one example out of a thousand; the bat, if it did not sleep through the winter, must have starved, as the moths and flying insects upon which it feeds disappear. But the transition from summer to winter carries us into the very midst of physical astronomy, that is to say, into the midst of those laws which govern the solar system at least, and probably all the heavenly bodies.* * The relation of animals to inanimate nature, the suit¬ ing the first to the circumstances by which they are sur¬ rounded, the provisions for their comfort, are striking in some instances, not noticed by Paley. The wool of the sheep would be much too warm a clothing for it in climates nearer the equator than our own, and in those its fleece is exchanged for a fine and much more scanty covering of hair. In the arctic re¬ gions, the fur of the bear and the plumage of the birds is chiefly white. Some of the animals of those northern climates even shed their summer furs, and acquire a white one as the winter approaches. Is not this a kind provision of Providence, to render them less conspicuous objects in the snow, which is the almost perpetual cover¬ ing of the zone they inhabit ? The migration of birds deserves a fuller notice than that in the text, for it is one of the most surprising instances of God’s providence for preserving animals in circumstances most conducive to their welfare. This re¬ markable phenomenon early attracted attention, for five- and-twenty hundred years ago it was remarked, “ the stork knoweth her appointed times ; the turtle, and the crane, and the swallow, observe the time of their coming.” (Jercru. viii. 7.) It is certain that a deficiency of food, a painful alteration of temperature, may render their pre¬ sent abiding place to them uncomfortable ; these circum¬ stances might gradually drive them, without any cause for wonder, from one extremity of a continent to another; but what has taught them that a happier state of things exists at a distance of hundreds of miles, across the ocean ?—a distance that they traverse with wearied wing, and which proves fatal to many of the companions of their flight. What informed the swallow at Senegal that a genial and desirable climate was at a particular period, and that period only, to be found in Britain ? How came the Soland Goose to conceive, in its high northern home, that there was one diminutive island, that of the Bass, in the Solway Fii'th, and that only, to be found upon our shores that would be favourable for its residence during the time of incubation ? Who, to use our Homer’s verse, “ Who bids the stork, Columbus-like, explore Heavens not his own, and worlds unknown before ? Who calls the council, states the certain day, Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way ?” Let the same great poet answer these queries, -Reason raise o’er instinct as you can In this ’tis God directs, in that ’tis man. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 119 CHAPTER XVIII. INSTINCTS. The order may not be very obvious, by which I place instincts next to relations. But I consider them as a species of relation. They contribute, along with the animal organization, to a joint effect, in which view they are related to that organization. In many cases, they refer from one animal to another animal; and, when this is the case, become strictly rela¬ tions in a second point of view. An instinct is a propensity prior to experience, and independent of instruction. We contend, that it is by instinct that the sexes of animals seek each other; that animals cherish their offspring : that the young quadruped is directed to the teat of its dam; that birds build their nests, and brood with so much patience upon their eggs ; that insects which do not sit upon their eggs, deposit them in those particular situations, in which the young, when hatched, find their appropriate food : that it is instinct which carries the salmon, and some other fish, out of the sea into rivers, for the purpose of shedding their spawn in fresh water. We may select out of this catalogue the incubation of eggs. I entertain no doubt, but that a couple of sparrows hatched in an oven, and kept separate from the rest of their species, would proceed as other sparrows do, in every office which related to the production and preservation of their brood. Assuming this fact, the thing is inexplicable, upon any other hypothesis than that of an instinct, impressed upon the constitution of the animal. For, first, what should induce the female bird to prepare a nest before she lays her eggs ? It is in vain to suppose her to be possessed of the faculty of reasoning : for no reasoning- will reach the case. The fulness or distention which she might feel in a particular part of her body, from the growth and solidity of the egg within her, could not possibly inform her that she was about to produce something, which, when produced, was to be preserved and taken care of. Prior to experience, there was nothing to lead to this inference, or to this suspicion. The analogy was all against it : for, in every other instance, what issued from the body, was cast out and rejected. But, secondly, let us suppose the egg to be produced into day ; how should birds know that their eggs contain their young ? There is nothing, either in the aspect or in the in¬ ternal composition of an egg, which could lead even the most daring imagination to conjec¬ ture, that it was hereafter to turn out from under its shell, a living, perfect bird. The form of the egg bears not the rudiments of a resemblance to that of the bird. Inspecting its con¬ tents, we find still less reason, if possible, to look for the result which actually takes place. If we should go so far, as, from the appearance of order and distinction in the disposition of the liquid substances which we noticed in the egg, to guess that it might be designed for the abode and nutriment of an animal (which would be a very bold hypothesis), we should ex¬ pect a tadpole dabbling in the slime, much rather then a dry, winged, feathered creature ; a compound of parts and properties impossible to be used in a state of confinement in the egg, and bearing no conceivable relation, either in quality or material, to any thing observed in it. From the white of an egg, would any one look for the feather of a goldfinch ? or expect from a simple uniform mucilage, the most complicated of all machines, the most diversified of all collections of substances ? Nor would the process of incubation, for some time at least, lead us to suspect the event. Who that saw red streaks, shooting in the fine mem¬ brane which divides the white from the yolk, would suppose that these were about to become bones and limbs ? Who, that espied two discoloured points first making their appearance in the cicatrix, would have had the courage to predict, that these points w ere to grow into the heart and head of a bird ? It is difficult to strip the mind of its experience. It is difficult to resuscitate surprise, when familiarity has once laid the sentiment asleep. 120 NATURAL THEOLOGY. But could we forget all that we know, and which our sparrows never knew, about ovipa¬ rous generation; could we divest ourselves of every information, but what we derived from reasoning upon the appearances or quality discovered in the objects presented to us: I am convinced that Harlequin coming out of an egg upon the stage, is not more astonishing to a child, than the hatching of a chicken both would be, and ought to be, to a philosopher. But admit the sparrow by some means to know, that within that egg was concealed the principle of a future bird : from what chymist was she to learn, that warmth was necessary to bring it to maturity, or that the degree of warmth, imparted by the temperature of her own body, was the degree required ? To suppose, therefore, that the female bird acts in this process from a sagacity and reason of her own, is to suppose her to arrive at conclusions which there arc no premises to justify. If our sparrow, sitting upon her eggs, expect young sparrows to come out of them, she forms, I will venture to say, a wild and extravagant expectation, in opposition to present appearances, and to probability. She must have penetrated into the order of nature, farther than any faculties of ours will carry us : and it hath been well observed, that this deep sagacity, if it be sagacity, subsists in conjunction with great stupidity, even in relation to the same subject. “A chymical operation,” says Addison, u could not be followed with greater art or diligence, than is seen in hatching a chicken : yet is the process carried on without the least glimmering of thought or common sense. The hen will mistake a piece of chalk for an egg ; is insensible of the increase or diminution of their number ; does not distinguish between her own and those of another species; is frightened when her supposi¬ titious breed of ducklings take the water. 1 ’ But it will be said, that what reason could not do for the bird, observation, or instruc¬ tion, or tradition, might. Now if it be true, that a couple of sparrows, brought up from the first in a state of separation from all other birds, would build their nest, and brood upon their eggs, then there is an end of this solution. What can be the traditionary knowledge of a chicken hatched in an oven ? Of young birds taken in their nests, a few species breed, when kept in cages ; and they which do so, build their nests nearly in the same manner as in the wild state, and sit upon their eggs. This is sufficient to prove an instinct, without having recourse to experiments upon birds hatched by artificial heat, and deprived, from their birth, of all communication with their species : for we can hardly bring ourselves to believe, that the parent bird in¬ formed her unfledged pupil of the history of her gestation, her timely preparation of a nest, her exclusion of the eggs, her long incubation, and of the joyful eruption at last of her ex¬ pected offspring ; all which the bird in the cage must have learnt in her infancy, if we resolve her conduct into institution. Unless we will rather suppose, that she remembers her own escape from the egg; had attentively observed the conformation of the nest in which she was nurtured; and had treasured up her remarks for future imitation : which is not only extremely improbable, (for who, that sees a brood of callow birds in their nest, can believe that they are taking a plan of their habitation ?) but leaves unaccounted for, one principal part of the difficulty, “ the preparation of the nest before the laying of the egg.” This she could not gain from observation in her infancy. It is remarkable also, that the hen sits upon eggs which she has laid without any com¬ munication with the male ; and which are therefore necessarily unfruitful. That secret she is not let into. Y r et if incubation had been a subject of instruction or of tradition, it should seem that this distinction would have formed part of the lesson : whereas the instinct of nature is calculated for a state of nature : the exception here alluded to, taking place, chiefly if not solely, amongst domesticated fowls, in which nature is forced out of her course.* * Tt lias been determined long since by the Egyptians, of holding from eight to ten thousand eggs. The oven- that chickens may be artificially hatched by keeping them keepers find it unadvisable to lay the eggs deeper than in a temperature similar to that of the sitting hen, which two rows, and that they must be turned two or three is about 95° to 100° of Fahrenheit. This is done on the times a-day. What long practice has taught the Egyp- kanks of the Nile to a very great extent, in ovens capable tian oven-keepers, every hen knows by instinct; not a NATURAL THEOLOGY. 121 There is another case of oviparous economy, which is still less likely to be the effect of education, than it is even in birds, namely, that of moths and butterflies , which deposit their eggs in the precise substance, that of a cabbage for example, from which, not the butterfly herself, but the caterpillar which is to issue from her egg, draws its appropriate food. The butterfly cannot taste the cabbage. Cabbage is no food for her : yet in the cabbage, not by chance, but studiously and electively, she lays her egg. There are, amongst many other kinds, the willow-caterpillar and the cabbage-caterpillar : but we never find upon a willow, the caterpillar which eats the cabbage ; nor the converse.* The choice, as appears to me, cannot in the butterfly proceed from instruction. She had no teacher in her caterpillar state. She never knew her parent. I do not see, therefore, how knowledge acquired by experience, if it ever were such, could be transmitted from one generation to another. There is no opportunity either for instruction or imitation. The parent race is gone, before the new brood is hatched. And if it be original reasoning in the butterfly, it is profound reasoning indeed. She must remember her caterpillar state, its tastes and habits : of which memory she shews no signs whatever. She must conclude from analogy (for here her re¬ collection cannot serve her), that the little round body which drops from her abdomen, will at a future period produce a living creature, not like herself, but like the caterpillar which she remembers herself once to have been. Under the influence of these reflections, she goes about to make provision for an order of things, which she concludes will, some time or other, take place. And it is to be observed, that not a few out of many, but that all butterflies argue thus; all draw this conclusion; all act upon it. But suppose the address, and the selection, and the plan, which we perceive in the preparations which many irrational animals make for their young, to be traced to some pro¬ bable origin ; still there is left to be accounted for, that which is the source and foundation of these phenomena, that which sets the whole at work, the aropyr /, the parental affection, which I contend to be inexplicable upon any other hypothesis than that of instinct. For we shall hardly, I imagine, in brutes, refer their conduct towards their offspring to a sense of duty, or of decency, a care of reputation, a compliance with public manners, or with rules of life built upon a long experience of their utility. And all attempts to account for the parental affection from association, I think, fail. With what is it associated ? Most immediately with the throes of parturition, that is, with pain and terror and disease. The more remote but not less strong association, that which depends upon analogy, is all against it. Every thing else, which proceeds from the body, is cast away, and rejected. In birds, is it the egg which the hen loves ? or is it the expectation which she cherishes of a future single housewife is unaware of the fact, that the sitting hen frequently and regularly turns her eggs. The Egyptians also have found, that it is best for the eggs to be laid on the ground, and for the fire to be made in the upper part of the oven, so that the warmth shall descend upon the eggs. Recent investigations have ex¬ plained this. The germ of the future chicken, it is found, is attached to the outside of the yolk in such a manner, that it is always at its upper surface; and as the yolk is specifically lighter than the white, the admirable result follows, that the embiwo chick is always suspended at the ' upper side of the egg, immediately against the breast of the hen ; is removed as far as possible from the ground, and is in consequence certain of receiving the piost regular supply of warmth. The Egyptian has for ages used this arrangement, without knowing, any more than the hen, why it was necessary to follow a certain routine in producing his chickens ; yet it is now clear, that not a single movement is made by either, except in furtherance of provisions ori¬ ginally made by Him who first formed and regulated the egg. Brougham and Bell on Paley. On the Chicken-ovens of Cairo, by Professor Greaves. Phil. Trans, for 1677, 923. Plans of the ovens, in which it appears 100,000,000 chickens arc annually hatched, are given in the Penny Magazine, No. 87. It is a marked instance of God’s providence, that the egg-shells of those birds that deposit them upon the sur¬ face of the earth are always of the colour of the turf or sand which they may happen to frequent. Take as a familiar example the egg of the plover, its green and speckled shell closely resembles that of the mossy places in which they are laid. Their discovery is consequently rendered more difficult. “ It is utterly impossible that ever unthinking, untaught animals, should take to incubation as the only method of hatching their yonng, was it not implanted in their nature by the Infinitely Wise Creator. But so ardent is their desire, so unwearied is their patience, when they are engaged in that business, that they will abide in their nests for several weeks, deny themselves the pleasures, and even the necessaries of life, some of them even starving themselves almost rather than hazard their eggs to get food; and others, either performing the office by turns, or else the one kindly seeking out and carrying food to the other, engaged in the office.” Derham’s Physico-Theology, p. 256. * Even the common nettle has its particular cater¬ pillar, and the parent never fails to deposit her eggs upon this plant, uninviting as it is to the tastes of a butterfly. 122 NATURAL THEOLOGY. progeny, that keeps her upon her nest. What cause has she to expect delight from her progeny ? Can any rational answer be given to the question, why, prior to experience, the brooding hen should look for pleasure from her chickens ? It does not, I think, appear, that the cuckoo ever knows her young; yet, in her way, she is as careful in making provi¬ sion for them, as any other bird. She does not leave her egg in every hole. The salmon suffers no surmountable obstacle to oppose her progress up the stream of fresh rivers. And what does she do there ? she sheds a spawn, which she immediately quits, in order to return to the sea : and this issue of her body, she never afterward recognises in any shape whatever. Where shall we find a motive for her efforts and her perseverance ? Shall we seek it in argumentation, or in instinct ? The violet crab of Jamaica, performs a fatiguing march of some months’ continuance from the mountains to the sea-side. When she reaches the coast, she casts her spawn into the open sea ; and sets out upon her return home. Moths and butterflies, as hath already been observed, seek out for their eggs those precise situations and substances in which the offspring caterpillar will find its appropriate food. That dear caterpillar, the parent butterfly must never see. There are no experiments to prove that she would retain any knowledge of it, if she did. How shall we account for her conduct ? I do not mean for her art and judgment in selecting and securing a mainte¬ nance for her young, but for the impulse upon which she acts. What should induce her to exert any art, or judgment, or choice, about the matter ? The undisclosed grub, the animal which she is destined not to know, can hardly be the object of a particular affection, if we deny the influence of instinct. There is nothing, therefore, left to her, but that of which her nature seems incapable, an abstract anxiety for the general preservation of the species; a kind of patriotism ; a solicitude lest the butterfly race should cease from the creation. Lastly, the principle of association will not explain the discontinuance of the affection when the young animal is grown up. Association, operating in its usual way, would rather produce a contrary effect. The object would become more necessary, by habits of society ; whereas birds and beasts, after a certain time, banish their offspring ; disown their acquaintance ; seem to have even no knowledge of the objects which so lately engrossed the attention of their minds, and occupied the industry and labour of their bodies. This change, in different animals, takes place at different distances of time from the birth; but the time always corresponds with the ability of the young animal to maintain itself; never anticipates it. In the sparrow tribe, when it is perceived that the young brood can fly, and shift for themselves, then the parents forsake them for ever ; and, though they continue to live together, pay them no more attention than they do to other birds in the same flock. * I believe the same thing is true of all gregarious quadrupeds. In this part of the case, the variety of resources, expedients, and materials, which animals of the same species are said to have recourse to, under different circumstances, and when differently supplied, makes nothing against the doctrine of instincts. The thing which we want to account for, is the propensity. The propensity being there, it is probable enough that it may put the animal upon different actions, according to different exigencies. And this adaptation of resources may look like the effect of art and consideration rather than of instinct: but still the propensity is instinctive. For instance, suppose what is related of the woodpecker to be true, that in Europe she deposits her eggs in cavities, which she scoops out in the trunks of soft or decayed trees, and in which cavities the eggs lie concealed from the eye, and in some sort safe from the hand of man : but that, in the forests of Guinea and the Brazils, which man seldom frequents, the same bird hangs her nest to the twigs of tall trees ; thereby placing them out of the reach of monkeys and snakes ; i. e. that in each situation she prepares against the danger which she has most occasion to apprehend ; suppose, I say, this to be true, and to be alleged, on the part of the bird that builds these nests, as evidence of a reasoning and distinguishing precaution : still the question returns, whence the propensity to build at all ? Nor does parental affection accompany generation by any universal law of animal organi- * Goldsmith’s Natural History, vol. iv. p. 241. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 123 zation, if such a thing were intelligible. Some animals cherish their progeny with the most ardent fondness, and the most assiduous attention ; others entirely neglect them: and this distinction always meets the constitution of the young animal, with respect to its wants and capacities. In many, the parental care extends to the young animal; in others, as in all oviparous fish, it is confined to the egg, and, even as to that, to the disposal of it in its proper element. Also, as there is generation without parental affection, so is there parental instinct, or what exactly resembles it, without generation. In the bee tribe, the grub is nurtured neither by the father nor the mother, but by the neutral bee. Probably the case is the same with ants. I am not ignorant of the theory which resolves instinct into sensation: which asserts, that what appears to have a view and relation to the future, is the result only of the present disposition of the animals body, and of pleasure or pain experienced at the time. Thus the incubation of eggs is accounted for by the pleasure which the bird is supposed to receive from the pressure of the smooth convex surface of the shells against the abdomen, or by the relief which the mild temperature of the egg may afford to the heat of the lower part of the body, which is observed to be at this time increased beyond its usual state. This present gratification is the only motive with the hen for sitting upon her nest; the hatching of the chickens is, with respect to her, an accidental consequence. The affection of viviparous animals for their young is, in in like manner, solved by the relief, and perhaps the pleasure, which they receive from giving suck. The young animal’s seeking, in so many instances, the teat of its dam, is explained from its sense of smell, which is attracted by the odour of milk. The salmon’s urging its way up the stream of fresh-water rivers, is attributed to some grati¬ fication or refreshment, which, in this particular state of the fish’s body, she receives from the change of element. Now of this theory it may be said, First, that of the cases which require solution, there are few to which it can be applied with tolerable probability ; that there are none to which it can be applied without strong objections, furnished by the circumstances of the case. The attention of the cow to its calf, and of the ewe to its lamb, appear to be prior to their sucking. The attraction of the calf or lamb to the teat of the dam is not explained by simply referring it to the sense of smell. What made the scent of the milk so agreeable to the lamb, that it should follow it up with its nose, or seek with its mouth the place from which it proceeded ? No observation, no expe¬ rience, no argument, could teach the new-dropped animal, that the substance from which the scent issued, was the material of its food. It had never tasted milk before its birth. None of the animals which are not designed for that nourishment, ever offer to suck, or to seek out any such food. What is the conclusion, but that the sugescent parts of animals are fitted for their use, and the knowledge of that use put into them ? We assert, secondly, that, even as to the cases in which the hypothesis has the fairest claim to consideration, it does not at all lessen the force of the argument for intention and design. The doctrine of instinct is that of appetencies, superadded to the constitution of an animal, for the effectuating of a purpose beneficial to the species. The above-stated solution would derive these appetencies from organization, but then this organization is not less specifically, not less precisely, and, therefore, not less evidently adapted to the same ends, than the appetencies themselves would be upon the old hypothesis. In this way of consider¬ ing the subject, sensation supplies the place of foresight : but this is the effect of contrivance on the part of the Creator. Let it be allowed, for example, that the hen is induced to brood upon her eggs by the enjoyment or relief, which, in the heated state of her abdomen, she experiences from the pressure of round smooth surfaces, or from the application of a temperate warmth. How comes this extraordinary heat or itching, or call it what you will, which you suppose to be the cause of the bird’s inclination, to be felt, just at the time when the inclination itself is wanted : when it tallies so exactly with the internal constitution of the egg, and with the help which that constitution requires in order to bring it to maturity ? In my opinion, this solution, if it be accepted as to the fact, ought to increase, rather than otherwise, our admiration of the contrivance. A gardener lighting up his stoves, just when he wants to force his fruit, and when his trees require the heat, gives not a more certain evidence of 124 NATURAL THEOLOGY. design *. So again; when a male and female sparrow come together, they do not meet to confer upon the expediency of perpetuating their species. As an abstract proposition, they care not the value of a barley-corn, whether the species be perpetuated, or not : they follow their sensations; and all those consequences ensue, which the wisest counsels would have dictated, which the most solicitous care of futurity, which the most anxious concern for the sparrow- world, could have produced. But how do these consequences ensue ? The sensations, and the constitution upon which they depend, are as manifestly directed to the purpose which we see fulfilled by them; and the train of intermediate effects, as manifestly laid and planned with a view to that purpose : that is to say, design is as completely evinced by the phenomena, as it would he, even if we suppose the operations to begin, or to be carried on, from what some will allow to he alone properly called instincts, that is, from desires directed to a future end, and having no accomplishment or gratification distinct from the attainment of that end. In a word : I should say to the patrons of this opinion, Be it so ; he it, that those actions of animals which we refer to instinct, are not gone about with any view to their consequences, but that they are attended in the animal with a present gratification, and are pursued for the sake of that gratification alone ; what does all this prove, hut that the prospection , which must he somewhere, is not in the animal, but in the Creator ? In treating of the parental affection in brutes, our business lies rather with the origin of the principle, than with the effects and expressions of it. Writers recount these with pleasure and admiration. The conduct of many kinds of animals towards their young, has escaped no observer, no historian of nature. “ How will they caress them,” says Derham, “ with their affectionate notes ; lull and quiet them with their tender and parental voice; put food into their mouths; cherish and keep them warm ; teach them to pick, and eat, and gather food for themselves ; and, in a word, perform the part of so many nurses, deputed by the Sovereign Lord and Preserver of the world, to help such young and shiftless creatures !” Neither ought it, under this head, to be forgotten, how much the instinct costs the animal which feels it; how much a bird, for example, gives up, by sitting upon her nest; how repugnant it is to her organization, her habits, and her pleasures. An animal, formed for liberty, submits to confinement, in the very season when every thing invites her abroad : what is more ; an animal delighting in motion, made for motion, all whose motions are so easy and so free, hardly a mo¬ ment, at other times, at rest, is, for many hours of many days together, fixed to her nest, as close as if her limbs were tied down by pins and wires. For my part, I never see a bird in that situation, hut I recognise an invisible hand, detaining the contented prisoner from her fields and groves, for the purpose, as the event proves, the most worthy of the sacrifice, the most important, the most beneficial. But the loss of liberty is not the whole of what the procreant bird suffers. Harvey tells us, that he has often found the female wasted to skin and bone by sitting upon her eggs. One observation more, and I will dismiss the subject. The pairing of birds, and the non-pairing of beasts, forms a distinction between the two classes, which shews, that the conjugal instinct is modified with a reference to utility founded on the condition of the offspring. In quadrupeds, the young animal draws its nutriment from the body of the dam. The male parent neither does nor can contribute any part to its sustentation. In the feathered race, the young bird is supplied by an importation of food, to procure and bring home which, in a sufficient quantity for the demand of a numerous brood, requires the industry of both parents. In this difference, we see a reason for the vagrant instinct of the quadruped, and for the faithful love of the feathered mate.t * The animal heat, or natural temperature of birds, been incapable of hatching its eggs. The temperature is shown by the experiments of Camper and Hunter to required for this process being from 95°to 100°. Hunter vary between 103° and 107° of Fahrenheit’s thermometer, found the temperature of the rectum of fowls and geese to This is a warmth higher than that of any other class of be permanently 104°. animals. Its cause is yet unexplained, but the necessity -f The instinct of animals in their choice of food, in their for this elevated temperature may justly be connected rejection of what is poisonous, and in selecting what is with incubation. If the warmth of a fowl had only wholesome, is too remarkable to escape the notice of the been equal to that of the human body, it would have most careless :—witness the sweepings of the lawn and NATURAL THEOLOGY. 125 CHAPTER XIX. OF INSECTS. We arc not writing a system of natural history; therefore we have not attended to the classes into which the subjects of that science are distributed. What we had to observe concerning different species of animals, fell easily, for the most part, within the divisions which the course of our argument led us to adopt. There remain, however, some remarks upon the insect tribe, which could not properly be introduced under any of these heads; and which therefore we have collected into a chapter by themselves. The structure, and the use of the parts, of insects, are less understood than that of quadru¬ peds and birds, not only by reason of their minuteness, or the minuteness of their parts (for that minuteness we can, in some measure, follow with glasses), but also by reason of the remoteness of their manners and modes of life from those of larger animals. For instance : Insects under all their varieties of form, are endowed with antennas , which is the name given to those long feelers that rise from each side of the head : but to what common use or want of the insect kind, a provision so universal is subservient, has not yet been ascertained : and it has not been ascertained, because it admits not of a clear, or very probable, comparison, the shrubbery deposited by the gardener in the farm-yard ; how carefully and how skilfully the gallant horse culls them over, how readily he picks out the sweet blades of grass, and how ^uniformly he rejects the poisonous leaves and branches of the flower-garden. By no chance does he ever eat the hemlock (Conium Maculatum), the deadly nightshade (Atropa Belladonna), or the bane berry ( Actoea Spicata), or a hundred other unwholesome products swept from the garden ; his instinct teaches him that they are noxious, yet the goat and the sheep greedily devour the first and last named with perfect impunity. The rabbit riots in parsley; but the horse rejects it entiiely : and this instinct is not the effect of habit and long practice; the English race-horse turned out under the palms of India, selects his food just as carefully and successfully as the Arab on the heaths of Newmarket, neither are deceived by the tempting appearance of strange plants around them. The rabbit always rejects the fennel and the nettle; and were it not so, some of the barren drifting sands of Norfolk and Suffolk, which are only tenanted by these animals, would be shelterless, for there the luxuriant clumps of nettles afford the only shade the rabbits enjoy from the sun and wind. The tastes too of different animals differ as strongly ; the bitter sowthistle and the lettuce are greedily eaten by the horse; but he will not taste the poppy, which the cow will readily pasture upon : the first, when in a state of ' nature, seeks the sweet short grass of the upland pastures, which he is provided with teeth to bite off close to the ground, just as it is springing into life; he is careful in selecting the cleanest spots, and anxiously avoids where other animals have preceded him. The cow, on the con¬ trary, under the same circumstances, haunts the rankest and deepest pastures; her mouth is ill adapted for close feeding ; and she is by no means so particular in selecting the sweetest and most cleanly spots. By this arrangement, the different tribes of animals which are intended to herd sociably together, arc not naturally induced to seek the same pastures; they are found on different elevations, contentions and destruction of food are avoided, and universal enjoyment promoted. Then again this marvellous instinct of animals is not confined to their food, but extends to other substances, which are neither nutritious nor naturally inviting: thus the health ofall herbivorous animals is increased by their taking a certain portion of salt; and it is found that in a state of nature, all this class of animals take it regu¬ larly ;_that the rein-deer of Lapland seeks the sea shore in spring; the wild cattle of America haunt the salt pools, or salt licks, so constantly that the huntsman always expects to find his game in their vicinity; the horse licks the dirty saline exudations of the stable with avidity, but ceases to do so if he has a piece of rock salt placed in his manger, which he then regularly prefers ; sheep do the same, if it is placed with them in their pastures; the very bee in summer seeks the sea shore, drains, &c. where salt can be obtained. This habit does not result merely from the grateful flavour of the substances ingested; the dog has no taste for the grass which makes him vomit; there is nothing tempting to her palate in the sandy pebbles, or pieces of calcareous earth, which every hen consumes with such unvaried regularity, and yet countless generations have steadily followed the practice, guided merely by an uner¬ ring instinct* Yon Buch’s Travels in Norway. Dr. Paris, Pharm. Lambert An. Rev., 1804, 3767. Lord Somerville on Sheep, 104. Johnson on the use of Salt in Agriculture, p. 106. Dr. Bevan on Bees, 186-197. Sir John Pringle, Phil. Trans, vol. 46, p. 557. Howard, Com. Board of Agri. 1812, p. 213. Dr. Fordycc on Digestion, p. 25.— This well-known physician found by experiment that with¬ out canary birds, for instance, have access to calcaieous earth at the time of their laying, they frequently die from their eggs not coming properly to maturity.. He divided a number of these lithe birds, when they were breeding, into two parties ; and supplied one party with a piece of old mortar which they devoured greedily, and all of them lived and laid their eggs as usual : but of the other party, not supplied with lime, many died.—• Ibid, p 26. 120 NATURAL THEOLOGY. with any organs which we possess ourselves, or with the organs of animals which resemble ourselves in their functions and faculties, or with which we are better acquainted than we are with insects. We want a ground of analogy. This difficulty stands in our way as to some particulars in the insect constitution, which we might wish to be acquainted with. Never¬ theless, there are many contrivances in the bodies of insects, neither dubious in their use, nor obscure in their structure, and most properly mechanical. These form parts of our argument. I. The elytra , or scaly wings of the genus of scaraba3us or beetle, furnish an example of this kind. The true wing of the animal is a light, transparent membrane, finer than the finest gauze, and not unlike it. It is also, when expanded, in proportion to the size of the animal, very large. In order to protect this delicate structure, and, perhaps, also, to pre¬ serve it in a due state of suppleness and humidity, a strong, hard case is given to it, in the shape of the horny wing which we call the elytron. When the animal is at rest, the gauze wings lie folded up under this impenetrable shield. When the beetle prepares for flying, he raises the integument, and spreads out his thin membrane to the air. And it cannot be observed without admiration, what a tissue of cordage, i. e. of mus¬ cular tendons, must run in various and complicated, but determinate directions, along this fine surface, in order to enable the animal, either to gather it up into a certain precise form, whenever it desires to place its wings under the shelter which nature hath given to them ; or to expand again their folds when wanted for action. In some insects, the elytra cover the whole body ; in others, half; in others only a small part of it; but in all, they completely hide and cover the true wings. Also, Many or most of the beetle species lodge in holes in the earth, environed by hard, rough substances, and have frequently to squeeze their way through narrow passages; in which situation, wings so tender, and so large, could scarcely have escaped injury, without both a firm covering to defend them, and the capacity of collecting themselves up under its protection. II. Another contrivance, equally mechanical, and equally clear, is the awl, or borer, fixed at the tails of various species of flies; and with which they pierce, in some cases, plants ; in others, wood ; in others, the skin and flesh of animals : in others, the coat of the chrysalis of insects of a different species from their own; and in others, even lime, mortar, and stone. I need not add, that having pierced the substance, they deposit their eggs in the hole. The descriptions which naturalists give of this organ, are such as the following : It is a sharp-pointed instrument, which, in its inactive state, lies concealed in the extremity of the abdomen, and which the animal draws out at pleasure, for the purpose of making a puncture in the leaves, stem, or bark, of the particular plant, which is suited to the nourishment of its young. In a sheath, which divides and opens whenever the organ is used, there is enclosed a compact, solid, dentated stem, along which runs a gutter or groove , by which groove, after the penetration is effected, the egg, assisted, in some cases, by a peristaltic motion, passes to its destined lodgment. In the oestrum or gad-fly, the wimble draws out like the pieces of a spy-glass : the last piece is armed with three hooks, and is able to boro through the hide of an ox. Can any thing more be necessary to display the mechanism, than to relate the fact ? III. The stings of insects, though for a different purpose, are, in their structure, not unlike the piercer. The sharpness to which the point in all of them is wrought; the temper and firmness of the substance of which it is composed ; the strength of the muscles by which it is darted out, compared with the smallness and weakness of the insect, and with the soft or friable texture of the rest of the body; are properties of the sting to be noticed, and not a little to be admired. The sting of a bee will pierce through a goat-skin glove. It penetrates the human flesh more readily than the finest point of a needle. The action of the sting affords an example of the union of chymistry and mechanism, such as, if it be not a proof of contrivance, nothing is. First, as to the chymistry ; how highly con¬ centrated must be the venom , which, in so small a quantity, can produce such powerful effects ! And in the bee we may observe, that this venom is made from honey , the only food of the insect, but the last material from which I should have expected that an exalted NATURAL THEOLOGY, 127 poison could, by any process or digestion whatsoever, have been prepared. In the next place, with respect to the mechanism, the sting is not a simple, but a compound in¬ strument. The visible sting, though drawn to a point exquisitely sharp, is in strict¬ ness only a sheath; for, near to the extremity, may be perceived by the microscope two minute orifices, from which orifices, in the act of stinging, and, as it should seem, after the point of the main sting has buried itself in the flesh, are launched out two subtile rays, which may be called the true or proper stings, as being those through which the poison is infused into the puncture already made by the exterior sting. I have said, that chymistry and mechanism are here united: by which observation I meant, that all this machinery would have been useless, telum imbelle , if a supply of poison, intense in quality, in proportion to the smallness of the drop, had not been furnished to it by the chymical elabo¬ ration which was carried on in the insect’s body ; and that, on the other hand, the poison, the result of this process, could not have attained its effect, or reached its enemy, if, when it was collected at the extremity of the abdomen, it had not found there a machinery fitted to conduct it to the external situations in which it was to operate, viz. an awl to bore a hole, and a syringe to inject the fluid. Yet these attributes, though combined in their action, arc independent in their origin. The venom does not breed the sting; nor does the sting concoct the venom. IV. The proboscis , with which many insects are endowed, comes next in order to be considered. It is a tube attached to the head of the animal. In the bee, it is composed of two pieces, connected by a joint: for, if it were constantly extended, it would be too much exposed to accidental injuries ; therefore, in its indolent state, it is doubled up by means of the joint, and in that position lies secure under a scaly penthouse. In many species of the butterfly, the proboscis when not in use, is coiled up like a watch-spring. In the same bee, the proboscis serves the office of the mouth, the insect having no other ; and how much better adapted it is, than a mouth would be, for the collecting of the proper nourish¬ ment of the animal, is sufficiently evident. The food of the bee is the nectar of flowers; a drop of syrup, lodged deep in the bottom of the corollae, in the recesses of the petals, or down the neck of a monopetalous glove. Into these cells the bee thrusts its long narrow pump, through the cavity of which it sucks up this precious fluid, inaccessible to every other approach. It is observable also, that the plant is not the w’orse for what the bee does to it. The harmless plunderer rifles the sweets, but leaves the flower un¬ injured. The ringlets of which the proboscis of the bee is composed, the muscles by which it is extended and contracted, form so many microscopical wonders. The agility also, with which it is moved, can hardly fail to excite admiration. But it is enough for our purpose to observe, in general, the suitableness of the structure to the use, of the means to the end, and especially the wisdom by which nature has departed from its most general analogy (for, animals being furnished with mouths are such), when the purpose could be better answered by the deviation. In some insects, the proboscis, or tongue, or trunk, is shut up in a sharp-pointed sheath : which sheath, being of a much firmer texture than the proboscis itself, as well as sharpened at the point, pierces the substance which contains the food, and then opens within the wound , to allow the enclosed tube, through which the juice is extracted, to perform its office. Can any mechanism be plainer than this is ; or surpass this ? V. The metamorphosis of insects from grubs into moths and flies, is an astonishing process. A hairy caterpillar is transformed into a butterfly. Observe the change. We have four beautiful wings, where there were none before; a tubular proboscis, in the place of a mouth with jaws and teeth; six long legs, instead of fourteen feet. In another case, we see a white, smooth, soft worm, turned into a black, hard, crustaceous beetle, with gauze wings. These, as I said, are astonishing processes, and must require, as it should seem, a proportion- ably artificial apparatus. The hypothesis which appears to me most probable is, that, in the grub, there exist at the same time three animals, one within another, all nourished by the same digestion, and by a communicating circulation; but in different stages of maturity. The latest discoveries made by naturalists, seem to favour this supposition. The insect, already equipped with wings, is descried under the membranes both of the worm and 128 NATURAL THEOLOGY. nymph. In some species, the proboscis, the antennae, the limbs, and wings of the fly, have been observed to be folded lip within the body of the caterpillar ; and with such nicety as to occupy a small space only under the two first wings. This being so, the outermost animal, which, besides its own proper character, serves as an integument to the other two, being the farthest advanced, dies, as we suppose, and drops off first. The second, the pupa or chrysalis, then offers itself to observation. This also, in its turn dies ; its dead and brittle husk falls to pieces, and makes way for the appearance of the fly or moth. Now, if this be the case, or indeed whatever explication be adopted, we have a prospective contrivance of the most curious kind : we have organizations three deep; yet a vascular system, which supplies nutrition, growth, and life, to all of them together. VI. Almost all insects are oviparous. Nature keeps her butterflies, moths, and cater¬ pillars, locked up during the winter in their egg-state; and we have to admire the various devices to which, if we may so speak, the same nature hath resorted, for the security of the egg. Many insects inclose their eggs in a silken web; others cover them with a coat of hair, torn from their own bodies ; some glue them together; and others, like the moth of the silkworm, glue them to the leaves upon which they are deposited, that they may not be shaken off by the wind, or washed away by rain: some again make incisions into leaves, and hide an egg in each incision ; whilst some envelope their eggs with a soft substance, which forms the first aliment of the young animal : and some again make a hole in the earth, and having stored it with a quantity of proper food, deposit their eggs in it. In all of which we are to observe, that the expedient depends, not so much upon the address of the animal, as upon the physical resources of his constitution. The art also with which the young insect is coiled up in the egg, presents, where it can be examined, a subject of great curiosity. The insect, furnished with all the members which it ought to have, is rolled up into a form which seems to contract it into the least possible space ; by which contraction, notwithstanding the smallness of the egg, it has room enough in its apartment, and to spare. This folding of the limbs appears to me to indicate a special direction ; for, if it were merely the effect of compression, the collocation of the parts would be more various than it is. In the same species, I believe, it is always the same. These observations belong to the whole insect tribe, or to a great part of them. Other observations are limited to fewer species ; but not, perhaps, less important or satisfactory. I. The organization in the abdomen of the silkwoy'm , or spider , whereby these insects form their thread , is as incontcstibly mechanical as a wire-drawer s mill. In the body of the silkworm are two bags, remarkable for their form, position, and use. They wind round the intestine; when drawn out, they are ten inches in length, though the animal itself be only two. Within these bags, is collected a glue; and communicating with the bags, are two paps or outlets, perforated like a grater, by a number of small holes. The glue or gum, being passed through these minute apertures, forms hairs of almost imperceptible fineness ; and these hairs, when joined, compose the silk which we wind off from the cone, in which the silkworm has wrapped itself up : in the spider, the web is formed of this thread. In both cases, the extremity of the thread, by means of its adhesive quality, is first attached by the animal to some external hold; and the end being now fastened to a point, the insect, by turning round its body, or by receding from that point, draws out the thread through the holes above described, by an operation, as hath been observed, exactly similar to the drawing of wire. The thread, like the wire, is formed by the hole through which it passes. In one respect there is a difference. The wire is the metal unaltered, except in figure. In the animal process, the nature of the substance is somewhat changed, as well as the form ; for, as it exists within the insect, it is a soft, clammy gum, or glue. The thread acquires, it is probable, its firmness and tenacity from the action of the air upon its surface, in the moment of exposure; and a thread so fine is almost .all surface. This property, however, of the paste, is part of the contrivance. The mechanism itself consists of the bags, or reservoirs, into which the glue is collected, and of the external holes communicating with these bags; and the action of the machine is seen, in the forming of a thread, as wire is formed, by forcing the material already prepared through holes of proper dimensions. The secretion is an act too subtile for our discernment, NATURAL THEOLOGY. 1 21 ) except as we perceive it by the produce. But one thing answers to another ; the secretory glands to the quality and consistence required in the secreted substance ; the bag to its recep¬ tion : the outlets and orifices are constructed, not merely for relieving the reservoirs of their burden, but for manufacturing the contents into a form and texture, of great external use, or rather indeed of future necessity, to the life and functions of the insect. II. Bees, under one character or other, have furnished every naturalist with a set of observations. I shall, in this place, confine myself to one; and that is the relation which obtains between the wax and the honey. No person, who has inspected a bee-hive, can for¬ bear remarking how commodiously the honey is bestowed in the comb; and, amongst other advantages, how effectually the fermentation of the honey is prevented by distributing it into small cells. The fact is, that when the honey is separated from the comb, and put into jars, it runs into fermentation, with a much less degree of heat than what takes place in a hive. This may be reckoned a nicety; but, independently of any nicety in the matter, I would ask, what could the bee do with the honey, if it had not the wax ? how, at least, could it store it up for winter ? The wax, therefore, answers a purpose with respect to the honey; and the honey constitutes that purpose with respect to the wax. This is the rela¬ tion between them. But the two substances, though, together, of the greatest use, and, without each other, of little, come from a different origin. The bee finds the honey, but makes the wax. The honey is lodged in the nectaria of flowers, and probably undergoes little alteration ; is merely collected: whereas the wax is a ductile, tenacious paste, made out of a dry powder, not simply by kneading it with a liquid, but by a digestive process in the body of the bee. What account can be rendered of facts so circumstanced, but that the animal, being intended to feed upon honey, was, by a peculiar external configuration, enabled to procure it ? That, moreover, wanting the honey when it could not be procured at all, it was farther endued with the no less necessary faculty, of constructing repositories for its preservation ? Which faculty, it is evident, must depend, primarily, upon the capacity of providing suitable materials. Two distinct functions go to make up the ability. First, the power in the bee, with respect to wax, of loading the farina of flowers upon its thighs. Microscopic observers speak of the spoon-shaped appendages with which the thighs of bees are beset for this very purpose; but, inasmuch as the art and will of the bee may be sup¬ posed to be concerned in this operation, there is, secondly, that which doth not rest in art or will,—a digestive faculty which converts the loose powder into a stiff substance. This is a just account of the honey and the honey-comb ; and this account, through every part, carries a creative intelligence along with it. The sting also of the bee has this relation to the honey, that it is necessary for the protec¬ tion of a treasure which invites so many robbers *. III. Our business is with mechanism. In the panorpa tribe of insects, there is a forceps in the tail of the male insect with which he catches and holds the female. Are a pair of pincers more mechanical than this provision in its structure, or is any structure more clear and certain in ifs design ? IV. St. Pierre tells us t, that in a fly with six feet (I do not remember that he describes the species,) the pair next the head and the pair next the tail, have brushes at their extremi- * The relation between the honey and the wax may be considered further. Honey being the food assigned to the bee, and that food being required in the winter when little or none is produced by our flowers, it became neces¬ sary to have it stored in the seasons of more abundant supply. For the storehouses it was necessary to provide an undecaying material; now wax is the only vegetable compound that resists putrefaction for any lengthened time under circumstances tending to promote it—moisture and warmth. The bee, therefore, is not only gifted with the power of forming a substance plastic and convenient for the formation of its cells, but the most suitable of all others to the purpose for which it is required. Whence came also the sagacity, the sagacity acting in the perfec¬ tion of correctness, that makes this insect construct its cells invariably of a hexagon form? Mathematicians by a series of abstruse calculation, have shown that this of all other figures is the one that allows the greatest number of small structures to be crowded into a given space. W ho taught this to the honey-bee? Who instructed it, when an intruding mouse or slug is slain within its hive; who taught it that a covering of wax would prevent the escape of pestilential and annoying exhalations from the carcase ? Who taught the bee with provident and relentless slaughter to destroy the drones, at the conclusion of the season in which only they are serviceable? These queries founded on the instinct displayed by this insect, might be much extended, but sufficient has been noticed to demonstrate that here, as iu all other parts of creation, not only is every thing best , but occurring in its most fitting mode and season. f Vol. i. p. 342. K NATURAL THEOLOGY. 1.30 ties, with which the fly dresses, as there may be occasion, the anterior or the posterior part of its body; but that the middle pair have no such brushes, the situation of these legs not admitting of the brushes, if they were there, being converted to the same use. This is a very exact mechanical distinction. V. If the reader, looking to our distributions of science, wish to contemplate the chymistry, as well as the mechanism, of nature, the insect creation will afford him an example. I refer to the light in the tail of a glow-worm. Two points seem to be agreed upon by naturalists concerning it: first, that it is phosphoric ; secondly, that its use is to attract the male insect. The only thing to be inquired after, is the singularity, if any such there be, in the natural history of this animal, which should render a provision of this kind more necessary for it, than for other insects. That singularity seems to be the difference which subsists between the male and the female; which difference is greater than what we find in any other species of animal whatever. The glow-worm is a female caterpillar , the male of which is a fly , lively, comparatively small, dissimilar to the female in appearance, probably also as distin¬ guished from her in habits, pursuits, and manners, as he is unlike in form and external constitution. Here then is the adversity of the case. The caterpillar cannot meet her companion in the air. The winged rover disdains the ground. They might never there¬ fore be brought together, did not this radiant torch direct the volatile mate to his sedentary female. In this example, we also see the resources of art anticipated. One grand operation of chymistry is the making of phosphorus : and it was thought an ingenious device, to make phosphoric matches supply the place of lighted tapers. Now this very thing is done in the body of the glow-worm. The phosphorus is not only made, but kindled ; and caused to emit a steady and genial beam, for the purpose which is here stated, and which I believe to be the true one*. VI. Nor is the last the only instance that entomology affords, in which our discoveries, or rather our projects, turn out to be imitations of nature. Some years ago, a plan was sug¬ gested, of producing propulsion by reaction in this way : by the force of a steam-engine, a stream of water was to be shot out of the stern of a boat; the impulse of which stream upon the water in the river, was to push the boat itself forward ; it is, in truth, the principle by which sky-rockets ascend in the air. Of the use or practicability of the plan, I am not speaking ; nor is it my concern to praise its ingenuity : but it is certainly a contrivance. Now, if naturalists are to be believed, it is exactly the device which nature has made use of, for the motion of some species of aquatic insects. The larva of the dragonfly , according to Adams, swims by ejecting water from its tail; is driven forward by the reaction of water in the pool upon the current issuing in a direction backward from its body. VII. Again : Europe has lately been surprised by the elevation of bodies in the air by means of a balloon. The discovery consisted in finding out a manageable substance, which was, bulk for bulk, lighter than air: and the application of the discovery was, to make a body composed of this substance bear up, along with its own weight, some heavier body which was attached to it. This expedient, so new to us, proves to be no other than what the Author of nature has employed in the gossamer spider. We frequently see this spider’s thread floating in the air, and extended from hedge to hedge, across a road or brook of four or five yards width. The animal which forms the thread, has no wings wherewith to fly from one extremity to the other of this line; nor muscles to enable it to spring or dart to so great a distance: yet its Creator hath laid for it a path in the atmosphere; and after this * The glow-worm’s light has ever excited the attention nam are still more splendid. Dr. Shaw describes the of all classes ; the very ploughboy places it in his hat; fulgoria lanternaria, or Peruvian lantern-fly, as being the poets have celebrated, philosophers have examined, its largest of the phosphorescent insects. It measures three nature. But all examinations have failed in demonstrat- inches in length, and five from the tip of one wing to the ing the sources from whence its luminous appearance is extremity of the other. derived. Its pale blue light is yet one of the mysteries “ This beautiful insect is a native of Surinam, and of animal chemistry. many other parts of South America, and during the night The luminous insects of other climates are still more diffuses so strong a phosphoric splendour from its head, or beautiful than the glow-worms of England. The fire- lantern, that it may be employed for the purpose of a flies of Siam, which tenant its deep forests, are celebrated candle or torch.”—Shaw’s Zoology, vol. vi. 144. in India for their illuminating powers. And those of Suri- NATURAL THEOLOGY. 131 manner. Though the animal itself be heavier than air, the thread which it spins from its bowels is specifically lighter. This is its balloon . The spider, left to itself, would drop to the ground ; but being tied to its thread, both are supported. We have here a very peculiar provision : and to a contemplative eye it is a gratifying spectacle, to see this insect wafted on her thread, sustained by a levity not her own, and traversing regions, which, if we examined only the body of the animal, might seem to have been forbidden to its nature. I must now crave the reader’s permission to introduce into this place, for want of a better, an observation or two upon the tribe of animals, whether belonging to land or water, which are covered by shells. I. The shells of snails are a wonderful, a mechanical, and, if one might so speak concerning the works of nature, an original contrivance. Other animals have their proper retreats, their hybernacula also, or winter-quarters, but the snail carries these about with him. He travels with his tent; and this tent, though, as was necessary, both light and thin, is completely impervious either to moisture or air. The young snail comes out of its egg with the shell upon its back; and the gradual enlargement which the shell receives, is derived from the slime excreted by the animal’s skin. Now the aptness of this excretion to the purpose, its property of hardening into a shell, and the action, whatever it be, of the animal, whereby it avails itself of its gift, and of the constitution of its glands (to say nothing of the work being commenced before the animal is born), are things which can, with no probability, be referred to any other cause than to express design; and that not on the part of the animal alone, in which design, though it might build the house, could not have supplied the material. The will of the animal could not determine the quality of the excretion. Add to which, that the shell of the snail, with its pillar and convolution, is a very artificial fabric; whilst a snail, as it should seem, is the most numb and unprovided of all artificers. In the midst of variety, there is likewise a regularity which could hardly be expected. In the same species of snail, the number of turns is usually, if not always, the same. The sealing up of the mouth of the shell by the snail, is also well calculated for its warmth and security; but the cerate is not of the same substance with the shell. II. Much of what has been observed of snails, belongs to shell-Jish , and their shells , particu¬ larly to those of the univalve kind ; with the addition of two remarks : one of which is upon the great strength and hardness of most of these shells. I do not know whether, the weight being given, art can produce so strong a case as are some of these shells. Which defensive strength suits well with the life of an animal, that has often to sustain the dangers of a stormy element, and a rocky bottom, as well as the attacks of voracious fish. The other remark is upon the property, in the animal excretion, not only of congealing, but of congealing, or, as a builder would call it, setting , in water, and into a cretaceous substance, firm and hard. This property is much more extraordinary, and, chemically speaking, more specific, than that of hardening in the air; which may be reckoned a kind of exsiccation, like the drying of clay into bricks. III. In the bivalve order of shell-fish, cockles, muscles, oysters, &c. what contrivance can be so simple or so clear, as the insertion, at the back, of a tough tendinous substance, that becomes at once the ligament which binds the two shells together, and the hinge upon which they open and shut ? IV. The shell of a lobster’s tail, in its articulations and overlappings, represents the jointed part of a coat of mail; or rather, which I believe to be the truth, a coat of mail is an imita¬ tion of a lobster’s shell. The same end is to be answered by both ; the same properties, therefore, are required in both, namely, hardness and flexibility, a covering which may guard the part without obstructing its motion. For this double purpose, the art of man, expressly exercised upon the subject, has not been able to devise any thing better than what nature presents to his observation. Is not this therefore mechanism, which the mechanic, having a similar purpose in view, adopts ? Is the structure of a coat of mail to be referred to art ? Is the same structure of the lobster, conducing to the same use, to be referred to any thing less than art ? NATURAL THEOLOGY. 13: Some, who may acknowledge the imitation, and assent to the inference which we draw from it, in the instance before ns, may be disposed, possibly, to ask, why such imitations are not more frequent than they are, if it be true, as we allege, that the same principle of intelli¬ gence, design, and mechanical contrivance, was exerted in the formation of natural bodies, as we employ in the making of the various instruments by which our purposes are served ? The answers to this question are, first, that it seldom happens, that precisely the same pur¬ pose, and no other, is pursued in any work which we compare, of nature and of art; secondly, that it still more seldom happens, that we can imitate nature, if we would. Our materials and our workmanship are equally deficient. Springs and wires, and cork and leather, produce a poor substitute for an arm or a hand. In the example which we have selected, I mean of a lobsters shell compared with a coat of mail, these difficulties stand less in the way, than in almost any other that can be assigned : and the consequence is, as we have seen, that art gladly borrows from nature her contrivance, and imitates it closely. But to return to insects. I think it is in this class of animals above all others, especially when we take in the multitude of species which the microscope discovers, that we are struck with what Cicero has called “ the insatiable variety of nature.” There are said to be six thousand species of flies ; seven hundred and sixty butterflies; each different from all the rest. (St. Pierre.) The same writer tells us, from his own observation, that thirty-seven species of winged insects, with distinctions well expressed, visited a single strawberry-plant in the course of three weeks*. Ray observed, within the compass of a mile or two of his own house, two hundred kinds of butterflies, nocturnal and diurnal. He likewise asserts, but, 1 think, without any grounds of exact computation, that the number of species of insects, reckoning all sorts of them, may not be short of ten thousand+. And in this vast variety of animal forms (for the observation is not confined to insects, though more applicable perhaps to them than to any other class), we are sometimes led to take notice of the different methods, or rather of the studiously diversified methods, by which one and the same purpose is attained. In the article of breathing, for example, which was to be provided for in some way or other, besides the ordinary varieties of lungs, gills, and breatliing-holes (for insects in general respire, not by the mouth, but through holes in the sides), the nymphse of gnats have an appa¬ ratus to raise their backs to the top of the water, and so take breath. The hydrocantliari do the like by thrusting their tails out of the water J. The maggot of the eruca labra has a long tail, one part sheathed within another (but which it can draw out at pleasure), with a starry tuft at the end, by which ti/ft, when expanded upon the surface, the insect both sup¬ ports itself in the water, and draws in the air which is necessary. In the article of natural clothing, we have the skins of animals invested with scales, hair, feathers, mucus, froth ; or itself turned into a shell or crust: in the no less necessary article of offence and defence, we have teeth, talons, beaks, horns, stings, prickles, with (the most singular expedient for the same purpose) the power of giving the electric shock, and, as is credibly related of some animals, of driving away their pursuers by an intolerable foetor, or of blackening the water through which they are pursued. The consideration of these appearances might induce us to believe, that variety itself, distinct from every other reason, was a motive in the mind of the Creator, or with the agents of his will§. To this great variety in organized life, the Deity has given, or perhaps there arises out of it, a corresponding variety of animal appetites. For the final cause of this we have not far to seek. Did all animals covet the same element, retreat, or food, it is evident how much fewer could be supplied and accommodated, than what at present live conveniently together, and find a plentiful subsistence. What one nature rejects, another delights in. Food which is nauseous to one tribe of animals, becomes, by that very property which makes it nauseous, an alluring dainty to another tribe. Carrion is a treat to dogs, ravens, vultures, fish. The exhalations of corrupted substances, attract flies by crowds. Maggots revel in putrefaction. * Wl* L, p. 3. p Wisd. of God, p. 23. + Derham, p. 7. § TSo stronger instance is upon record of the inability of of knowledge, than the attempt to annul the will of Lady )e ignorant to appreciate the true value and attractiveness Glanville on the plea of insanity, or mental derangement, NATURAL THEOLOGY. 133 CHAPTER XX. OF PLANTS*. I think a designed and studied mechanism to be, in general, more evident in animals than in plants: and it is unnecessary to dwell upon a weaker argument, where a stronger is at hand. There are, however, a few observations upon the vegetable kingdom, which lie so directly in our way, that it would be improper to pass by them without notice. The one great intention of nature in the structure of plants, seems to be the perfecting of the seed; and, what is part of the same intention, the preserving of it until it be perfected. This intention shows itself, in the first place, by the care which appears to be taken, to protect and ripen, by every advantage which can be given to them of situation in the plant, those parts which most immediately contribute to fructification, viz. the anthers©, the stamina, and the stigmata. These parts are usually lodged in the centre, the recesses, or the laby¬ rinths of the flower; during their tender and immature state, are shut up in the stalk, or sheltered in the bud; as soon as they have acquired firmness of texture sufficient to bear which was endeavoured to be sustained by the plea, that she had a fondness for collecting insects; and it is a fact which our great naturalist, Ray, had to appear at Exeter as a witness to prove that the study of Entomology is no symptom of madness! (Harris’s Aurelian, art. “Papilio Cinxia.”) Other minds have formed of the science a far different and more correct estimate. “ Insects,” says Mr. Kirby, u appear to have been nature’s favourite productions ; in which to manifest her power and skill, she has combined and concenti’ated almost all that is beautiful and graceful, interesting and alluring, curious and singular, in every other class and order of her children. To these, her valued miniatures, she has given the most delicate touch and highest finish of her pencil. Numbers she has armed with glittering mail, reflecting a lustre like the burnished metals ; in others she lights up the dazzling radiance of polished gems. Some she has decked with what looks like liquid drops of gold or silver. What numbers vie with the gayest offspring of Flora in various beauties ; yet in colours, not like theirs, evanescent; in the rich veining and texture of their wings, and in the rich down that clothes them. Nature, in her sportive mood when paint¬ ing them, sometimes imitates the clouds of heaven ; many are veined like the richest marbles; some are blazoned with heraldic insignia; for in fields azure, sable, vert, gules, argent, and or, they bear fesses,bars, bends, crosses, crescents, stars, and even animals. Pliny, the Roman naturalist, remarked, ‘ In these beings so minute, and as it were such non-entities, what wisdom is displayed, what power, what unfathomable perfection !’ The striking peculiarity and variety of structure which they exhibit in their instruments of nutrition, motion, and oviposition; in their organs of sensation, generation, and the fountains of vitality : indeed their whole system, anatomically considered, is a world of wonders. If they are followed into their habits of life and activity, engaged in their several employments, practising their various arts,pursuing theiramours, and preparing habi¬ tations for their progeny, all profferarich mine of amusement and instruction, all proclaim‘the hand that made us isdivine.’ In conclusion, no religious doctrine is more strongly estab¬ lished by the history of insects, than that of a superin¬ tending Providence. That of the innumerable species of these beings, many of them beyond conception fragile, and exposed to dangers and enemies without end, no link should be lost from the chain ; but all be maintained in those relative proportions necessary for the general good of the system; that if one species for a while predominates, counterchecks should at the same time be provided to reduce it within its true limits ; that they never exceed their commission : all furnish a proof that there is an un¬ seen, directing, and controlling hand. Insects, in truth, are a book in which whoever reads under proper impres¬ sions, cannot avoid looking from the effect to the cause, and acknowledging His eternal power and godhead thus wonderfully displayed, and irrefragably demonstrated.” (Kirby & Spence’s Introduction to Entomology.) It is impossible, within our limits, to enter particularly into the wondrous contrivances and mechanism of the insect forms; those who would pursue the subject must refer to the excellent work above quoted, and we would also recommend the perusal of two superior essays by Mr. Donovan in Rees’s Cyclopaedia, on “Insects” and “ Entomology.” One fact of minute and exquisite work¬ manship displayed in the insect structure, we must notice. The eye of the common house-fly is fixed so as to enable its prominent organs of vision to view accurately the objects around in every direction; it is furnished with 8000 hexagonal faces, all calculated to convey perfect images to the optic nerve—all slightly convex—all acting as so many cornea—8000 included within a space no larger than the head of a pin !—all hexagonal—all of the best possible form to prevent a waste of space! This is so wonderful that it would stagger belief if not vouched for by being the result of the microscopical researches of such men as M. Lewenhoeck, and others equally emi¬ nent. * Our ignorance of the many astonishing chemical pro¬ cesses carried on in the animal and vegetable kingdom, bespeaks the superiority of their Divine author; for here the philosopher is perpetually baffled, and bis experi¬ mental researches retarded by the existence in living mat¬ ter of principles above “ our mortal ken : ” there are processes too, and chemical operations always going on in living bodies, alike strange and inexplicable on any prin¬ ciples which will apply to inorganic matter. Dr. Thomson, perhaps the most distinguished experi¬ mental chemist of our age, has readily acknowdedged the difficulties that attend such researches :—“Scarcely a sin¬ gle process can be completely traced ; the multiplicity of operations continually going on in vegetables at the same time, and the variety of different and even opposite sub- 134 NATURAL THEOLOGY. exposure, and are ready to perform the important office which is assigned to them, they are disclosed to the light and air, by the bursting of the stem, or the expansion of the petals; after which, they have, in many cases, by the very form of the flower during its blow, the light and warmth reflected upon them from the concave side of the cup. What is called also the sleep of plants, is the leaves or petals disposing themselves in such a manner as to shelter the young stems, buds, or fruit. They turn up, or they fall dowm, according as this purpose renders either change of position requisite. In the growth of corn, whenever the plant begins to shoot, the two upper leaves of the stalk join together, embrace the ear, and protect it till the pulp has acquired a certain degree of consistency. In some water-plants, the flowering and fecundation are carried on within the stem, which afterward opens to let loose the impregnated seed.* The pea or papilionaceous tribe, enclose the parts of fructifi¬ cation within a beautiful folding of the internal blossom, sometimes called, from its shape, the boat or keel; itself also protected under a penthouse formed by the external petals. This structure is very artificial; and what adds to the value of it, though it may diminish the curiosity, very general. It has also this further advantage (and it is an advantage strictly mechanical), that all the blossoms turn their backs to the wind, whenever the gale blows strong enough to endanger the delicate parts upon which the seed depends. I have observed this a hundred times in a field of peas in blossom. It is an aptitude which results from the figure of the flower, and, as we have said, is strictly mechanical; as much so, as the turning of a weather-board or tin cap upon the top of a chimney. Of the poppy , and of many similar species of flowers, the head, while it is growing, hangs down, a rigid curvature in the upper part of the stem giving to it that position: and in that position it is impenetrable by rain or moisture. When the head lias acquired its size, and is ready to open, the stalk erects itself, for the purpose, as it should seem, of presenting the flower, and with the flower, the instru¬ ments of fructification, to the genial influence of the sun’s rays. This always struck me as a curious property; and specifically, as well as originally, provided for in the constitution of the plant: for, if the stem be only bent by the weight of the head, how comes it to straighten itself when the head is the heaviest ? These instances show the attention of nature to this principal object, the safety and maturition of the parts upon which the seed depends. In trees , especially in those which are natives of colder climates, this point is taken up earlier. Many of these trees (observe in particular the ash and the horse-chesnut) produce the embryos of the leaves and flowers in one year, and bring them to perfection the following. There is a winter therefore to be gotten over. Now what we are to remark is, how nature has prepared for the trials and severities of that season. These tender embryos are, in the first place, wrapped up with a compactness, which no art can imitate; in which state they compose what we call the bud. This is not all. The bud itself is enclosed in scales; which scales are formed from the remains of past leaves, and the rudiments of future ones. Neither is this the whole. In the coldest climates, a third preservative is added, by the bud having a coat of gum or resin, which, being congealed, resists the strongest frosts. On the approach of warm weather, this gum is softened, and ceases to be a hindrance to the expansion of the leaves and flowers. All this care is part of that system of provisions which has for its object and consummation, the production and perfecting of the seeds. The seeds themselves are packed up in a capsule , a vessel composed of coats, which, com¬ pared with the rest of the flower, are strong and tough. From this vessel projects a tube, through which tube the farina, or some subtile fecundating effluvium that issues from it, is stances, formed out of the same ingredients, and almost at the same place, astonish and confound us. The order too, and the skill with which every thing is conducted, are no less surprising. No two operations clash, there is no discord, no irregularity, no disturbance; every object is gained, and everything is ready for its intended purpose: this is too wonderful to escape our observation, and of too much importance not to claim our attention. Many phi¬ losophers accordingly, distinguished equally for their indus¬ try and sagacity, have dedicated a great part of their lives to the study of vegetation; but hitherto their success has not been equal to their exertions. No person has been able to detect this agent , always so busy and performing such wonders, or to discover him at his work; nor have philosophers been more fortunate in their attempts to ascertain the instruments which he employs in his opera¬ tions.”—Chemistry, vol. iv., p. 303. The late talented Dr. Henry readily made the same acknowledgment. — “In the functions of a living plant a directing principle is concerned, peculiar to animated bodies.”—Elements of Exp. Chem., vol. ii., p. 181,— See also Davy’s Agri. Chem., p. 249. * Philos. Transact., Part ii. 1796, p. 502. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 135 admitted to the seed. And here also occurs a mechanical variety, accommodated to the different circumstances under which the same purpose is to be accomplished. In flowers which are erect, the pistil is shorter than the stamina ; and the pollen, shed from the antheraa into the cup of the flower, is caught, in its descent, by the head of the pistil, called the stigma. But how is this managed when the flowers hang down (as does the crown-imperial, for instance), and in which position the farina, in its fall, would be carried from the stigma, and not towards it ? The relative length of the parts is now inverted. The pistil in these flowers is usually longer, instead of shorter, than the stamina, that its protruding summit may receive the pollen as it drops to the ground. In some cases (as in the nigella ), where the shafts of the pistils or styles are disproportionably long, they bend down their extremities upon the antherse, that the necessary approximation may be effected*. But (to pursue this great work in its progress), the impregnation, to which all this machi¬ nery relates, being completed, the other parts of the flower fade and drop off, whilst the gravid seed-vessel , on the contrary, proceeds to increase its bulk, always to a great, and in some species (in the gourd, for example, and melon) to a surprising comparative size ; assuming in different plants an incalculable variety of forms, but all evidently conducing to the security of the seed. By virtue of this process, so necessary, but so diversified, we have the seed, at length, in stone-fruits and nuts, incased in a strong shell, the shell itself enclosed in a pulp or husk, by which the seed within is, or hath been, fed; or, more generally (as in grapes, oranges, and the numerous kinds of berries), plunged overhead in a glutinous syrup, contained within a skin or bladder: at other times (as in apples and pears) imbedded in the heart of a firm fleshy substance ; or (as in strawberries) pricked into the surface of a soft pulp. These and many more varieties exist in wliat we call fruits f. In pulse, and grain, and * The impregnation of the seed by the access of the pollen to the stigma of the seed-bearing dower is secured by many provisions not mentioned by Paley. The valves of the anther containing it burst with a force that disperses it widely around; an explosion that is facilitated by any very slight motion. Thus in the Cypress, Willow, and Birch ; when the male dowers are fully perfected, if sud¬ denly shaken by the wind or hand, a cloud of pollen is shed around that can scarcely fail to come in contact with the stigmas. Bees and other insects also convey this fecun¬ dating dust attached to their bodies, and the taste implanted in them, causing them to restrict their visits during a whole day to that species which they drst alight upon in the morning, is assistant to this important object. The tubu¬ lar dower of the Arislolochia clematitis terminates in a globe at the base, in this globe is the pistil; but the stamens being shorter than this, and the dower standing upright, the pollen would not reach it from their anthers but by means of some foreign aid. The Tipula pennicornis especially visits it in quest of honey, and in pursuit of this hunts about among the anthers until covered with pollen ; when it attempts to escape, it is prevented by a multitude of stiff hairs, that fill the tube of the dower pointing inwards—a direction that allows the easy entrance of the insect, but effectually prevents its return ; impatient of confinement its rapid movements shake off the pollen from its body on to the stigma, and effect the impregnation. The insect easily escapes when the dower begins to fade. (Willdenovv, 817.) At the period when the pollen is ripe, and at that period only, the stigmas of the Gratiola, pa»sy or heart's-ease, &c. gape open for its reception; but in almost all a glutinous moisture exudes to which the pollen attaches and is absorbed. The style of the Glori- osa superba bends almost at a right angle towards the stamens to receive the pollen ; and in the genus Saxifraga, the stamens bend down one or two at a time ; and, after discharging their pollen over the stigma, return to their former position.—(Withering’s Botany, i. 289.) In the j Berberry, its six stamens, while undisturbed, recline upon the petals of the dower; but if any body by accident or design, the foot of an insect or the touch of a bristle, tickles the lower part of their filaments, they jerk forward and bend until their anthers strike against the top of the pistil, discharging their pollen, if ripe, and again retiring. (Phil. Transactions for 1788.—Smith’s Introduction—and Keith’s System of Physiolog. Botany.) T From the conformation of fruits alone, one might be led, even without experience, to suppose, that part of this provision was destined for the utilities of animals. As limited to the plant, the provision itself seems to go beyond its object. The fiesh of an apple, the pulp of an orange, the meat of a plum, the fatness of the olive, appear to be more than sufficient for the nourishing of the seed or ker¬ nel. The event shows, that this redundancy, if it be one, ministers to the support and gratification of animal natures; and when we observe a provision to be more than sufficient for one purpose, yet wanted for another purpose, it is not unfair to conclude that both purposes were contemplated together. It favours this view of the subject to remark, that fruits are not (which they might have been) ready all together, but that they ripen in succession throughout a great part of the year ; some in summer; some in autumn ; that some require the slow maturation of the winter, and supply the spring; also that the coldest fruits grow in the hottest places. Cucumbers, pine-apples, melons, are the natural produce of warm climates, and contribute greatly, by their coolness, to the refreshment of the inhabitants of those countries. I will add to this note the following observation com¬ municated to me by Mr. Brinkley. “ The eatable part of the cherry or peach first serves the purposes of perfecting the seed or kernel, by means of vessels passing through the stone, and which are very visible in a peach-stone. After the kernel is perfected, the stone becomes hard, and the vessels cease their functions. But the substance surrounding the stone is not then thrown away as useless. That which was before only an instiu- ment for perfecting the kernel, now receives and retains to itself the whole of the sun’s influence, and thereby becomes a grateful food to man. Also what an evident mark of design is the stone protecting the kernel! The intervention of the stone prevents the second use from interfering with the first.”—(Note by Paley.) 1 36 NATURAL THEOLOGY. grasses; in trees, and shrubs, and flowers; the variety of the seed-vessels is incomputable. We have the seeds (as in the pea-tribe) regularly disposed in parchment pods, which, though soft and membranous, completely exclude the wet even in the heaviest rains; the pod also, not seldom (as in the bean), lined with a fine down; at other times (as in the senna) dis¬ tended like a blown bladder : or we have the seed enveloped in wool (as in the cotton-plant,) lodged (as in pines) between the hard and compact scales of a cone, or barricadoed (as in the artichoke and thistle) with spikes and prickles ; in mushrooms, placed under a pent-liouse ; in ferns, within slits in the back part of the leaf: or (which is the most general organization of all) we find them covered by strong, close tunicles, and attached to the stem according to an order appropriated to each plant, as is seen in the several kinds of grain and of grasses. In which enumeration, what we have first to notice is, unity of purpose under variety of expedients. Nothing can be more single than the design; more diversified than the means. Pellicles, shells, pulps, pods, husks, skin, scales armed with thorns, are all employed in prosecuting the same intention. Secondly; we may observe, that in all these cases, the purpose is fulfilled within a just and limited degree. We can perceive, that if the seeds of plants were more strongly guarded than they are, their greater security would interfere with other uses. Many species of animals would suffer, and many perish, if they could not obtain access to them. The plant would overrun the soil; or the seed be wasted for want of room to sow itself. It is, sometimes, as necessary to destroy particular species of plants, as it is, at other times, to encourage their growth. Here, as in many cases, a balance is to be main¬ tained between opposite uses. The provisions for the preservation of seeds appear to be directed, chiefly against the inconstancy of the elements, or the sweeping destruction of inclement seasons. The depredation of animals, and the injuries of accidental violence, are allowed for in the abundance of the increase. The result is, that out of the many thousand different plants which cover the earth, not a single species, perhaps, has been lost since the creation*. When nature has perfected her seeds, her next care is to disperse them. The seed cannot answer its purpose, while it remains confined in the capsule. After the seeds therefore are ripened, the pericarpium opens to let them out; and the opening is not like an accidental bursting, but, for the most part, is according to a certain rule in each plant. What I have always thought very extraordinary, nuts and shells, which we can hardly crack with our teeth, divide and make way for the little tender sprout which proceeds from the kernel. Handling the nut, I could hardly conceive how the plantule was ever to get out of it. There are cases, it is said, in which the seed-vessel by an elastic jerk, at the moment of its explo¬ sion, casts the seeds to a distance. We all however know, that many seeds (those of most composite flowers, as of the thistle, dandelion, &c.) are endowed with what are not impro¬ perly called wings ; that is, downy appendages, by which they are enabled to float in the air, and are carried oftentimes by the wind to great distances from the plant which produces them. It is the swelling also of this downy tuft within the seed-vessel, that seems to over¬ come the resistance of its coats, and to open a passage for the seed to escape t. * It is worthy of remark that in general the less useful plants are productive of but few seeds; but those which are more serviceable to man and the rest of the animal creation, invariably bear an abundance. This is obviously the case in wheat and all the other grasses; a single cap¬ sule of the tobacco will yield 1000 seeds; of the white poppy, 8000; a single stalk of the maize (Zea Mays), 2000; of the elecampane, 3000. — (Grew.—Linnaeus.— Raivius.) f Contrivances for the dispersion of seed are quite as apparent as for their production. Some are thrown from the seed-vessel with an elastic jerk ; the cracking in a field of ripe oats, and in a hedge of furze when its pods are ripe, arises from this foi’cible dispersion of the seed. But the seed-vessel of the Impatiens is one of the most remarkable examples of this. If touched when ripe it bursts open, the sides, or valves, spring from the stem, and sprinkle the seed forcibly around. Some seeds, as those of the burdock, and cliver-grass, are furnished with hooks, which clinging to the coat6 of animals, are transported by these to otherwise unreachable situations. The stones of cherries, haws, sloes, &c. are voided uninjured by the birds that swallow the containing fruit for its flesh. The light seeds of the mosses and funguses are dispersed by the winds; and other heavier seeds are furnished with an appara¬ tus particularly adapted to be acted upon by the same agitation of the air. Thus the seeds of the fir and the tulip tree have a wing attached, that enables them to float to a distance from the parent stem ; whilst those of the dandelion are furnished with a downy parachute that bears them, like fairy vehicles, to widely distant places for vege¬ tation. All seeds being specifically lighter than water, if they fall into some neighbouring stream, or are borne away upon the ocean, are thence conveyed frequently to lands far distant from their native soil. Thus the southern shores of the Baltic receive seeds matured in the interior of Germany; and the cocoa, cashew, and other nuts, traverse the Atlantic, and visit Norway from the New World. (Mirbel on the Dissemination of Plants.—Keith’s Botany.) NATURAL THEOLOGY. 137 But the constitution of seeds is still more admirable than either their preservation or their dispersion. In the body of the seed of every species of plant, or nearly of every one, pro¬ vision is made for two grand purposes: first, for the safety of the germ ; secondly, for the temporary support of the future plant. The sprout, as folded up in the seed, is delicate and brittle beyond any other substance. It cannot be touched without being broken. Yet, in beans, peas, grass-seeds, grain, fruits, it is so fenced on all sides, so shut up and protected, that, whilst the seed itself is rudely handled, tossed into sacks, shovelled into heaps, the sacred particle, the miniature plant, remains unhurt. It is wonderful also, how long many kinds of seeds, by the help of their integuments, and perhaps of their oils, stand out against decay. A grain of mustard-seed has been known to lie in the earth for a hundred years; and, as soon as it had acquired a favourable situation, to shoot as vigorously as if just gathered from the plant. Then, as to the second point, the temporary support of the future plant, the matter stands thus. In grain, and pulse, and kernels, and pippins, the germ composes a very small part of the seed. The rest consists of a nutritious substance, from which the sprout draws its aliment for some considerable time after it is put forth ; viz. until the fibres, shot out from the other end of the seed, are able to imbibe juices from the earth, in a sufficient quantity for its demand. It is owing to this constitution, that we see seeds sprout, and the sprouts make a considerable progress, without any earth at all. It is an economy also, in which we remark a close analogy between the seeds of plants and the eggs of animals. The same point is provided for, in the same manner, in both. In the egg, the residence of the living principle, the cicatrix, forms a very minute part of the contents. The white and the white only is expended in the formation of the chicken. The yolk, very little altered or diminished, is wrapped up in the abdomen of the young bird, when it quits the shell; and serves for its nourishment, till it have learnt to pick its own food. This perfectly resembles the first nutrition of a plant. In the plant, as well as in the animal, the structure has every character of contrivance belonging to it: in both it breaks the transition from prepared to unprepared aliment; in both, it is prospective and compensatory. In animals which suck, this inter¬ mediate nourishment is supplied by a different source. In all subjects, the most common observations are the best, when it is their truth and strength which have made them common. There are, of this sort, two concerning plants, which it falls within our plan to notice. The first relates to, what has already been touched upon, their germination. When a grain of corn is cast into the ground, this is the change which takes place. From one end of the grain issues a green sprout; from the other, a number of white fibrous threads. How can this be explained ? Why not sprouts from both ends ? Why not fibrous threads from both ends ? To what is the difference to be referred, but to design; to the different uses which the parts are thereafter to serve; uses which discover themselves in the sequel of the process ? The sprout, or plumule, struggles into the air ; and becomes the plant, of which, from the first, it contained the rudiments : the fibres shoot into the earth ; and, thereby, both fix the plant to the ground, and collect nourishment from the soil for its support. Now, what is not a little remarkable, the parts issuing from the seed take their respective directions, into whatever position the seed itself happens to be cast. If the seed be thrown into the wrongest possible position; that is, if the ends point in the ground the reverse of what they ought to do, every thing, nevertheless goes on right. The sprout, after being pushed down a little way, makes a bend, and turns upwards; the fibres, on the contrary, after shooting at first upwards, turn down. Of this extraordinary vegetable fact, an account has lately been attempted to be given. “ The plu¬ mule (it is said) is stimulated by the air into action, and elongates itself when it is thus most excited ; the radicle is stimulated by moisture , and elongates itself when it is thus most excited. Whence one of these grows upward in quest of its adapted object, and the other downward*.” Were this account better verified by experiment than it is, it only shifts the contrivance. It does not disprove the contrivance ; it only removes it a little farther back. Who, to use our author’s own language, u adapted the objects?” Wlm gave sucli^a quality to these connate parts, as to be susceptible of dijferent , “ stimulation; as to be excited * Darwin’s Phytologia, p. 144. 138 NATURAL THEOLOGY. each only by its own element, and precisely by that which the success of the vegetation requires ? I say, “ which the success of the vegetation requires for the toil of the husband¬ man would have been in vain; his laborious and expensive preparation of the ground in vain ; if the event must, after all, depend upon the position in which the scattered seed was sown. Not one seed out of a hundred would fall in a right direction. Our second observation is upon a general property of climbing plants, which is strictly mechanical. In these plants, from each knot or joint, or, as botanists call it, axilla, of the plant, issue, close to each other, two shoots; one bearing the flower and fruit; the other drawn out into a wire, a long, tapering, spiral tendril, that twists itself round any thing which lies within its reach. Considering, that in this class two purposes are to be provided for (and together), fructification and support, the fruitage of the plant, and the sustentation of its stalk, what means could be used more effectual, or, as I have said, more mechanical, than what this structure presents to our eyes ? Why, or how, without a view to this double purpose, do two shoots, of such different and appropriate forms, spring from the same joint, from contiguous points of the same stalk ? It never happens thus in robust plants, or in trees. “ We see not (says Ray) so much as one tree, or shrub, or herb, that hath a firm and strong stem, and that is able to mount up and stand alone without assistance, furnished 'with these tendrils .” Make only so simple a comparison as that between a pea and a bean. Why does the pea put forth tendrils, the bean not; but because the stalk of the pea cannot support it¬ self, the stalk of the bean can ? We may add also, as a circumstance not to be overlooked, that in the pea tribe, these clasps do not make their appearance till they are wanted ; till the plant has grown to a height to stand in need of support.* This word “support” suggests to us a reflection upon a property of grasses, of corn, and canes. The hollow stems of these classes of plants are set, at certain intervals, with joints. These joints are not found in the trunks of trees, or in the solid stalks of plants. There may be other uses of these joints ; but the fact is, and it appears to be, at least, one purpose designed by them, that they corroborate the stem; which by its length and hollowness, would otherwise be too liable to break or bend. Grasses are Nature’s care. With these she clothes the earth ; with these she sustains its inhabitants. Cattle feed upon their leaves; birds upon their smaller seeds ; men upon the larger : for, few readers need be told that the plants, which produce our bread-corn, belong to this class. In those tribes which are more generally considered as grasses, their extraor¬ dinary means and powers of preservation and increase, their hardiness, their almost uncon¬ querable disposition to spread, their faculties of reviviscence, coincide with the intention of nature concerning them. They thrive under a treatment by which other plants are destroyed. The more their leaves are consumed, the more their roots increase. The more they are trampled upon, the thicker they grow. Many of the seemingly dry and dead leaves of grasses revive, and renew their verdure in the spring. In lofty mountains, where the sum¬ mer heats are not sufficient to ripen the seeds, grasses abound which are viviparous, and consequently able co propagate themselves without seed. It is an observation, likewise, which has often been made, that herbivorous animals attach themselves to the leaves of gras¬ ses ; and, if at liberty in their pastures to range and choose, leave untouched the straws which support the flowers, t The general properties of vegetable nature, or properties common to large portions of that kingdom, are almost all which the compass of our argument allows to bring forward. * It is worthy of remark, that a tendril never begins to clasp until it touches something round which it can en¬ twine; it is endowed with a power, and made to restrain that power until it can be serviceable. The tendril of the Virginian creeper ( Vitis quinquefolia) has a flat fleshy extremity, by which, if it cannot meet with a more easily seized support, it can attach itself to the surface of a wall. (Smith's Introduct. to Botany, 225.) Somewhat of a similar power is that possessed by some plants to twine their slender stems round any pole or branch that comes within their reach. It is surely a testi¬ mony of a particular design that these, and these only, where it happens to be requisite, should have this coiling power; the twigs of the willow, and others quite as pliant and weak, have no such capability. What is extraordi¬ nary too is, that these twining stems always make their convolutions in one direction, and no force can make them twist in the contrary direction. The Honeysuckle always twines from left to right; the Great Bind-weed (Convol¬ vulus sepium) as invariably and obstinately turns from right to left. 'f' Withering’s Botanical Arrangement, vol. i. p. 28, ed. 2d. When the farmer looks upon his pastures, and talks of NATURAL THEOLOGY. ISO It is impossible to follow plants into their several species. We may be allowed, however to single out three or four of these species as worthy of particular notice, either by some sin¬ gular mechanism, or by some peculiar provision, or by both. I. In Dr. Darwin’s Botanic Garden (1. 395, note), is the following account of the vallis- neria , as it has been observed in the river Rhone.— u They have roots at the bottom of the Rhone. The flowers of the female plant float on the surface of the water, and are furnished with an elastic spiral stalk , which extends or contracts as the water rises or falls ; this rise or fall, from the torrents which flow into the river, often amounting to many feet in a few hours. The flowers of the male plant are produced under water; and, as soon as the fecun¬ dating farina is mature, they separate themselves from the plant, rise to the surface, and are wafted by the air, or borne by the currents, to the female flowers.” Our attention in this narrative will be directed to two particulars : first, to the mechanism, the 44 elastic, spiral stalk,” which lengthens or contracts itself according as the water rises or falls; secondly, to the provision which is made for bringing the male flower, which is produced under water, to the female flower which floats upon the surface. II. My second example I take from Withering’s Arrangement, vol. ii. p. 209, ed. 3. “ The Cuscuta europcea is a parasitical plant. The seed opens, and puts forth a little spiral body , which does not seek the earth, to take root; but climbs in a spiral direction, from right to left, up other plants, from which, by means of vessels, it draws its nourishment.” The “ little spiral body,” proceeding from the seed, is to be compared with the fibres which seeds send out in ordinary cases ; and the comparison ought to regard both the form of the threads and the direction. They are straight; this is spiral. They shoot downwards; this points upwards. In the rule, and in the exception, we equally perceive design. III. A better known parasitical plant is the ever-green shrub, called the misseltoe. What we have to remark in it, is a singular instance of compensation . No art hath yet made these plants take root in the earth. Here therefore might seem to be a mortal defect in their constitution. Let us examine how this defect is made up to them. The seeds are endued with an adhesive quality so tenacious, that, if they be rubbed upon the smooth bark of almost any tree, they will stick to it. And then what follows ? Roots springing from these seeds, insinuate their fibres into the woody substance of the tree ; and the event is, that a misseltoe plant is produced the next winter.* Of no other plant do the roots refuse to shoot in the ground ; of no other plant do the seeds possess this adhesive, generative quality, when apjflied to the bark of trees. IY. Another instance of the compensatory system is in the autumnal crocus, or meadow saffron (Colchicum autumnale). I have pitied this poor plant a thousand times. Its blos¬ som rises out of the ground in the most forlorn condition possible ; without a sheath, a fence, a calyx, or even a leaf to protect it: and that, not in the spring, not to be visited by sum¬ mer suns, but under all the disadvantages of the declining year. When we come, however, to look more closely into the structure of this plant, we find that, instead of its being ne¬ glected, Nature has gone out of her course to provide for its security, and to make up to it for all its defects. The seed-vessel, which in other plants is situated within the cup of the flower, or just beneath it, in this plant lies buried ten or twelve inches under ground within the bulbous root. The tube of the flower, which is seldom more than a few tenths of an inch long, in this plant extends down to the root. The styles in all cases reach the seed- vessel ; but it is in this, by an elongation unknown to any other plant. All these singula¬ rities contribute to one end. 44 As this plant blossoms late in the year, and probably would not have time to ripen its seeds before the access of winter, which would destroy them ; Providence has contrived its structure such, that this important office may be performed at a depth in the earth out of reach of the usual effects of frost.”+ That is to say, in the autumn nothing is done above ground but the business of impregnation; which is an affair his “Grass,” he has but one idea in his brain; and by a (Sinclair’s Hortus Gramineus Woburnensis, 115.) It is, rare chance indeed reflects, or indeed is aware that the surely, a provision of Wisdom that the most useful tribe grasses are the most numerous natural order of plants in of plants should be the most numerous ; abundantly pio- the creation. In Great Britain there are 150 distinct ductive of seed ; and most tenacious of life, indigenous species and varieties; whilst the number of * Withering, vol. i. p. 203, ed. 2d. all those known to botanists amounts to about 1500. *(* Withering, vol. i. p. 360. 140 NATURAL THEOLOGY. between the antlierae and the stigmata, and is probably soon over. The maturation of the impregnated seed, which in other plants proceeds within a capsule, exposed together with the rest of the flower to the open air, is here carried on, and during the whole winter, within the heart, as we may say, of the earth, that is, 44 out of the reach of the usual effects of frost.” But then a new difficulty presents itself. Seeds, though perfected, are known not to vege¬ tate at this depth in the earth. Our seeds, therefore, though so safely lodged, would, after all, be lost to the purpose for which all seeds are intended. Lest this should be the case, 44 a second admirable provision is made to raise them above the surface when they are perfected, and to sow them at a proper distance viz. the germ grows up in the spring , upon a fruit- stalk, accompanied with leaves. The seeds now, in common with those of other plants, have the benefit of the summer, and are sown upon the surface. The order of vegetation exter¬ nally is this :— the plant produces its flowers in September; its leaves and fruits in the spring following.* V. I give the account of the Dioncea muscipula , an extraordinary American plant, as some late authors have related it: but whether we be yet enough acquainted with the plant, to bring every part of this account to the test of repeated and familiar observation, I am unable to say. 44 Its leaves are jointed, and furnished with two rows of strong prickles ; their sur¬ faces covered with a number of minute glands, which secrete a sweet liquor that allures the approach of flies. When these parts are touched by the legs of flies, the two lobes of the leaf instantly spring up, the rows of prickles lock themselves fast together, and squeeze the unwary animal to death/’ I Here, under a new model, we recognise the ancient plan of nature, viz. the relation of parts and provisions to one another, to a common office, and to the utility of the organized body to which they belong. The attracting syrup, the rows of strong prickles, their position so as to interlock the joints of the leaves; and what is more than the rest, that singular irritability of their surfaces, by which they close at a touch ; all bear a contributory part in producing an effect, connected either with the defence or with the nutrition of the plant. + * This plant, since Paley wrote, has been extensively employed in the preparation of the Vinum Colchicum, and is the basis of several medicines for the cure of the gout, and other disorders. f Smellie’s Phil, of Nat. Hist- vol. i. p* 5. I Paley speaks doubtingly of the phenomena exhibited by the Dionoea muscipula, but they have since been con¬ firmed and witnessed by numerousbotanists and cultivators. A still more extraordinary instance of motion in plants is that exhibited by the Hedysarum yyrans , a native of the banks of the Ganges. Its leaves are ternate, composed of one large leaflet in the middle, and two smaller at its sides. These are in constant motion ; sometimes equably, some¬ times spasmodically ; but without any unity in the move¬ ments. If the motion is suspended by grasping the leaves with the hand, it is renewed with more rapidity when the restraint is removed, subsiding gradually to its regular pace. It does not depend upon the stimulus of light or beat, because the movements continue during the hours of night, as well as throughout the day. (Keith’s Physiolog. Botany.) The vegetable substances, by their number, their va¬ riety of appearance, chemical properties, taste, and smell, would imply, to a non-chemical reader, a great diversity of composition. Such persons would never suspect that three substances, almost exclusive of others, enter into the com¬ position of them all, and these three are carbon (charcoal), hydrogen, and oxygen. Thus, oxalic acid—citric acid— acetic acid (vinegar)—sugar—gum—starch—turpentine— attar of roses—assafoetida—oil of lavender—juice of garlic, and a hundred other vegetable substances, are composed solely of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. We wall give, for Hyd. the purpose of illustrating this assertion, a fev analyses. Ox- Car. Oxalic Acid is composed of 64 32 Citric Acid. 55 41 Acetic Acid (vinegar) . 47 47 Sugar. 511 4U Starch 494 431 Alcohol (spirit of wine) 34^ 52“ Olive Oil. 10 76 Gum 51 42 Bees’ Wax. 51 82 Wood of Oak . • . . 401 52 4 4 6 7 7 1 3§ 14 7 121 5f Berzelius, Annals of Philosophy, vol. 5. Gay Lussac Recherch. Phy. Chem. ii. 316. Dr. Thomson’s Che¬ mistry, iv. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 141 CHAPTER XXI. THE ELEMENTS, When we come to the elements, we take leave of our mechanics; because we come to things, of the organization of which, if they be organized, we are confessedly ignorant. This ignorance is implied by their name. To say the truth, our investigations are stopped long- before we arrive at this point. But then it is for our own comfort to find, that a knowledge of the constitution of the elements is not necessary for us. For instance, as Addison has well observed, “ we know water sufficiently, when we know how to boil, how to freeze, how to evaporate, how to make it fresh, how to make it run or spout out in what quantity and direc¬ tion we please, without knowing what water is.” The observation of this excellent writer has more propriety in it now, than it had at the time it was made : for the constitution, and the constituent parts, of water, appear in some measure to have been lately discovered; yet it does not, I think, appear, that we can make any better or greater use of water since the discovery, than we did before it.* * No fact more decidedly evinces the power of God, and his contrivance for the preservation of the world, than that of the utter indestructibility of elementary matter; for by no contrivance, can be lessened the number of atoms first created in the earth. The chemist can devise no pro¬ cess by which such an attempt would be successful. Fire merely alters the arrangement of matter, it does not de¬ stroy a particle. The gas produced by the combustion of a piece of charcoal, or wood, or coal, is absorbed by the leaves of vegetables, and enters into the composition of wood, is arranged so as to form, once more, fuel or fresh food ; and however long this experiment may be carried on, the result is always uniform; not a particle is lost; it is merely altered in appearance,—now solid ; then in gas ; again digested, by vegetables; again solidified in ve¬ getable matters. However we vary the investigation, the result is in¬ variably the same, whether w T e witness the slow decompo¬ sition of a lifeless tree, exposed to the weathei’, or behold its more rapid destruction in our fires, it tends only to the same great result; it is merely a change, the transmi¬ gration of particles of matter. This fact cannot be too often repeated, or be too deeply impressed upon the student’s attention; by no scheme, or contrivance, can we annihilate created matter; we may alter the form in which it appears, but we never can destroy a single atom. We have, in a former chapter, alluded to various curious laws which regulate the atmospheric air, the first of the four great masses, of which the ancient philosophers erroneously considei’ed the world to be composed, and from whence 'Paley has derived his idea of this chapter on “the ele¬ ments.’’ We have only briefly to remark, in this place, upon one or two of the modern discoveries, in the examination of the other three, viz. Water, Fire, and Earth. First, with regard to Water; there are certain devia¬ tions made, in its instance, from the laws which regulate all other fluids, distinctly marking a contriving power. Thus all other fluids contract, or become more dense, as their temperature is diminished—there is no limit known to their contraction; water is the solitary exception. This universal fluid is found only to conti’act to a certain point, 40° of Fahrenheit’s thermometer; but after that point the loss of heat causes it to expand. The effect is admirable, for in consequence, ice, as it is formed, floats on the surface of the water; for ice is not formed until the temperature of the water is 32o of Fahrenheit; or, eight degrees below 40. Swimming on the surface, it is melted as soon as warmer seasons, or winds of a higher temperature arise. Had water been governed by the same law which regulates other fluids, the ice would have sunk to the bottom, as it was formed, and there remained unmelted ; since, into great depths of wa- ter, the sun’s rays never penetrate. Our lakes, and the bottom of the sea, in consequence, would have been eter¬ nally frozen—mere quarries of ice. If we exclude the contrivance of the Architect, we can assign no rational reason for this extraordinary, however necessary, deviation, in the case of water, from the general laws which govern all other fluids. The very existence of heat , the caloric of the chemists, is another proof of the divine origin of the earth w T e inhabit ; for, without its presence, all fluids would have been solid, as quicksilver always is in the arctic regions ; and animal and vegetable life could not have been sustained. If sufficient warmth, or latent heat, had been created in bodies, there could be no reason for the existence of fire, or combustion, except the goodness of the contriving Author : yet, without its agency, a great portion of the earth would be uninhabitable; and man must have lived, like the beasts of the field, upon undressed food. The presence of heat, in all inorganic bodies, was unne¬ cessary, as regards their creation ; they might have well existed entirely without it; but then the globe must have been untenanted; the earth an impenetrable rock; the ocean a solid crystal. The chemical examination of the earth is full of won¬ ders. The mixture of different soils, for instance, so essential to the production of vegetation, and so universal on the surface of the earth, again betrays the work of a con¬ triving Mind. Three earths—lime, clay (alumina), and flint (silica), constitute the great mass of the earth we inhabit; are present in all soils : two of them exist, as necessary ingredients, in all vegetables. These earths, had chance formed them, or accident thrown them together, would of necessity have been found, on the earth’s surface, in great and distinct masses. Mountains of pure alumina would, at least occasionally, have been discovered by the side, or piled upon masses of pure silex. The strata would have 142 NATURAL THEOLOGY. We can never think of the elements, without reflecting upon the number of distinct uses which are consolidated in the same substance. The air supplies the lungs, supports fire, con¬ veys sound, reflects light, diffuses smells, gives rain, wafts ships, bears up birds. ’E£ vdaros ra 7 tcivtcl : icater , besides maintaining its own inhabitants, is the universal nourisher of plants, and through them of terrestrial animals ; is the basis of their juices and fluids ; dilutes their food ; quenches their thirst; floats their burdens. Fire warms, dissolves, enlightens : is the great promoter of vegetation and life, if not necessary to the support of both. We might enlarge, to almost any length we please, upon each of these uses: but it ap¬ pears tome almost sufficient to state them. The few remarks, which I judge it necessary to add, are as follow: I. Air is essentially different from earth. There appears to be no necessity for an atmo¬ sphere’s investing our globe (the moon has none); yet it does invest it: and we see how many, how various, and how important, are the purposes which it answers to every order of animated, not to say of organized, beings, which are placed upon the terrestrial surface. I think that every one of these uses will be understood upon the first mention of them, except it be that of reflecting light, which may be explained thus : If I had the power of seeing only by means of rays coming directly from the sun, whenever I turned my back upon the luminary, I should find myself in darkness. If I had the power of seeing by reflected light, yet by means only of light reflected from solid masses, these masses would shine indeed, and glisten, but it would be in the dark. The hemisphere, the sky, the world, could only be illuminated , as it is illu¬ minated, by the light of the sun being from all sides, and in every direction, reflected to the eye, by particles, as numerous, as thickly scattered, and as widely diffused, as are those of the air. Another general quality of the atmosphere is the power of evaporating fluids. The adjustment of this quality to our use is seen in its action upon the sea. In the sea, water and salt are mixed together most intimately ; yet the atmosphere raises the water, and leaves the salt. Pure and fresh as drops of rain descend, they are collected from brine. If evapo¬ ration be solution (which seems to be probable), then the air dissolves the water, and not the salt. Upon whatever it be founded, the distinction is critical; so much so, that when we attempt to imitate the process by art, we must regulate our distillation with great care and nicety, or, together with the water, we get the bitterness, or, at least, the distastefulness, of the marine substance : and, after all, it is owing to this original elective power in the air, that we can effect the separation which we wish, by any art or means whatever. By evaporation, water is carried up into the air; by the converse of evaporation, it falls down upon the earth. And how does it fall ? Not by the clouds being all at once recon¬ verted into water, and descending like a sheet; not in rushing down in columns from a spout; but in moderate drops, as from a colander. Our watering-pots are made to imitate showers of rain. Yet, a priori, I should have thought either of the two former methods more likely to have taken place than the last. By respiration, flame, putrefaction, air is rendered unfit for the support of animal life. By the constant operation of these corrupting principles, the whole atmosphere, if there were no restoring causes, would come at length to be deprived of its necessary degree of purity. Some of these causes seem to have been discovered, and their efficacy ascertained by experi- been occasionally distinct; the divisions separate, and de¬ fined :—but this is never the case on our globe. The earths are invariably found mixed together; or, if a speci¬ men of a pure earth is discovered, its rarity speedily entitles it to a place in the museum of the mineralogist. The ingenuity of the geologist provides for this diffi¬ culty, by imagining that this earth of ours was once in a semi-fluid state ; either a great bubble of mud, or melted by heat. The professors, however, of this science, readily allow that either theory is incapable of explaining all the phenomena of the earth. The existence of the great fossil beds of rock salt, for instance, will satisfy every reader of this insufficiency of the geologists’ theories. Water would have melted, and intense heat readily evaporated or sub¬ limed, these saline masses. Yet, amid all this seeming chance, these endless me¬ chanical mixtures of the earths in all soils, the chemists’ investigations clearly inform us that, without this mixture, no plants could have existed. No vegetable, for instance, will grow in either pure lime, pure alumina, or pure flint; nay, if either earth constitutes only nineteen parts out of twenty, of any soil, such land is absolutely barren. The mixture, therefore, must have been made from the crea¬ tion ; otherwise no vegetable substance could have been produced. The credulity of the atheist, however, allows him to believe in the accumulation together of all these strange and very extraordinary number of improbabilities, by far too closely approximating to miracles, in their nature, to render them readily distinguishable. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 143 ment. And so far as tlie discovery has proceeded, it opens to us a beautiful and a wonderful economy. Vegetation proves to be one of them. A sprig of mint, corked up with a small portion of foul air, placed in the light, renders it again capable of supporting life or flame. Here, therefore, is a constant circulation of benefits maintained between the two great pro¬ vinces of organized nature. The plant purifies what the animal had poisoned ; in return, the contaminated air is more than ordinarily nutritious to the plant. Agitation with water turns out to be another of these restoratives. The foulest air, shaken in a bottle with water for a sufficient length of time, recovers a great degree of its purity. Here then again, allowing for the scale upon which nature works, we see the salutary effects of storms and tempests. The yeasty waves which confound the heaven and the sea, are doing the very thing which was done in the bottle. Nothing can be of greater importance to the living creation, than the salubrity of their atmosphere. It ought to reconcile us therefore to these agitations of the elements, of which we sometimes deplore the consequences, to know, that they tend power¬ fully to restore to the air that purity, which so many causes are constantly impairing.* II. In Water, what ought not a little to be admired, are those negative qualities which constitute its purity. Had it been vinous, or oleaginous, or acid; had the sea been filled, or the rivers flowed, with wine or milk ; fish, constituted as they are, must have died : plants, constituted as they are, would have withered: the lives of animals which feed upon plants, must have perished. Its very insipidity , which is one of those negative qualities, renders it the best of all menstrua. Having no taste of its own, it becomes the sincere vehicle of every other. Had there been a taste in water, be it what it might, it would have infected every thing we ate or drank, with an importunate repetition of the same flavour. Another thing in this element, not less to be admired, is the constant round which it travels; and by which, without suffering either adulteration or waste, it is continually offer¬ ing itself to the wants of the habitable globe. From the sea are exhaled those vapours which form the clouds: these clouds descend in showers, which penetrating into the crevices of the hills, supply springs; which springs flow in little streams into the valleys; and there unit¬ ing, become rivers ; which rivers, in return, feed the ocean. So there is an incessant circu¬ lation of the same fluid: and not one drop probably more or less now than there was at the creation. A particle of water takes its departure from the surface of the sea, in order to fulfil certain important offices to the earth; and having executed the service which was assigned to it, returns to the bosom which it left. * These remarks clearly indicate, that Paley was well acquainted with the discoveries, in vegetable chemistry, of his contemporary, the celebrated Priestley ; whom he only survived a few months, and whose writings he more than once quotes in the progress of this work. “ The characteristics of Priestley,” said Sir Humphry Davy, “ were ardent zeal and the most unwearied industry : he possessed, in the highest degree, ingenuousness and the love of truth. Chemistry owes to him some of her most important instruments of research, and many of her most useful combinations; and no single person ever discovered so many new and curious substances.” To Priestley belongs the discovery of vital air, or oxygen gas; which he, for he lived in the days of phlogiston, de¬ nominated dephlogisticated gas. He discovered that plants growing in the light, purify the atmosphere ; he showed the error of the common con¬ clusion, that plants are unwholesome when kept in a sitting room, for they add to its vital air ; but that they should not be admitted into bed rooms, for in the dark they absorb vital air, and emit fixed air, which animals cannot breathe. Dr. Franklin, “ the Playmate of the Lightning,” when he heard of these discoveries, thus expressed himself, in one of his excellent letters : “ That the vegetable creation should restore the air which is spoiled by the animal part of it, looks like a rational system, and seems to be of a piece with the rest.” “ Thus fire purifies W’ater all the world over; it puri¬ fies it by distillation, when it arises in vapours, and lets it fall in rain ; and further still by filtration; and when keeping it fluid, it suffers that rain to percolate the earth.” “I hope,” he adds, “this will give some check to the rage for destroying trees that grow near houses, which has accompanied our late improvements in gardening, from an opinion of their being unwholesome.” For Priestley’s discoveries in vegetable chemistry, the Royal Society awarded him the Copley Medal; on the presentation of which the President, Sir John Copley, thus eloquently expressed himself:—“From these disco¬ veries we are assured that no vegetable grows in vain; but from the oak of the forest to the meanest grass of the field, every individual plant is serviceable to mankind ; if not alw’ays distinguished by some private virtue, yet making a part of the whole which cleanses and purifies our atmo¬ sphere. In this the fragrant rose and the deadly night¬ shade co-operate ; nor are the herbage and the woods, in the most unpeopled regions, unprofitable to us, nor we to them, considering how constantly the winds convey to them our vitiated air, for our relief and their nourishment. And if ever these salutary gales rise to storms and hurri¬ canes, let us still trace and revere the ways of a beneficent Being, who not fortuitously, but with design ; not in wrath, but in mercy, thus shakes the water and the air together, to bury in the deep those putrid and pestilential effluvia, which the vegetables on the face of the earth had been insufficient to consume.” Life of Priestley. Davy’s Elements of Chem. Phil., p. 38. Life of Pringle, by Dr. Kippis. Franklin’s Letters on Electricity, &c. 144 NATURAL THEOLOGY. Some have thought, that we have too much water upon the globe, the sea occupying above three quarters of its whole surface. But the expanse of ocean, immense as it is, may be no more than sufficient to fertilize the earth. Or independently of this reason, I know not why the sea may not have as good a right to its place as the land. It may proportionably sup¬ port as many inhabitants ; minister to as large an aggregate of enjoyment. The land only affords a habitable surface; the sea is habitable to a great depth. III. Of Fire, we have said that it dissolves. The only idea probably which this term raised in the reader’s mind, was that of fire melting metals, resins, and some other substances, fluxing ores, running glass, and assisting us in many of our operations, chymical or culinary. Now these are only uses of an occasional kind, and give us a very imperfect notion of what fire does for us. The grand importance of this dissolving power, the great office indeed of fire in the economy of nature, is keeping things in a state of solution, that is to say, in a state of fluidity. Were it not for the presence of heat, or of a certain degree of it, all fluids would be frozen. The ocean itself would be a quarry of ice; universal nature stiff and dead. We see, therefore, that the elements bear not only a strict relation to the constitution of organized bodies, but a relation to each other. Water could not perform its office to the earth without air; nor exist, as water, without fire. IV. Of Light (whether we regard it as of the same substance with fire, or as a different substance), it is altogether superfluous to expatiate upon the use. No man disputes it. The observations, therefore, which I shall offer, respect that little which we seem to know of its constitution. Light travels from the sun at the rate of twelve millions of miles in a minute. Urged by such a velocity, with wdiat force must its particles drive against (I will not say the eye, the tenderest of animal substances, but) every substance, animate or inanimate, which stands in its way ! It might seem to be a force sufficient to shatter to atoms the hardest bodies. ITow then is this effect, the consequence of such prodigious velocity, guarded against ? By a proportionable minuteness of the particles of which light is composed. It is impossible for the human mind to imagine to itself any thing so small as a particle of light. But this extreme exility, though difficult to conceive, it is easy to prove. A drop of tallow, expended in the wick of a farthing candle, shall send forth rays sufficient to fill a hemisphere of a mile diameter; and to fill it so full of these rays, that an aperture not larger than the pupil of an eye, wherever it be placed within the hemisphere, shall be sure to receive some of them. What floods of light are continually poured from the sun, we cannot estimate; but the im¬ mensity of the sphere which is filled with its particles, even if it reached no farther than the orbit of the earth, we can in some sort compute; and w T e have reason to believe that, throughout this whole region, the particles of light lie, in latitude at least, near to one an¬ other. The spissitude of the sun’s rays at the earth is such, that the number which falls upon a burning-glass of an inch diameter is sufficient, when concentrated, to set wood on fire. The tenuity and the velocity of particles of light, as ascertained by separate observations, may be said to be proportioned to each other: both surpassing our utmost stretch of com¬ prehension ; but proportioned. And it is this proportion alone which converts a tremendous element into a welcome visitor. It has been observed to me by a learned friend, as having often struck his mind, that, if light had been made by a common artist, it would have been of one uniform colour: whereas, by its present composition, we have that variety of colours, which is of such infinite use to us for the distinguishing of objects; which adds so much to the beauty of the earth, and augments the stock of our innocent pleasures. With which may be joined another reflection, viz. that, considering light as compounded of rays of seven different colours (of which there can be no doubt, because it can be resolved into these rays by simply passing it through a prism), the constituent parts must be well mixed and blended together, to produce a fluid so clear and colourless, as a beam of light is, when received from the sun*. * A thought is always suggested in the mind of the a chaotic world ours would be without its vivifying pre¬ editor, when dwelling upon the phenomena of light, what sence. Its importance is not confined to the most obvious NATURAL THEOLOGY. 145 CHAPTER XXII. ASTRONOMY # . My opinion of Astronomy lias always been, that it is not the best medium through which to prove the agency of an intelligent Creator; hut that, this being proved, it shews, beyond all other sciences, the magnificence of his operations. The mind, which is once convinced, it raises to sublimcr views of the Deity than any other subject affords; but it is not so well adapted, as some other subjects are, to the purpose of argument. We are destitute of the means of examining the constitution of the heavenly bodies. The very simplicity of their appearance is against them. We see nothing, but bright points, luminous circles, or the phases of spheres reflecting the light which falls upon them. Now we deduce design from relation, aptitude, and correspondence of parts. Some degree therefore of complexity is ne¬ cessary to render a subject fit for this species of argument. But the heavenly bodies do not, except perhaps in the instance of Saturn’s ring, present themselves to our observation as compounded of parts at all. This, which may be a perfection in them, is a disadvantage to us, as inquirers after their nature. They do not come within our mechanics. And what we say of their forms is true of their motions. Their motions are carried on without any sensible intermediate apparatus; whereby we are cut off from one principal ground of argumentation, analogy. We have nothing wherewith to compare them ; no in¬ vention, no discovery, no operation or resource of art, which, in this respect, resembles them. Even those tilings which are made to imitate and represent them, such as orreries, planeta¬ ria, celestial globes, &c. bear no affinity to them, in the cause and principle by which their motions are actuated. I can assign for this difference a reason of utility, viz. a reason why, though the action of terrestrial bodies upon each other be, in almost all cases, through the intervention of solid or fluid substances, yet central attraction does not operate in this man¬ ner. It was necessary that the intervals between the planetary orbs should be devoid of any inert matter, either fluid or solid, because such an intervening substance would, by its resistance, destroy those very motions which attraction is employed to preserve. This may be a final cause of the difference; but still the difference destroys the analogy. of its properties, the assistance of vision. Without light, many chemical changes would never take place at all ; “ the blythe blink” of our firesides would be unknown ; all vegetation, except the dark moss and the lurid fungus, would expire ; and man would be as ignorant, as degraded as, and less powerful than, the brutes around him. There is no doubt but that light acts upon all living creatures as a gentle but enduring stimulus. Where is the saturnine wretch, that does not feel more joyous in the blessed sun¬ shine than he does when enveloped by the clouds and fogs of winter ? Who does not feel more active in body, more vigorous in mind, amid the brightness of summer than in the darker seasons of the year ? A dismal climate and Boeotian dulness, a dark November and English melan¬ choly, are associated in our language,.—whilst the dance, the song, poetry, and love, rise to the imagination with the name of an eastern sky. Mr. Stuart, the celebrated pedestrian tourist, has recorded that he was never so healthful, or in such spirits, as when in a high northern latitude, at that season when the sun sinks not below the horizon for successive months. Yet the importance, the necessity, the blessedness of light—its adaptation to the physical welfare of the whole creation—is seldom reflected upon, notwithstanding this seems held up to our attention by the sublime command that preceded the creation of any organized being—“ Let there be light; and there was light, and God saw that it was good." * For the articles of this chapter marked with an aste¬ risk, I am indebted to some obliging communications re¬ ceived (through the hands of the lord bishop of Elphin) from the Rev. J. Brinkley, M.A., Andrew’s professor of astronomy in the university of Dublin. John Brinkley, the friend and assistant of Paley in this great work, one of the most distinguished astronomers of his day, was a native of Woodbridge, in Suffolk, at the grammar school of which town, and at Cains College, Cambridge, he was educated. This excellent prelate owed his good fortune in life entirely to his own merit. He was senior wrangler in 1788; and in 1792, by the recommendation of Dr. Law, bishop of Elphin, was ap¬ pointed Andrew’s professor of astronomy in the university of Dublin. He made an admirable use of the facilities afforded him by his office—discovered the parallax of the fixed stars, and otherwise made himself known advan¬ tageously as an excellent mathematician : his “ Introduc¬ tion to Astronomy ” is certainly the best extant. He was consecrated bishop of Cloyne in 1826, and died in 1835, regretted by all men of science, and with the cha¬ racter of having, on every possible occasion, endeavoured to further the interests of science, virtue, and religion.— Ann. Reg. 1835, p. 235. Gentleman’s Magazine, 1835, p. 547. L NATURAL THEOLOGY. 140 Our ignorance, moreover, of the sensitive natures, by which other planets are inhabited, necessarily keeps from us the knowledge of numberless utilities, relations, and subserviences, which we perceive upon our own globe. After all; the real subject of admiration is, that we understand so much of astronomy as we do. That an animal, confined to the surface of one of the planets, bearing a less propor¬ tion to it than the smallest microscopic insect does to the plant it lives upon: that this little, busy, inquisitive creature, by the use of senses which were given it for its domestic necessi¬ ties, and by means of the assistants of those senses which it has had the art to procure, should have been enabled to observe the whole system of worlds to which its own belongs; the changes of place of the immense globes which compose it ; and with such accuracy, as to mark out beforehand the situation in the heavens in which they will be found at any future point of time; and that these bodies, after sailing through regions of void and track¬ less space, should arrive at the place where they were expected, not within a minute, but within a few seconds of a minute of the time prefixed and predicted: all this is wonderful, whether we refer our admiration to the constancy of the heavenly motions themselves, or to the perspicacity and precision with which they have been noticed by mankind. Nor is this the whole, nor indeed the chief part, of what astronomy teaches. By bringing reason to bear upon observation (the acutest reasoning upon the exactest observation), the astronomer has been able, out of the a mystic dance,” and the confusion (for such it is) under which the motions of the heavenly bodies present themselves to the eye of a mere gazer upon the skies, to elicit their order and their real paths. Our knowledge therefore of astronomy is admirable, though imperfect: and, amidst the confessed desiderata and desideranda which impede our investigation of the wisdom of the Deity in th ese the grandest of his works, there are to be found, in the phenomena, ascer¬ tained circumstances and laws, sufficient to indicate an intellectual agency in three of its principal operations, viz. in choosing, in determining, in regulating; in choosing , out of a boundless variety of suppositions which were equally possible, that which is beneficial; in determining , what, left to itself, had a thousand chances against conveniency, for one in its favour; in regulating subjects, as to quantity and degree, which, by their nature, were un¬ limited with respect to either. It will be our business to offer, under each of these heads, a few instances, such as best admit of a popular explication *. * One great reason why astronomy is not so well adapted to the proofs of a contriving, superintending Creator, is the utter impossibility for the human mind to grasp the immensity of the field included in the astrono¬ mer’s province. A good idea of the extent of the number of the constellations and hardly known clusters of stars may be formed from the paper of Sir William Herschell in the Phil. Trans, for 1833, p. 361 ; in which he says— “ The observations which are here registered, comprise, more or less, about two thousand five hundred nebulae and clusters of stars.” In many instances careful drawings have been made, and repeatedly compared at distant in¬ tervals with the objects they have been intended to re¬ present. Among the figures will be found representations of some very extraordinary objects, which have not hi¬ therto been sufficiently pointed out to the notice of astro¬ nomers, and of which indeed some of the most remarkable peculiarities have escaped every former observer. These are briefly noticed in the descriptions appended to each observation, and more distinctly and at large in the ex¬ planations of the plates. Meantime it is only necessary for any reader to cast his eyes over the figures, to be satis¬ fied that many of these mysterious objects possess a sym¬ metry of parts and a unity of design, which, singular as their constitution must appear, strongly mark them as systems of a definite nature, each complete in itself, and subservient to some distinct purpose, of which it is vain for us to conjecture the nature.” And yet, amid our ne¬ cessary ignorance of the contrivances and other proofs of the existence of a Divine Architect in the planets and stars with which we are encircled, and to which Paley and Herschell have alluded, there are some observa¬ tions, some facts, some properties or elements, which are probably common to us all ; and are enjoyed by the inhabitants of the most distant stars, as well as those of our earth, and are equally proofs of the adaptation of the means to the end. Thus reasoning, we know that the most remote fixed stars have light ; and reasoning from analogy, it is almost certain that they possess also heat : for these elements are generally, though not necessarily, united. Then again, with heat and light magnetism is also, in some mystic way, connected. Thus a magnet is destroyed by being heated to a certain temperature; and M. Morichini and others have clearly shown that a needle, placed in the violet ray of the spectrum, becomes magnetic; and all philosophers are well aware how intimately electric or galvanic properties are connected with these three; how heat, light, and electricity are all readily produced by mere friction ; and how materially heat retards or pro¬ motes the production of either of the other three etherials. Some of them too are intimately connected with the pro¬ duction of animal and vegetable life, and may even be substituted for each other, as the agent of its production, even in cases apparently the most improbable. Thus, it was long since shown by M. Achard, an eminent French chemist, that eggs, when kept in an electrified state for the usual period, produced chickens just as readily as if they were heated to a temperature of 103° ; and his ex¬ periments have been decidedly supported by those recently NATURAL THEOLOGY. 147 I. Amongst proofs of choice, one is, fixing the source of light and heat in the centre of the system. The sun is ignited and luminous; the planets, which move round him, cold and dark. There seems to be no antecedent necessity for this order. The sun might have been an opaque mass; some one, or two, or more, or any, or all the planets, globes of fire. There is nothing in the nature of the heavenly bodies, which requires that those which are stationary should be on fire, that those which move should be cold: for, in fact, comets are bodies on fire, or at least capable of the most intense heat, yet revolve round a centre : nor does this order obtain between the primary planets and their secondaries, which are all opaque. When we consider, therefore, that the sun is one ; that the planets going round it are, at least, seven; that it is indifferent to their nature, which are luminous and which are opaque; and also, in what order, with respect to each other, these two kinds of bodies are disposed; we may judge of the improbability of the present arrangement taking place by chance. If, by way of accounting for the state in which we find the solar system, it be alleged (and this is one amongst the guesses of those who reject an intelligent Creator), that the planets themselves are only cooled or cooling masses, and were once, like the sun, many thousand times hotter than red-hot iron; then it follows, that the sun also himself must be in his progress towards growing cold; which puts an end to the possibility of his having- existed, as he is, from eternity. This consequence arises out of the hypothesis with still more certainty, if we make a part of it, what the philosophers wdio maintain it have usually taught, that the planets were originally masses of matter, struck off in a state of fusion, from the body of the sun, by the percussion of a comet, or by a shock from some other cause, with which we are not acquainted : for, if these masses, partaking of the nature and substance of the sun’s body, have in process of time lost their heat, that body itself, in time likewise, no matter in how much longer time, must lose its heat also, and therefore be inca¬ pable of an eternal duration in the state in which we see it, either for the time to come, or the time past. The preference of the present to any other mode of distributing luminous and opaque bodies, I take to be evident. It requires more astronomy than I am able to lay before the reader, to shew, in its particulars, what would be the effect to the system, of a dark body at the centre, and of one of the planets being luminous: but I think it manifest, without either plates or calculation, first, that supposing the necessary proportion of magnitude be¬ tween the central and the revolving bodies to be preserved, the ignited planet would not be sufficient to illuminate and warm the rest of the system; secondly, that its light and heat would be imparted to the other planets much more irregularly than light and heat are now received from the sun. (*) II. Another thing, in which a choice appears to be exercised, and in which, amongst the possibilities out of which the choice was to be made, the number of those which were wrong, bore an infinite proportion to the number of those which were right, is in what geo¬ metricians call the axis of rotation. This matter I will endeavour to explain. The earth, it is well known, is not an exact globe, but an oblate spheroid, something like an orange. Now the axes of rotation, or the diameters upon which such a body may be made to turn round, are as many as can be drawn through its centre to opposite points upon its whole surface : but of these axes none are permanent , except either its shortest diameter, i. e. that which passes through the heart of the orange from the place where the stalk is inserted into it, and which is but one ; or its longest diameters, at right angles with the former, which must all terminate in the single circumference which goes round the thickest part of the orange. The shortest diameter is that upon which in fact the earth turns, and it is, as the announced by Mr. Cross, of Taunton. As, therefore, we demonstrated. Thus it has been clearly shown that some see such a mighty, such an intimate connexion existing of the stars have atmospheres. throughout all God’s works, it is more than probable Rumford, Nicholson’s Journ. vol. ii. p. 1Q(>. Picket that some such a chain exists on other planets than sur le Feu, chap. 6. Gilberts, Annal. de Phys. xlvi. our own, and for equally important purposes. We are p. 367. Annals of Phil. vol. ii. p. 390. lhomson, sure of the existence in them of light,—one link in the vol. i. p. 22—155. On the extensive Atmosphere of class of the etherials; and have no rational reason to doubt Mars, by Sir James South, Phil. Trans. 1831, p. 417. of the existence of others : in fact, some of them have been 148 NATURAL THEOLOGY. reader sees, what it ought to he, a permanent axis; whereas, had blind chance, had a casual impulse, had a stroke or push at random, set the earth a-spinning, the odds were infinite, but that they had sent it round upon a wrong axis. And what would have been the conse¬ quence ? The difference between a permanent axis and another axis is this : When a spheroid in a state of rotatory motion gets upon a permanent axis, it keeps there; it remains steady and faithful to its position : its poles preserve their direction with respect to the plane and to the centre of its orbit: but, whilst it turns upon an axis which is not permanent (and the number of those we have seen infinitely exceeds the number of the other), it is always liable to shift and vacillate from one axis to another, with a corresponding change in the in¬ clination of its poles. Therefore, if a planet once set off revolving upon any other than its shortest, or one of its longest axes, the poles on its surface would keep perpetually changing, and it never would attain a permanent axis of rotation. The effect of this unfixedness and instability would be, that the equatorial parts of the earth might become the polar, or the polar the equatorial; to the utter destruction of plants and animals, which are not capable of interchanging their situations, but are respectively adapted to their own. As to ourselves, instead of rejoicing in our temperate zone, and annually preparing for the moderate vicissi¬ tude, or rather the agreeable succession, of seasons, which we experience and expect, we might come to be locked up in the ice and darkness of the arctic circle, with bodies neither inured to its rigours, nor provided with shelter or defence against them. Nor would it be much better, if the trepidation of our pole, taking an opposite course, should place us under the heats of a vertical sun. But if it would fare so ill with the human inhabitant, who can live under greater varieties of latitude than any other animal, still more noxious would this translation of climate have proved to life in the rest of the creation; and, most perhaps of all, in plants. The habitable earth, and its beautiful variety, might have been destroyed by a simple mischance in the axis of rotation*. (*) III. All this, however, proceeds upon a supposition of the earth having been formed at first an oblate spheroid. There is another supposition; and perhaps our limited informa¬ tion will not enable us to decide between them. The second supposition is, that the earth, being a mixed mass somewhat fluid, took, as it might do, its present form, by the joint action of the mutual gravitation of its parts and its rotatory motion. This, as we have said, is a point in the history of the earth which our observations are not sufficient to determine. For a very small depth below the surface (but extremely small—less, perhaps, than an eight- thousandth part, compared with the depth of the centre), we find vestiges of ancient fluidity. But this fluidity must have gone down many hundred times farther than we can penetrate, to enable the earth to take its present oblate form: and whether any traces exist to that depth, we are ignorant. Calculations were made a few years ago, of the mean density of the earth, by comparing the force of its attraction with the force of attraction of a rock of granite, the bulk of which could be ascertained : and the upshot of the calculation was, that the earth, upon an average, through its whole sphere, has twice the density of granite, or above five times that of water. Therefore it cannot be a hollow shell, as some have formerly * The permanency, the unfailing regularity, which ob¬ tains in the planetary system, is one of its most astonish¬ ing phenomena. Stars, bodies exceeding in magnitude our globe, extend in endless succession, floating in space at stated and unaltering distances.—these, thousands of thousands beyond the reach of human numeration, are placed at the precise points of permanent equilibrium_ unchanged, undisturbing eacli others stability since “ the beginning.” Newton thought that there is a principle in the planetary motions which would ultimately cause the destruction of the system ; but Laplace, by pursuing and obtaining still greater accuracy in the researches of our great philosopher, has proved that what appeared sources of disorder, are, in fact, the perfecting machinery of the system, and that the piinciple of conservation is as eternal as that of motion. (Davy’s Last Days of a Philosopher.) Time, adds the same powerful mind, is almost a human word, and change entirely a human idea. It is confined to the details, to the forms of matter; yet as that matter itself is indestructible, so the laws of attraction which go¬ vern and control its changes, know no alteration. These laws, above all other phenomena of the system of the uni¬ verse, bring beforo us most immediately an idea of the Providence of God. If the laws of attraction were to be suspended but for a moment, all things would fall into their primitive chaos—every thing of which our world is composed be dissipated in vapoui'. Yet what is this all- pervading, all-restraining attraction? We call it a pro- pei’ty of matter; W’e can trace out its regulated pheno¬ mena; but, like sound, heat, light, electi’icity, and magnetism, we know it only by its effects : it is an ema¬ nation of the will of the Creator; it is an instance of that “ small, still voice,” which, if we will attend to it, is always suggesting that an Almighty hand is over and upholding us,—is not only sustaining myriads of woilds, but the smallest insect that creeps upon their surfaces. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 149 supposed; nor can its internal parts be occupied by central fire, or by water. The solid parts must greatly exceed tlie fluid parts: and the probability is, that it is a solid mass throughout, composed of substances more ponderous the deeper we go. Nevertheless, we may conceive the present face of the earth to have originated from the revolution of a sphere, covered by a surface of a compound mixture; the fluid and solid parts separating, as the surface becomes quiescent. Here then comes in the moderating hand of the Creator. If the water had exceeded its present proportion, even but by a trifling quantity, compared Avitli the whole globe, all the land would have been covered : had there been much less than there is, there would not have been enough to fertilize the continent. Had the exsiccation been progressive, such as we may suppose to have been produced by an evaporating heat, how came it to stop at the point at which we see it ? Why did it not stop sooner ? why at all ? The mandate of the Deity will account for this; nothing else will. IV. Op centripetal forces. By virtue of the simplest law that can be imagined, viz. that a body continues in the state in which it is, whether of motion or rest; and, if in mo¬ tion, goes on in the line in which it was proceeding, and with the same velocity, unless there be some cause for change: by virtue, I say, of this law, it comes to pass (what may appear to be a strange consequence), that cases arise, in which attraction, incessantly drawing a body towards a centre, never brings, nor ever will bring, the body to that centre, but keep it in eternal circulation round it. If it were possible to fire off a cannon-ball with a velocity of five miles in a second, and the resistance of the air could be taken away, the cannon-ball would for ever wheel round the earth, instead of falling down upon it. This is the principle which sustains the heavenly motions. The Deity, having appointed this law to matter (than which, as we have said before, no law could be more simple), has turned it to a won¬ derful account in constructing planetary systems. The actuating cause in these systems, is an attraction which varies reciprocally as the square of the distance ; that is, at double the distance it has a quarter of the force ; at half the distance, four times the strength ; and so on. Now, concerning this law of variation, we have three things to observe: First; that attraction, for any thing we know about it, was just as capable of one law of variation, as of another: Secondly; that, out of an infinite number of possible laws, those which were admissible for the purpose of supporting the hea¬ venly motions, lay within certain narrow limits : Thirdly; that of the admissible laws, or those which come within the limits prescribed, the law that actually prevails is the most beneficial. So far as these propositions can be made out, we may be said, I think, to prove choice and regulation : choice, out of boundless variety ; and regulation, of that which, by its own nature, was, in respect of the property regulated, indifferent and indefinite. I. First, then, attraction, for any thing we know about it, was originally indifferent to all laws of variation depending upon change of distance, i. e. just as susceptible of one law as of another. It might have been the same at all distances; it might have increased as the distance increased: or it might have diminished with the increase of the distance, yet in ten thousand different proportions from the present, it might have followed no stated law at all. If attraction be what Cotes, with many other Newtonians, thought it to be, a primor¬ dial property of matter, not dependent upon, or traceable to, any other material cause ; then, by the very nature and definition of a primordial property, it stood indifferent to all laws. If it be the agency of something immaterial; then also, for any thing we know of it, it was indifferent to all laws. If the revolution of bodies round a centre depend upon vortices, neither are these limited to one law more than another. There is, I know, an account given of attraction, which should seem, in its \ r ery cause, to assign to it the law which we find it to observe; and which, therefore, makes that law, a law, not of choice, but of necessity: and it is the account, which ascribes attraction to an emanation from the attracting body. It is probable, that the influence of such an emanation will be proportioned to the spissitude of the rays of which it is composed; which spissitude, supposing the rays to issue in right lines on all sides from a point, will be reciprocally as the square of the distance. The mathematics of this solution we do not call in question: the question with us is, whether there be any sufficient reason for believing that attraction is produced by an emanation. For my part, I am totally at a loss to comprehend how particles 150 NATURAL THEOLOGY. streaming from a centre should draw a body towards it. The impulse, if impulse it be, is all the other way. Nor shall we find less difficulty in conceiving a conflux of particles, incessantly flowing to a centre, and carrying down all bodies along with it, that centre also itself being in a state of rapid motion through absolute space; for, by what source is the stream fed, or what becomes of the accumulation ? Add to which, that it seems to imply a contrariety of properties, to suppose an ethereal fluid to act, but not to resist; powerful enough to carry down bodies with great force towards a centre, yet, inconsistently with the nature of inert matter, powerless and perfectly yielding with respect to the motions which result from the projectile impulse. By calculations drawn from ancient notices of eclipses of the moon, we can prove that, if such a fluid exist at all, its resistance has had no sensible effect upon the moon’s motion for two thousand five hundred years. The truth is, that, except this one circumstance of the variation of the attracting force at different distances agreeing with the variation of the spissitude, there is no reason whatever to support the hypothesis of an emanation; and, as it seems to me, almost insuperable reasons against it. (*) II. Our second proposition is, that, whilst the possible laws of variation were infinite, the admissible laws, or the laws compatible with the preservation of the system, lie within narrow limits. If the attracting force had varied according to any direct law of the distance, let it have been what it would, great destruction and confusion would have taken place. The direct simple proportion of the distance would, it is true, have produced an ellipse: but the perturbing forces would have acted with so much advantage, as to be continually changing the dimensions of the ellipse, in a manner inconsistent with our terrestrial creation. For instance : if the planet Saturn, so large and so remote, had attracted the earth, both in proportion to the quantity of matter contained in it, which it does; and also in any pro¬ portion to its distance, i. e. if it had pulled the harder for being the farther off (instead of the reverse of it), it would have dragged out of its course the globe which we inhabit, and have perplexed its motions, to a degree incompatible with our security, our enjoyments, and probably our existence. Of the inverse laws, if the centripetal force had changed as the cube of distance, or in any higher proportion, that is (for I speak to the unlearned), if, at double the distance, the attractive force had been diminished to an eighth part, or to less than that, the consequence would have been, that the planets, if they once began to approach the sun, would have fallen into his body ; if they once, though by ever so little, increased their distance from the centre, would for ever have receded from it. The laws therefore of attrac¬ tion, by which a system of revolving bodies could be upholden in their motions, lie within narrow limits, compared with the possible laws. I much under-rate the restriction, when I say that, in a scale of a mile, they are confined to an inch. All direct ratios of the distance are excluded, on account of danger from perturbing forces : all reciprocal ratios, except what lie beneath the cube of the distance, by the demonstrable consequence, that every the least change of distance would, under the operation of such laws, have been fatal to the repose and order of the system. We do not know, that is, we seldom reflect, how interested we are in this matter. Small irregularities may be endured; but, changes within these limits being allowed for, the permanency of our ellipse is a question of life and death to our whole sensitive world. (*) III. That the subsisting law of attraction falls within the limits which utility re¬ quires, when these limits bear so small a proportion to the range of possibilities upon which chance might equally have cast it, is not, with any appearance of reason, to be accounted for, by any other cause than a regulation proceeding from a designing mind. But our next proposition carries the matter somewhat farther. We say, in the third place, that, out of the different laws which lie within the limits of admissible laws, the best is made choice of ; that there are advantages in this particular law which cannot be demonstrated to belong to any other law; and concerning some of which, it can be demonstrated that they do not belong to any other. ( # ) 1. Whilst this law prevails between each particle of matter, the united attraction of ti sphere composed of that matter, observes the same law. This property of the law is ne¬ cessary, to render it applicable to a system composed of spheres, but it is a property which belongs to no other law of attraction that is admissible. The law of variation of the united NATURAL THEOLOGY. 151 attraction is in no other case the same as the law of attraction of each particle, one case excepted, and that is of the attraction varying directly as the distance; the inconveniency of which law, in other respects, we have already noticed. We may follow this regulation somewhat further, and still more strikingly perceive that it proceeded from a designing mind. A law both admissible and convenient was requisite. In what way is the law of the attracting globes obtained ? Astronomical observations and terrestrial experiments shew that the attraction of the globes of the system is made up of the attraction of their parts; the attraction of each globe being compounded of the attractions of its parts*. Now the admissible and convenient law which exists, could not be obtained in a system of bodies gravitating by the united gravitation of their parts, unless each particle of matter were attracted by a force varying by one particular law, viz. varying inversely as the square of the distance ; for, if the action of the particles be according to any other law whatever, the admissible and convenient law, which is adopted, could not be obtained. Here then are clearly shewn regulation and design. A law both admissible and convenient was to be obtained ; the mode chosen for obtaining that law was bv making each particle of matter act. After this choice was made, then farther attention was to be given to each particle of matter, and one, and one only particular law of action to be assigned to it. No other law would have answered the purpose intended. (*) 2. All systems must be liable to 'perturbations. And therefore, to guard against these perturbations, or rather to guard against their running to destructive lengths, is perhaps the strongest evidence of care and foresight that can be given. Now, we are able to demonstrate of our law of attraction, what can be demonstrated of no other, and what qualifies the dangers which arise from cross but unavoidable influences; that the action of the parts of our system upon one another, will not cause permanently increasing irregularities, but merely periodical or vibratory ones; that is, they will come to a limit, and then go back again. This we can demonstrate only of a system, in which the following properties concur, viz. that the force shall be inversely as the square of the distance ; the masses of the revolving bodies small, compared with that of the body at the centre; the orbits not much inclined to one another ; and their eccentricity little. In such a system, the grand points are secure. The mean dis¬ tances and periodic times, upon which depend our temperature, and the regularity of our year, are constant. The eccentricities, it is true, will still vary; but so slowly, and to so small an extent, as to produce no inconveniency from fluctuation of tenquerature and season. The same as to the obliquity of the planes of the orbits. For instance, the inclination of the ecliptic to the equator will never change above two degress (out of ninety), and that will require many thousand years in performing. It has been rightly also remarked, that, if the great planets, Jupiter and Saturn, had moved in lower spheres, their influences would have had much more effect as to disturbing the planetary motions, than they now have. While they revolve at so great distances from the rest, they act almost equally on the sun and on the inferior planets; which has nearly the same consequence as not acting at all upon either. If it be said, that the planets might have been sent round the sun in exact circles, in which case, no change of distance from the centre taking place, the law of variation of the attracting power would have never come in question, one law would have served as well as another; an answer to the scheme may be drawn from the consideration of these same perturbing forces. The system retaining in other respects its present constitution, though the planets had been at first sent round in exact circular orbits, they could not have kept them : and if the law of attraction had not been what it is, or, at least, if the prevailing law had transgressed the limits above assigned, every evagation would have been fatal: the planet once drawn, as drawn it necessarily must have been, out of its course, would have wandered in endless error. * This universal influence of attraction has been poetically alluded to by Rogers. In some of his stanzas he says— The very law which moulds a tear, And bids it trickle from its source, That law preserves the earth a sphere. And guides the planets in their course. 152 NATURAL THEOLOGY. (*) V. What we have seen in the law of the centripetal force, viz. a choice guided by views of utility, and a choice of one law out of thousands which might equally have taken place, we see no less in the figures of the planetary orbits. It was not enough to fix the law of the centripetal force, though by the wisest choice; for, even under that law, it was still competent to the planets to have moved in paths possessing so great a degree of eccentricity, as, in the course of every revolution, to be brought very near to the sun, and carried away to immense distances from him. The comets actually move in orbits of this sort: and, had the planets done so, instead of going round in orbits nearly circular, the change from one extremity of temperature to another must, in ours at least, have destroyed every animal and plant upon its surface. Now, the distance from the centre at which a planet sets off, and the absolute force of attraction at that distance, being fixed, the figure of its orbit, its being a circle, or nearer to, or farther off from a circle, viz. a rounder or a longer oval, depends upon two things, the velocity with which, and the direction in which, the planet is projected. And these, in order to produce a right result, must be both brought within certain narrow limits. One, and only one, velocity, united with one, and only one, direction, will produce a perfect circle. And the velocity must be near to this velocity, and the direction also near to this direction, to produce orbits, such as the planetary orbits are, nearly circular; that is, ellipses with small eccentricities. The velocity and the direction must both be right. If the velocity be wrong, no direction will cure the error; if the direction be in any considerable degree oblique, no velocity will produce the orbit required. Take, for example, the attraction of gravity at the surface of the earth. The force of that attraction being what it is, out of all the degrees of velocity, swift and slow, with which a ball might be shot off, none would answer the purpose of which we are speaking, but what was nearly that of five miles in a second. If it were less than that, the body would not get round at all, but would come to the ground; if it were in any considerable degree more than that, the body would take one of those eccen¬ tric courses, those long ellipses, of which we have noticed the inconveniency. If the velocity reached the rate of seven miles in a second, or went beyond that, the ball would fly off from the earth, and never be heard of more. In like manner with respect to the direction; out of the innumerable angles in which the ball might be sent off (I mean angles formed with a line drawn to the centre), none would serve but what was nearly a right one: out of the various directions in which the cannon might be pointed, upwards and downwards, every one would fail, but what was exactly or nearly horizontal. The same thing holds true of the planets: of our own amongst the rest. We are entitled therefore to ask, and to urge the question, Why did the projectile velocity and projectile direction of the earth happen to be nearly those which would retain it in a circular form ? Why not one of the infinite number of velocities, one of the infinite number of directions, which would have made it approach much nearer to, or recede much farther from, the sun ? The planets going round all in the same direction, and all nearly in the same plane, afforded to Buffon a ground for asserting, that they had all been shivered from the sun by the same stroke of a comet, and by that stroke projected into their present orbits. Now, beside that this is to attribute to chance the fortunate concurrence of velocity and direction which we have been here noticing, the hypothesis, as I apprehend, is inconsistent with the physical laws by which the heavenly motions are governed. If the planets were struck off from the surface ot the sun, they would return to the surface of the sun again. Nor will this difficulty be got rid of, by supposing that the same violent blow which shattered the sun’s surface, and separated large fragments from it, pushed the sun himself out of his place; for, the conse¬ quence of this would be, that the sun and system of shattered fragments would have a pro¬ gressive motion, which, indeed, may possibly be the case with our system; but then each fragment would, in every revolution, return to the surface of the sun again. The hypothesis is also contradicted by the vast difference which subsists between the diameters of the plan¬ etary orbits. The distance of Saturn from the sun (to say nothing of the Georgium Sidus) is nearly five-and-twenty times that of Mercury; a disparity, which it seems impos¬ sible to reconcile with Buffon’s scheme. Bodies starting from the same place, with whatever difference or direction or velocity they set off, could not have been found at these different NATURAL THEOLOGY. 153 distances from the centre, still retaining their nearly circular orbits. They must have been carried to their proper distances, before they were projected. To conclude: in astronomy, the great thing is to raise the imagination to the subject, and that oftentimes in opposition to the impression made upon the senses. An illusion, for example, must be gotten over, arising from the distance at which we view the heavenly bodies, viz. the apparent slozcness of their motions. The moon shall take some hours in getting half a yard from a star which it touched. A motion so deliberate we may think easily guided. But what is the fact? The moon, in fact, is, all this while, driving through the heavens, at the rate of considerably more than two thousand miles in an hour; which is more than double of that with which a ball is shot off from the mouth of a cannon. Yet is this prodigious rapidity as much under government, as if the planet proceeded ever so slowly, or were conducted in its course inch by inch. It is also difficult to bring the imagination to conceive (what yet, to judge tolerably of the matter, it is necessary to conceive) how loose y if we may so express it, the heavenly bodies are. Enormous globes, held by nothing, con¬ fined by nothing, are turned into free and boundless space, each to seek its course by the virtue of an invisible principle; but a principle, one, common, and the same in all; and ascertainable. To preserve such bodies from being lost, from running together in heaps, from hindering and distracting one another’s motions, in a degree inconsistent with any continuing order; i. e. to cause them to form planetary systems, systems that, when formed, can be upheld, and most especially, systems accommodated to the organized and sensitive natures, which the planets sustain, as we know to be the case, where alone we can know what the case is, upon our earth : all this requires an intelligent interposition, because it can be demon¬ strated concerning it, that it requires an adjustment of force, distance, direction, and velocity, out of the reach of chance to have produced; an adjustment, in its view to utility, similar to that which we see in ten thousand subjects of nature which are nearer to us; but in power, and in the extent of space through which that power is exerted, stupendous. But many of the heavenly bodies, as the sun and fixed stars, are stationary. Their rest must be the effect of an absence or of an equilibrium of attractions. It proves also, that a projectile impulse was originally given to some of the heavenly bodies, and not to others. But farther; if attraction act at all distances, there can only be one quiescent centre of gravity in the universe : and all bodies whatever must be approaching this centre, or revolving round it. According to the first of these suppositions, if the duration of the world had been long enough to allow of it, all its parts, all the great bodies of which it is composed, must have been gathered together in a heap round this point. No changes, however, which have been observed, afford us the smallest reason for believing, that either the one supposition or the other is true; and then it will follow, that attraction itself is controlled or suspended by a superior agent: that there is a power above the highest of the powers of material nature : a will, which restrains and circumscribes the operations of the most extensive*. * It must here, however, be stated, that many astro¬ nomers deny that any of the heavenly bodies are abso¬ lutely stationary. Some of the brightest of the fixed stars have certainly small motions ; and of the rest the distance is too great, and the intervals of our observation too short, to enable us to pronounce with certainty that they may not have the same. The motions in the fixed stars which have been observed, are considered either as proper to each of them, or as compounded of the motion of our system, and of motions proper to each star. By a comparison of these motions, a motion in our system is supposed to be discovered. By continuing this analogy to other, and to all systems, it is possible to suppose that attraction is unlimited, and that the whole material universe is revolving round some fixed point within its containing sphere or space. The progress of astronomical discoveries since Paley’s time, has not weakened the force of any of his conclusions ; other and more distantstars, suns, satellites, and systems have been explored by improved instruments,but amid all the dif¬ ficulties necessarily attendant upon such a distant view, the conviction of the divine order, the regularity, and the contriving adaptation of the means to the end, still forces itself upon the mind of the astronomer. “ In turning, says Professsor Whewell, to the satellites of the other planets of our System, there is one fact which immediately arrests our attention; the number of such attendant bodies appears to increase as we proceed to planets farther and farther from the sun. Such at least is the general rule. Mercury and Venus, the planets nearest the sun, have no such attendants, the Earth has one. Mars indeed, who is still farther removed, lias none; nor have the minor planets, Juno, Vesta, Ceres, Pallas, so that the rule only is approximately verified. But Jupiter, who is at five times the Earth’s distance, has four satellites; and Saturn, who is again at a distance nearly twice as great, has seven, besides that most extraordinary phenomenon, his ring, which, for the purposes of illumination, is equiva¬ lent to many thousand satellites. Of Uranus, u is difficult to speak, for his great distance renders it almost impos¬ sible to observe the smaller circumstances of his condition. It does not appear at all probable that he has a ring like 154 NATURAL THEOLOGY. CHAPTER XXIII. OF TIIE PERSONALITY OF THE DEITY. Contrivance, if established, appears to me to prove every thing which we wish to prove. Amongst other things, it proves the personality of the Deity, as distinguished from what is sometimes called nature, sometimes called a principle : which terms, in the mouths of those who use them philosophically, seem to be intended, to admit and to express an efficacy, but to exclude and to deny a personal agent. Now that which can contrive, which can design, Saturn ; but he has at least five satellites which are visible to us at the enormous distance of 900 millions of miles ; and we believe that the astronomer will hardly deny that he may possibly have thousands of smaller ones circulating about him.” We conceive that a person of common understanding will be strongly impressed with the persuasion, that the satellites are placed in the system, with a view to com¬ pensate for the diminished light of the sun at greater distances. And although Mars may seem an exception to the rule, yet “ no one familiar with such contemplations will by one anomaly be driven from the persuasion, that the end which the arrangements of the satellites seem suited to answer is x-eally one of the ends of their creation.” Recent discoveries also have demonstrated, that it is most probable that there is no such thing as empty space in God’s creation ; but that all space is filled by some description of matter, and that it is more than probable that there are other planets even in our system, and circulating perhaps in our own immediate orbit, which we have never been permitted to discover, inhabited perhaps by beings of a nature far superior to the tenants of our earth—perchance the abode of spirits and of angels. There is perhaps no discovery of modern astronomy so remarkable in support of this conclusion as that of Encke's Comet, which we will again borrow the words of Professor Whewell to describe. “ This body revolves in a very eccentric or oblong orbit, its greatest, or aphelion distance from the sun, and its nearest, or perihelion distance, being in the proportion of more than ten to one. In this respect it agrees with other comets; but its time of revolution about the sun is much less than that of the comets which have excited most notice, for while they appear at long intervals of years, the body of which we are now speaking returns to its perihelion every 1208 days. Another observable circumstance in this singular body is its extreme apparent tenuity; it appears as a loose indefi¬ nitely formed speck of vapour, through which the stars are visible, with no perceptible diminution of their brightness. It will be easily conceived that a body which has, perhaps, no more solidity or coherence than a cloud of dust, or a wreath of smoke, will have less force to make its way through a fluid medium, however thin, than a more dense and compact body would have. In atmospheric air much rarefied, a bullet might proceed for miles without losing any of its velocity, while such a loose mass as the comet is supposed to be, would lose its projectile motion in the 6pace of a few yards. This consideration will account for the circumstance, that the existence of such a medium has been detected by observing the motions of Encke’s comet, though the motions of the heavenly bodies pre¬ viously observed, showed no trace of such an impediment. This medium produces a very small effect upon the motion of the comet, as will easily be supposed from what has been said. By Encke’s calculation, it appears that the effect of the resistance, supposing the comet to move in the earth’s orbit, would be about l - 850 of the sun’s force of the body. The effect of such a resistance may appear, at first sight, paradoxical ; it w r ould be to make the comet move more slowly, but perform its revolu¬ tions more quickly. This, however, will perhaps be un¬ derstood, if it be considered that by moving more slowly, the comet will be more rapidly drawn towards the centre, and that in this way a revolution will be described by a shorter path than it was before. It appears that, in get¬ ting round the sun, the comet gains more in this way than it loses by the diminution of its velocity. The case is much like that of a stone thrown in the air; the stone moves more slowly than it would do if there were no air ; but yet it comes to the earth sooner than it would do on that supposition. It appears that the effect of the resistance of the etherial medium, from the first discovery of the comet up to the pi’esent time, has been to diminish the time of revolution, by about two days; and the comet is ten days in advance of the place it would have reached, if there had been no resistance.” But w T e need not call in the results of the splendid researches of the astronomer to convince us that there are substances and matters existing in space far beyond our atmosphere, for we are occasionally visited by specimens of their contents which have long attracted the attention and confounded all the conjectures of the ablest philoso¬ phers : thus in all ages have been remarked the phenomena of meteoric stones and fire balls. They are described by Livy and Pliny to have occurred in their days, and have been since noticed in numerous instances. Perhaps the most remarkable of these was the celebrated meteor of 1783, which traversed this country and a portion of the continent, at a height of about sixty miles ; its diameter was certainly greater than 1000 yards ; its motion and appearance corresponded with those of all other meteors; it was luminous, moved very swiftly, and dis¬ appeared in a short time. Their disappearance is usually attended with a loud series of explosions, and solid sub¬ stances fall from them to the earth. Collections of these stones, whose existence was long doubted by philosophers, have recently been made, their properties demonstrated,and their composition ascertained ; and it is a little remarkable that although meteoric stones have been analysed from all parts of the globe, yet still their chemical composition is found to be almost exactly similar: those which fell at Smolensk, at Lissa, at the Cape of Good Hope, at Benares, in France, and in Yorkshire, all contain nickel and iron. One analysed by Mr. Howard, which fell in Yorkshire, contained— Silica . .75 parts. Magnesia . . 35 Oxide of iron . 48 Oxide of nickel . 2 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 155 must be a person. These capacities constitute personality, for they imply consciousness and thought. They require that which can perceive an end or purpose; as well as the power of providing means, and of directing means, and of directing them to their end*. They require a centre in which perceptions unite, and from which volitions flow; which is mind. The acts of a mind prove the existence of a mind; and in whatever a mind resides, is a person. The seat of intellect is a person. We have no authority to limit the properties of mind to any particular corporeal form, or to any particular circumscription of space. These proper¬ ties subsist, in created nature, under a great variety of sensible forms. Also every animated being has its sensorium; that is, a certain portion of space, within which perception and volition are exerted. This sphere may be enlarged to an indefinite extent; may comprehend the universe; and, being so imagined, may serve to furnish us with as good a notion, as we are capable of forming, of the immensity of the Divine Nature, i. e. of a Being, infinite, as well in essence as in power; yet nevertheless a person. “No man hath seen God at any time.” And this, I believe, makes the great difficulty. Now it is a difficulty which chiefly arises from our not duly estimating the state of our faculties. The Deity, it is true, is the object of none of our senses : but reflect what limited capacities animal senses are. Many animals seem to have but one sense, or perhaps two at the most—touch and taste. Ought such an animal to conclude against the existence of odours, sounds, and colours ? To another species is given the sense of smelling. This is an advance in the knowledge of the powers and properties of nature : but, if this favoured animal should infer, from its superiority over the class last described, that it perceived every thing which was perceptible in nature, it is known to us, though perhaps not suspected by the animal itself, that it proceeded upon a false and presumptuous estimate of its faculties. To another is added the sense of hearing ; which lets in a class of sensations entirely unconceived by the animal before spoken of; not only distinct, but remote from any which it had ever experienced, and greatly superior to them. Yet this last animal has no more ground for believing that its senses comprehend all things, and all properties of things, which exist, than might have been claimed by the tribes of animals beneath it; for we know, that it is still possible to possess another sense, that of sight, which shall disclose to the percipient a new world. This fifth sense makes the animal what the human animal is : but to infer, that possibility stops here; that either this fifth sense is the last sense, or that the five compre¬ hended all existence, is just as warrantable a conclusion, as that which might have been made by any of the different species which possessed fewer, or even by that, if such there be, which possessed only one. The conclusion of the one-sense animal, and the conclusion of the five-sense animal, stand upon the same authority. There may be more and other senses than those which we have. There may be senses suited to the perception of the powers, properties, and substance of spirits. These may belong to higher orders of rational agents ; for there is not the smallest reason for supposing that we are the highest, or that the scale of creation stops with usf. The great energies of nature are known to us only by their effects. The substances which produce them, are as much concealed from our senses as the divine essence itself. Gravita¬ tion , though constantly present, though constantly exerting its influence, though every where around us, near us, and within us ; though diffused throughout all space, and penetrating the texture of all bodies, with which we are acquainted, depends, if upon a fluid, upon a Many wild dreams have been brought forward since Mr. Howard first demonstrated the peculiarity of their composition to account for theirpresence in the atmosphere. Chladni thought they were bodies floating in empty space; others, that they must have been thrown out of some volcano; and Laplace thought that that volcano must be in the moon. Amid all their discordant dreams, however, they agreed in the conclusion, that there probably exists, even in our atmosphere, many substances of whose presence ■we have no suspicion; and that these meteors probably proceeded from a much greater distance than the boundary usually assigned to our atmosphere. All their researches tend also to confirm the conclusion, that no portion of the creation is to be found untenanted by some description of either organic or inorganic matter, placed there for some useful, though to us incomprehen¬ sible, purpose. — Whewell’s Astronomy and General Physics, p. 193 — 197_Cavallo, Phil. Trans. 1784- Howard, Phil. Mag., vol. xvi. p* 804.—Klaproth, vol. v. p. 252—255. * Priestley’s Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, p. 153, ed. 2. T The efforts of a truly philosophical and poetical mind to delineate the probable existences here alluded to, are beautifully related in “the vision” of Sir H. Davy, in his “ Last Days of a Philosopher.” 15G NATURAL THEOLOGY. fluid which, though powerful and universal in its operation, is no object of sense to us; il upon any other kind of substance or action, upon a substance and action, from which ice receive no distinguishable impressions. Is it then to be wondered at, that it should, in some measure, be the same with the divine nature ? Of this however we are certain, that whatever the Deity be, neither the universe , nor any part of it which we see, can be He. The universe itself is merely a collective name: its parts are all which are real: or which are things. Now inert matter is out of the question : and organized substances include marks of contrivance. But whatever includes marks of con¬ trivance, whatever, in its constitution, testifies design, necessarily carries us to something beyond itself, to some other being, to a designer prior to, and out of, itself. No animal, for instance, can have contrived its own limbs and senses; can have been the author to itself of the design with which they were constructed. That supposition involves all the absurdity of self creation, i. e. of acting without existing. Nothing can be God, which is ordered by a wisdom and a will, which itself is void of; which is indebted for any of its properties to contrivance ah extra. The not having that in his nature which requires the exertion of another prior being (which property is sometimes called self-sufficiency, and sometimes self¬ comprehension), appertains to the Deity, as his essential distinction, and removes his nature from that of all things which we see. Which consideration contains the answer to a ques¬ tion that has sometimes been asked, namely, Why, since something or other must have existed from eternity, may not the present universe be that something ? The contrivance perceived in it, proves that to be impossible. Nothing contrived, can, in a strict and proper sense, be eternal, forasmuch as the contriver must have existed before the contrivance. Wherever we see marks of contrivance, we are led for its cause to an intelligent author. And this transition of the understanding is founded upon uniform experience. We see intel¬ ligence constantly contriving; that is, we see intelligence constantly producing effects, marked and distinguished by certain properties; not certain particular properties, but by a kind and class of properties, such as relation to an end, relation of parts to one another, and to a com¬ mon purpose. We see, wherever we are witnesses to the actual formation of things, nothing except intelligence producing effects so marked and distinguished. Furnished with this experience, we view the productions of nature. We observe them also marked and distin¬ guished in the same manner. We wish to account for their origin. Our experience suggests a cause perfectly adequate to this account. No experience, no single instance or example, can be offered in favour of any other. In this cause therefore we ought to rest; in this cause the common sense of mankind has, in fact, rested, because it agrees with that which, in all cases, is the foundation of knowledge,—the undeviating course of their experience. The reasoning is the same as that, by which we conclude any ancient appearances to have been the effects of volcanoes or inundations; namely, becatise they resemble the effects which fire and water produce before our eyes; and because we have never known these effects to result from any other operation. And this resemblance may subsist in so many circumstances, as not to leave us under the smallest doubt in forming our opinion. Men are not deceived by this reasoning: for whenever it happens, as it sometimes does happen, that the truth comes to be known by direct information, it turns out to be what was expected. In like manner, and upon the same foundation (which in truth is that of experience) we conclude that the works of nature proceed from intelligence and design; because, in the properties of relation to a purpose, subserviency to a use, they resemble what intelligence and design are constantly producing, and what nothing except intelligence and design ever produce at all. Of every argument, which would raise a question as to the safety of this reasoning, it may be observed, that if such argument be listened to, it leads to the inference, not only that the present order of nature is insufficient to prove the existence of an intelligent Creator, but that no imaginable order would be sufficient to prove it; that no contrivance, were it ever so me¬ chanical, ever so precise, ever so clear, ever so perfectly like those which we ourselves employ, would support this conclusion. A doctrine, to which, I conceive, no sound mind can assent. The force however of the reasoning is sometimes sunk by our taking up with mere names. We have already noticed*, and we must here notice again, the misapplication of the term * Ch. i. sect. vii. NATURAL THEOLOGY, 1 * tor lo/ a law,” and the mistake concerning the idea which that term expresses in physics, whenever such idea is made to take the place of power, and still more of an intelligent power, and, as such, to be assigned for the cause of any thing, or of any property of any thing, that exists. This is what we are secretly apt to do, when we speak of organized bodies (plants for in¬ stance, or animals) owing their production, their form, their growth, their qualities, their beauty, their use, to any law or laws of nature; and when we are contented to sit down with that answer to our inquiries concerning them. I say once more, that it is a perversion of language to assign any law’, as the efficient, operative cause of any thing. A law presup¬ poses an agent, for it is only the mode according to which an agent proceeds; it implies a power, for it is the order according to which that power acts. Without this agent, without this power, which are both distinct from itself, the “ law” docs nothing; is nothing. What has been said concerning “law, 0 holds true of mechanism. Mechanism is not itself power. Mechanism, without power, can do nothing. Let a watch be contrived and con¬ structed ever so ingeniously; be its parts ever so many, ever so complicated, ever so finely wrought or artificially put together, it cannot go without a weight or spring, i. e. without a force independent of, and ulterior to, its mechanism. The spring acting at the centre, will produce different motions and different results, according to the variety of the intermediate mechanism. One and the self-same spring acting in one and the same manner, viz. by simply expanding it¬ self, may be the cause of a hundred different and all useful movements, if a hundred different and well devised sets of wheels be placed between it and the final effect; e. g. may point out the hour of the day, the day of the month, the age of the moon, the position of the planets, the cycle of the years, and many other serviceable notices ; and these movements may fulfil their pur¬ poses with more or less perfection, according as the mechanism is better or worse contrived, or better or worse executed, or in a better or worse state of repair: but in all cases , it is necessary that the spring act at the centre. The course of our reasoning upon such a subject would be this : By inspecting the watch, even when standing still, we get a proof of contri¬ vance, and of a contriving mind, having been employed about it. In the form and obvious relation of its parts, we see enough to convince us of this. If we pull the works in pieces, for the purpose of a closer examination, we are still more fully convinced. But when we see the watch going , we see proof of another point, viz. that there is a power somewhere, and somehow or other, applied to it; a power in action;—that there is more in the subject than the mere wheels of the machine;—that there is a secret spring, or a gravitating plum¬ met ; in a word, that there is force, and energy, as well as mechanism. So then, the watch in motion establishes to the observer two conclusions: One; that thought, contrivance, and design, have been employed in the forming, proportioning, and arranging of its parts ; and that whoever or wherever he be, or were, such a contriver there is, or was: The other; that force or power, distinct from mechanism, is, at this present time, acting upon it. If I saw a hand-mill even at rest, I should see contrivance : but if I saw it grinding, I should be assured that a hand was at the windlass, though in another room. It is the same in nature. In the works of nature we trace mechanism ; and this alone proves contrivance : but living, active, moving, productive nature, proves also the exertion of a power at the centre : for wherever the power resides may be denominated the centre. The intervention and disposition of what are called “ second causes' fall under the same observation. This disposition is or is not mechanism, according as we can or cannot trace it ’ by our senses and means of examination. That is all the difference there is; and it is a difference which respects our faculties, not the things themselves. Now where the order of second causes is mechanical, what is here said of mechanism strictly applies to it. But it would be always mechanism (natural cliymistry, for instance, would be mechanism), if our senses were acute enough to descry it. Neither mechanism, therefore, in the works of na¬ ture, nor the intervention of what are called second causes (for I think that they are the same thing), excuses the necessity of an agent distinct from both. If, in tracing these causes, it be said that we find certain general properties of matter which have nothing in them that bespeaks intelligence, I answer, that, still, the managing of these properties, the pointing and directing them to the uses which we see made of them, demands intelligence in the highest degree. For example; suppose animal secretions to be 158 NATURAL THEOLOGY. elective attractions, and that such and such attractions universally belong to such and such substances ; in all which there is no intellect concerned; still the choice and collocation of these substances, the fixing upon right substances, and disposing of them in right places, must be an act of intelligence. What mischief would follow, were there a single transposi¬ tion of the secretory organs ; a single mistake in arranging the glands which compose them ! There may be many second causes, and many courses of second causes, one behind another, between what we observe of nature, and the Deity: but there must be intelligence some¬ where : there must be more in nature than what we see; and, amongst the things unseen, there must be an intelligent, designing author. The philosopher beholds with astonishment the production of things around him. Unconscious particles of matter take their stations, and severally range themselves in an order, so as to become collectively plants or animals, i. e. organized bodies, with parts bearing strict and evident relation to one another, and to the utility of the whole : and it should seem that these particles could not move in any other way than as they do; for they testify not the smallest sign of choice, or liberty, or discre¬ tion. There may be particular intelligent beings, guiding these motions in each case : or they may be the result of trains of mechanical dispositions, fixed beforehand by an intelligent appointment, and kept in action by a power at the centre. But, in either case, there must be intelligence. The minds of most men are fond of what they call a principle , and the appearance of sim¬ plicity, in accounting for phenomena. Yet this principle, this simplicity, resides merely in the name; which name, after all, comprises, perhaps, under it a diversified, multifarious, or progres¬ sive operation, distinguishable into parts. The power in organized bodies of producing bodies like themselves, is one of these principles. Give a philosopher this, and he can get on. But he does not reflect, what this mode of production, this principle (if such he choose to call it), re¬ quires ; how much it presupposes ; what an apparatus of instruments, some of which are strictly mechanical, is necessary to its success; what a train it includes of operations and changes, one succeeding another, one related to another, one ministering to another ; all ad¬ vancing, by intermediate, and frequently by sensible steps, to their ultimate result! Yet, because the whole of this complicated action is wrapped up in a single term generation , we are to set it down as an elementary principle; and to suppose, that when we have resolved the things which we see into this principle, we have sufficiently accounted for their origin, without the necessity of a designing intelligent Creator. The truth is, generation is not a principle, but a process. We might as well call the casting of metals a principle ; we might, so far as appears to me, as well call spinning and weaving principles : and then, referring the texture of cloths, the fabric of muslins and calicoes, the patterns of diapers and damasks, to these, as principles, pretend to dispense with intention, thought, and contrivance, on the part of the artist; or to dispense, indeed, with the necessity of any artist at all, either in the manufacturing of the article, or in the fabrication of the machinery by which the manufac¬ ture was carried on*. And, after all, how, or in what sense, is it true, that animals produce their like ? A but¬ terfly, with a proboscis instead of a mouth, with four wings and six legs, produces a hairy caterpillar, with jaws and teeth, and fourteen feet. A frog produces a tadpole. A black beetle, with gauze wings, and a crusty covering, produces a white, smooth, soft worm; an epliemeron fly, a cod-bait maggot. These, by a progress through different stages of life, and * Equivocal generation lias always been a favourite theory, a desirable fact to establish, with those who deny the existence of a Creator. Many observations, many ex¬ periments have been made, to shew that plants are produced without seeds—are created by some innate tendency of our earth; but these observations and experiments have been refuted as repeatedly. Girtanner endeavoured to support them (Ann. de Chimie, xxxiv. 35), but his con¬ clusions have been overturned by the researches of Mal¬ pighi, Sennebier, and others. When, at the last meeting of the British Association of Science, Mr. Cross stated the results of some curious experiments, made by applying to various substances the continued action of galvanism, the supporters of the theory of equivocal generation, ap¬ peared to have obtained a powerful ally. This intelligent experimenter obtained several crops,” to use his own phrase, of a previously unnoticed species of Acarus, or Mite, by galvanizing, for many days unceasingly, Fluor Spar, whilst moistened by the continual drippings of Sili- cated Potass. But his own philosophical conclusion, told by himself to the editor, is, that the eggs of this Acarus are in the Spar, which is the insect’s natural habitat; and that the action of the galvanism effects their incubation. This is no newly discovered power of galvanism or electri¬ city, for it was long since established by actual experi¬ ment, that hen’s eggs could be hatched by its agency as completely as by heat. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 159 action, and enjoyment (and in each state, provided with implements and organs appropriated to the temporary nature which they hear), arrive at last at the form and fashion of the parent animal. But all this is process, not principle; and proves, moreover, that the property of animated bodies, of producing their like, belongs to them, not as a primordial property, not by any blind necessity in the nature of things, but as the effect of economy, wisdom, and design; because the property itself assumes diversities, and submits to deviations dictated by intelligible utilities, and serving distinct purposes of animal happiness. The opinion, which would consider “ generation” as a principle in nature; and which would assign this principle as the cause, or endeavour to satisfy our minds with such a cause, of the existence of organized bodies ; is confuted, in my judgment, not only by every mark of contrivance discoverable in those bodies, for which it gives us no contriver, offers no account whatever; but also by the farther consideration, that tilings generated, possess a clear rela¬ tion to things not generated. If it were merely one part of a generated body bearing a rela¬ tion to another part of the same body; as the mouth of an animal to the throat, the throat to the stomach, the stomach to the intestines, those to the recruiting of the blood, and, by means of the blood, to the nourishment of the whole frame : or if it were only one generated body bearing a relation to another generated body; as the sexes of the same species to each other, animals of prey to their prey, herbivorous and granivorous animals to the plants or seeds upon which they feed ; it might be contended, that the whole of this correspondency was attributable to generation, the common origin from which these substances proceeded. But what shall we say to agreements which exist between things generated and things not generated ? Can it be doubted, was it ever doubted, but that the lungs of animals bear a relation to the air, as a permanently elastic fluid ? They act in and by it; they cannot act without it. Now, if generation produced the animal, it did not produce the air: yet their properties correspond. The eye is made for light, and light for the eye. The eye would be of no use without light, and light perhaps of little without eyes; yet one is produced by generation, the other not. The ear depends upon undulations of air. Here are two sets of motions ; first, of the pulses of the air ; secondly of the drum, bones, and nerves of the ear ; sets of motions bearing an evident reference to each other : yet the one, and the apparatus for the one, produced by the intervention of generation ; the other altogether independent of it. If it be said, that the air, the light, the elements, the world itself, is generated ; I answer, that I do not comprehend the proposition. If the term mean any thing similar to what it means when applied to plants or animals, the proposition is certainly without proof; and, I think, draws as near to absurdity, as any proposition can do, which does not include a con¬ tradiction in its terms. I am at a loss to conceive, how the formation of the world can he compared to the generation of an animal. If the term generation signify something quite different from what it signifies on ordinary occasions, it may, by the same latitude, signify any thing. In which case, a word or phrase taken from the language of Otaheite, would convey as much theory concerning the origin of the universe, as it does to talk of its being generated. We know a cause (intelligence) adequate to the appearances which we wish to account for: we have this cause continually producing similar appearances: yet, rejecting this cause, the sufficiency of which we know, and the action of which is constantly before our eyes, we are invited to resort to suppositions, destitute of a single fact for their support, and confirmed by no analogy with which we are acquainted. Were it necessary to inquire into the motives of men's opinions, I mean their motives separate from their arguments ; I should almost suspect, that, because the proof of a Deity drawn from the constitution of nature is not only popular but vulgar (which may arise from the cogency of the proof, and be indeed its highest recommendation), and because it is a species almost of puerility to take up with it; for these reasons, minds, which are habitually in search of invention and originality, feel a resistless inclination to strike off into other solutions and other expositions. The truth is, that many minds are not so indisposed to any thing which can be offered to them, as they are to the flatness of being content with common reasons: and, what is most to be lamented, minds conscious of superiority are the most liable to this repugnancy. The u suppositions” here alluded to, all agree in one character: they all endeavour to NATURAL THEOLOGY. J 00 dispense witli the necessity in nature, of a particular, personal intelligence; that is to say, with the exertion of an intending, contriving mind, in the structure and formation of the organized constitutions which the world contains. They would resolve all productions into unconscious energies, of a like kind, in that respect, with attraction, magnetism, electricity, Sec. ; without any thing farther. In this, the old system of atheism and the new agree. And I much doubt, whether the new schemes have advanced any thing upon the old, or done more than changed the terms of the nomenclature. For instance, I could never see the difference between the antiquated system of atoms, and Buffons organic molecules. This philosopher, having made a planet by knocking off from the sun a piece of melted glass, in consequence of the stroke of a comet; and having set it in motion, by the same stroke, both round its own axis and the sun; finds his next difficulty to be, how to bring plants and animals upon it. In order to solve this difficulty, we are to suppose the universe replenished with particles, endowed with life, but without organization or senses of their own; and endowed also with a tendency to marshal themselves into organized forms. The concourse of these particles, by virtue of this tendency, but without intelligence, will, or direction (for I do not find that any of these qualities are ascribed to them), has produced the living forms which we now see*. Very few of the conjectures, which philosophers hazard upon these subjects, have more of pretension in them, than the challenging you to shew the direct impossibility of the hypo¬ thesis. In the present example, there seemed to be a positive objection to the whole scheme upon the very face of it ; which was that, if the case were as here represented, new combinations ought to be perpetually taking place; new plants and animals, or organized bodies which were neither, ought to be starting up before our eyes every day. For this, however, our philosopher has an answer. Whilst so many forms of plants and animals are already in existence, and, consequently, so many u internal moulds,” as he calls them, are prepared and at hand, the organic particles run into these moulds, and are employed in sup¬ plying an accession of substance to them, as well for their growth, as for their propagation. By which means, things keep their ancient course. But, says the same philosopher, should any general loss or destruction of the present constitution of organized bodies take place, the particles, for want of u moulds” into which they might enter, would run into different com¬ binations, and replenish the waste with new species of organized substances. Is there any history to countenance this notion ? Is it known, that any destruction has been so repaired ? any desert thus repeoplcd ? So far as I remember, the only natural appearance mentioned by our author, by way of fact whereon to build his hypothesis, is the formation of worms in the intestines of animals, which is here ascribed to the coalition of superabundant organic particles, floating about in the first passages; and which have combined themselves into these simple animal forms, for want of internal moulds, or of vacancies in those moulds, into which they might be received. The thing referred to, is rather a species of facts, than a single fact; as some other cases may, with equal reason, be included under it. But to make it a fact at all, or, in any sort, * Paley has well described some of the wild reveries of the celebrated, talented, and vainglorious Buffon, who, very unfortunately fancying himself “ a genius equal to the majesty of nature,” made, as a natural consequence of this very laughable conclusion, many truly ludicrous mis¬ takes. The man who could have the vanity, as Buffon had, to class himself with Newton, Leibnitz, and Bacon, was not likely to be diffident of his own powers, to con¬ quer any gigantic difficulty : and thus Buffon very readily undertook to explain the most profound mysteries of ve¬ getable and animal life ; and this he thought he did very satisfactorily, by merely substituting mystic words for un¬ known phenomena. In this way he accounted for the origin of vegetables, animals, and planets, in a manner highly satisfactory to his admiring disciples, who regarded him as almost a Divinity : his end, however, demon¬ strated the vanity of all his knowledge, for be died in 1788, from the effects of a painful disease, the stone, which was a concretion, it seems, that he, who could ex¬ plain the origin of stones and earths, could neither under¬ stand nor remove. His vanity was, it appears, hereditary ; for his only son, who was guillotined, only five years after the death of his father, thought it quite sufficient to say to the crowd assembled around the scaffold, “ Citizens, my name is Buffon.” If science, however misdirected, could have had any charms in the eyes of infidel France, Buffon might have been right in his conjecture, that merely his name would have commanded some respect; but infidelity is, of all modes of belief, the most practically intolerant and illiberal. If anyone doubts the assertion, let him ask himself,—Why did the illustrious M. Lavoi¬ sier, the most celebrated of the French chemical philoso¬ phers, perish on the scaffold? ai:d what crimes had he committed sufficient to invoke the vengeance of the fero¬ cious infidel illuminati who then ruled in France? NATURAL THEOLOGY. 101 applicable to the question, we must begin with asserting an equivocal generation, contrary to analogy, and without necessity : contrary to an analogy, which accompanies us to the very limits of our knowledge or inquiries ; for wherever, either in plants or animals, we are able to examine the subject, we find procreation from a parent form : without necessity; for I apprehend that it is seldom difficult to suggest methods, by which the eggs, or spawn, or yet invisible rudiments of these vermin, may have obtained a passage into the cavities in which they are found*. Add to this, that their constancy to their species , which, I believe, is as regular in these as in the other vermes, decides the question against our philosopher, if, in truth, any question remained upon the subject. Lastly; these wonder-working instruments, these s< internal moulds,” what are they after all ? what, when examined, but a name without signification ; unintelligible, if not self¬ contradictory ; at the best, differing in nothing from the “ essential forms” of the Greek philosophy ? One short sentence of Buffon’s work exhibits his scheme as follows : u When this nutritious and prolific matter, which is diffused throughout all nature, passes through the internal mould of an animal or vegetable, and finds a proper matrix, or receptacle, it gives rise to an animal or vegetable of the same species.” Does any reader annex a meaning to the expression “ internal mould,” in this sentence ? Ought it then to be said, that, though we have little notion of an internal mould, we have not much more of a designing mind ? The very contrary of this assertion is the truth. When we speak of an artificer or an archi¬ tect, we talk of what is comprehensible to our understanding, and familiar to our experience. We use no other terms, than what refer us for their meaning to our consciousness and ob¬ servation ; what express the constant objects of both; whereas names like that we have mentioned, refer us to nothing; excite no idea; convey a sound to the ear, but I think do no more. Another system which has lately been brought forward, and with much ingenuity, is that of appetencies. The principle, and the short account of the theory, is this : Pieces of soft, ductile matter, being endued with propensities or appetencies for particular actions, would by continual endeavours, carried on through a long series of generations, work themselves gradually into suitable forms ; and at length acquire, though perhaps by obscure and almost imperceptible improvements, an organization fitted to the action which their respective pro¬ pensities led them to exert. A piece of animated matter, for example, that was endued with a propensity to fly, though ever so shapeless, though no other we will suppose than a round ball to begin with, would, in a course of ages, if not in a million of years, perhaps in a hun¬ dred millions of years (for our theorists, having eternity to dispose of, are never sparing in time), acquire wings. The same tendency to locomotion in an aquatic animal, or rather in an animated lump, which might happen to be surrounded by water, would end in the pro¬ duction of Jins: in a living substance, confined to the solid earth, would put out legs and feet; or, if it took a different turn, would break the body into ringlets, and conclude by crawling upon the ground. Although I have introduced the mention of this theory into this place, I am unwilling to give to it the name of an atheistic scheme, for two reasons: first, because, so far as I am able to understand it, the original propensities and the numberless varieties of them (so different, in this respect, from the laws of mechanical nature, which are few and simple), are, in the plan itself, attributed to the ordination and appointment of an intelligent and designing Creator: secondly, because, likewise, that large postulatum, which is all along assumed and presupposed, the faculty in living bodies of producing other bodies organized like themselves, seems to be referred to the same cause ; at least is not attempted to be accounted for by any other. In one important respect, however, the theory before us coincides with atheistic systems, viz. in that, in the formation of plants and animals, in the structure and use of their parts, it does away final causes. Instead of the parts of a plant or animal, or the particular structure of the parts, having been intended for the action or the use to which we see them applied; according to this theory, they have themselves grown out of that action, sprung * I trust I may be excused, for not citing, as another fact which is to confirm the hypothesis, a grave assertion of this writer, that the branches of trees upon which the stag feeds, break out again in his horns. Such ybefs nieiit no discussion. M 1G2 NATURAL THEOLOGY. from that use. The theory therefore dispenses with that which we insist upon, the necessity, in each particular case, of an intelligent, designing mind, for the contriving and determining of the forms which organized bodies hear. Give our philosopher these appetencies; give him a portion of living irritable matter (a nerve, or the clipping of a nerve), to work upon: give also to his incipient or progressive forms, the power, in every stage of their alteration, of propagating their like; and, if he is to be believed, he could replenish the world with all the vegetable and animal productions which we at present see in it. The scheme under consideration is open to the same objection with other conjectures of a similar tendency, viz. a total defect of evidence. No changes, like those which the theory requires, have ever been observed. All the changes in Ovid’s Metamorphoses might have been effected by these appetencies, if the theory were true; yet not an example, nor the pretence of an example, is offered of a single change being known to have taken place. Nor is the order of generation obedient to the principle upon which this theory is built. The mamma? # of the male have not vanished by inusitation; nee curtorum , per multa scecula , Judceorum propagini deest proeputium. It is easy to say, and it has been said, that the al¬ terative process is too slow to be perceived; that it has been carried on through tracts of immeasurable time; and that the present order of things is the result of a gradation, of which no human records can trace the steps. It is easy to say this; and yet it is still true, that the hypothesis remains destitute of evidence. The analogies which have been alleged, are of the following kind: The bunch of a camel, is said to be no other than the effect of carrying burdens; a service in which the species has been employed from the most ancient times of the world. The first race, by the daily load¬ ing of the back, would probably find a small grumous tumour to be formed in the flesh of that part. The next progeny would bring this tumour into the world with them. The life to which they were destined, would increase it. The cause which first generated the tuber¬ cle being continued, it would go on, through every succession, to augment its size, till it attained the form and the bulk under which it now appears. This may serve for one in¬ stance : another, and that also of the passive sort, is taken from certain species of birds. Birds of the crayie kind, as the crane itself, the heron, bittern, stork, have, in general, their thighs bare of feathers. This privation is accounted for from the habit of wading in water, and from the effect of that element to check the growth of feathers upon these parts; in consequence of which, the health and vegetation of the feathers declined through each gene¬ ration of the animal; the tender down, exposed to cold and wetness, became weak, and thin, and rare, till the deterioration ended in the result which we see, of absolute nakedness. I will mention a third instance, because it is drawn from an active habit, as the two last were from passive habits; and that is the pouch of the pelican. The description which na¬ turalists give of this organ, is as follows: “ From the lower edges of the under chap, hangs a bag, reaching from the whole length of the bill to the neck, which is said to be capable of containing fifteen quarts of water. This bag, the bird has a power of wrinkling up into the hollow of the under chap. When the bag is empty, it is not seen: but when.the bird has fished with success, it is incredible to what an extent it is often dilated. The first thing the pelican does in fishing, is to fill the bag ; and then it returns to digest its burden at leisure. The bird preys upon the large fishes, and hides them by dozens in its pouch. When the bill is opened to its widest extent, a person may run his head into the bird’s mouth, and conceal it in this monstrous pouch, thus adapted for very singular purposes f.” Now this extraordinary conformation is nothing more, say our philosophers, than the result of habit; not of the habit or effort of a single pelican, or of a single race of pelicans, but of a habit perpetuated through a long series of generations. The pelican soon found the conveniency of reserving in its mouth, when its appetite was glutted, the remainder of its prey, which is fish. The fulness produced by this attempt, of course stretched the skin which lies between the under chaps, as being the most yielding part of the mouth. Every distention increased the cavity. * I confess myself totally at a loss to guess at the rea- (Phil. Transact. 1799, p. 2), viz. that the mamma) of son, either final or efficient, for this part of the animal the foetus may he formed, before the sex is determined, frame: unless there be some foundation for an opinion, of -j- Goldsmith, vol. vi. p. 52. which I draw the hint from a paper of Mr. Everard Home NATURAL THEOLOGY. ] G.°> The original bird, and many generations which succeeded him, might find difficulty enough in making the pouch answer this, purpose : but future pelicans, entering upon life with a pouch derived from their progenitors, of considerable capacity, would more readily accelerate its advance to perfection, by frequently pressing down the sack with the weight of fish which it might now be made to contain. These, or of this kind, are the analogies relied upon. Now, in the first place, the instances themselves are unauthenticated by testimony ; and, in theory, to say the least of them, open to great objections. Who ever read of camels without bunches, or with bunches less than those with which they are at present usually formed ? A bunch, not unlike the camel’s, is found between the shoulders of the buffalo ; of the origin of which it is impossible to give the account which is here given. In the second example : Why should the application of water, which appears to promote and thicken the growth of feathers upon the bodies and breasts of geese, and swans, and other water-fowls, have divested of this covering the thighs of cranes ? The third instance, which appears to me as plausible as any that can be produced, has this against it, that it is a singularity restricted to the species ; whereas, if it had its commence¬ ment in the cause and manner which have been assigned, the like conformation might be expected to take place in other birds, which fed upon fish. How comes it to pass, that the pelican alone was the inventress, and her descendants the only inheritors, of this curious resource ? But it is the less necessary to controvert the instances themselves, as it is a straining of analogy beyond all limits of reason and credibility, to assert that birds, and beasts, and fish, with all their variety and complexity of organization, have been brought into their forms, and distinguished into their several kinds and natures, by the same process (even if that process could be demonstrated, or had it ever been actually noticed) as might seem to serve for the gradual generation of a camel's bunch, or a pelican’s pouch. The solution, when applied to the works of nature generally , is contradicted by many of the phenomena, and totally inadequate to others. The ligaments or strictures, by which the tendons are tied down at the angles of the joints, could, by no possibility, be formed by the motion or exercise of the tendons themselves; by any appetency exciting these parts into action ; or by any tendency arising therefrom. The tendency is all the other way ; the conatus in constant opposition to them. Length of time does not help the case at all, but the reverse. The valves also in the blood-vessels, could never be formed in the manner which our theorist proposes. The blood, in its right and natural course, has no tendency to form them. When obstructed or refluent, it has the contrary. These parts could not grow out of their use, though they had eternity to grow in. The senses of animals appear to me altogether incapable of receiving the explanation of their origin which this theory affords. Including under the word 44 sense” the organ and the perception, we have no account of either. How will our philosopher get at vision , or make an eye ? How should the blind animal affect sight, of which blind animals, we know, have neither conception nor desire ? Affecting it, by what operation of its will, by what endeavour to see, could it so determine the fluids of its body, as to inchoate the formation of an eye ? or suppose the eye formed, would the perception follow ? The same of the other senses. And this objection holds its force, ascribe what you will to the hand of time, to the power of habit, to changes too slow to be observed by man, or brought within any compari¬ son which he is able to make of past things with the present; concede what you please to these arbitrary and unattested suppositions, how will they help you ? Here is no inception. No laws, no course, no powers of nature which prevail at present, nor any analogous to these, could give commencement to a new sense. And it is in vain to inquire how that might proceed, which could never begin. I think the senses to be the most inconsistent with the hypothesis before us, of any part of the animal frame. But other parts are sufficiently so. The solution does not apply to the parts of animals, which have little in them of motion. If we could suppose joints and muscles to be gradually formed by action and exercise, what action or exercise could form a skull, or fill it with brains? No effort of the animal could determine the clothing of its m 2 164 NATURAL THEOLOGY. skin. Wliat conatus could give prickles to the porcupine or hedgehog, or to the sheep its fleece ? In the last place ; What do these appetencies mean when applied to plants ? I am not able to give a signification to the term, which can be transferred from animals to plants; or which is common to both. Yet a no less successful organization is found in plants, than what obtains in animals. A solution is wanted for one, as well as the other. Upon the whole; after all the schemes and struggles of a reluctant philosophy, the neces¬ sary resort is to a Deity. The marks of design are too strong to be gotten over. Design must have had a designer. That designer must have been a person. That person is God. CHAPTER XXIV. OF THE NATURAL ATTRIBUTES OF THE DEITY. It is an immense conclusion, that there is a God ; a perceiving, intelligent, designing Being; at the head of creation, and from whose will it proceeded. The attributes of such a Being, suppose his reality to be proved, must be adequate to the magnitude, extent, and multiplicity of his operations : which are not only vast beyond comparison with those per¬ formed by any other power; but so far as respects our conceptions of them, infinite, because they are unlimited on all sides. Yet the contemplation of a nature so exalted, however surely we arrive at the proof of its existence, overwhelms our faculties. The mind feels its powers sink under the subject. One consequence of which is, that from painful abstraction the thoughts seek relief in sen¬ sible images. Whence may be deduced the ancient, and almost universal, propensity to idolatrous substitutions. They are the resources of a labouring imagination. False religions usually fall in with the natural propensity ; true religions, or such as have derived themselves from the true, resist it. It is one of the advantages of the revelations which we acknowledge, that, whilst they reject idolatry with its many pernicious accompaniments, they introduce the Deity to human apprehension, under an idea more personal, more determinate, more within its compass, than the theology of nature can do. And this they do by representing him exclusively under the relation in which he stands to oursel ves; and, for the most part, under some precise charac¬ ter, resulting from that relation, or from the history of his providences: which method suits the span of our intellects much better than the universality which enters into the idea of God, as deduced from the views of nature. When, therefore, these representations are well founded in point of authority (for all depends upon that), they afford a condescension to the state of our faculties, of which, those who have most reflected on the subject, will be the first to acknowledge the want and the value. Nevertheless, if we be careful to imitate the documents of our religion, by confining our explanations to what concerns ourselves, and do not affect more precision in our ideas than the subject allows of, the several terms which are applied to denote the attributes of the Deity, may be made, even in natural religion, to bear a sense consistent with truth and rea¬ son, and not surpassing our comprehension. These terms are ; omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, eternity, self-existence, neces¬ sary existence, spirituality. “ Omnipotence,” “ omniscience,” “ infinite” power, “ infinite” knowledge, are superla¬ tives ; expressing our conception of these attributes in the strongest and most elevated terms which language supplies. We ascribe power to the Deity under the name of “ omnipotence,” the strict and correct conclusion being, that a power which could create such a world as this is, must be, beyond all comparison, greater than any which we experience in ourselves, than NATURAL THEOLOGY. 105 any which we observe in other visible agents ; greater also than any which we can want, for our individual protection and preservation, in the being upon whom we depend. It is a power, likewise, to which we are not authorized, by our observation or knowledge, to assign any limits of space or duration *. Very much of the same sort of remark is applicable to the term u omniscience,” infinite knowledge, or infinite wisdom. In strictness of language, there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom; wisdom always supposing action, and action directed by it. With respect to the first, viz. knowledge , the Creator must know, intimately, the constitution and properties of the things which he created : which seems also to imply a foreknowledge of their action upon one another, and of their changes; at least, so far as the same result from trains of physical and necessary causes. His omniscience also, as far as respects things pre¬ sent, is deducible from his nature, as an intelligent being, joined with the extent, or rather the universality, of his operations. Where he acts, he is; and where he is, he perceives. The wisdom of the Deity, as testified in the works of creation, surpasses all idea we have of wisdom, drawn from the highest intellectual operations of the highest class of intelligent beings with whom we are acquainted; and, which is of the chief importance to us, whatever be its compass or extent, which it is evidently impossible that we should be able to deter¬ mine, it must be adequate to the conduct of that order of things under which we live. And this is enough. It is of very inferior consequence, by what terms we express our no¬ tion, or rather our admiration, of this attribute. The terms, which the piety and the usage of language have rendered habitual to us, may be as proper as any other. We can trace this attribute much beyond what is necessary for any conclusion to which we have occasion to apply it. The degree of knowledge and power requisite for the formation of created na¬ ture, cannot, with respect to us, be distinguished from infinite. The divine “ omnipresence” stands, in natural theology, upon this foundation :—in every part and place of the universe with which we are acquainted, we perceive the exertion of a power, which we believe, mediately or immediately, to proceed from the Deity. For in¬ stance ; in what part or point of space, that has ever been explored, do we not discover attraction ? In what regions do we not find light ? In what accessible portion of our globe do we not meet with gravity, magnetism, electricity ; together with the properties also and powers of organized substances, of vegetable or of animated nature ? Nay, farther, we may ask, what kingdom is there of nature, what corner of space, in which there is any thing that can be examined by us, where we do not fall upon contrivance and design ? The only reflec¬ tion perhaps which arises in our minds from this view of the world around us is, that the * No consideration brings the power, the almighty power of God, so impressively, so sensibly, so awfully to the mind of the editor, as some of the facts made known to us by astronomy. The things of earth are demonstra¬ tive of knowledge, goodness, and power ; but it is power in details—power developed so as to strike the mind in¬ significantly, compared with that exhibition of it in the sidereal systems of endless space. There we see thousands of worlds, all upheld by the same omnipotence as sustains and directs our own. The faculties are benumbed in the effort to comprehend their interminable succession : a series of worlds extending for millions of miles, we may approach in idea; but a series, as has been well said, whose centre is every where, and its boundary no where, is beyond human conception. If, observes an eloquent writer, if the whole planetary system was lighted up into a globe of fire, it would exceed, by many millions of times, the magnitude of this world, and yet would only appear a small lucid point from the nearest of the fixed stars. If a body was projected from the sun with the ve¬ locity of a cannon-ball, it would take hundreds of thou¬ sands of years before it described that mighty interval which separates the nearest of the fixed stars from our sun and from our system. If this earth, which moves at more than the inconceivable velocity of a million and a half of miles a day, was to be hurried from its orbit, and to take the same rapid flight over this immense tract, it would not have arrived at the termination of its journey, after taking all the time which has elapsed since the crea¬ tion of the world. These are great numbers, and great calculations ; and the mind feels its own impotency in attempting to grasp them. We can state them in words. We can exhibit them in figures. We can demonstrate them by the powers of a most rigid and infallible geome¬ try. But no human fancy can summon up a lively or an adequate conception— can roam, in its ideal flight, over this immeasurable largeness—can take in this mighty space, in all its grandeur, and in all its immensity—can sweep the outer boundaries of such a creation, or lift itself up to the majesty of that great and invisible arm, on which all is suspended. (Dr. Chalmers’s Astronomical Discourses.) The wonders of this endless system are not yet all told. Each of those stars is probably the centre of a system as vast and as splendid as the one we inhabit. Worlds roll in those distant regions, and these worlds must be the mansions of life and intelligence. In yon gilded canopy of heaven, we see the broad aspect of the universe, where each shining point presents us with a sun, and each sun with a system of worlds—where the Divinity reigns in all the grandeur of his attributes—where he peo¬ ples immensity with his wonders; and travels in the greatness of his strength through the dominions of one vast and unlimited monarchy. i6a NATURAL THEOLOGY. laws of nature every where prevail; that they are uniform and universal. But what do we mean by the laws of nature, or by any law ? Effects are produced by power, not by laws. A law cannot execute itself. A law refers us to an agent. Now an agency so general, as that we cannot discover its absence, or assign the place in which some effect of its continued energy is not found, may, in popular language at least, and, perhaps, without much deviation from philosophical strictness, be called universal : and, with not quite the same, but with no inconsiderable propriety, the person, or Being, in whom that power resides, or from whom it was derived, may be taken to be omnipresent. He who upholds all things by his power, may be said to be every where present. This is called a virtual presence. There is also what metaphysicians denominate an essen¬ tial ubiquity: and which idea the language of Scripture seems to favour: but the former, I think, goes as far as natural theology carries us. “ Eternity” is a negative idea, clothed with a positive name. It supposes, in that to which it is applied, a present existence ; and is the negation of a beginning or an end of that existence. As applied to the Deity, it has not been controverted by those who acknowledge a Deity at all. Most assuredly, there never was a time in which nothing existed, because that condition must have continued. The universal blank must have remained; nothing could rise up out of it ; nothing could ever have existed since; nothing could exist now. In strictness, however, we have no concern with duration prior to that of the visible world. Upon this article therefore of theology, it is sufficient to know, that the contriver necessarily existed before the contrivance. “ Self-existence” is another negative idea, viz. the negation of a preceding cause, as of a progenitor, a maker, an author, a creator. “ Necessary existence” means demonstrable existence. u Spirituality” expresses an idea, made up of a negative part, and of a positive part. The negative part consists in the exclusion of some of the known properties of matter, especially of solidity, of the vis inertia ?, and of gravitation. The positive part comprises perception, thought, will, power, action , by which last term is meant, the origination of motion; the quality, perhaps, in which resides the essential superiority of spirit over matter, “ which can¬ not move, unless it be moved; and cannot but move, when impelled by another.” * I apprehend that there can be no difficulty in applying to the Deity both parts of this idea. CHAPTER XXV. THE UNITY OF THE DEITY. Of the “ Unity of the Deity,” the proof is, the uniformity of plan observable in the uni¬ verse. The universe itself is a system; each part either depending upon other parts, or being connected with other parts by some common law of motion, or by the presence of some common substance. One principle of gravitation causes a stone to drop towards the earth, and the moon to wheel round it. One law of attraction carries all the different planets about the sun. This philosophers demonstrate. There are also other points of agreement amongst them, which may be considered as marks of the identity of their origin, and of their intelli¬ gent Author. In all are found the conveniency and stability derived from gravitation. They all experience vicissitudes of days and nights, and changes of season. They all, at least Jupiter, Mars, and Venus, have the same advantages from their atmospheres as we have. In all the planets, the axes of rotation are permanent. Nothing is more probable than that the same attracting influence, acting according to the same rule, reaches to the fixed stars : but, if this be only probable, another thing is certain, viz. that the same element of light does. The * Bishop Wilkins’s Principles of Natural Religion, p. 106. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 167 light from a fixed star affects our eyes in the same manner, is refracted and reflected accord¬ ing to the same laws, as the light of a candle. The velocity of the light of the fixed stars is also the same as the velocity of the light of the sun, reflected from the satellites of Jupiter. The heat of the sun, in kind, differs nothing from the heat of a coal fire. In our own globe the case is clearer. New countries are continually discovered, but the old laws of nature arc always found in them : new plants, perhaps, or animals, but always in com¬ pany with plants and animals which we already know; and always possessing many of the same general properties. We never get amongst such original, or totally different, modes of existence, as to indicate, that we are come into the province of a different Creator, or under the direction of a different will. In truth, the same order of things attends us, wherever we go. The elements act upon one another, electricity operates, the tides rise and fall, the magnetic needle elects its position, in one region of the earth and sea, as well as in another. One atmosphere invests all parts of the globe, and connects all : one sun illumi¬ nates, one moon exerts its specific attractions upon all parts. If there be a variety in natural effects, as e. g. in the tides of different seas, that very variety is the result of the same cause, acting under different circumstances. In many cases this is proved ; in all, is probable. The inspection and comparison of living forms, add to this argument examples without number. Of all large terrestrial animals, the structure is very much alike; their senses nearly the same ; their natural functions and passions nearly the same ; their viscera nearly the same, both in substance, shape, and office: digestion, nutrition, circulation, secretion, go on, in a similar manner, in all: the great circulating fluid is the same; for, I think, no difference has been discovered in the properties of blood , from whatever animal it be drawn. The experiment of transfusion proves that the blood of one animal will serve for another. The skeletons also of the larger terrestrial animals, shew particular varieties, but still under a great general affinity. The resemblance is somewhat less, yet sufficiently evident, between quadrupeds and birds. They are alike in five respects, for one in which they differ. In fish , which belong to another department, as it were, of nature, the points of comparison become fewer. But we never lose sight of our analogy, e. g. we still meet with a stomach, a liver, a spine ; with bile, and blood; with teeth; with eyes (which eyes are only slightly varied from our own, and which variation, in truth, demonstrates, not an interruption, but a continuance of the same exquisite plan; for it is the adaptation of the organ to the ele¬ ment, viz. to the different refraction of light passing into the eye out of a denser medium). The provinces, also, themselves of water and earth, are connected by the species of animals which inhabit both ; and also by a large tribe of aquatic animals, which closely resemble the terrestrial in their internal structure; I mean the cetaceous tribe, which have hot blood, respiring lungs, bowels, and other essential parts, like those of land animals. The similitude, surely, bespeaks the same creation, and the same Creator. Insects and shellfish appear to me to differ from other classes of animals the most widely of any. Yet even here, beside many points of particular resemblance, there exists a general relation of a peculiar kind. It is the relation of inversion; the law of contrariety; namely, that, whereas, in other animals, the bones, to which the muscles are attached, lie within the body; in insects and shell-fish, they lie on the outside of it. The shell of a lobster performs to the animal the office of a bone , by furnishing to the tendons that fixed basis or immoveable fulcrum, without which, mechanically, they could not act. The crust of an insect is its shell, and answers the like purpose. The shell also of an oyster stands in the place of a bone ; the bases of the muscles being fixed to it, in the same manner as, in other animals, they are fixed to the bones. All which (under wonderful varieties, indeed, and adaptations ol form) confesses an imitation, a remembrance, a carrying on, of the same plan. The observations here made, are equally applicable to plants; but, I think, unnecessary to be pursued. It is a very striking circumstance, and alone sufficient to prove all which we contend for, that, in this part likewise of organized nature, we perceive a continuation of the sexual system. Certain however it is, that the whole argument for the divine unity, goes no farther than to a unity of counsel. natural theology. 1(>8 It may likewise be acknowledged, that no arguments which we are in possession of, exclude the ministry of subordinate agents. If such there be, they act under a presiding, a conti oi¬ ling will; because they act according to certain general restrictions, by certain common rules, and, as it should seem, upon a general plan: but still such agents, and different ranks, and classes, and degrees of them, may be employed. CHAPTER XXVI. OF THE GOODNESS OF THE DEITY. The proof of the divine goodness rests upon two propositions : each, as we contend, capa¬ ble of being made out by observations drawn from the appearances of nature. The first is, “ that in a vast plurality of instances in which contrivance is perceived, the design of the contrivance is beneficial .” The second, “that the Deity has superadded ’pleasure to animal sensations, beyond what was necessary for any other purpose, or when the purpose, so far as it was necessary, might have been effected by the operation of pain.” First, “ in a vast plurality of instances in which contrivance is perceived, the design of the contrivance is beneficial.” No productions of nature display contrivance so manifestly as the parts of animals; and the parts of animals have all of them, I believe, a real, and, with very few exceptions, all of them a known and intelligible, subserviency to the use of the animal. Now, when the mul¬ titude of animals is considered, the number of parts in each, their figure and fitness, the faculties depending upon them, the variety of species, the complexity of structure, the suc¬ cess, in so many cases, and felicity of the result, we can never reflect, without the profoundest adoration, upon the character of that Being from whom all these things have proceeded : we cannot help acknowledging, what an exertion of benevolence creation was; of a benevolence how minute in its care, how vast in its comprehension ! When we appeal to the parts and faculties of animals and to the limbs and senses of ani¬ mals in particular, we state, I conceive, the proper medium of proof for the conclusion which we wish to establish. I will not say, that the insensible parts of nature are made solely for the sensitive parts : but this 1 say, that, when we consider the benevolence of the Deity, we can only consider it in relation to sensitive being. Without this reference, or referred to any thing else, the attribute has no object; the term has no meaning. Dead matter is nothing. The parts, therefore, especially the limbs and senses, of animals, although they constitute, in mass and quantity, a small portion of the material creation, yet, since they alone are instruments of perception, they compose what may be called, the whole of visible nature, estimated with a view to the disposition of its Author. Consequently, it is in these that we are to seek his cha¬ racter. It is by these that we are to prove, that the world was made with a benevolent design. Nor is the design abortive 55 '. It is a happy world after all. The air, the earth, the water, * “ Nor is the design abortive.” Paley thus thought— thus expressed himself, at the close of his days on earth, when a complication of acute disorders was hurrying him to his grave; this chapter was, in fact, one of the last of his writings He was consistent even to the end, and never once was led to doubt the goodness of Him, who was about to summon him to his final reward. His observation, to a friend, about this period, that if there had been an error in the universal belief, he must have found it out, betrayed his still unwearied anxiety for the knowledge of truth, and the sincerity of his re¬ searches. His last—his dying chapters, moreover, bear indirect and unanswerable testimony to the fact, so often witnessed in others, that the laws and materials which govern the body , are of a widely different nature from those which constitute the mind■ His body was wasted, its strength had failed, its energies had been long departing; but his mind seemed to improve by time, was more ener¬ getic, more brilliant, as his other powers decayed ; and when he was so weak, as with difficulty to bear the slightest motion, or necessary sustenance, at such a period was he writing the elegant concluding passages of this his last, per¬ haps his most splendid work. The mental spirit was now totally unclouded ; more clear in its conclusions, more eloquent, more happy than ever ; seeming to exult, even joyously, at its approaching departure; and yet able to de¬ monstrate, by its own example, that though the body was perishing, and fast approaching its final exit, yet, that the spirit was made of other, of far more enduring materials than that poor diseased frame it had so long and so brilli¬ antly animated. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 169 teem with delighted existence. In a spring noon, or a summer evening, on whichever side I turn my eyes, myriads of happy beings crowd upon my view. “ The insect youth are on the wing/’ Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air. Their sportive mo¬ tions, their Avanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their continual change of place without use or purpose, testify their joy, and the exultation which they feel in their lately discovered faculties. A bee amongst the flowers in spring, is one of the most cheerful objects that can be looked upon. Its life appears to be all enjoyment; so busy, so pleased ; yet it is only a specimen of insect life, with which, by reason, of the animal being half domesticated, we hap¬ pen to be better acquainted than we are with that of others. The whole icinged insect tribe, it is probable, are equally intent upon their proper employments, and under every variety of constitution, gratified, and perhaps equally gratified, by the offices which the Author of their nature has assigned to them. But the atmosphere is not the only scene of enjoyment for the insect race. Plants are covered with aphides, greedily sucking their juices, and constantly, as it should seem, in the act of sucking. It cannot be doubted but that this is a state of intense gra¬ tification. What else should fix them so close to their operation, and so long ? Other species are running about , with an alacrity in their motions, which carries with it every mark of pleasure. Large patches of ground are sometimes half covered with these brisk and sprightly natures. If we look to what the icaters produce, shoals of the fry of fish frequent the mar¬ gins of rivers, of lakes, and of the sea itself. These are so happy, that they know not what to do with themselves. Their attitudes, their vivacity, their leaps out of the water, their frolics in it (which I have noticed a thousand times Avith equal attention and amusement), all conduce to shew their excess of spirits, and are simply the effects of that excess. Walking by the sea-side, in a calm evening, upon a sandy shore, and with an ebbing tide, I have fre¬ quently remarked the appearance of a dark cloud, or, rather, very thick mist, hanging OA r er the edge of the water, to the height, perhaps, of half a yard, and of the breadth of two or three yards, stretching along the coast as far as the eye could reach, and always retiring with the water. When this cloud came to be examined, it proved to be nothing else than so much space, filled with young shrimps , in the act of bounding into the air from the shallow margin of the water, or from the Avet sand. If any motion of a mute animal could express delight, it was this : if they had meant to make signs of their happiness, they could not have done it more intelligibly. Suppose, then, what I have no doubt of, each individual of this number to be in a state of positive enjoyment; AAdiat a sum, collectively, of gratification and pleasure have we here before our \ T iew ! The young of all animals appear to me to receive pleasure simply from the exercise of their limbs and bodily faculties, without reference to any end to be attained, or any use to be an¬ swered, by the exertion. A child, without knowing any thing of the use of language, is in a high degree delighted with being able to speak. Its incessant repetition of a few articu¬ late sounds, or, perhaps, of the single Avord which it has learnt to pronounce, proves this point clearly. Nor is it less pleased with its first successful endeavours to walk, or rather to run (which precedes walking), although entirely ignorant of the importance of the attainment to its future life, and even without applying it to any present purpose. A child is delighted with speaking, without having any thing to say, and with walking, without knowing where to go. And, prior to both these, I am disposed to believe, that the waking hours of infancy are agreeably taken up with the exercise of vision, or perhaps, more properly speaking, with learning to see. But it is not for youth alone that the great Parent of creation hath provided. Happiness is found with the purring cat, no less than with the playful kitten; in the arm¬ chair of dozing age, as well as in either the sprightliness of the dance, or the animation of the chase. To novelty, to acuteness of sensation, to hope, to ardour of pursuit, succeeds, what is, in no inconsiderable degree, an equivalent for them all, “perception of ease/’ Herein is the exact difference between the young and the old. The young are not happy, but when enjoying pleasure ; the old are happy when free from pain. And this constitution suits with the degrees of animal power which they respectively possess. The vigour of youth was to be stimulated to action by impatience of rest; Avhilst to the imbecility ot age, quietness and repose become positive gratifications. In one important respect the advantage is with the old. A state of ease is, generally speaking, more attainable than a state ol pleasure. A 170 NATURAL THEOLOGY. constitution, therefore, which can enjoy ease, is preferable to that which can taste only plea¬ sure. This same perception of ease oftentimes renders old age a condition of great comfort; especially when riding at its anchor after a busy or tempestuous life. It is well described by Rousseau, to be the interval of repose and enjoyment, between the hurry and the end of life. How far the same cause extends to other animal natures, cannot be judged of with certainty. The appearance of satisfaction, with which most animals, as their activity subsides, seek and enjoy rest, affords reason to believe, that this source of gratification is appointed to advanced life, under all, or most, of its various forms. In the species with which we are best acquainted, namely, our own, I am far, even as an observer of human life, from thinking that youth is its happiest season, much less the only happy one: as a Christian, I am willing to believe that there is a great deal of truth in the following representation given by a very pious writer, as well as excellent man :* “To the intelligent and virtuous, old age presents a scene of tranquil enjoyments, of obedient appetite, of well-regulated affections, of maturity in knowledge, and of calm preparation for immortality. In this serene and dignified state, placed as it were on the confines of two worlds, the mind of a good man reviews what is past with the compla¬ cency of an approving conscience ; and looks forward, with humble confidence in the mercy of God, and with devout aspirations towards his eternal and ever-increasing favour.” What is seen in different stages of the same life, is still more exemplified in the lives of different animals. Animal enjoyments are infinitely diversified. The modes of life, to which the organization of different animals respectively determines them, are not only of various but of opposite kinds. Y r et each is happy in its own. For instance ; animals of prey live much alone ; animals of a milder constitution in society. Yet the herring, which lives in shoals, and the sheep, which lives in flocks, are not more happy in a crowd, or more contented amongst their companions, than is the pike, or the lion, with the deep solitudes of the pool, or the forest. But it will be said, that the instances which we have here brought forward, whether of vi¬ vacity or repose, or of apparent enjoyment derived from either, are picked and favourable instances. We answer, that they are instances, nevertheless, which comprise large pro¬ vinces of sensitive existence ; that every case which we have described is the case of millions. At this moment, in every given moment of time, how many myriads of animals are eating their food, gratifying their appetites, ruminating in their holes, accomplishing their wishes, pursuing their pleasures, taking their pastimes ! In each individual, how many things must go right for it to be at ease: yet how large a proportion out of every species is so in every assignable instant! Secondly, we contend, in the terms of our original proposition, that throughout the whole of life, as it is diffused in nature, and as far as we are acquainted with it, looking to the average of sensations, the plurality and the preponderancy is in favour of happiness by a vast excess. In our own species, in which perhaps the assertion may be more questionable than in any other, the prepollency of good over evil, of health, for example, and ease, over pain and distress, is evinced by the very notice which calamities excite. What inquiries does the sickness of our friends produce! what conversation their misfortunes ! This shews that the common course of things is in favour of happiness; that happiness is the rule, misery the exception. Were the order reversed, our attention would be called to examples of health and competency, instead of disease and want. One great cause of our insensibility to the goodness of the Creator, is the very extensiveness of his bounty. We prize but little what we share only in common with the rest, or with the generality of our species. When we hear of blessings, we think forthwith of successes, of prosperous fortunes, of honours, riches, preferments, i. e. of those advantages and superiorities over others, which we happen either to possess, or to be in pursuit of, or to covet. The com¬ mon benefits of our nature entirely escape us. Yet these are the great things. These consti¬ tute what most properly ought to be accounted blessings of Providence; what alone, if we might so speak, are worthy of its care. Nightly rest and daily bread, the ordinary use of our limbs, and senses, and understandings, are gifts which admit of no comparison with any other. Yet, because almost every man we meet with possesses these, we leave them out of * Father’s Instructions; by Dr. Pereival of Manchester, [>. 317. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 171 our enumeration. They raise no sentiment; they move no gratitude. Now, herein is our judgment perverted by our selfishness. A blessing ought in truth to be the more satisfac¬ tory, the bounty at least of the donor is rendered more conspicuous, by its very diffusion, its commonness, its cheapness : by its falling to the lot, and forming the happiness, of the great bulk and body of our species, as well as of ourselves. Nay even when we do not possess it, it ought to be matter of thankfulness that others do. But we have a different way of think¬ ing. We court distinction. That is not the worst: we see nothing but what has distinction to recommend it. This necessarily contracts our views of the Creator’s beneficence within a narrow compass ; and most unjustly. It is in those things which are so common as to be no distinction, that the amplitude of the Divine benignity is perceived. But pain, no doubt, and privations exist, in numerous instances, and to a degree, which, collectively, would be very great, if they were compared with any other thing than with the mass of animal fruition. For the application, therefore, of our proposition to that mixed state of things which these exceptions induce, two rules are necessary, and both, I think, just and fair rules. One is, that we regard those effects alone which are accompanied with proofs of intention : The other, that when we cannot resolve all appearances into benevolence of de¬ sign, we make the few give place to the many; the little to the great; that we take our judgment from a large and decided preponderancy, if there be one. I crave leave to transcribe into this place, what I have said upon this subject in my Moral Philosophy : — 44 When God created the human species, either he wished their happiness, or he wished their misery ; or he was indifferent and unconcerned about either. 44 If he had wished our misery, he might have made sure of his purpose, by forming our senses to be so many sores and pains to us, as they are now instruments of gratification and enjoyment : or by placing us amidst objects, so ill suited to our perceptions, as to have con¬ tinually offended us, instead of ministering to our refreshment and delight. He might have made, for example, every thing we tasted, bitter ; every thing we saw, loathsome; every thing we touched, a sting ; every smell, a stench ; and every sound, a discord. 44 If he had been indifferent about our happiness or misery, we must impute to our good fortune (as all design by this supposition is excluded) both the capacity of our senses to re¬ ceive pleasure, and the supply of external objects fitted to produce it. 44 But either of these, and still more both of them, being too much to be attributed to ac¬ cident, nothing remains but the first supposition, that God, when he created the human species, wished their happiness; and made for them the provision which he has made, with that view and for that purpose. 44 The same argument may be proposed in different terms; thus: contrivance proves design: and the predominant tendency of the contrivance indicates the disposition of the designer. The world abounds with contrivances: and all the contrivances which we are acquainted with, are directed to beneficial purposes. Evil, no doubt, exists; but is never, that we can perceive, the object of contrivance. Teeth are contrived to eat, not to ache; their aching now and then is incidental to the contrivance, perhaps inseparable from it; or even, if you will, let it be called a defect in the contrivance : but it is not the object of it. This is a distinction which well deserves to be attended to. In describing implements of husbandry, you would hardly say of the sickle, that it is made to cut the reaper’s hand : though from the construction of the instrument, and the manner of using it, this mischief often follows. But if you had occasion to describe instruments of torture, or execution : this engine, you would say, is to extend the sinews; this to dislocate the joints; this to break the bones; this to scorch the soles of the feet. Here, pain and misery are the very objects of the contrivance. Now, nothing of this sort is to be found in the works of nature. We never discover a train of contrivance to bring about an evil purpose. No anatomist ever discovered a system of organization calculated to produce pain and disease; or, in explaining the parts of the human body, ever said, This is to irritate; this to inflame; this duct is to convey the gravel to the kidneys ; this gland to secrete the humour which forms the gout; if by chance he come at a part of which he knows not the use, the most he can say is, that it is useless; no one ever suspects that it is put there to incommode, to annoy, or to torment. 172 NATURAL THEOLOGY. The two cases which appear to me to have the most of difficulty in them, as forming the most of the appearance of exception to the representation here given, are those of venomous animals, and of animals preying upon one another. These properties of animals, wherever they are found, must, I think, be referred to design; because there is in all cases of the first, and in most cases of the second, an express and distinct organization provided for the producing of them. Under the first head, the fangs of vipers, the stings of wasps and scorpions, are as clearly intended for their purpose, as any animal structure is for any purpose the most incon¬ testably beneficial. And the same thing must, under the second head, be acknowledged of the talons and beaks of birds, of the tusks, teeth, and claws of beasts of prey ; of the shark’s mouth, of the spider’s w T eb, and of numberless weapons of offence belonging to different tribes of voracious insects. We cannot, therefore, avoid the difficulty by saying, that the effect was not intended. The only question open to us is, whether it be ultimately evil. From the confessed and felt imperfection of our knowledge, we ought to presume, that there may be consequences of this economy which are hidden from us: from the benevolence which pervades the general designs of nature, we ought also to presume, that these consequences, if they could enter into our calculation, would turn the balance on the favourable side. Both these I contend to be reasonable presumptions. Not reasonable presumptions, if these two cases were the only cases which nature presented to our observation ; but reasonable pre¬ sumptions under the reflection, that the cases in question are combined with a multitude of intentions all proceeding from the same author, and all, except these, directed to ends of undisputed utility. Of the vindications, however, of this economy, which we are able to assign, such as most extenuate the difficulty are the following. With respect to venomous bites and stings, it may be observed,— 1. That the animal itself being regarded, the faculty complained of is good: being condu¬ cive, in all cases, to the defence of the animal ; in some cases, to the subduing of its prey ; and in some, probably, to the killing of it, when caught, by a mortal wound, inflicted in the passage to the stomach, which may be no less merciful to the victim, than salutary to the devourer. In the viper, for instance, the poisonous fang may do that which, in other animals of prey, is done by the crush of the teeth. Frogs and mice might be swallowed alive without it. 2. But it will be said, that the provision, when it comes to the case of bites, deadly even to human bodies and to those of large quadrupeds, is greatly overdone ; that it might have fulfilled its use, and yet have been much less deleterious than it is. Now I believe the case of bites, which produce death in large animals (of stings I think there are none) to be very few'. The experiments of the Abbe Fontana, which were numerous, go strongly to the proof of this point. He found that it required the action of five exasperated vipers to kill a dog of a moderate size; but that, to the killing of a mouse or a frog, a single bite was sufficient; which agrees with the use which we assign to the faculty. The Abbe seemed to be of opinion, that the bite even of the rattle-snake would not usually be mortal; allowing, however, that in certain particular unfortunate cases, as when the puncture had touched some very tender part, pricked a principal nerve for instance, or, as it is said, some more considerable lymphatic vessel, death might speedily ensue. 3. It has been, I think, very justly remarked, concerning serpents, that, whilst only a few species possess the venomous property, that property guards the whole tribe. The most innocuous snake is avoided with as much care as a viper. Now the terror with which large animals regard this class of reptiles, is its protection; and this terror is founded on the for¬ midable revenge, which a few of the number, compared with the whole, are capable of taking. The species of serpents, described by Linnaeus, amount to two hundred and eighteen, of which thirty-two only are poisonous. 4. It seems to me, that animal constitutions are provided, not only for each element, but for each state of the elements, i. e. for every climate, and for every temperature; and that part of the mischief complained of, arises from animals (the human animal most especially) occu- pying situations upon the earth, which do not belong to them, nor were ever intended for their habitation. The folly and wickedness of mankind, and necessities proceeding from these causes, have driven multitudes of the species to seek a refuge amongst burning sands, NATURAL THEOLOGY. 173 whilst countries, blessed with hospitable skies, and with the most fertile soils, remain almost without a human tenant. We invade the territories of wild beasts and venomous reptiles, and then complain that we are infested by their bites and stings. Some accounts of Africa place this observation in a strong point of view. 44 The deserts,” says Adanson, 44 are entirely barren, except where they are found to produce serpents ; and in such quantities, that some extensive plains are almost entirely covered with them.” These are the natures appropriated to the situation. Let them enjoy their existence; let them have their country. Surface enough will be left to man, though his numbers were increased a hundred-fold, and left to him, where he might live, exempt from these annoyances. The second case, viz. that of animals devouring one another, furnishes a consideration of much larger extent. To judge, whether, as a general provision, this can be deemed an evil , even so far as we understand its consequences, which, probably, is a partial understanding, the following reflections are fit to be attended to. 1. Immortality upon this earth is out of the question. Without death there could be no generation, no sexes, no parental relation, i. e. as things are constituted, no animal happiness. The particular duration of life, assigned to different animals, can form no part of the objection ; because, whatever that duration be, whilst it remains finite and limited, it may always be asked, why it is no longer. The natural age of different animals varies, from a single day to a century of years. No account can be given of this; nor could any be given, whatever other proportion of life had obtained amongst them. The term then of life in different animals being the same as it is, the question is, what mode of taking it away is the best even for the animal itself. Now, according to the established order of nature (which we must suppose to prevail, or we cannot reason at all upon the subject), the three methods by which life is usually put an end to, are acute diseases, decay, and violence. The simple and natural life of brutes , is not often visited by acute distempers; nor could it be deemed an improvement of their lot, if they were. Let it be considered, therefore, in what a condition of suffering and misery a brute animal is placed, which is left to perish by decay. In human sickness or infirmity, there is the assistance of man’s rational fellow-creatures, if not to alleviate his pains, at least to minister to his necessities, and to supply the place of his own activity. A brute, in his wild and natural state, does every thing for himself. When his strength, therefore, or his- speed, or his limbs, or his senses, fail him, he is delivered over, either to absolute famine, or to the protracted wretchedness of a life slowly wasted by the scarcity of food. Is it then to see the world filled with drooping, superannuated, half-starved, helpless, and unhelped animals, that you would alter the present system of pursuit and prey ? 2. Which system is also to them the spring of motion and activity on both sides. The pursuit of its prey, forms the employment, and appears to constitute the pleasure of a con¬ siderable part of the animal creation. The using of the means of defence, or flight, or pre¬ caution, forms also the business of another part. And even of this latter tribe, we have no reason to suppose that their happiness is much molested by their fears. Their danger exists continually; and in some' cases they seem to be so far sensible of it, as to provide, in the best manner they can, against it; but it is only when the attack is actually made upon them, that they appear to suffer from it. To contemplate the insecurity of their condition with anxiety and dread, requires a degree of reflection, which (happily for themselves) they do not possess. A hare , notwithstanding the number of its dangers and its enemies, is as playful an animal as any other. 3. But, to do justice to the question, the system of animal destruction ought always to be considered in strict connexion with another property of animal nature, viz. superfecundity. They are countervailing qualities. One subsists by the correction of the other. In treating, therefore, of the subject under this view (which is, I believe, the true one), our business will be, first, to point out the advantages which are gained by the powers in nature of a super¬ abundant multiplication: and, then, to shew that these advantages are so many reasons for appointing that system of animal hostilities, which we are endeavouring to account for. In almost all cases, nature produces her supplies with profusion. A single cod-fish spawns, in one season, a greater number of eggs than all the inhabitants of England amount to. A 174 NATURAL THEOLOGY. thousan cl other instances of prolific generation might he stated, which, though not equal to this, would carry on the increase of the species with a rapidity that outruns calculation, and to an im measurable extent. The advantages of such a constitution are two : first, that it tends to keep the world always full; whilst, secondly, it allows the proportion between the several species of animals to be differently modified, as different purposes require, or as different situations may afford for them room and food. Where this vast fecundity meets with a vacancy fitted to receive the species, there it operates with its whole effect; there it pours in its numbers, and replenishes the waste. We complain of what we call the exorbitant multiplication of some troublesome insects; not reflecting, that large portions of nature might be left void without it. If the accounts of travellers may be depended upon, immense tracts of forests in North America would be nearly lost to sensitive existence, if it were not for gnats. u In the thinly inhabited regions of America, in which the waters stagnate and the climate is warm, the whole air is filled with crowds of these insects.” Thus it is, that where we looked for solitude and death-like silence, we meet with animation, activity, enjoyment; with a busy, a happy, and a peopled world. Again, hosts of mice are reckoned amongst the plagues of the north-east part of Europe; whereas vast plains in Siberia, as we learn from good authority, would be lifeless without them. The Caspian deserts are converted by their presence into crowded warrens. Between the Volga and the Yaik, and in the country of Hyrcania, the ground, says Pallas, is in many places covered with little hills, raised by the earth cast out in forming the burrows. Do we then so envy these blissful abodes, as to pronounce the fecundity by which they are supplied with inhabitants, to be an evil; a subject of com¬ plaint, and not of praise ? Farther, by virtue of this same superfecundity, what we term destruction, becomes almost instantly the parent of life. What we call blights are oftentimes legions of animated beings, claiming their portion in the bounty of nature. What corrupts the produce of the earth to us, prepares it for them. And it is by means of their rapid multi¬ plication, that they take possession of their pasture; a slow propagation would not meet the opportunity. But in conjunction with the occasional use of this fruitfulness, we observe also, that it allows the proportion between the several species of animals to be differently modified, as different puposcs of utility may require. When the forests of America come to be cleared, and the swamps drained, our gnats will give place to other inhabitants. If the population of Europe should spread to the north and the east, the mice will retire before the husbandman and the shepherd, and yield their station to herds and flocks. In what concerns the human species, it may be a part of the scheme of Providence, that the earth should be inhabited by a shifting, or perhaps a circulating population. In this economy, it is possible that there may be the following advantages : When old countries are become exceedingly corrupt, simpler modes of life, purer morals, and better institutions, may rise up in new ones, whilst fresh soils reward the cultivator with more plentiful returns. Thus the different portions of the globe come into use in succession as the residence of man ; and, in his absence, entertain other guests, which, by their rapid multiplication, soon fill the chasm. In domesticated animals, we find the effect of their fecundity to be, that we can always command numbers; we can always have as many of any particular species as we please, or as we can support. Nor do we complain of its excess; it being much more easy to regulate abundance, than to supply scarcity. But then this superfecundity , though of great occasional use and importance, exceeds the ordinary capacity of nature to receive or support its progeny. All superabundance supposes destruction, or must destroy itself. Perhaps there is no species of terrestrial animals whatever, which would not overrun the earth, if it were permitted to multiply in perfect safety; or of fish, which would not fill the ocean : at least, if any single species were left to their natural increase without disturbance or restraint, the food of other species would be exhausted by their maintenance. It is necessary, therefore, that the effects of such prolific faculties be curtailed. In conjunction with other checks and limits, all subservient to the same purpose, are the thinnings which take place among animals, by their action upon one another. In some instances we ourselves experience, very directly, the use of these hostilities. One species of insects rids us of another species ; or reduces their ranks. A third species, perhaps, keeps NATURAL THEOLOGY". 175 the second within bounds : and birds or lizards arc a fence against the inordinate increase by which even these last might infest us. In other more numerous, and possibly more important instances, this disposition of things, although less necessary or useful to us, and of course less observed by us, may be necessary and useful to certain other species; or even for the pre ¬ venting of the loss of certain species from the universe: a misfortune which seems to be studiously guarded against. Though there may be the appearance of failure in some of the details of nature’s works, in her great purposes there never are. Her species never fail. The provision which was originally made for continuing the replenishment of the world, has proved itself to be effectual through a long succession of ages. What farther shews that the system of destruction amongst animals holds an express relation to the system of fecundity; that they are parts indeed of one compensatory scheme; is, that, in each species, the fecundity bears a proportion to the smallness of the animal, to the weakness, to the shortness of its natural term of life, and to the dangers and enemies by which it is surrounded. An elephant produces but one calf; a butterfly lays six hundred eggs. Birds of prey seldom produce more than two eggs: the sparrow tribe, and the duck tribe, frequently sit upon a dozen. In the rivers, we meet with a thousand minnows for one pike; in the sea, a million of herrings for a single shark. Compensation obtains throughout. Defencelessness and devastation are repaired by fecundity. We have dwelt the longer on these considerations, because the subject to which they apply, namely, that of animals devouring one another, forms the chief, if not the only instance, in the works of the Deity, of an economy, stamped by marks of design, in which the character of utility can be called in question. The case of venomous animals is of much inferior conse¬ quence to the case of prey, and, in some degree, is also included under it. To both cases it is probable that many more reasons belong, than those of which we are in possession. Our first proposition, and that which we have hitherto been defending, was “ that, in a vast plurality of instances, in which contrivance is perceived, the design of the contrivance is beneficial.” Our second proposition is, u that, the Deity has added pleasure to animal sensations, beyond what was necessary for any other purpose, or when the purpose, so far as it was necessary, might have been effected by the operation of pain.” This proposition maybe thus explained : the capacities, which, according to the established course of nature, are necessary to the support or preservation of an animal, however manifestly they may be the result of an organization contrived for the purpose, can only be deemed an act or a part of the same will, as that which decreed the existence of the animal itself; because, whether the creation proceeded from a benevolent or a malevolent being, these capacities must have been given, if the animal existed at all. Animal properties, therefore, which fall under this description, do not strictly prove the goodness of God : they may prove the existence of the Deity; they may prove a high degree of power and intelligence : but they do not prove his goodness; forasmuch as they must have been found in any creation which was capable of continuance, although it is possible to suppose, that such a creation might have been produced by a being whose views rested upon misery. But there is a class of properties, which may be said to be superadded, from an intention expressly directed to happiness; an intention to give a happy existence distinct from the general intention of providing the means of existence ; and that is, of capacities for pleasure, in cases wherein, so far as the conservation of the individual or of the species is concerned, they were not wanted, or wherein the purpose might have been secured by the operation of pain. The provision which is made of a variety of objects, not necessary to life, and minis¬ tering only to our pleasures; and the properties given to the necessaries of life themselves, by which they contribute to pleasure as well as preservation; shew a farther design, than that of giving existence *. * See this topic considered in Dr. Balguy’s Treatise upon the Divine Benevolence. This excellent author first, I think, proposed it; and nearly in the terms in which it is here stated. Some other observations also under this head are taken from that treatise. Dr. Thomas Balguy, the excellent author whom Palcy thus commends and quotes, was vicar of Alton, and arch¬ deacon of Winchester, in the cathedral of which city lie was buried in 1795. He was a learned and devout man, little 176 NATURAL THEOLOGY. A single instance will make all this clear. Assuming the necessity of food for the support of animal life ; it is requisite, that the animal he provided with organs fitted for the procuring, receiving, and digesting of its food. It may also he necessary, that the animal he impelled by its sensations to exert its organs. But the pain of hunger would do all this. Why add pleasure to the act of eating ; sweetness and relish to food ? Why a new and appropriate sense for the perception of the pleasure ? Why should the juice of a peach, applied to the palate, affect the part so differently from what it does when rubbed upon the palm of the hand ? This is a constitution which, so far as appears to me, can be resolved into nothing but the pure benevolence of the Creator. Eating is necessary; but the pleasure attending it is not necessary : and that this pleasure depends, not only upon our being in possession of the sense of taste, which is different from every other, but upon a particular state of the organ in which it resides, a felicitous adaptation of the organ to the object, will be confessed by any one, who may happen to have experienced that vitiation of taste which frequently occurs in fevers, when every taste is irregular, and every one bad. In mentioning the gratifications of the palate, it may be said that we have made choice of a trifling example. I am not of that opinion. They afford a share of enjoyment to man ; but to brutes, I believe that they are of very great importance. A horse at liberty passes a great part of his waking hours in eating. To the ox, the sheep, the deer, and other ruminating animals, the pleasure is doubled. Their whole time almost is divided between browsing upon their pasture and chewing their cud. Whatever the pleasure be, it is spread over a large portion of their existence. If there be animals, such as the lupous fish, which swallow their prey whole, and at once, without any time, as it should seem, for either drawing out, or relishing, the taste in the mouth, is it an improbable conjecture, that the seat of taste with them is in the stomach ; or, at least, that a sense of pleasure, whether it be taste or not, accompanies the dissolution of the food in that receptacle, which dissolution in general is carried on very slowly ? If this opinion be right, they are more than repaid for the defect of palate. The feast lasts as long as the digestion. In seeking for argument, we need not stay to insist upon the comparative importance of our example: for the observation holds equally of all, or of three at least, of the other senses. The necessary purposes of hearing might have been answered without harmony ; of smell, without fragrance; of vision, without beauty. Now, “ if the Deity had been indif¬ ferent about our happiness or misery, we must impute to our good fortune (as all design by this supposition is excluded), both the capacity of our senses to receive pleasure, and the supply of external objects fitted to excite it.” I allege these as two felicities, for they are different things, yet both necessary: the sense being formed, the objects, which were applied to it, might not have suited it; the objects being fixed, the sense might not have agreed with them. A coincidence is here required, which no accident can account for. There are three possible suppositions upon the subject, and no more. The first; that the sense, by its original constitution, was made to suit the object: the second; that the object, by its original consti¬ tution, was made to suit the sense : the third; that the sense is so constituted, as to be able, either universally, or within certain limits, by habit and familiarity, to render every object pleasant. Whichever of these suppositions we adopt, the effect evinces, on the part of the Author of nature, a studious benevolence. If the pleasures which we derive from any of our senses, depend upon an original congruity between the sense and the properties perceived by it, we know by experience, that the adjustment demanded, with respect to the qualities which were conferred upon the objects that surround us, not only choice and selection, out of a boundless variety of possible qualities with which these objects might have been endued, but a proportioning also of degree, because an excess or defect of intensity spoils the perception, as much almost as an error in the kind and nature of the quality. Likewise the degree of ambitious of either wealth or distinction ; for in 1779, on the death of bishop Warburton, he modestly declined the proffered see of Gloucester. He published, besides his work on “ the Divine Benevolence,” a collection of his own sermons, and edited those of his friend, Dr. Powell. (Nicholls’s Anecdotes of Literature.) The offer of the bishopric arrived in the night when Balguy was in bed ; and little expecting to be disturbed by official messages, he told, therefore, the astonished government messenger he was sorry he had disturbed him, but he would give him an answer when he arose in the morning. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 1 h'rj 1 4 4 dulness or acuteness in the sense itself, is no arbitrary thing, but, in order to preserve the congruity here spoken of, requires to be in exact or near correspondency with the strength of the impression. The dulness of the senses forms the complaint of old age. Persons in fevers, and, I believe, in most maniacal cases, experience great torment from their preternatural acuteness. An increased, no less than an impaired sensibility, induces a state of disease and suffering. © The doctrine of a specific congruity between animal senses and their objects, is strongly favoured by what is observed of insects in the election of their food. Some of these will feed upon one kind of plant or animal, and upon no other: some caterpillars upon the cabbage alone; some upon the black currant alone. The species of caterpillar which eats the vine, will starve upon the elder; nor will that which we find upon fennel, touch the rose-bush. Some insects confine themselves to two or three kinds of plants or animals. Some again show so strong a preference, as to afford reason to believe that, though they may be driven by hunger to others, they are led by the pleasure of taste to a few particular plants alone : and all this, as it should seem, independently of habit or imitation. But should we accept the third hypothesis, and even carry it so far, as to ascribe every thing which concerns the question to habit (as in certain species, the human species most particularly, there is reason to attribute something), we have then before us an animal capacity, not less perhaps to be admired than the native congruities which the other scheme adopts. It cannot be shown to result from any fixed necessity in nature, that what is frequently applied to the senses should of course become agreeable to them. It is, so far as it subsists, a power of accommodation provided in these senses by the Author of their struc¬ ture, and forms a part of their perfection. In whichever way we regard the senses, they appear to be specific gifts, ministering, not only to preservation, but to pleasure. But what we usually call the senses , are probably themselves far from being the only vehicles of enjoyment, or the whole of our constitution which is calculated for the same purpose. We have many internal sensations of the most agreeable kind, hardly referable to any of the five senses. Some physiologists have holden, that all secretion is pleasurable; and that the complacency which in health, without any external assignable object to excite it, we derive from life itself, is the effect of our secretions going on well within us. All this may be true; but, if true, what reason can be assigned for it, except the will of the Creator ? It may reasonably be asked, why is any thing a pleasure ? and I know no answer which can be returned to the question, but that which refers it to appointment. We can give no account whatever of our pleasures in the simple and original perception; and, even when physical sensations are assumed, we can seldom account for them in the secondary and complicated shapes, in which they take the name of diversions. I never yet met with a sportsman, who could tell me in what the sport consisted; who could resolve it into its principle, and state that principle. I have been a great follower of fishing myself, and in its cheerful solitude have passed some of the happiest hours of a sufficiently happy life; but, to this moment, I could never trace out the source of the pleasure which it afforded me. The “ quantum in rebus inane!” whether applied to our amusements, or to our graver pursuits (to which, in truth, it sometimes equally belongs), is always an unjust complaint. If trifles engage, and if trifles make us happy, the true reflection suggested by the experi¬ ment, is upon the tendency of nature to gratification and enjoyment; which is, in other words, the goodness of its Author towards his sensitive creation*. * Paley here confesses what he was on no occasion unwilling to acknowledge, his love of fishing. The progress of this very work was, it seems, not seldom suspended by his fishing avocations ; and when, on one occasion, Dr. Bar¬ rington, his diocesan, enquired how he was getting on with it, he replied, “ My lord, I shall work steadily at it when the fly-fishing season is over.” His friend, the bishop of Elphin, had him drawn by Romney with his fishing-rod, and from this, the best por¬ trait of Paley extant, our artist has engraved for our edition of his Works. Neither was he reluctant to allow that he could not define in what consisted the pleasure of the pursuit, which is a difficulty we have observed in all our brother an¬ glers, from honest Isaac Walton to the late Sir Humphry Davy. The honest Sea Captain, in Sir John Hawkins’s edition of Walton’s Angler, perhaps defined it the best when, after N 178 NATURAL THEOLOGY. Rational natures also, as such, exhibit qualities which help to confirm the truth of our position. The degree of understanding found in mankind is usually much greater than what is necessary for mere preservation. The pleasure of choosing for themselves, and of prose¬ cuting the object of their choice, should seem to be an original source of enjoyment. The pleasures received from things, great, beautiful, or new, from imitation, or from the liberal arts, are, in some measure, not only superadded, but unmixed gratifications, having no pains to balance them*. I do not know whether our attachment to 'property be not something more than the mere dictate of reason, or even than the mere effect of association. Property communicates a charm to whatever is the object of it. It is the first of our abstract ideas; it cleaves to us the closest and the longest. It endears to the child its plaything, to the peasant his cottage, to the landholder his estate. It supplies the place of prospect and scenery. Instead of coveting the beauty of distant situations, it teaches every man to find it in his own. It gives boldness and grandeur to plains and fens, tinge and colouring to clays and fallows. All these considerations come in aid of our second proposition. The reader will now bear in mind what our two propositions were. They were, firstly, that in a vast plurality of instances, in which contrivance is perceived, the design of the contriver is beneficial: secondly, that the Deity has added pleasure to animal sensations beyond what was necessary for any other purpose; or when the purpose, so far as it was necessary, might have been effected by the operation of pain. Whilst these propositions can be maintained, we are authorized to ascribe to the Deity the character of benevolence ; and what is benevolence at all, must in him be infinite benevo¬ lence, by reason of the infinite, that is to say, the incalculably great, number of objects upon which it is exercised. Of the origin of evil, no universal solution has been discovered; I mean, no solution which reaches to all cases of complaint. The most comprehensive is that which arises from the consideration of general rules. We may, I think, without much difficulty, be brought to admit the four following points : first, that important advantages may accrue to the universe from the order of nature proceeding according to general laws : secondly, that general laws, however well set and constituted, often thwart and cross one another: thirdly, that from these thwartings and crossings, frequent particular inconveniences will arise: and, fourthly, that it agrees with our observation to suppose, that some degree of these inconveniences takes place in the works of nature. These points may be allowed; and it may also be asserted, that the general laws with which we are acquainted, are directed to beneficial ends. On the other hand, with many of these laws we are not acquainted at all, or we are totally unable to trace them in their branches, and in their operation; the effect of which ignorance is, that they cannot be of importance to us as measures by which to regulate our conduct. The conservation of them may be of importance in other respects, or to other beings, but we are uninformed of their value or use; uninformed, consequently, when, and how far, they may or may not be suspended, or their effects turned aside, by a presiding and benevolent will, describing a month’s patient fishing for barbel “ without a single nibble,” he said, “ It is the pleasure of going after them.” It is a pursuit which is certainly fascinating, and as Walton says of those who object to it, “ we anglers pity them perfectly, and stand in no need to borrow their thoughts to think ourselves so happy so some of the best and most talented men of all ages have deemed no apology necessary for their indulgence in this quiet amusement. Walton has celebrated the skill, as a fisherman, of good archbishop Sheldon. Gay, the amiable poet, used to fish with the utmost ardour in the bl ight and rapid chalk-lined trout streams of Amesbury, in Wiltshire. Nelson used to do the same, with equal energy, in the Wandle, at Merton. And the late illustrious Davy spent much of his later days, both in England and Germany, in the same delight¬ ful occupation—a pursuit which he has so well described in almost his last work, his “ Salmonia, or Days of Fly Fishing,” the concluding words of which well express his continued love of the art :— “ Though I do not expect, like our arch-patriarch Walton, to number ninety years and upwards, yet I hope as long as I can enjoy, in a vernal day, the light and warmth of the sunbeams, still to haunt the streams—fol¬ lowing the example of our late venerable friend, the Presi¬ dent of the Royal Academy (Benjamin West)—in company with whom, when he was an octogenarian, I have thrown the fly, caught trout, and enjoyed a delightful day of angling and social amusement, in the shady green meadow's, by the bright clear streams of the Wandle.”—Salmonia, p. 4—327 ; Angler, p. 4—178. * Balguy on the Divine Benevolence. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 179 without incurring greater evils than those which would he avoided. The consideration, there¬ fore, of general laws, although it may concern the question of the origin of evil very nearly (which I think it does), rests in views disproportionate to our faculties, and in a knowledge which we do not possess. It serves rather to account for the obscurity of the subject, than to supply us with distinct answers to our difficulties. However, whilst we .assent to the above-stated propositions, as principles, whatever uncertainty we may find in the application, we lay a ground for believing, that cases of apparent evil, for which we can suggest no particular reason, are governed by reasons, which are more general, which lie deeper in the order of second causes, and which on that account are removed to a greater distance from us. The doctrine of imperfections , or, as it is called, of evils of imperfection, furnishes an account, founded, like the former, in views of universal nature. The doctrine is briefly this :—It is probable, that creation may be better replenished by sensitive beings of different sorts, than by sensitive beings all of one sort. It is likewise probable, that it may be better replenished by different orders of being rising one above another in gradation, than by beings possessed of equal degrees of perfection. Now, a gradation of such beings, implies a gradation of imperfections. No class can justly complain of the imperfections which belong to its place in the scale, unless it were allowable for it to complain, that a scale of being was appointed in nature; for which appointment there appear to be reasons of wisdom and goodness. In like manner, finiteness, or what is resolvable into finiteness, in inanimate subjects, can never be a just subject of complaint; because, if it were ever so, it would be always so : we mean, that we can never reasonably demand that things should be larger or more, when the same demand might be made, whatever the quantity or number was. And to me it seems, that the sense of mankind had so far acquiesced in these reasons, as that we seldom complain of evils of this class, when we clearly perceive them to be such. What I have to add, therefore, is, that we ought not to complain of some other evils, which stand upon the same foot of vindication as evils of confessed imperfection. We never complain, that the globe of our earth is too small: nor should we complain, if it were even much smaller. But where is the difference to us, between a less globe, and part of the present being uninhabitable ? The inhabitants of an island may be apt enough to murmur at the sterility of some parts of it, against its rocks, or sands, or swamps : but no one thinks himself authorized to murmur, simply because the island is not larger than it is. Y r et these are the same griefs. The above are the two metaphysical answers which have been given to this great question. They are not the worse for being metaphysical, provided they be founded (which I think they are) in right reasoning: but they are of a nature too wide to be brought under our survey, and it is often difficult to apply them in the detail. Our speculations, therefore, are perhaps better employed when they confine themselves within a narrower circle. The observations which follow, are of this more limited, but more determinate, kind. Of bodily pain, the principal observation, no doubt, is that which we have already made and already dwelt upon, viz. u that it is seldom the object of contrivance ; that when it is so, the contrivance rests ultimately in good.” To which, however, may be added, that the annexing of pain to the means of destruction is a salutary provision ; inasmuch as it teaches vigilance and caution; both gives notice of danger, and excites those endeavours which may be necessary to preservation. The evil consequence, which sometimes arises from the want of that timely intimation of danger which pain gives, is known to the inhabitants of cold countries by the example of frost-bitten limbs. I have conversed with patients who have lost toes and fingers by this cause. They have in general told me, that they were totally unconscious of any local uneasiness at that time. Some I have heard declare, that whilst they were about their employment, neither their situation, nor the state of the air, was unpleasant. They felt no pain; they suspected no mischief; till, by the application of warmth, they discovered, too late, the fatal injury which some of their extremities had suffered. I say that this shows the use of pain, and that we stand in need of such a monitor. I believe also that.the use extends farther than we suppose, or can now trace; that to disagreeable sensations we, and all animals, owe, or have owed, 180 NATURAL THEOLOGY. many habits of action which are salutary, but which are become so familiar, as not easily to be referred to their origin*. Pain also itself is not without its alleviations. It may be violent and frequent; but it is seldom both violent and long-continued : and its pauses and intermissions become positive pleasures. It has the power of shedding a satisfaction over intervals of ease, which, I believe, few enjoyments exceed. A man resting from a fit of the stone or gout, is, for the time, in possession of feelings which undisturbed health cannot impart. They may be dearly bought, but still they are to be set against the price. And, indeed, it depends upon the duration and urgency of the pain, whether they be dearly bought or not. I am far from being sure, that a man is not a gainer by suffering a moderate interruption of bodily ease for a couple of hours out of the four-and-twenty. Two very common observations favour this opinion: one is, that remissions of pain call forth, from those who experience them, stronger expressions of satisfaction and of gratitude towards both the author and the instru¬ ments of their relief, than are excited by advantages of any other kind : the second is, that the spirits of sick men do not sink in proportion to the acuteness of their sufferings; but rather appear to be roused and supported, not by pain, but by the high degree of comfort which they derive from its cessation, or even its subsidence, whenever that occurs ; and which they taste with a relish, that diffuses some portion of mental complacency over the whole of that mixed state of sensations in which disease has placed themt. In connexion with bodily pain may be considered bodily disease , whether painful or not. Few diseases are fatal. I have before me the account of a dispensary in the neighbourhood, which states six years’ experience as follows:— Admitted, 6,420. Cured, 5,476. Dead, 234. And this I suppose nearly to agree with what other similar institutions exhibit. Now, in all these cases, some disorder must have been felt, or the patients would not have applied for a remedy ; yet we see how large a proportion of the maladies which were brought for¬ ward, have either yielded to proper treatment, or, what is more probable, ceased of their own accord. We owe these frequent recoveries, and, where recovery does not take place, this patience of the human constitution under many of the distempers by which it is visited, to two benefactions of our nature. One is, that she works within certain limits ; allows of a certain latitude within which health may be preserved, and within the confines of which it only suffers a graduated diminution. Different quantities of food, different degrees of exercise, different portions of sleep, different states of the atmosphere, are compatible with the possession of health. So likewise it is with the secretions and excretions, with many internal functions of the body, and with the state, probably, of most of its internal organs. They may vary considerably, not only without destroying life, but without occasioning any high degree of inconveniency. The other property of our nature, to which we are still more more beholden, is its constant endeavour to restore itself, when disordered, to its regular course. The fluids of the body appear to possess a power of separating and expelling any * The very occurrence of pain, that invariably attends gome circumstances of our bodies, distinctly points out contrivance,.—intention to preserve us. “If, for example, the pain which we feel—upon doing what tends to the destruction of our bodies—as upon too near approaches to fire,or upon wounding ourselves, is appointed by the Author of Nature to prevent our doing what thus tends to our destruction, this is altogether as much an instance of his benevolence, and of our being under his government, as declaring by a voice from heaven, that if we acted so, he would inflict such pain upon us, and inflicting it, whether it be greater or less.”.—Butler’s Analogy, Part I. chap. ii. f The fact that this chapter was written by Paley when suffering under a most excruciating complaint, im¬ parts to it additional interest: his was not a theoretical view ; he did not describe sensations of pleasure, feelings of gratitude, which he had not himself experienced. His medical attendants often expressed their surprise “ at the readiness, and even cheerfulness, with which, on the first respite from pain, he resumed his literary labours.” “ It is not,” said Dr. Fenwick, in his Life of Clarke, Paley’s physician, when speaking of this chapter; “ It is not a philosopher, in the full enjoyment of health, who speaks lightly of an evil which he may suppose at a distance, when Dr. Paley thus speaks. The sentiment flowed from his own feelings: he was himself that man.” This fact, so interesting to the lover of Paley, betrays that he was consistent to the end; never suffering one event in life to pass unobserved or disregarded, if it was possible to render it subservient to truth. He who could make even the death of a butterfly serve as a proof of the existence of a Divine Creator, was not likely to let his own pains and afflictions pass by unrecorded and unapplied, as demonstrating his goodness and his benevolence.— Medley’s Life of Paley, p. 205. Fenwick’s Memoirs of Dr. Clarke. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 181 noxious substance whicli may have mixed itself with them. This they do, in eruptive fevers, by a kind of despumation, as Sydenham calls it, analogous in some measure to the intestine action by which fermenting liquors work the yeast to the surface. The solids, on their part, when their action is obstructed, not only resume that action, as soon as the ob¬ struction is removed, but they struggle with the impediment. They take an action as near to the true one, as the difficulty and the disorganization, with which they have to contend, will allow of. Of mortal diseases, the great use is to reconcile us to death. The horror of death proves the value of life. But it is in the power of disease to abate, or even extinguish, this horror ; which it does in a wonderful manner, and, oftentimes, by a mild and imperceptible grada¬ tion. Every man who has been placed in a situation to observe it, is surprised with the change which has been wrought in himself, when he compares the view which he entertains of death upon a sick-bed, with the heart-sinking dismay with which he should some time ago have met it in health. There is no similitude between the sensations of a man led to execution, and the calm expiring of a patient at the close of his disease. Death to him is only the last of a long train of changes; in his progress through which, it is possible that he may experience no shocks or sudden transitions. Death itself, as a mode of removal and of succession, is so connected with the whole order of our animal world, that almost every thing in that world must be changed, to be able to do without it. It may seem likewise impossible to separate the fear of death from the enjoyment of life, or the perception of that fear from rational natures. Brutes are in a great measure delivered from all anxiety on this account by the inferiority of their faculties; or rather they seem to be armed with the apprehension of death just sufficiently to put them upon the means of preservation, and no farther. But would a human being wish to pur¬ chase this immunity at the expense of those mental powers which enable him to look forward to the future ? Death implies separation : and the loss of those whom we love must, necessarily, so far as we can conceive, be accompanied with pain. To the brute creation, nature seems to have stepped in with some secret provision for their relief, under the rupture of their attachments. In their instincts towards their offspring, and of their offspring to them, I have often been surprised to observe how ardently they love, and how soon they forget. The pertinacity of human sorrow (upon which time also, at length, lays its softening hand) is probably, there¬ fore, in some manner connected with the qualities of our rational or moral nature. One thing however is clear, viz. that it is better that we should possess affections, the sources of so many virtues, and so many joys, although they be exposed to the incidents of life, as well as the interruptions of mortality, than, by the want of them, be reduced to a state of selfish¬ ness, apathy, and quietism. Of other external evils (still confining ourselves to what are called physical or natural evils), a considerable part comes within the scope of the following observation:—The great principle of human satisfaction is engagement. It is a most just distinction, which the late Mr. Tucker has dwelt upon so largely in his works, between pleasures in which we are passive, and pleasures in which we are active. And, I believe, every attentive observer of human life will assent to his position, that, however grateful the sensations may occasionally be in which we are passive, it is not these, but the latter class of our pleasures, which con¬ stitute satisfaction; which supply that regular stream of moderate and miscellaneous enjoy¬ ments, in which happiness, as distinguished from voluptuousness, consists. Now for rational occupation, which is, in other words, for the very material of contented existence, there would be no place left, if either the things with which we had to do were absolutely imprac¬ ticable to our endeavours, or if they were too obedient to our uses. A world, furnished with advantages on one side, and beset with difficulties, wants, and inconveniences, on the other, is the proper abode of free, rational, and active natures, being the fittest to stimulate and exercise their faculties. The very refractoriness of the objects they have to deal with, contributes to this purpose. A world in which nothing depended upon ourselves, however it might have suited an imaginary race of beings, would not have suited mankind. Their skill, prudence, industry; their various arts and their best attainments, from the application 182 NATURAL THEOLOGY. ot wliicli they draw, if not their highest, their most permanent gratifications, would be insignificant, if things could be either moulded by our volitions, or, of their own accord, conformed themselves to our views and wishes. Now it is in this refractoriness that we discern the seed and principle of physical evil, as far as it arises from that which is external to us. Civil evils, or the evils of civil life, are much more easily disposed of, than physical evils : because they are, in truth, of much less magnitude, and also because they result, by a kind of necessity, not only from the constitution of our nature, but from a part of that constitu¬ tion which no one would wish to see altered. The case is this: mankind will in every country breed up to a certain point of distress. That point may be different in different countries or ages, according to the established usages of life in each. It will also shift upon the scale, so as to admit of a greater or less number of inhabitants, according as the quantity of provision, which is either produced in the country, or supplied to it from other countries, may happen to vary. But there must always be such a point, and the species will always breed up to it. The order of generation proceeds by something like a geometrical progres¬ sion. The increase of provision, under circumstances even the most advantageous, can only assume the form of an arithmetic series. Whence it follows, that the population will always overtake the provision, will pass beyond the line of plenty, and will continue to increase till checked by the difficulty of procuring subsistence*. Such difficulty therefore, along with its attendant circumstances, must be found in every old country : and these circumstances constitute what we call poverty, which, necessarily, imposes labour, servitude, restraint. It seems impossible to people a country with inhabitants who shall be all in easy circum¬ stances. For suppose the thing to be done, there would be such marrying and giving in marriage amongst them, as would in a few years change the face of affairs entirely: i. e. as would increase the consumption of those articles, which supplied the natural or habitual wants of the country, to such a degree of scarcity, as must leave the greatest part of the inhabitants unable to procure them without toilsome endeavours, or, out of the different kinds of these articles, to procure any kind except that which was most easily produced. And this, in fact, describes the condition of the mass of the community in all countries: a condi¬ tion unavoidably, as it should seem, resulting from the provision which is made in the human, in common with all animal constitutions, for the perpetuity and multiplication of the species. It need not however dishearten any endeavours for the public service, to know that popu¬ lation naturally treads upon the heels of improvement. If the condition of a people be meliorated, the consequence will be either that the mean happiness will be increased, or a greater number partake of it; or, which is most likely to happen, that both effects will take place together. There may be limits fixed by nature to both, but they are limits not yet attained, nor even approached, in any country of the world. And when we speak of limits at all, we have respect only to provisions for animal wants. There are sources, and means, and auxiliaries, and augmentations, of human happiness, communicable without restriction of numbers; as capable of being possessed by a thousand persons as by one. Such are those, which flow from a mild, contrasted with a tyrannic government, whether civil or domestic; those which spring from religion ; those which grow out of a sense of security ; those 'which depend upon habits of virtue, sobriety, moderation, order; those, lastly, which are found in the possession of well-directed tastes and desires, compared with the dominion of tormenting, pernicious, contradictory, unsatisfied, and unsa- tisfiable passions. The distinctions of civil life are apt enough to be regarded as evils, by those who sit under them ; but, in my opinion, with very little reason. In the first place, the advantages which the higher conditions of life are supposed to confer, bear no proportion in value to the advantages which are bestowed by nature. The gifts of nature always surpass the gifts of fortune. How much, for example, is activity better than attendance ; beauty than dress ; appetite, digestion, and tranquil bowels, than all the studies of cookery, or than the most costly compilation of forced, or far-fetched dainties ! * See a statement of this subject, in a late treatise upon population. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 183 Nature lias a strong tendency to equalization. Habit, the instrument of nature, is a great leveller; the familiarity which it induces, taking off the edge both of our pleasures and our sufferings. Indulgences which are habitual, keep us in ease, and cannot be carried much farther. So that with respect to the gratifications of which the senses are capable, the dif¬ ference is by no means proportionable to the apparatus. Nay, so far as superfluity generates fastidiousness, the difference is on the wrong side. It is not necessary to contend, that the advantages derived from wealth are none (under due regulations they are certainly considerable), but that they are not greater than they ought to be. Money is the sweetener of human toil; the substitute for coercion ; the recon¬ ciler of labour with liberty. It is, moreover, the stimulant of enterprise in all projects and undertakings, as well as of diligence in the most beneficial arts and employments. Now, did affluence, when possessed, contribute nothing to happiness, or nothing beyond the mere supply of necessaries; and the secret should come to be discovered; we might be in danger of losing great part of the uses, which are, at present, derived to us through this important medium. Not only would the tranquillity of social life be put in peril by the want of a motive to attach men to their private concerns; but the satisfaction which all men receive from success in their respective occupations, which collectively constitutes the great mass of human comfort, would be done away in its very principle. With respect to station , as it is distinguished from riches, whether it confer authority over others, or be invested with honours which apply solely to sentiment and imagination, the truth is, that what is gained by rising through the ranks of life, is not more than sufficient to draw forth the exertions of those who are engaged in the pursuits which lead to advance¬ ment, and which, in general, are such as ought to be encouraged. Distinctions of this sort are subjects much more of competition than of enjoyment; and in that competition their use consists. It is not, as hath been rightly observed, by what the Lord Mayor feels in his coach, but by what the apprentice feels who gazes at him, that the public is served. As we approach the summits of human greatness, the comparison of good and evil, with respect to personal comfort, becomes still more problematical; even allowing to ambition all its pleasures. The poet asks, 44 What is grandeur, what is power?” The philosopher an¬ swers, 44 Constraint and plague : et in maxima quaque fortund minimum licere.” One very common error misleads the opinion of mankind upon this head, viz. that universally, authority is pleasant, submission painful. In the general course of human affairs, the very reverse of this is nearer to the truth. Command is anxiety, obedience ease. Artificial distinctions sometimes promote real equality. Whether they be hereditary, or be the homage paid to office, or the respect attached by public opinion to particular profes¬ sions, they serve to confront that grand and unavoidable distinction which arises from pro¬ perty, and which is most overbearing where there is no other. It is of the nature of property, not only to be irregularly distributed, but to run into large masses. Public laws should be so constructed as to favour its diffusion as much as they can. But all that can be done by laws, consistently with that degree of government of his property which ought to be left to the subject, will not be sufficient to counteract this tendency. There must always therefore be the difference between rich and poor: and this difference will be the more grinding, when no pretension is allowed to be set up against it. So that the evils, if evils they must be called, which spring either from the necessary subordinations of civil life, or from the distinctions which have, naturally, though not neces¬ sarily, grown up in most societies, so long as they are unaccompanied by privileges injurious or oppressive to the rest of the. community, are such as may, even by the most depressed ranks, be endured with very little prejudice to their comfort. The mischiefs of which mankind are the occasion to one another, by their private wicked¬ nesses and cruelties; by tyrannical exercises of power; by rebellions against just authority; by wars ; by national jealousies and competitions operating to the destruction of third coun¬ tries ; or by other instances of misconduct either in individuals or societies, all are to be resolved into the character of man as a free agent . Free agency, in its very essenc e , contains liability to abuse. A r et, if you deprive man of his free agency, you subvert his nat ure. Y ou may have order from him and regularity, as you may from the tides or the trade-winds, but 184 NATURAL THEOLOGY. you put an end to his moral character, to virtue, to merit, to accountableness, to the use indeed of reason. To which must be added the observation, that even the bad qualities of mankind have an origin in Iheir good ones. The case is this: Human passions are either necessary to human welfare, or capable of being made, and, in a great majority of instances, in fact made, conducive to its happiness. These passions are strong and general; and, perhaps, would not answer their purpose unless they were so. But strength and generality, when it is expedient that particular circumstances should be respected, become, if left to themselves, excess and misdirection. From which excess and misdirection, the vices of mankind (the causes, no doubt, of much misery) appear to spring. This account, whilst it shews us the principle of vice, shews us, at the same time, the province of reason and of self-government; the want also of every support which can be procured to either from the aids of religion; and it shews this, without having recourse to any native gratuitous malignity in the human constitution. Mr. Hume, in his posthumous dialogues, asserts, indeed, of idleness , or aver¬ sion to labour (which he states to lie at the root of a considerable part of the evils which mankind suffer), that it is simply and merely bad. But how does he distinguish idleness from the love of ease ? or is he sure, that the love of ease in individuals is not the chief foundation of social tranquillity ? It will be found, I believe, to be true, that in every community there is a large class of its members, whose idleness is the best quality about them, being the corrective of other bad ones. If it were possible, in every instance, to give a right determination to industry, we could never have too much of it. But this is not pos¬ sible, if men are to be free. And without this, nothing would be so dangerous, as an incessant, universal, indefatigable activity. In the civil world, as well as in the material, it is the vis inertias which keeps things in their places # . Natural Theology has ever been pressed with this question,—Why, under the regency of a supreme and benevolent Will, should there be, in the world, so much as there is, of the appearance of chance ? The question in its whole compass lies beyond our reach : but there are not wanting, as in the origin of evil, answers which seem to have considerable weight in particular cases, and also to embrace a considerable number of cases. I. There must be chance in the midst of design: by which we mean that events which are not designed, necessarily arise from the pursuit of events which are designed. One man travelling to York, meets another man travelling to London. Their meeting is by chance, is accidental, and so would be called and reckoned, though the journeys which produced the meeting were, both of them, undertaken with design and from deliberation. The meeting, * This vis inerticB in the material world is well al¬ luded to by Professor Whewell, when treating, in his Cosmical Arrangements, “ of Friction,” p.244. We have before had occasion to quote the excellent works of the professor, who has on more than one occasion obligingly assisted personally the researches of the editors of this work. “ The objects which every where surround us,” says Mr. Whewell, “ the books or dishes which stand on bur tables, our tables and chairs themselves, the loose clods and stones in the field, the heaviest masses produced by nature or art, would be in a perpetual motion, quick or slow, according to the forces which acted on them, and to their size, if it were not for the tranquillizing and steady¬ ing effects of the agent we are considering: without this, our apartments, if they kept their shape, would exhibit to us articles of furniture, and of all other kinds, sliding and creeping from side to side, at every push and every wind, like loose objects in a ship’s cabin, when she is changing her course in a gale.” In another part of the same work, Mr. Whewell adds, “ And if, in endeavouring to trace the plan of the vast labyrinth of laws by which the universe is governed, we are sometimes lost and bewildered, and can scarcely, or not at all, discern the lines by which pain and sorrow and vice fall in with a scheme, directed to the strictest right and greatest good, we yet find no room to faint or falter, knowing that these are the darkest and most tangled re¬ cesses of our knowledge; that into them science has as yet cast no ray of light; that in them reason has as yet caught sight of no general law, by which we may securely hold; while in those regions where we can see clearly, where science has thrown her strongest illumination upon the scheme of creation ; where we have had displayed to us the general laws which gave rise to all the multifarious variety of particular facts,—we find all full of wisdom, and harmony, and beauty ; and all this wise selection of means, this harmonious constitution of laws, this beautiful symmetry of relations, directed, with no exception which human investigation has yet discovered, to the preserva¬ tion, the diffusion, the well-being of those living things which, though of their nature we know so little, we cannot doubt to be the worthiest objects of the Creator’s care.” NATURAL THEOLOGY. 105 though accidental, was nevertheless hypothetically necessary (which is the only sort of ne¬ cessity that is intelligible) : for if the two journeys were commenced at the time, pursued in the direction and with the speed, in which and with which, they were in fact begun and performed, the meeting could not be avoided. There was not, therefore, the less necessity in it for its being by chance. Again, the rencounter might be most unfortunate, though the errands, upon which each party set out upon his journey, were the most innocent or the most laudable. The by effect may be unfavourable, without impeachment of the proper purpose, for the sake of which the train, from the operation of which these consequences ensued, was put in motion. Although no cause act without a good purpose ; accidental consequences, like these, may be either good or bad. II. The appearance of chance will always bear a proportion to the ignorance of the observer*. The cast of a die as regularly follows the laws of motion, as the going of a watch ; yet, because we can trace the operation of those laws through the works and move¬ ments of the watch, and cannot trace them in the shaking and throwing of the die (though the laws be the same, and prevail equally in both cases), we call the turning up of the number of the die, chance, the pointing of the index of the watch, machinery, order, or by some name which excludes chance. It is the same in those events which depend upon the will of a free and rational agent. The verdict of a jury, the sentence of a judge, the resolu¬ tion of an assembly, the issue of a contested election, will have more or less of the appearance of chance, might be more or less the subject of a wager, according as we were less or more acquainted with the reasons which influenced the deliberation. The difference resides in the information of the observer, and not in the thing itself; which, in all the cases proposed, proceeds from intelligence, from mind, from counsel, from design. Now when this one cause of the appearance of chance, viz. the ignorance of the observer, comes to be applied to the operations of the Deity, it is easy to foresee how fruitful it must prove of difficulties and of seeming confusion. It is only to think of the Deity, to perceive * Never did Paley lay down a truer axiom. Chance, in the opinion of the multitude, has been the parent of all our discoveries, of our noblest efforts of genius; and many are the idle erroneous stories told in attestation of the assertion; yet the fall of the apple no more suggested to Newton the theory of gravity or attraction, than it did to the same philosopher the conclusion that the diamond was a combustible body, a century before it was shewn by Mr. Smithson Tennant to be made of carbon. Watt, the great inventor of the modern steam-engine, is well known to have deduced his first grand conclusions from the experiments of Professor Black, on Latent Heat; and Davy, the discoverer of the safety-lamp, constructed his “ Miner’s Friend,” not from any chance suggestions, but by the most careful, the most profound deductions— from well-conducted experiments. The story told by Theophrastus, of the invention of glass by some Phoenician merchants, which is known to every school-boy, is equally erroneous ; for although they might have witnessed the fusion of the soda and the glass into a thick vitreous mass, yet no one for ages took ad¬ vantage of the fact. And when at last glass utensils were produced, no one knew how to render them transparent. Augustus had amongst his most valuable treasures two glass vessels, which were transparent, and in consequence considered invaluable. The manufacture of plate, white, and green glass, has all been owing to scientific experi¬ ments. Wedgewood was ever ready to make the same acknowledgment with regard to porcelain ; and Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning-jenny, died with the convic¬ tion that chance had no more to do with its formation than it had with the cotton fibres, which it was employed to spin into thread. We are, in fact, much too ready to use the word chance, because it promotes our mental inaction, soothes our ig¬ norance, and palliates our well-loved indolence, our dis¬ taste for active inquiries after knowledge. If this were not so, we should, instead of acknowledging, by assigning it to chance, our inability to account for the formation of even a pebble, the rather declare it to be the result of laws and arrangements, of which we have not sufficient know¬ ledge to explain. It is in this spirit that the philosopher proceeds: the geologist, in investigating the construction even of a peb¬ ble, is able to demonstrate that this too is the result of powers and of laws, which God, in another state of the earth, brought into activity ; for he finds that even a pebble bears evidence of being formed in other ages of the world, by intense fusions, by mighty deluges, which have long since ceased; and that its construction was effected by means equally powerful as those employed in the contrivance and regulation of organic matter. To such conclusions came all the greatest philosophers of bygone ages. “ Our powers,” said Galileo, in his Dia¬ logues on Mechanics, “ do not enable us to comprehend the works of his hands.” Copernicus himself spoke with rapture, in his works, of the “ Divine fabric of the great and good God.” And Newton, the greatest of all philo- sopheis, concludes his admirable work, the Principia, by telling us, “ this beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets, could have its origin in no other way than by the purpose and command of a powerful and intelligent Being.” To these great testimonies let us add yet one more (though we feel their number is almost endless), that of Davy, the greatest chemical philosopher of our days :—“ I am glad,” said he, in his last work, “ I am glad you have not retreated into the desert and defence¬ less wilderness of scepticism, or of false and feeble philo¬ sophy. I should not have thought it worth my while to have followed you there : I should as soon think of argu¬ ing with the peasant who informs me that the basaltic columns of Antrim or of Staffa were the works of human art, and raised by the giant Finmacoul.”—Consolations in Travel, p. 151. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 18(5 what variety of objects, what distance of time, what extent of space and action, his counsels may, or rather must, comprehend. Can it be wondered at, that of the purposes which dwell in such a mind as this, so small a part should be known to us ? It is only necessary, there¬ fore, to bear in our thought, that in proportion to the inadequateness of our information, will be the quantity, in the world, of apparent chance. III. In a great variety of cases, and of cases comprehending numerous subdivisions, it appears, for many reasons, to bo better that events rise up by chance , or, more properly speaking, with the appearance of chance, than according to any observable rule whatever. This is not seldom the case even in human arrangements. Each person’s place and pre¬ cedency, in a public meeting, may be determined by lot. Work and labour may be allotted. Tasks and burdens may be allotted :— -Operumque laborem Partibus aequabat justis, aut sorte trahebat. Military service and station may be allotted. The distribution of provision may be made by lot , as it is in a sailor’s mess ; in some cases also, the distribution of favours may be made by lot. In all these cases, it seems to be acknowledged, that there are advantages in permitting events to chance, superior to those, which would or could arise from regulation. In all these cases also, though events rise up in the way of chance, it is by appointment that they do so. In other events, and such as are independent of human will, the reasons for this preference of uncertainty to rule, appear to be still stronger. For example : it seems to be expedient that the period of human life should be uncertain. Did mortality follow any fixed rule, it would produce a security in those that were at a distance from it, which would lead to the greatest disorders; and a horror in those who approached it, similar to that which a con¬ demned prisoner feels on the night before his execution. But, that death be uncertain, the young must sometimes die, as well as the old. Also were deaths never sudden , they who are in health would be too confident of life. The strong and the active, who want most to be warned and checked, would live without apprehension or restraint. On the other hand, were sudden deaths very frequent, the sense of constant jeopardy would interfere too much with the degree of ease and enjoyment intended for us; and human life be too precarious for the business and interests which belong to it. There could not be dependence either upon our own lives, or the lives of those with whom we were connected, sufficient to carry on the regular offices of human society. The manner, therefore, in which death is made to occur, conduces to the purposes of admonition, without overthrowing the necessary stability of human affairs. Disease being the forerunner of death, there is the same reason for its attacks coming upon us under the appearance of chance, as there is for uncertainty in the time of death itself. The seasons are a mixture of regularity and chance. They are regular enough to authorize expectation, whilst their being, in a considerable degree, irregular, induces, on the part of the cultivators of the soil, a necessity for personal attendance, for activity, vigilance, precau¬ tion. It is this necessity which creates farmers ; which divides the profit of the soil between the owner and the occupier; which by requiring expedients, by increasing employment, and by rewarding expenditure, promotes agricultural arts and agricultural life, of all modes of life the best, being the most conducive to health, to virtue, to enjoyment. I believe it to be found, in fact, that where the soil is the most fruitful, and the seasons the most constant, there the condition of the cultivators of the earth is the most depressed*. Uncertainty, * If any reader doubts the correctness of this assertion, let him remember the rich soils of the east of Europe, the fertile plains of Hindostan and of Palestine, the rich bottoms of Poland, the alluvial soils of Italy and of Tur¬ key, and of the slaves who cultivate them : let him com¬ pare these with the naturally barren alpine rocks of Swit¬ zerland, the sands of the Netherlands, and with their cultivators. But he need not travel out of his own coun¬ try ; for, saying nothing of Ireland, let him compare the little farmers of Devonshire, the land of stone fences and rich soils, with the talented agriculturists of the county of Norfolk, cultivating, as if in defiance of nature, its drift¬ ing sands, and making the very desert produce crops truly luxuriant. Let him only compare the small cottages of the western farmers with the mansions of those of the east, and he will speedily agree with all that Palcy has said of the comparative condition of the farmers of rich and poor soils. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 187 therefore, has its use even to those who sometimes complain of it the most. Seasons of scarcity themselves are not without their advantages. They call forth new exertions; they set contrivance and ingenuity at work; they give birth to improvements in agriculture and economy; they promote the investigation and management of public resources. Again; there are strong intelligible reasons, why there should exist in human society great disparity of wealth and station; not only as these things are acquired in different degrees, but at the first setting out of life. In order, for instance, to answer the various demands of civil life, there ought to be amongst the members of every civil society a diversity of education, which can only belong to an original diversity of circumstances. As this sort of disparity, which ought to take place from the beginning of life, must, ex hypothesis be pre¬ vious to the merit or demerit of the persons upon whom it falls, can it be better disposed of than by chance ? Parentage is that sort of chance : yet it is the commanding circumstance which in general fixes each man’s place in civil life, along with every thing which appertains to its distinctions. It may be the result of a beneficial rule, that the fortunes or honours of the father devolve upon the son ; and, as it should seem, of a still more necessary rule, that the low or laborious condition of the parent be communicated to his family ; but with respect to the successor himself, it is the drawing of a ticket in a lottery. Inequalities, therefore, of fortune, at least the greatest part of them, viz. those which attend us from our birth, and depend upon our birth, may be left, as they are left, to chance , without any just cause for questioning the regency of a supreme Disposer of events. But not only the donation, when by the necessity of the case they must be gifts, but even the acquirability of civil advantages, ought, perhaps, in a considerable degree, to lie at the mercy of chance. Some would have all the virtuous rich, or, at least, removed from the evils of poverty, without perceiving, I suppose, the consequence, that all the poor must be wicked. And how such a society could be kept in subjection to government, has not been shewn : for the poor, that is, they who seek their subsistence by constant manual labour, must still form the mass of the community ; otherwise the necessary labour of life could not be carried on ; the work would not be done, which the wants of mankind in a state of civilisation, and still more in a state of refinement, require to be done. It appears to be also true, that the exigencies of social life call not only for an original diversity of external circumstances, but for a mixture of different faculties, tastes, and tem¬ pers. Activity and contemplation, restlessness and quiet, courage and timidity, ambition and contentedness, not to say even indolence and dulness, are all wanted in the world, all conduce to the well going on of human affairs, just as the rudder, the sails, and the ballast of a ship, all perform their part in the navigation. Now, since these characters require for their foundation different original talents, different dispositions, perhaps also different bodily constitutions; and since, likewise, it is apparently expedient, that they be promiscuously scattered amongst the different classes of society : can the distribution of talents, dispositions, and the constitutions upon which they depend, be better made than by chance ? The opposites of apparent chance, are constancy and sensible interposition ; every degree of secret direction being consistent with it. Now of constancy , or of fixed and known rules, we have seen in some cases the inapplicability: and inconveniences which we do not sec, might attend their application in other cases*. * In many of the operations of nature, which a care¬ less observer regards as any thing but proofs of a Divine Regulator, and as the mere effects of chance, there is yet found by the botanist an order and a regularity at once unexpected and remarkable. Thus the leaves of plants appear in particular months with so much regularity that Linnaeus actually proposed to construct from those indications a kind of rural almanac, which he deno¬ minated “ The Calendar of Flora.” The honeysuckle protrudes its leaves in January ; the elder, the goose¬ berry, and the currant, in February; the lime, the willow, and the elm, in April; the oak and the ash, which appear in leaf the latest of all our trees, in May. Or, if we take the flowers for our calendar, the snowdrop and the mezereon arrive in February; the primrose in March ; the cowslip in April; very many in May and June; others in July, August, and Sep¬ tember; some, as the meadow-saffron, not till October ; the laurustinus and the arbutus, not until November or December. And not only did Linnaeus deem it pos¬ sible to construct a calendar of flowers, hut he also pro¬ posed a floral clock, which should tell to the countryman the hour of the day by the opening of different flowers. Thus the day-lily (Lemerocallis fulva), opens at five in the morning; the common dandelion, about five or six ; the hawksweed (hieracium latifolium), at seven; the hieracium pilosella, at eight; the marigold, at nine ; the mesembryanthemum Neapolitanum, at ten or eleven. 18 '] NATURAL THEOLOGY. Of sensible interposition, we may be permitted to remark, that a Providence, always and certainly distinguishable, would be neither more nor less than miracles rendered frequent and common. It is difficult to judge of the state into which this would throw us. It is enough to say, that it would cast us upon a quite different dispensation from that under which we live. It would be a total and radical change. And the change would deeply affect, or perhaps subvert, the whole conduct of human affairs. I can readily believe, that, other circumstances being adapted to it, such a state might be better than our present state. It may be the state of other beings ; it may be onrs hereafter. But the question with which we are now concerned is, how far it would be consistent with our condition, supposing it in other respects to remain as it is ? And in this question there seem to be reasons of great moment on the negative side. For instance : so long as bodily labour continues, on so many accounts, to be necessary for the bulk of mankind, any dependency upon supernatural aid, by unfixing those motives which promote exertion, or by relaxing those habits which engen¬ der patient industry, might introduce negligence, inactivity, and disorder, into the most useful occupations of human life ; and thereby deteriorate the condition of human life itself. As moral agents, we should experience a still greater alteration; of wdiicli more will be said under the next article. Although, therefore, the Deity, who possesses the power of winding and turning, as he pleases, the course of causes which issue from himself, do in fact interpose to alter or intercept effects, which without such interposition, would have taken place; yet it is by no means in¬ credible, that his providence, which always rests upon final good, may have made a reserve with respect to the manifestation of his interference, a part of the very plan which he has appointed for our terrestrial existence, and a part conformable with, or in some sort required by, other parts of the same plan. It is at any rate evident, that a large and ample province remains for the exercise of Providence, without its being naturally perceptible by us ; because obscurity, when applied to the interruption of laws, bears a neces¬ sary proportion to the imperfection of our knowledge, when applied to the laws themselves, or rather to the effects which these laws, under their various and incalculable combina¬ tions, would of their own accord produce. And if it be said, that the doctrine of Divine Providence, by reason of the ambiguity under which its exertions present themselves, can be attended with no practical influence upon our conduct; that, although we believe ever so firmly that there is a Providence, we must prepare, and provide, and act, as if there were none; I answer, that this is admitted; and that we farther allege, that so to prepare, and so to provide, is consistent with the most perfect assurance of the reality of a Providence : and not only so, but that it is, probably, one advantage of the present state of our information, that our provisions and preparations are not disturbed by it. Or if it be still asked, Of what use at all then is the doctrine, if it neither alter our measures nor regulate our conduct ? I answer again, that it is of the greatest use, but that it is a doctrine of sentiment and piety, not (immediately at least) of action or conduct; that it applies to the consolation of men’s minds, to their devotions, to the excitement of gratitude, the support of patience, the keeping alive and the strengthening of every motive for endeavouring to please our Maker; and that these are great uses. Of all views under which human life has ever been considered, the most reasonable, in my judgment, is that which regards it as a state of probation. If the course of the world were separated from the contrivances of nature, I do not know that it would be necessary to look for any other account of it, than what, if it may be called an account, is contained in the an¬ swer, that events rise up by chance. But since the contrivances of nature decidedly evince Thus we see that there is a regularity of months, and even hours, in the flowers of the garden, which looks exceedingly unlike chance. The very adaptation of the flowers and plants to the seasons, is a proof of contrivance. “ The relation,” says Mr. Whewell, u is as clear as that of a watch to a sun-dial. If a person were to compare the watch with the sun-dial, hour after hour, and day after day, it would be impossible for him not to believe that the watch had been contrived to accommodate itself to the solar day. We have, at least, ten thousand kinds of vegetable watches, of the most various forms, which are all accommodated to the solar year, and the evidence of contrivance, seems to be no more capable of being eluded in this case than in the other.”—Loudon's Gardening, p. 1158. Whewell’s Astronomy, p. 32—38. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 189 intention; and since the course of the world and the contrivances of nature have the same author; we are, by the force of this connexion, led to believe, that the appearance, under which events take place, is reconcilable with the supposition of design on the part of the Deity. It is enough that they be reconcilable with this supposition ; and it is undoubtedly true, that they may be reconcilable, though we cannot reconcile them. The mind, however, which contemplates the works of nature, and, in those works, sees so much of means directed to ends, of beneficial effects brought about by wise expedients, of concerted trains of causes terminating in the happiest results; so much, in a word, of counsel, intention, and benevolence; a mind, I say, drawn into the habit of thought which these observations excite, can hardly turn its view to the condition of our own species, without endeavouring to suggest to itself some purpose, some design, for which the state in which we are placed is fitted, and which it is made to serve. Now we assert the most probable supposition to be that it is a state of moral probation ; and that many things in it suit with this hypothesis, which suit with no other. It is not a state of unmixed happiness, or of happiness simply; it is not a state of designed misery, or of misery simply : it is not a state of retribution; it is not a state of punishment. It suits with none of these suppositions. It accords much better with the idea of its being a condition calculated for the production, exercise, and improvement, of moral qualities, with a view to a future state, in which these qualities, after being so produced, exercised, and im¬ proved, may, by a new and more favouring constitution of things, receive their reward, or become their own. If it be said, that this is to enter upon a religious rather than a philoso¬ phical consideration ; I answer, that the name of Religion ought to form no objection, if it shall turn out to be the case, that the more religious our views are, the more probability they contain. The degree of beneficence, of benevolent intention, and of power, exercised in the construction of sensitive beings, goes strongly in in favour, not only of a creative, but of a continuing care, that is, of a ruling Providence. The degree of chance which appears to pre¬ vail in the world, requires to be reconciled with this hypothesis. Now it is one thing to maintain the doctrine of Providence along with that of a future state, and another thing with¬ out it. In my opinion, the two doctrines must stand or fall together. For although more of this apparent chance may perhaps, upon other principles, be accounted for than is generally supposed, yet a future state alone rectifies all disorders : and if it can be shewn, that the appearance of disorder is consistent with the uses of life, as a 'preparatory state, or that in some respects it promotes these uses, then, so far as this hypothesis may be accepted, the ground of the difficulty is done away. In the wide scale of human condition, there is not perhaps one of its manifold diversities, which does not bear upon the design here suggested. Virtue is infinitely various. There is no situation in which a rational being is placed, from that of the best instructed Christian, down to the condition of the rudest barbarian, which affords not room for moral agency ; for the acquisition, exercise, and display, of voluntary qualities, good and bad. Health and sickness, enjoyment and suffering, riches and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, power and subjection, liberty and bondage, civilisation and barbarity, have all their offices and duties, all serve the formation of character: for when we speak of a state of trial, it must be remembered, that characters are not only tried, or proved, or detected, but that they are generated also, and formed , by circumstances. The best dispositions may subsist under the most depressed, the most afflicted fortunes. A West-Indian slave, who, amidst his wrongs, retains his benevolence, I, for my part, look upon as amongst the foremost of human candidates for the rewards of virtue. The kind master of such a slave—that is, he who, in the exercise of an inordinate authority, postpones, in any degree, his own interest to his slave’s comfort—is likewise a meritorious character : but still he is inferior to his slave. All however which I contend for, is, that these destinies, opposite as they may be in every other view, are both trials; and equally such. The observation may be applied to every other con¬ dition; to the whole range of the scale, not excepting even its lowest extremity. Savages appear to us all alike ; but it is owing to the distance at which we view savage life, that we perceive in it no discrimination of character. I make no doubt, but that moral qualities, both good and bad, are called into action as much, and that they subsist in as great vaiiety, in these inartificial societies, as they are, or do, in polished life. Certain at least it is, that 190 NATURAL THEOLOGY. the good and ill treatment which each individual meets with, depends more upon the choice and voluntary conduct of those about him, than it does or ought to do, under regular civil institutions, and the coercion of public laws. So again, to turn our eyes to the other end of the scale; namely, that part of it which is occupied by mankind enjoying the benefits of learning, together with the lights of revelation; there also the advantage is all along proba¬ tionary. Christianity itself, I mean the revelation of Christianity, is not only a blessing, but a trial. It is one of the diversified means by which the character is exercised : and they who require of Christianity, that the revelation of it should be universal, may possibly be found to require, that one species of probation should be adopted, if not to the exclusion of others, at least to the narrowing of that variety which the wisdom of the Deity hath ap¬ pointed to this part of his moral economy *. Now if this supposition be well founded; that is, if it be true, that our ultimate, or our most permanent happiness, will depend, not upon the temporary condition into which we are cast, but upon our behaviour in it; then is it a much more fit subject of chance than we usually allow or apprehend it to be, in what manner the variety of external circumstances, which subsist in the human world, is distributed amongst the individuals of the species. 44 This life being a state of probation, it is immaterial,” says Rousseau, 44 what kind of trials we ex¬ perience in it, provided they produce their effects.” Of two agents who stand indifferent to the moral Governor of the universe, one may be exercised by riches, the other by poverty. The treatment of these two shall appear to be very opposite, whilst in truth it is the same; for though, in many respects, there be great disparity between the conditions assigned, in one main article there may be none, viz. in that they alike are trials ; have both their duties and temptations, not less arduous or less dangerous in one case than the other ; so that if the final award follow the character, the orioinal distribution of the circumstances under which that character is formed, may be defended upon principles not only of justice but of equality. What hinders, therefore, but that mankind may draw lots for their condition ? They take their portion of faculties and opportunities, as any unknown cause, or concourse of causes, or as causes acting for other purposes, may happen to set them out: but the event is governed by that which depends upon themselves, the application of what they have received. In di¬ viding the talents, no rule was observed : none was necessary : in rewarding the use of them, that of the most correct justice. The chief difference at last appears to be, that the right use of more talents, i. e. of a greater trust, will be more highly rewarded, than the right use of fewer talents, i. e. of a less trust. And since, for other purposes, it is expedient that there be an equality of concredited talents here, as well, probably, as an inequality of conditions here¬ after, though all remuneratory; can any rule, adapted to that inequality, be more agreeable, even to our apprehensions of distributive justice, than this is ? We have said, that the appearance of casualty , which attends the occurrences and events of life, not only does not interfere with its uses, as a state of probation, but that it promotes these uses. 'Passive virtues, of all others the severest and the most sublime ; of all others, perhaps, the most acceptable to the Deity; would, it is evident, be excluded from a constitution, in which happiness and misery regularly followed virtue and vice. Patience and composure under dis¬ tress, affliction, and pain ; a stedfast keeping up of our confidence in God, and of our reliance upon his final goodness, at the time when every thing present is adverse and discouraging ; and (what is no less difficult to retain) a cordial desire for the happiness of others, even when we are deprived of our own ; these dispositions, which constitute, perhaps, the perfec¬ tion of our moral nature, would not have found their proper office and object in a state of avowed retribution; and in which, consequently, endurance of evil would be only submission to punishment. Again; one man’s sufferings may be another man’s trial. The family of a sick parent is a school of filial piety. The charities of domestic life, and not only these, but all the social * The reader will observe, that I speak of the revela- condition, with respect to their future state, by his inter- tion of Christianity as distinct from Christianity itself, vention; may be the objects of his benignity and interces- The dispensation may already be universal. That part sion, as well as of the propitiatory virtue of his passion, of mankind which never heard of Christ’s name, may But this is not “ natural theology therefore I will not nevertheless be redeemed, that is, be placed in a better dwell longer upon it. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 191 virtues, are called out by distress. But then, misery, to be the proper object of mitigation, or of that benevolence which endeavours to relieve, must be really or apparently casual. It is upon such sufferings alone that benevolence can operate. For were there no evils in the world, but what were punishments, properly and intelligibly such, benevolence would only stand in the way of justice. Such evils, consistently with the administration of moral govern¬ ment, could not be prevented or alleviated; that is to say, could not be remitted in whole or in part, except by the authority which inflicted them, or by an appellate or superior authority. This consideration, which is founded in our most acknowledged apprehensions of the nature of penal justice, may possess its weight in the Divine counsels. Virtue perhaps is the greatest of all ends. In human beings, relative virtues form a large part of the whole. Now relative virtue presupposes, not only the existence of evil, without which it could have no object, no material, to work upon, but that evils be, apparently at least, misfortunes ; that is, the effects of apparent chance. It may be in pursuance, therefore, and in furtherance of the same scheme of probation, that the evils of life are made so to present themselves. I have already observed, that when we let in religious considerations, we often let in light upon the difficulties of nature. So in the fact now to be accounted for, the degree of happi¬ ness, which we usually enjoy in this life, may be better suited to a state of trial and probation, than a greater degree would be. The truth is, we are rather too much delighted with the world, than too little. Imperfect, broken, and precarious, as our pleasures are, they are more than sufficient to attach us to the eager pursuit of them. A regard to a future state can hardly keep its place as it is. If we were designed therefore to be influenced by that regard, might not a more indulgent system, a higher or more uninterrupted state of gratification, have interfered with the design ? At least it seems expedient, that mankind should be susceptible of this influence, when presented to them : that the condition of the world should not be such, as to exclude its operation, or even to weaken it more than it does. In a religious view (however we may complain of. them in every other), privation, disappointment, and satiety, are not without the most salutary tendencies. CHAPTER XXVII. CONCLUSION. In all cases, wherein the mind feels itself in danger of being confounded by variety, it is sure to rest upon a few strong points, or perhaps upon a single instance. Amongst a multitude of proofs, it is one that does the business. If we observe in any argument, that hardly two minds fix upon the same instance, the diversity of choice shews the strength of the argument, because it shews the number and competition of the examples. There is no subject in which the tendency to dwell upon select or single topics is so usual, because there is no subject, of which, in its full extent, the latitude is so great, as that of natural history applied to the proof of an intelligent Creator. For my part I take my stand in human anatomy ; and the examples of mechanism I should be apt to draw out from the copious catalogue which it sup¬ plies, are the pivot upon which the head turns, the ligament within the socket of the hip joint, the pulley or trochlear muscles of the eye, the epiglottis, the bandages which tie down the tendons of the wrist and instep, the slit or perforated muscles at the hands and feet, the knitting of the intestines to the mesentery, the course of the chyle into the blood, and the constitution of the sexes as extended throughout the whole of the animal creation. To these instances, the reader's memory will go back, as they are severally set forth in their places; there is not one of the number which I do not think decisive, not one which is not strictly mechanical: nor have I read or heard of any solution of these appearances, which, in the smallest degree, shakes the conclusion that we build upon them. But, of the greatest part of those, who, either in this book or any other, read arguments to prove the existence of a God, it will be said, that they leave oft only where they began ; that 1*02 NATURAL THEOLOGY. they were never ignorant of this great truth, never doubted of it; that it does not therefore appear, what is gained by researches from which no new opinion is learnt, and upon the sub¬ ject of which no proofs were wanted. Now I answer that, by investigation , the following- points are always gained, in favour of doctrines even the most generally acknowledged (sup¬ posing them to be true) viz. stability and impression. Occasions will arise to try the firm¬ ness of our most habitual opinions. And upon these occasions, it is a matter of incalculable use to feel our foundation; to find a support in argument for what we had taken up upon authority. In the present case, the arguments upon which the conclusion rests, are exactly such, as a truth of universal concern ought to rest upon. “ They are sufficiently open to the views and capacities of the unlearned, at the same time that they acquire new strength and lustre from the discoveries of the learned.” If they had been altogether abstruse and recon¬ dite, they would not have found their way to the understandings of the mass of mankind : if they had been merely popular, they might have wanted solidity. But, secondly, what is gained by research in the stability of our conclusion, is also gained from it in impression. Physicians tell us, that there is a great deal of difference between taking a medicine, and the medicine getting into the constitution. A difference not unlike which, obtains with respect to those great moral propositions, which ought to form the direct¬ ing principles of human conduct. It is one thing to assent to a proposition of this sort; another, and a very different thing, to have properly imbibed its influence. I take the case to be this : perhaps almost every man living has a particular train of thought, into which his mind glides and falls, when at leisure from the impressions and ideas that occasionally excite it: perhaps, also, the train of thought here spoken of, more than any other thing, determines the character. It is of the utmost consequence, therefore, that this property of our constitution be well regulated. Now it is by frequent or continued meditation upon a subject, by placing a subject in different points of view, by induction of particulars, by variety of examples, by applying principles to the solution of phenomena, by dwelling upon proofs and consequences, that mental exercise is drawn into any particular channel. It is by these means at least, that we have any power over it. The train of spontaneous thought, and the choice of that train, may be directed to different ends, and may appear to be more or less judiciously fixed, according to the purpose in respect of which we consider it: but, in a moral view , I shall not, I believe, be contradicted when I say, that, if one train of thinking be more desirable than another, it is that which regards the phenomena of nature with a constant reference to a su¬ preme intelligent Author. To have made this the ruling, the habitual sentiment of our minds, is to have laid the foundation of every thing which is religious. The world thenceforth becomes a temple, and life itself one continued act of adoration. The change is no less than this ; that, whereas formerly God was seldom in our thoughts, we can now scarcely look upon any tiling, without perceiving its relation to him. Every organized natural body, in the provisions which it contains for its sustentation and propagation, testifies a care, on the part of the Creator, expressly directed to these purposes. We are on all sides surrounded by such bodies ; examined in their parts, wonderfully curious ; compared with one another, no less wonderfully diversified. So that the mind, as well as the eye, may either expatiate in variety and multitude, or fix itself down to the investigation of particular divisions of the science. And in either case it will rise up from its occupation, possessed by the subject, in a very different manner, and with a very different degree of influence, from what a mere assent to any verbal proposition which can be formed concerning the existence of the Deity, at least that merely complying assent with which those about us are satisfied, and with which we are too apt to satisfy ourselves, will or can produce upon the thoughts. More especially may this difference be perceived, in the degree of admiration and of awe, with which the Divinity is regarded, when represented to the understanding by its own remarks, its own reflections, and its own reasonings, compared with what is excited by any language that can be used by others. The works of nature want only to be contemplated. When contemplated, they have every thing in them which can astonish by their greatness : for, of the vast scale of operation through which our discoveries carry us, at one end we see an intelligent power fixing planetary systems, arranging, for instance, the trajectory of Saturn , or constructing a ring of two hundred thousand miles diameter, to surround his body, NATURAL THEOLOGY. 193 * and be suspended like a magnificent arch over the heads of his inhabitants ; and, at the other bending a hooked tooth, concerting and providing an appropriate mechanism, for the clasping and reclasping of the filaments of the feather of the humming-bird. We have proof, not only of both these works proceeding from an intelligent agent; but of their proceeding from the same agent: for, in the first place, we can trace an identity of plan, a connexion of system, from Saturn to our own globe: and when arrived upon our globe, we can, in the second place, pursue the connexion through all the organized, especially the animated, bodies which it supports. We can observe marks of a common relation, as well to one another, as to the elements of which their habitation is composed. Therefore one mind hath planned, or at least hath prescribed a general plan, for alL these productions. One Being has been con¬ cerned in all. Under this stupendous Being we live. Our happiness, our existence, is in his hands. All we expect must come from him. Nor ought we to feel our situation insecure. In every nature, and in every portion of nature, which we can descry, we find attention bestowed upon even the minutest parts. The hinges in the wings of an earwig , and the joints of its antennae, are as highly wrought, as if the Creator had nothing else to finish. We see no signs of diminution of care by multiplicity of objects, or of distraction of thought by variety. We have no reason to fear, therefore, our being forgotten, or overlooked, or neglected. The existence and character of the Deity, is, in every view, the most interesting of all human speculations. In none, however, is it more so, than as it facilitates the belief of the funda¬ mental articles of Revelation. It is a step to have it proved, that there must be something in the world more than what we see. It is a farther step to know, that, amongst the invisi¬ ble things of nature, there must be an intelligent mind, concerned in its production, order, and support. These points being assured to us by Natural Theology, we may well leave to Revelation the disclosure of many particulars, which our researches cannot reach, respecting either the nature of this Being as the original cause of all things, or his character and designs as a moral governor; and not only so, but the more full confirmation of other particulars, of which, though they do not lie altogether beyond our reasonings and our probabilities, the certainty is by no means equal to the importance. The true theist will be the first to listen to any credible communication of Divine knowledge. Nothing which he has learnt from Natural Theology, will diminish his desire of farther instruction, or his disposition to receive it with humility and thankfulness. He wishes for light: he rejoices in light. His inward veneration of this great Being, will incline him to attend with the utmost seriousness, not only to all that can be discovered concerning him by researches into nature, but to all that is taught by a revelation, which gives reasonable proof of having proceeded from him. But, above every other article of revealed religion, does the anterior belief of a Deity bear with the strongest force upon that grand point, which gives indeed interest and importance to all the rest,—the resurrection of the human dead. The thing might appear hopeless, did we not see a power at work adequate to the effect, a power under the guidance of an intelligent will, and a power penetrating the inmost recesses of all substance. I am far from justifying the opinion of those, who “ thought it a thing incredible, that God should raise the dead but I admit, that it is first necessary to be persuaded, that there is a God, to do so. This being thoroughly settled in our minds, there seems to be nothing in this process (concealed as we confess it to be) which need to shock our belief. They who taken up the opinion, that the acts of the human mind depend upon organization , that the mind itself indeed consists in organization, are supposed to find a greater difficulty than others do, in admitting a transi¬ tion by death to a new state of sentient existence, because the old organization is apparently dissolved. But I do not see that any impracticability need be apprehended even by these; or that the change, even upon their hypothesis, is far removed from the analogy of some other operations, which we know with certainty that the Deity is carrying on. In the ordinary derivation of plants and animals, from one another, a particle, in many cases, minuter than all assignable, all conceivable dimension; an aura, an effluvium, an infinitesimal; determines the organization of a future body : docs no less than fix, whether that which is about to be produced, shall be a vegetable, a merely sentient, or a rational being: an oak, a frog, or a philosopher; makes all these differences; gives to the future body its qualities, and nature, o 194 NATURAL THEOLOGY. and species. And this particle, from which springs, and by which is determined, a whole future nature, itself proceeds from, and owes its constitution to, a prior body : nevertheless, which is seen in plants most decisively, the incepted organization, though formed within, and through, and by, a preceding organization, is not corrupted by its corruption, or c de¬ stroyed by its dissolution : but on the contrary, is sometimes extricated and developed by those very causes ; survives and comes into action, when the purpose, for which it was pre¬ pared, requires its use. Now an economy which nature has adopted, when the purpose was to transfer an organization from one individual to another, may have something analogous to it, when the purpose is to transmit an organization from one state of being to another state : and they who found thought in organization, may see something in this analogy applicable to their difficulties; for, whatever can transmit a similarity of organization will answer their purpose, because, according even to their own theory, it may be the vehicle of consciousness, and' because consciousness carries identity and individuality along with it through all changes of form or of visible qualities. In the most general case, that, as we have said, of the derivation of plants and animals from one another, the latent organization is either itself similar to the old organization, or has the power of communicating to new matter the old organic form. But it is not restricted to this rule. There are other cases, especially in the progress of insect life, in which the dormant organization does not much resemble that which encloses it, and still less suits with the situation in which the enclosing body is placed, but suits with a different situation to which it is destined. In the larva of the libellula, which lives constantly, and has still long to live under water, are descried the wings of a fly, which two years afterwards is to mount into the air. Is there nothing in this analogy ? It serves at least to shew, that even in the observable course of nature, organiza¬ tions are formed one beneath another; and, amongst a thousand other instances, it shews completely, that the Deity can mould and fashion the parts of material nature, so as to fulfil any purpose whatever which he is pleased to appoint. They who refer the operations of mind to a substance totally and essentially different from matter (as most certainly these operations, though affected by material causes, hold very little affinity to any properties of matter with which we are acquainted), adopt perhaps a juster reasoning and a better philosophy : and by these the considerations above suggested are not wanted, at least in the same degree. But to such as find, which some persons do find, an insuperable difficulty in shaking off an adherence to those analogies, which the cor¬ poreal world is continually suggesting to their thoughts; to such I say, every consideration will be a relief, which manifests the extent of that intelligent power which is acting in nature, the fruitfulness of its resources, the variety, and aptness, and success, of its means ; most especially every consideration, which tends to shew that, in the translation of a conscious existence, there is not, even in their own way of regarding it, any thing greatly beyond, or totally unlike, what takes place in such parts (probably small parts) of the order of nature, as are accessible to our observation. Again; if there be those who think, that the contractedness and debility of the human faculties, in our present state, seem ill to accord with the high destinies which the expecta¬ tions of religion point out to us; I would only ask them, whether any one who saw a child two hours after its birth, could suppose that it would ever come to understand fluxions*; or who then shall say, what farther amplification of intellectual powers, what accession of knowledge, what advance and improvement, the rational faculty, be its constitution what it will, may not admit of, when placed amidst new objects, and endowed with a sensorium adapted, as it undoubtedly will be, and as our present senses are, to the perception of those substances, and of those properties of things, with which our concern may lie. Upon the whole, in every change which respects this awful, but, as we trust, glorious change, we have a wise and powerful Being (the author, in nature, of infinitely various ex¬ pedients for infinitely various ends), upon whom to rely for the choice and appointment of means adequate to the execution of any plan which his goodness or his justice may have formed, for the moral and accountable part of his terrestrial creation. That great office rests * See Search’s Light of Nature, passim. NATURAL THEOLOGY. 195 with him ; be it ours to hope and to prepare, under a firm and settled persuasion, that, living and dying, we are his ; that life is passed in his constant presence, that death resigns us to his merciful disposal*. * We envy not the feelings of any one, who can con¬ clude this very admirable work, without admiration of the talents it displays and conviction of the truth it illustrates. The plan which Paley laid down for his own guidance, in the construction of this work, was, like that which dis¬ tinguishes all his other great productions, remarkable for its force and for its simplicity. He propounded one great principle, “ that a contrivance must have a contriver and throughout his work, he has laboured to defend and illustrate his position with equal talent and success. In this simplicity of plan consisted one great merit of Paley : he never wandered, without design, from the posi¬ tion he was maintaining; was seldom deceived in his authorities, and never confused. His illustrations, too, are never more than the subject requires; and he is therefore never, like some of the authors whose works he has em¬ ployed, led so far away from his first position, by digressions and endless quotations, that his readers forget the point from which they originally diverged. Paley seemed to be conscious that this work was naturally the first of the series. “It is a step,” says he, when near its conclusion, “ to have it proved, that there must he something in the world more than what we see. It is a farther step to know, that among the invisible things of nature, there must be an intelligent Mind, con¬ cerned in its production, order, and support. These points being assured to us by Natural Theology, we may well leave to Revelation the disclosure of many particulars which our researches cannot reach, respecting either the nature of this Being, as the original cause of all things, or his character and designs, as a moral governor; and not only so, but the more full confirmation of other particu¬ lars, of which, although they do not lie altogether beyond our reasonings and our probabilities, the certainty is by no means equal to their importance.” It has been sometimes said, that Paley has, in his Natural Theology, omitted one great and primary question, that which regards a living principle in organic matter, distinct from matter itself. This is not, however, a valid objection; for Paley did not, in this work, write to prove the existence of a soul in man, but the existence of an omnipotent Creator; which, when once he had unanswer¬ ably established, he then naturally felt, that to limit the powers of such a Being, was absurd because impossible ; and, as a natural consequence, he deemed it quite un¬ necessary to enter into the proof of the existence of matter purely spiritual; not but that, during the progress of this work, he has, with a different immediate motive, alluded to certain facts, which clearly demonstrate the existence, in organic substances, of a principle totally dis¬ tinct from the matter of which those substances are com¬ posed. Such, for instance, is the well known fact that the gastric juice of animals will dissolve dead but not living animal matters; will corrode the very dead stomach, which, when living, has held it for years. Again; the mental powers of man have, clearly, no necessary connection with his bodily ; the one, beginning perceptibly to decay after a certain age, while the other as evidently continue to improve in energy and strength for years. And of this we have many unanswerable instances. Paley would have dwelt upon such facts more at length, had the immediate object of his work required him to have employed them; but such was not his object: for he felt very justly, that that Being who could create a world out of nothing, could just as readily form and continue a soul in the same manner. ' A VIEW PART OF THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY; IN THREE PARTS. I. — Op the direct historical evidence of Christianity, and wherein it IS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE EVIDENCE ALLEGED FOR OTHER MIRACLES. II. - Of THE AUXILIARY EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. III. - A BRIEF CONSIDERATION OF SOME POPULAR OBJECTIONS. TO THE HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND JAMES YORKE, D. D. LORD BISHOP OF ELY*. My Lord, When, five years ago, an important station in the University of Cambridge awaited your Lordship’s disposal, you were pleased to offer it to me. The circumstances under which this offer was made, demand a public acknowledgment. I had never seen your Lordship; I possessed no connexion which could possibly recommend me to your favour; I was known to you, only by my endeavours, in common with many others, to discharge my duty as a tutor in the University ; and by some very imperfect, hut certainly well-intended, and, as you thought, useful publications since. In an age by no means wanting in examples of honourable patronage, although this deserve not to be mentioned in respect of the object of your Lordship’s choice, it is inferior to none in the purity and disinterestedness of the motives which suggested it. How the following work may be received, I pretend not to foretell. My first prayer concerning it is, that it may do good to any : my second hope, that it may assist, what it hath always been my earnest wish to promote, the religious part of an academical education. If in this latter view it might seem, in any degree, to excuse your Lordship’s judgment of its author, I shall be gratified by the reflection, that to a kindness flow¬ ing from public principles, I have made the best public return in my power. In the mean time, and in every event, I rejoice in the opportunity here afforded me, of testifying the sense I entertain of your Lordship’s conduct, and of a notice which I regard as the most flattering distinction of my life. I am, My Lord, With sentiments of gratitude and respect, Your Lordship’s faithful And most obliged servant, WILLIAM PALEY. * This enlightened bishop, who so honourably endea¬ voured to serve, at the same time, Paley, and Jesus’ College, Cambridge, by proffering to him its mastership, did not long survive the object of his regard and admi¬ ration : he died in 1808, three years after Paley, having then been twenty-seven years bishop of Ely. He was born in 1730; the youngest of the four sons of the great Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. Educated at Cam¬ bridge, he rose rapidly in the Church; became bishop of St. David’s, in 1774; was translated to Gloucester five years afterwards; and succeeded to Ely in 1781, on the death of Dr. Keene. He was an excellent and amiable prelate ; who, without being endowed with brilliant talents, zealously endeavoured to fulfil the duties of his station; and he will go down to posterity distinguished for at least one great and good action—an earnest endeavour to promote Paley, who was then almost friendless, and personally unknown to him. Gent. Mag., 1808, p. 856. Ann. Reg.-Chron., 158. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. PREFATORY CONSIDERATIONS *. I deem it unnecessary to prove tliat mankind stood in need of a revelation, because I have met with no serious person who thinks that, even under the Christian revelation, we have too much light, or any degree of assurance which is superfluous. I desire moreover, that, in judging of Christianity, it may be remembered, that the question lies between this religion and none : for, if the Christian religion be not credible, no one, with whom we have to do, will support the pretensions of any other. * The “ Evidences of Christianity” were first published in 1794, in three volumes, 12mo. ; they were speedily reprinted in two volumes, 8vo. ; and have since appeared in various forms. The success of the work was immediate, and very great. It was admirably adapted to encounter the torrent of irreligion and blasphemy, which then was rushing on to demonstrate, in the then rapidly ap¬ proaching days of the French Revolution, their melan¬ choly yet their legitimate fruits. Doubt was then thought puerile in politics, but philosophic in religion : an appear¬ ance of scepticism, therefore, was fashionable with the learned, and imitated, as a matter of course, by the smat- terers and the vulgar. While Paley was busy collecting his proofs, and arrang¬ ing his materials, a talented body of infidels were actively employed, openly as well as secretly, in attacking the out¬ works, nay, the very citadel of the Christian religion. Hume had been not many years in his grave, and Voltaire still fewer, when Paley published this work. Tom Paine was in the ascendant among his dazzled and shallow sect, and was profiting by his popularity at the time of its publi¬ cation ; whilst Gibbon, the sarcastic historian of Rome, descended into his grave the very year of its appearance. The value of the pilot is known best in the storm ; and the lovers therefore of Christianity, the humble, the anxious, and the devout, were, in consequence, delighted, at such a period, with this splendid, this unanswerable work. Blasphemy’and irreligion were confounded if not abashed; not an infidel could be found hardy enough to attempt to produce an answer. Scepticism began from that day to be no longer generally fashionable; for Paley had shewn, in plain and popular language, that so far from being reasonable, it was not even plausible. The learned, therefore, and the men of science, no longer generally patronised infidelity; it ceased to be thought an evidence_ of genius to be an infidel; and the professors of it have never since made head in England. The “ Age of Reason,” and the natural fruits of it, in the French revo¬ lutionary philosophy, helped to give a finishing blow to the once fashionable taste, since it practically convinced all reasonable men of the truth of Paley’s assertions, that infidelity was neither so liberal as Christianity, nor so friendly to the propagation of either liberty or virtue. The good men, of all sects, rejoiced at the opportune appearance of this great work; for they felt that a blow had been struck at infidelity, which all the Gibbons, all the Humes, and all the false philosophy of the age, could not return. The work was read by all classes ; the king carried it with him in his carriage ; Cambridge made it a text book for her students ; and its author was enabled to partake of the general exultation, by the noble conduct of the prelates of England, who caressed and immediately promoted him to some of the best preferments in their power to bestow upon him. Viewed as a link in the chain of his works, it naturally follows his “Theology;” since, having in that work proved the existence of a Creator, the next effort he had to make, as a Christian minister, was to prove that that Supreme Being had, in a former age of the world, made a revelation to his creatures. How well he has performed the task, his readers will judge by their own religious feelings ; but of the excellence of the mode he employed in the investiga¬ tion, there can be no doubt. How well, in his Natural Theology, he had laid the ground-work for his Evidences of Christianity, he seemed himself conscious, when he happily observed, “ It is a step to have it proved, that there must be something in this world more than what we see; it is a farther step to know, that among the invisible things of nature, there must be an intelligent Mind con¬ cerned in its production, order, and support,” &c. The foundation on which he builds his Evidences of Christianity, however excellent and successful, of necessity differs widely from that employed in his Natural Theology. In the latter, he takes his stand upon the proof of the contrivances discernible in the works of nature ; but in the work now before us, he rests his chief proofs upon human testimony ; in the management of either, he is equally excellent; displaying, in the one, the minute, yet profound knowledge of the philosopher; in the other, in the arrangement and illustration of his proofs, all the skill of the accomplished advocate. Thus, in his “ Evidences,” he took for his first great 200 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY*. Suppose, then, the world we live in to have had a Creator ; suppose it to appear, from the predominant aim and tendency of the provisions and contrivances observable in the universe, that the Deity, when he formed it, consulted for the happiness of his sensitive creation; suppose the disposition which dictated this counsel to continue; suppose a part of the crea¬ tion to have received faculties from their Maker, by which they are capable of rendering a moral obedience to his will, and of voluntarily pursuing any end for which he has designed them; suppose the Creator to intend for these, his rational and accountable agents, a second state of existence, in which their situation will be regulated by their behaviour in the first state, by which supposition (and by no other) the objection to the divine government in not putting a difference between the good and the bad, and the inconsistency of this confusion with the care and benevolence discoverable in the works of the Deity, is done away; suppose it to be of the utmost importance to the subjects of this dispensation to know what is intended for them, that is, suppose the knowledge of it to be highly conducive to the happi¬ ness of the species, a purpose which so many provisions of nature are calculated to promote : suppose, nevertheless, almost the whole race, either by the imperfection of their faculties, the misfortune of their situation, or by the loss of some prior revelation, to want this know¬ ledge, and not to be likely, without the aid of a new revelation, to attain it: under these circumstances, is it improbable that a revelation should be made ? Is it incredible that God should interpose for such a purpose? Suppose him to design for mankind a future state; is it unlikely that he should acquaint him with it ? Now in what way can a revelation be made, but by miracles ? In none which we are able to conceive. Consequently, in whatever degree it is probable, or not very improbable, that a revelation should be communicated to mankind at all; in the same degree is it probable, or not very improbable, that miracles should be wrought. Therefore, when miracles are related to have been wrought in the promulgating of a revelation manifestly wanted, and, if true, of inestimable value, the improbability which arises from the miraculous nature of the things related, is not greater than the original improbability that such a revelation should be imparted by God. I wish it, however, to be correctly understood, in what manner, and to what extent, this argument is alleged. We do not assume the attributes of the Deity, or the existence of a future state, to prove the reality of miracles. That reality always must be proved by evidence. We assert only, that in miracles adduced in support of revelation, there is not any such ante¬ cedent improbability as no testimony can surmount. And for the purpose of maintaining this assertion, we contend, that the incredibility of miracles related to have been wrought in attestation of a message from God, conveying intelligence of a future state of rewards and punishments, and teaching mankind how to prepare themselves for that state, is not, in itself, greater than the event, call it either probable or improbable, of the two following pro¬ positions being true : namely, first, that a future state of existence should be destined by God for his human creation ; and secondly, that, being so destined, he should acquaint them with it. It is not necessary for our purpose, that these propositions be capable of proof, or even that, by arguments drawn from the light of nature, they can be made out to be probable ; it is enough that we are able to say concerning them, that they are not so violently improbable, so contradictory to what we already believe of the divine power and character, that either the propositions themselves, or facts strictly connected with the propositions (and therefore no farther improbable than they are improbable), ought to be rejected at first sight, and to be rejected by whatever strength or complication of evidence they be attested. This is the prejudication we would resist. For to this length does a modern objection to position the testimony of the early Christians, maintained even to the death, one from which no fair argument could dispossess him, and for which it is vain to search for a stronger. Other authors, of great learning and talent, have taken different modes, have employed other excel¬ lent arguments in the same great cause ; but none of them have rivaled Paley, either in simplicity of design, or in the eloquence of their execution. Paley’s is, throughout, one great and unanswerable appeal to the reason and com¬ mon sense ot the reader : there is none to the feelings ; no attempts to mystify, or to supply imaginary defects in the case ; but the same candour, the same fairness of argu¬ ment is always preserved. He never appears to have forgotten the just dignity of the advocate, pleading in a good cause,—with religion for his client, truth for his object, the strongest facts for his support. “ En.” EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 201 miracles go, viz. that no human testimony can in any case render them credible. I think the reflection above stated, that, if there be a revelation, there must be miracles, and that under the circumstances in which the human species are placed, a revelation is not improba¬ ble, or not improbable in any great degree, to be a fair answer to the whole objection. But since it is an objection which stands in the very threshold of our argument, and if admitted, is a bar to every proof, and to all future reasoning upon the subject, it may be necessary, before we proceed farther, to examine the principle upon which it professes to be founded; which principle is concisely this, That it is contrary to experience that a miracle should be true, hut not contrary to experience that testimony should be false. Now there appears a small ambiguity in the term “ experience,” and in the phrases, “ contrary to experience,” or “ contradicting experience,” which it may be necessary to remove in the first place. Strictly speaking, the narrative of a fact is then only contrary to experience, when the fact is related to have existed at a time and place, at which time and place we being present did not perceive it to exist; as if it should he asserted, that in a parti¬ cular room, and at a particular hour of a certain day, a man was raised from the dead, in which room, and at the time specified, we, being present and looking on, perceived no such event to have taken place. Here the assertion is contrary to experience, properly so called : and this is a contrariety which no evidence can surmount. It matters nothing, whether the fact be of a miraculous nature, or not. But although this be the experience, and the contrariety, which archbishop Tillotson alleged in the quotation with which Mr. Hume opens his Essay, it is certainly not that experience, nor that contrariety, which Mr. Hume himself intended to object. And, short of this, I know no intelligible signification which can be affixed to the term “ contrary to experience,” but one, viz. that of not having ourselves experienced any thing similar to the thing related, or such things not being generally experienced by others. I say “ not generally :” for to state concerning the fact in question, that no such thing was ever experienced, or that universal experience is against it, is to assume the subject of the controversy. Now the improbability which arises from the want (for this properly is a want, not a contradiction) of experience, is only equal to the probability there is, that, if the thing were true, we should experience things similar to it, or that such things would be generally expe¬ rienced. Suppose it then to be true that miracles were wrought on the first promulgation of Christianity, when nothing but miracles could decide its authority, is it certain that such miracles would be repeated so often, and in so many places, as to become objects of general experience ? Is it a probability approaching to certainty ? Is it a probability of any great strength or force ? Is it such as no evidence can encounter ? And yet this probability is the exact converse , and therefore, the exact measure, of the improbability which arises from the want of experience, and which Mr. Hume represents as invincible by human testimony. It is not like alleging a new law of nature, or a new experiment in natural philosophy; because, when these are related, it is expected that, under the same circumstances, the same effect will follow universally; and in proportion as this expectation is justly entertained, the want of a corresponding experience negatives the history. But to expect concerning a miracle, that it should succeed upon a repetition, is to expect that which would make it cease to be a miracle, which is contrary to its nature as such, and would totally destroy the use and purpose for which it was wrought. The force of experience as an objection to miracles, is founded in the presumption, either that the course of nature is invariable, or that, if it be ever varied, variations will he frequent and general. Has the necessity of this alternative been demonstrated ? Permit us to call the course of nature the agency of an intelligent Being ; and is there any good reason for judg¬ ing this state of the case to be probable ? Ought we not rather to expect that such a Being, on occasions of peculiar importance, may interrupt the order which he had appointed, yet that such occasions should return seldom; that these interruptions consequently should be confined to the experience of a few; that the want of it, therefore, in many, should be matter neither of surprise nor objection ? But as a continuation of the argument from experience, it is said, that, when we advance accounts of miracles, we assign effects without causes, or we attribute effects to causes inade- 202 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. quate to the purpose, or to causes, of the operation of which we have no experience. Of what causes, we may ask, and of what effects does the objection speak ? If it be answered that, when we ascribe the cure of the palsy to a touch, of blindness to the anointing of the eyes with clay, or the raising of the dead to a word, we lay ourselves open to this imputa¬ tion ; we reply, that we ascribe no such effects to such causes. We perceive no virtue or energy in these things more than in other things of the same kind. They are merely signs to connect the miracle with its end. The effect we ascribe simply to the volition of Deity ; of whose existence and power, not to say of whose presence and agency, we have previous and independent proof. We have, therefore, all we seek for in the works of rational agents,— a sufficient power and an adequate motive. In a word, once believe that there is a God, and miracles are not incredible. Mr. Hume states the case of miracles to be a contest of opposite improbabilities, that is to say, a question whether it be more improbable that the miracle should bo true, or the testi¬ mony false : and this I think a fair account of the controversy. But herein I remark a want of argumentative justice, that, in describing the improbability of miracles, he suppresses all those circumstances of extenuation, which result from our knowledge of the existence, power, and disposition of the Deity; his concern in the creation, the end answered by the miracle, the importance of that end, and its subserviency to the plan pursued in the work of nature. As Mr. Hume has represented the question, miracles are alike incredible to him who is previously assured of the constant agency of a Divine Being, and to him who believes that no such Being exists in the universe. They are equally incredible, whether related to have been wrought upon occasions the most deserving, and for purposes the most beneficial, or for no assignable end whatever, or for an end confessedly trifling or pernicious. This surely cannot be a correct statement. In adjusting also the other side of the balance, the strength and weight of testimony, this author has provided an answer to every possible accumulation of historical proof by telling us, that we are not obliged to explain how the story of the evidence arose. Now I think that we are obliged; not, perhaps, to show by positive accounts how it did, but by a probable hypothesis how it might so happen. The existence of the testimony is a phenomenon; the truth of the fact solves the phenomenon. If we reject this solution, we ought to have some other to rest in ; and none, even by our adver¬ saries, can be admitted, which is not inconsistent with the principles that regulate human affairs and human conduct at present, or which makes men then to have been a different kind of beings from what they are now. But the short consideration which, independently of every other, convinces me that there is no solid foundation in Mr. Hume’s conclusion, is the following. When a theorem is proposed to a mathematician, the first thing he does with it is to try it upon a simple case, and if it produce a false result, he is sure that there must be some mistake in the demon¬ stration. Now to proceed in this way with what may be called Mr. Hume’s theorem. If twelve men, whose probity and good sense I had long known, should seriously and circum¬ stantially relate to me an account of a miracle wrought before their eyes, and in which it was impossible that they should be deceived; if the governor of the country, hearing a rumour of this account, should call these men into his presence, and offer them a short proposal, either to confess the imposture, or submit to be tied up to a gibbet; if they should refuse with one voice to acknowledge that there existed any falsehood or imposture in the case; if this threat were communicated to them separately, yet with no different effect; if it was at last executed; if I myself saw them, one after another, consenting to be racked, burnt, or strangled, rather than give up the truth of their account;—still, if Mr. Hume’s rule be my guide, I am not to believe them. Now I undertake to say that there exists not a sceptic in the world who would not believe them, or who would defend such incredulity. Instances of spurious miracles supported by strong apparent testimony, undoubtedly demand examination; Mr. Hume has endeavoured to fortify his argument by some examples of this kind. I hope, in a proper place, to show that none of them reach the strength or circumstances of the Christian evidence. In these, however, consist the weight of his objection: in the principle itself, I am persuaded, there is none. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 203 PART I. OF TIIE DIRECT HISTORICAL EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, AND WHEREIN IT IS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE EVIDENCE ALLEGED FOR OTHER MIRACLES. The two propositions which I shall endeavour to establish are these: I. That there is satisfactory evidence that many, professing to he original witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of those accounts; and that they also submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of conduct # . II. That there is not satisfactory evidence, that persons professing to be original witnesses of other miracles, in their nature as certain as these are, have ever acted in the same manner, in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and properly in consequence of their belief of those accounts. The first of these propositions, as it forms the argument, will stand at the head of the following nine chapters. CHAPTER I. there is satisfactory evidence that many, professing to be original avitnesses OF THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES, PASSED THEIR LIVES IN LABOURS, DANGERS, AND SUF¬ FERINGS, VOLUNTARILY UNDERGONE IN ATTESTATION OF THE ACCOUNTS AVHICH THEY DELIVERED, AND SOLELY IN CONSEQUENCE OF THEIR BELIEF OF THOSE ACCOUNTS ; AND THAT THEY ALSO SUBMITTED, FROM THE SAME MOTIVES, TO NEW RULES OF CONDUCT. To support this proposition, two points are necessary to be made out: first, that the Founder of the institution, his associates and immediate followers, acted the part which the proposition imputes to them: secondly, that * The multitude of the early Christian witnesses to the truth of Christianity, constitutes a body of evidence, which, in any other case, no man would hesitate to deem suffi¬ cient. Such connected evidence would be more than ample, in any important cause, to prove legally any person’s pedi¬ gree ; his claims to an estate, however large ; or to demon¬ strate the guilt of any criminal. In the case of our own laws, one witness only is required to prove the greatest of crimes; it is only in particular cases, as in perjury, that two are required ; because, in such cases, if it were not so, it would be merely placing one person’s oath against another. In our Courts of Justice, there are only two chief objections which can be taken to any witness, viz. that he is interested in the case in which he is to give evidence, or, secondly, that he has been convicted of some infamous crime : neither of which will apply to the witnesses, who with their dying breaths attested the truth of Christianity. Moreover the law of England admits the testimony of persons of all modes of religious belief—see Omichund v. Barker, Atkyn’s Reports, 21— suffers them to be sworn according to the manner which they they did so in attestation of the miraculous may deem the most sacred, and only rejects the testimony of an Atheist—Aitcheson v. Everritt, Cowper, 390—and then leaves it to the Jury to decide upon its credibility. Such too is the mode adopted by the professors and advo¬ cates of Christianity. Men of all creeds, of all sects; Jews and Gentiles, Romans and Greeks, have testified to its truth—illiterate fishermen (the least adapted of all men to be chosen to be chief conspirators)—learned phy¬ sicians, and accomplished classics (men not likely to be easily deceived) united in its propagation, bore testimony to having seen certain facts, and to having heard certain miraculous communications. That this evidence is amply sufficient to establish what it is adduced to prove, no reasonable person can doubt—no Court of Justice could deem it insufficient—no mere reasoning would answer it —yet such are the only defences of the Infidel—the only pleas he has to produce to excuse his scepticism. Is it then too much to ask for Christianity, what would be deemed reasonable in any other case, liowevei remotely similar ?>—See Reakc’s Law of Evidence,p. 1 —■ 11. Ed, 204 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. history recorded in our Scriptures, and solely in consequence of their belief of the truth of this history. Before we produce any particular testimony to the activity and sufferings which compose the subject of our first assertion, it will be proper to consider the degree of probability which the assertion derives from the nature of the case , that is, by inferences from those parts of the case which, in point of fact, are on all hands acknowledged. First, then, the Christian Religion exists, and therefore by some means or other was established. Now it either owes the principle of its establishment, i. e. its first publication, to the activity of the Person who was the founder of the institution, and of those who were joined with him in the undertaking, or we are driven upon the strange supposition, that, although they might lie by, others would take it up ; although they were quiet and silent, other persons busied themselves in the success and propagation of their story. This is perfectly incredible. Tome it appears little less than certain, that, if the first announcing of the religion by the Founder had not been followed up by the zeal and industry of his immediate disciples, the attempt must have expired in its birth. Then as to the kind and degree of exertion which was employed, and the mode of life to which these persons submitted, we reasonably suppose it to be like that which we observe in all others who voluntarily become missionaries of a new faith. Frequent, earnest, and laborious preaching, constantly conversing with religious persons upon religion, a seques¬ tration from the common pleasures, engagements, and varieties of life, and an addiction to one serious object, compose the habits of such men. I do not say that this mode of life is without enjoyment, but I say that the enjoyment springs from sincerity. With a conscious¬ ness at the bottom of hollowness and falsehood, the fatigue and restraint would become insupportable. I am apt to believe that very few hypocrites engage in these undertakings ; or, however, persist in them long. Ordinarily speaking, nothing can overcome the indolence of mankind, the love which is natural to most tempers of cheerful society and cheerful scenes, or the desire, which is common to all, of personal ease and freedom, but conviction. Secondly, it is also highly probable, from the nature of the case, that the propagation of the new religion was attended with difficulty and danger. As addressed to the Jews, it was a system adverse not only to their habitual opinions, but to those opinions upon which their hopes, their partialities, their pride, their consolation, was founded. This people, with or without reason, had worked themselves into a persuasion, that some signal and greatly advantageous change was to be effected in the condition of their country, by the agency of a long-promised messenger from heaven*. The rulers of the Jews, their leading sect, their priesthood, had been the authors of this persuasion to the common people. So that it was not merely the conjecture of theoretical divines, or the secret expectation of a few recluse devotees, but it was become the popular hope and passion, and like all popular opinions, undoubting, and impatient of contradiction. They clung to this hope under every misfor¬ tune of their country, and with more tenacity as their dangers or calamities increased. To find, therefore, that expectations so gratifying were to be worse than disappointed; that they were to end in the diffusion of a mild unambitious religion, which, instead of victories and triumphs, instead of exalting their nation and institution above the rest of the world, was to advance those whom they despised to an equality with themselves, in those very points of comparison in which they most valued their own distinction, could be no very pleasing dis¬ covery to a Jewish mind; nor could the messengers of such intelligence expect to be well received or easily credited. The doctrine was equally harsh and novel. The extending of the kingdom of God to those who did not conform to the law of Moses, was a notion that had never before entered into the thoughts of a Jew. The character of the new institution was, in other respects also, ungrateful to Jewish habits and principles. Their own religion was in a high degree technical. Even the enlightened * “ Percrebuerat oriente toto vetus ct constans opinio, contineri, eo ipso tempore fore, ut valescerct oriens, pro- esse in fatis, ut eo tempore Judaea profccti rerum poti- fectique Judaea rerum potirentur.” (Tacit. Hist. lib. v. rentur.” (Sueton. Vespasian, cap. 4—8.)—An ancient cap. 9 —13.)—A persuasion existed in many that there and immutable opinion was diffused over all the East, that was a statement in certain ancient hooka of the priests, it was among the things fated to be, that at that time, that at that time the East should obtain dominion, and those would go forth from Judea who should widely prevail, that those would go forth from Judea who should widely “ Pluribus persuasio inerat, antiquis sacerdotum literis prevail. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 205 Jew placed a great deal of stress upon the ceremonies of his law, saw in them a great deal of virtue and efficacy; the gross and vulgar had scarcely any thing else ; and the hypocritical and ostentatious magnified them above measure, as being the instruments of their own repu¬ tation and influence. The Christian scheme, without formally repealing the Levitical code, lowered its' estimation extremely. In the place of strictness and zeal in performing the observances which that code prescribed, or which tradition had added to it, the new sect preached up faith, well-regulated affections, inward purity, and moral rectitude of disposition, as the true ground, on the part of the worshipper, of merit and acceptance with God. This, however rational it may appear, or recommending to us at present, did not by any means facilitate the plan then. On the contrary, to disparage those qualities which the highest characters in the country valued themselves most upon, was a sure way of making powerful enemies. As if the frustration of the national hope was not enough, the long-esteemed merit of ritual zeal and punctuality was to be decried, and that by Jews preaching to Jews. The ruling party at Jerusalem had just before crucified the Founder of the religion. That is a fact which wdll not be disputed. They, therefore, who stood forth to preach the religion must necessarily reproach these rulers with an execution, which they could not but represent as an unjust and cruel murder. This would not render their office more easy, or their situation more safe. With regard to the interference of the Roman Government which was then established in Judea, I should not expect, that, despising as it did the religion of the country, it would, if left to itself, animadvert, either with much vigilance or much severity, upon the schisms and controversies which arose within it. Y r et there was that in Christianity which might easily afford a handle of accusation with a jealous government. The Christians avowed an unquali¬ fied obedience to a new master. They avowed also that he was the person who had been foretold to the Jews under the suspected title of king. The spiritual nature of this kingdom, the consistency of this obedience with civil subjection, were distinctions too refined to be entertained by a Roman president, who viewed the business at a great distance, or through the medium of very hostile representations. Our histories accordingly inform us, that this was the turn which the enemies of Jesus gave to his character and pretensions in their remonstrances with Pontius Pilate. And Justin Martyr, about a hundred years afterward, complains that the same mistake prevailed in his time : “Ye, having heard that we are waiting for a kingdom, suppose, without distinguishing, that we mean a human kingdom, when in truth we speak of that which is with God*.” And it was undoubtedly a natural source of calumny and misconstruction. The preachers of Christianity had, therefore, to contend with prejudice backed by power. They had to come forward to a disappointed people, to a priesthood possessing a considerable share of municipal authority, and actuated by strong motives of opposition and resentment; and they had to do this under a foreign government, to whose favour they made no preten¬ sions, and which w*as constantly surrounded by their enemies. The well-known, because the experienced fate of reformers, whenever the reformation subverts some reigning opinion, and does not proceed upon a change that has already taken place in the sentiments of a country, will not allow, much less lead, us to suppose that the first propagators of Christi¬ anity at Jerusalem and in Judea, under the difficulties and the enemies they had to contend with, and entirely destitute as they were of force, authority, or protection, could execute their mission with personal ease and safety. Let us next inquire, what might reasonably be expected by the preachers of Christianity when they turned themselves to the heathen public. Now the first thing that strikes us is, that the religion they carried with them was exclusive. It denied without reserve the truth of every article of heathen mythology, the existence of every object of their worship. It accepted no compromise ; it admitted no comprehension. It must prevail, if it prevailed at all, by the overthrow of every statue, altar, and temple, in the world. It will not easily be credited, that a design, so bold as this was, could in any age be attempted to be carried into execution with impunity. * Ap. l raa , p. 16, Ed. Thirl. 200 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. For it ought to be considered, that this was not setting forth, or magnifying the character and worship of some new competitor for a place in the Pantheon, whose pretensions might be discussed or asserted without questioning the reality of any others; it was pronouncing all other gods to be false, and all other worship vain. From the facility with which the polytheism of ancient nations admitted new objects of worship into the number of their acknowledged divinities, or the patience with which they might entertain proposals of this kind, we can argue nothing as to their toleration of a system, or of the publishers and active propagators of a system, which swept away the very foundation of the existing establish¬ ment. The one was nothing more than what it would be, in Popish countries, to add a saint to the calendar; the other was to abolish and tread under foot the calendar itself. Secondly, it ought also to be considered, that this was not the case of philosophers propounding in their books, or in their schools, doubts concerning the truth of the popular creed, or even avowing their disbelief of it. These philosophers did not go about from place to place to collect proselytes from amongst the common people; to form in the heart of the country societies professing their tenets; to provide for the order, instruction, and perma¬ nency, of these societies; nor did they enjoin their followers to withdraw themselves from the public worship of the temples, or refuse a compliance with rites instituted by the laws*. These things are what the Christians did, and what the philosophers did not; and in these consisted the activity and danger of the enterprise. Thirdly, it ought also to be considered, that this danger proceeded not merely from solemn acts and public resolutions of the state, but from sudden bursts of violence at particular places, from the licence of the populace, the rashness of some magistrates and negligence of others ; from the influence and instigation of interested adversaries, and, in general, from the variety and warmth of opinion which an errand so novel and extraordinary could not fail of exciting. I can conceive that the teachers of Christianity might both fear and suffer much from these causes, without any general persecution being denounced against them by imperial authority. Some length of time, I should suppose, might pass, before the vast machine of the Roman empire would be put in motion, or its attention be obtained to religious controversy: but, during that time, a great deal of ill usage might be endured, by a set of friendless, unprotected travellers, telling men, wherever they came, that the religion of their ancestors, the religion in which they had been brought up, the religion of the state, and of the magistrate, the rites which they frequented, the pomp which they admired, was through¬ out a system of folly and delusion. Nor do I think that the teachers of Christianity would find protection in that general disbelief of the popular theology, which is supposed to have prevailed amongst the intelligent part of the heathen public. It is by no means true that unbelievers are usually tolerant. They are not disposed (and why should they ?) to endanger the present state of things, by * The best of the ancient philosophers, Plato, Cicero, and Epictetus, allowed, or rather enjoined, men to worship the gods of the country, and in the established form. See passages to this purpose, collected from their works by Dr. Clarke, Nat. and Rev. Rel. p. 180, ed. v.—Except Socrates, they all thought it wiser to comply with the laws than to contend. To Dr. Samuel Clarke, whose works are so often quoted in this work, Paley was under considerable obligations, for Clarke had travelled over nearly the same ground in his Ci Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion.’’ Paley, however, was never a plagiarist; when he used the works of another author, he was ever anxious to quote his book, and acknowledge his obligation. And this he could well afford to do without detracting from the reputation lie enjoyed, for whatever he did borrow was so improved and transmuted in his hands, that its parentage was with diffi¬ culty recognised. Thus whoever will compare the following passage from Dr. Clarke’s work, p. 177, Edition 1706, with a similar passage of Paley, in the first chapter of his Natural rheology, will readily perceive whence the ideas were borrowed, and how skilfully Paley improved upon them. “For as a great machine, contrived by the skill of a consummate artificer, fitted up and adjusted with all con¬ ceivable accuracy for some very difficult and deep projected design, and polished and fine wrought in every part of it, with admirable niceness and dexterity, any man, who saw and examined one or two wheels of it, could not fail to observe, in these single parts of it, the admirable art and exact skill of the workman, and yet the excellency of the end for which the whole was contrived, he would not at all. be able, even though lie was himself also a skilful artificer, to discover and comprehend without seeing the whole fitted up and put together.’’ Clarke was perhaps the most learned man of his age, the friend of Sir Isaac Newton, whose Optics he translated, and of many other men of science. He died in 1729, in the fifty-fourth of his age, and may be said to have almost died at his post, for his mortal disease seized him, when preaching before the Judges at Sergeant’s Inn.—Biog. Brit. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 207 suffering a religion of which they believe nothing, to he disturbed by another of which they believe as little. They are ready themselves to conform to any thing; and are, oftentimes, amongst the foremost to procure conformity from others, by any method which they think likely to be efficacious. When was ever a change of religion patronized by infidels ? How little, notwithstanding the reigning scepticism, and the magnified liberality of that age, the true principles of toleration were understood by the wisest men amongst them, may be gathered from two eminent and uncontested examples. The younger Pliny, polished as he was by all the literature of that soft and elegant period, could gravely pronounce this monstrous judgment: —“ Those who persisted in declaring themselves Christians, I ordered to be led away to punishment (i. e. to execution,) for I did not doubt, whatever it was that they confessed , that contumacy and inflexible obstinacy ought to be punished!’ His master, Trajan, a mild and accomplished prince, went, nevertheless, no farther in his sentiments of moderation and equity, than wliat appears in the following rescript: “ The Christians are not to be sought for; but if any are brought before you, and convicted, they are to be punished."’ And this direction he gives, after it had been reported to him by his own president, that, by the most strict examination nothing could be discovered in the principles of these persons, but “ a bad and excessive superstition,” accompanied, it seems, with an oath or mutual federation, “ to allow themselves in no crime or immoral conduct whatever.” The truth is, the ancient heathens considered religion entirely as an affair of state, as much under the tuition of the magistrate, as any other part of the police. The religion of that age was not merely allied to the state; it was incorporated into it. Many of its offices were administered by the magistrate. Its titles of pontiffs, augurs, and flamens, w~ere borne by senators, consuls, and generals. Without discussing, therefore, the truth of the theology, they resented every affront put upon the established worship, as a direct opposition to the authority of government. Add to which, that the religious systems of those times, however ill supported by evidence, had been long established. The ancient religion of a country has always many votaries, and sometimes not the fewer, because its origin is hidden in remoteness and obscurity. Men have a natural veneration for antiquity, especially in matters of religion. What Tacitus says of the Jewish, was more applicable to the heathen establishment: “ Hi ritus, quoquo modo in ducti, antiquit ate defenduntur *.” It was also a splendid and sumptuous worship. It had its priesthood, its endowments, its temples. Statuary, painting, architecture, and music, contributed their effect to its ornament and magnificence. It abounded in festival shows and solemnities, to which the common people are greatly addicted, and which were of a nature to engage them much more than any thing of that sort among ns. These things would retain great numbers on its side by the fascination of spectacle and pomp, as well as interest many in its preservation by the advantage which they drew from it. u It was moreover interwoven,” as Mr. Gibbon rightly represents it, a with every circumstance of business or pleasure, of public or private life, with all the offices and amuse¬ ments of society."’ On the due celebration also of its rites, the people were taught to believe, and did believe, that the prosperity of their country in a great measure depended. I am willing to accept the account of the matter which is given by Mr. Gibbon:— “ The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful:” and I would ask from which of these three classes of men were the Christian missionaries to look for protection or impunity ? Could they expect it from the people, “ whose acknowledged confidence in the public religion” they subverted from its foundation ? From the philosopher, who, “ considering all religions as equally false, would of course rank theirs among the number, with the addition of regarding them as busy and troublesome zealots ? Or from the magistrate, who, satisfied with the u utility of the subsisting religion, would not be likely to countenance a spirit of proselytism and innovation;—a system which declared war against every other, and which, if it prevailed, must end in a total rupture of public opinion; an upstart religion, in a word, which was * These rites, howsoever introduced, were preserved by their antiquity. 208 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. not content with its own authority, but must disgrace all the settled religions of the world ( It was not to be imagined that he would endure with patience, that the religion of the emperor and the state should be calumniated and borne down by a company of superstitious and despicable Jews. Lastly; the nature of the case affords a strong proof, that the original teachers of Christianity, in consequence of their new profession, entered upon a new and singular course of life. We may be allowed to presume, that the institution which they preached to others, they conformed to in their own persons; because this is no more that what every teacher of a new religion both does, and must do, in order to obtain either proselytes or hearers. The change which this would produce was very considerable. It is a change which we do not easily estimate, because, ourselves and all about us being habituated to the institutions from our infancy, it is what we neither experience nor observe. After men became Christians, much of their time was spent in prayer and devotion, in religious meetings, in celebrating the eucharist, in conferences, in exhortations, in preaching, in an affectionate intercourse with one another, and correspondence with other societies. Perhaps their mode of life, in its form and habit, was not very unlike the Unitas Fratrum, or the modern Methodists. Think then what it was to become such at Corinth, at Ephesus, at Antioch, or even at Jerusalem. How new! how alien from all their former habits and ideas, and from those of every body about them ! What a revolution there must have been of opinions and prejudices to bring the matter to this! We know what the precepts of the religion are; how pure, how benevolent, how disin¬ terested, a conduct they enjoin; and that this purity and benevolence are extended to the very thoughts and affections. We are not, perhaps, at liberty to take for granted that the lives of the preachers of Christianity were as perfect as their lessons ; but we are entitled to contend that the observable part of their behaviour must have agreed in a great measure with the duties which they taught. There was, therefore (which is all that we assert), a course of life pursued by them, different from that which they before led. And this is of great importance. Men are brought to any thing almost sooner than to change their habit of life, especially when the change is either inconvenient, or made against the force of natural inclination, or with the loss of accustomed indulgences. “ It is the most difficult of all things to convert men from vicious habits to virtuous ones, as every one may judge from what he feels in himself, as well as from what he sees in others*.” It is almost like making men over again. Left then to myself, and without any more information than a knowledge of the existence of the religion, of the general story upon which it is founded, and that no act of power, force, and authority, was concerned in its first success, I should conclude, from the very nature and exigency of the case, that the Author of the religion, during his life, and his immediate disciples after his death, exerted themselves in spreading and publishing the institution throughout the country in which it began, and into which it was first carried ; that, in the prosecution of this purpose, they underwent the labours and troubles which we observe the propagators of new sects to undergo; that the attempt must necessarily have also been in a high degree dangerous; that, from the subject of the mission, compared with the fixed opinions and prejudices of those to whom the missionaries were to address them¬ selves, they could hardly fail of encountering strong and frequent opposition; that, by the hand of government, as well as from the sudden fury and unbridled licence of the people, they would oftentimes experience injurious and cruel treatment; that, at any rate, they must have always had so much to fear for their personal safety, as to have passed their lives in a state of constant peril and anxiety; and lastly, that their mode of life and conduct, visibly at least, corresponded with the institution which they delivered, and, so far, was both new, and required continual self-denial. * Hartley’s Essays on Man, p. 190. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 209 CHAPTER II. there is satisfactory evidence that many, professing to be original witnesses OF THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES, PASSED THEIR LIVES IN LABOURS, DANGERS, AND SUF¬ FERINGS, VOLUNTARILY UNDERGONE IN ATTESTATION OF THE ACCOUNTS WHICH THEY DELIVERED, AND SOLELY IN CONSEQUENCE OF THEIR BELIEF OF THOSE ACCOUNTS ; AND THAT THEY ALSO SUBMITTED, FROM THE SAME MOTIVES, TO NEW RULES OF CONDUCT. After thus considering what was likely to happen, we are next to inquire how the transaction is represented in the several accounts that have come down to us. And this inquiry is properly preceded by the other, forasmuch as the reception of these accounts may depend in part upon the credibility of what they contain. The obscure and distant view of Christianity, which some of the heathen writers of that age had gained, and which a few passages in their remaining works incidentally discover to us, offers itself to our notice in the first place: because, so far as this evidence goes, it is the concession of adversaries; the source from which it is drawn is unsuspected. Under this head a quotation from Tacitus, well known to every scholar, must be inserted, as deserving particular attention. The reader will bear in mind that this passage was written about seventy years after Christ’s death, and that it relates to transactions which took place about thirty years after that event.—Speaking of the fire which happened at Rome in the time of Nero, and of the suspicions which were entertained that the emperor himself was con¬ cerned in causing it, the historian proceeds in his narrative and observation thus:— “ But neither these exertions, nor his largesses to the people, nor his offerings to the gods, did away the infamous imputation under which Nero lay, of having ordered the city to be set on fire. To put an end, therefore, to this report, he laid the guilt, and inflicted the most cruel punishments, upon a set of people, who were liolden in abhorrence for their crimes, and called by the vulgar, Christians. The founder of that name was Christ, who suffered death in the reign of Tiberius, under his procurator Pontius Pilate.—This pernicious superstition, thus checked for a while, broke out again; and spread not only over Judea, where the evil originated, but through Rome also, whither every thing bad upon the earth finds its way, and is practised. Some, who confessed their sect, were first seized, and afterward, by their information, a vast multitude were apprehended, who were convicted, not so much of the crime of burning Rome, as of hatred to mankind. Their sufferings at their execution were aggravated by insult and mockery; for, some were disguised in the skins of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs; some were crucified; and others were wrapped in pitched shirts*, and set on fire when the day closed, that they might serve as lights to illuminate the night. Nero lent his own gardens for these executions, and exhibited at the same time a mock Circensian entertainment; being a spectator of the whole, in the dress of a charioteer, sometimes mingling with the crowd on foot, and sometimes viewing the spectacle from his car. This conduct made the sufferers pitied; and though they were criminals, and deserving the severest punishments, yet they were considered as sacrificed, not so much out of a regard to the public good, as to gratify the cruelty of one man t.” Our concern with this passage at present is only so far as it affords a presumption in support of the proposition which we maintain, concerning the activity and sufferings of the first teachers of Christianity. Now, considered in this view, it proves three things: 1st, that the Founder of the institution was put to death; 2dly, that in the same country in which he was put to death, the religion, after a short check, broke out again and spread; 3dly, that it so spread, as that, within thirty-four years from the author s death, a very * This is rather a paraphrase, hut is justified by what admoveri jubebat.” — Lard. Jewish and Heath. Test* the Scholiast upon Juvenal says : “ Nero inaleficos homines vol. i. p. 359. tseda et papyro, et ccra supervestiebat, et sic ad ignem F Annals of Tacitus, b. xv. s. 44. P 210 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. great number of Christians (ingens eorurn multitudo) were found at Rome. From which fact, tlie two following inferences may he fairly drawn: first, that if, in the space of thirty- four years from its commencement, the religion had spread throughout Judea, had extended itself to Rome, and there had numbered a great multitude of converts, the original teachers and missionaries of the institution could not have been idle ; secondly, that when the Author of the undertaking was put to death as a malefactor for his attempt, the endeavours of his followers to establish his religion in the same country, amongst the same people, and in the same age, could not hut he attended with danger. Suetonius, a writer contemporary with Tacitus, describing the transactions of the same reign, uses these words: “ Affecti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae et malefic®*.” “ The Christians, a set of men of a new and mischievous (or magical) superstition, were punished.” Since it is not mentioned here that the burning of the city was the pretence of the punishment of the Christians, or that they were the Christians of Rome who alone suffered, it is probable that Suetonius refers to some more general persecution than the short and occasional one which Tacitus describes. Juvenal, a writer of the same age with the two former, and intending, it should seem, to commemorate the cruelties exercised under Nero’s government, has the following finest:— “ Pone Tigellinum, tseda lucebis in illS, Qua stantes ardent, qui fixo gutture fumant, Et latum media sulcum deducit J arena.” “ Describe Tigellinus (a creature of Nero’s), and you shall suffer the same punishment with those who stand burning in their own flame and smoke, their head being held up by a stake fixed to their chin, till they make a long stream of blood and melted sulphur on the ground.” If this passage were considered by itself, the subject of allusion might be doubtful ; but, when connected with the testimony of Suetonius, as to the actual punishment of the Christians by Nero, and with the account given by Tacitus of the species of punishment which they were made to undergo, I think it sufficiently probable, that these were the executions to which the poet refers. These things, as has already been observed, took place within thirty-one years after Christ’s death, that is, according to the course of nature, in the lifetime, probably, of some of the apostles, and certainly in the lifetime of those who were converted by the apostles, or who were converted in their time. If then the Founder of the religion was put to death in the execution of his design; if the first race of converts to the religion, many of them, suffered the greatest extremities for their profession; it is hardly credible, that those who came between the two, who were companions of the Author of the institution during his fife, and the teachers and propagators of the institution after his death, could go about their undertaking with ease and safety. The testimony of the younger Pliny belongs to a later period ; for although he was contemporary with Tacitus and Suetonius, yet his account does not, like theirs, go back to the transactions of Nero’s reign, but is confined to the affairs of his own time. His celebrated letter to Trajan was written about seventy years after Christ’s death; and the information to be drawn from it, so far as it is connected with our argument, relates principally to two points : first, to the number of Christians in Bitliynia and Pontus, which was so considerable as to induce the governor of these provinces to speak of them in the following terms § : — “ Multi, omnis aetatis, utriusque sexus etiam;—neque enim civitates tantum, sed vicos etiam et agros, superstitionis istius contagio pervagata est.” “ There are many of every age and of both sexes;—nor has the contagion of this superstition seized cities only, but smaller towns also, and the open country.” Great exertions must have been used by the preachers of Christianity to produce this state of things within this time. Secondly, to a point which has been already noticed, and which I think of importance to be observed, namely, the sufferings to which Christians were exposed, without any public persecution * Suet. Nero. cap. 16. f Sat. i. ver. 155. J Forsan “ deducis.” § Pliny, b. x. ep. 97. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 211 being denounced against them by sovereign authority. For, from Pliny’s doubt how he was to act, his silence concerning any subsisting law on the subject, his requesting the emperor’s rescript, and the emperor, agreeably to his request, propounding a rule for his direction, without reference to any prior rule, it may be inferred, that there was, at that time, no public edict in force against the Christians. Yet from this same epistle of Pliny it appears, “ that accusations, trials, and examinations, were, and had been, going on against them in the provinces over which he presided; that schedules were delivered by anonymous informers, containing the names of persons who were suspected of holding or of favouring the religion; that, in consequence of these informations, many had been apprehended, of whom some boldly avowed their profession, and died in the cause; others denied that they were Christians; others, acknowledging that they had once been Christians, declared that they had long ceased to be such.” All which demonstrates, that the profession of Christianity was at that time (in that country at least) attended with fear and danger: and yet this took place without any edict from the Roman sovereign, commanding or authorising the persecution of Christians. This observation is farther confirmed by a rescript of Adrian to Minucius Fundanus, the proconsul of Asia* : from which rescript it appears, that the custom of the people of Asia was to proceed against the Christians with tumult and uproar. This disorderly practice, I say, is recognized in the edict, because the emperor enjoins, that for the future, if the Christians were guilt}^, they should be legally brought to trial, and not be pursued by importunity and clamour. Martial wrote a few years before the younger Pliny: and, as his manner was, made the sufferings of the Christians the subject of his ridicule t. Nothing, however, could show the notoriety of the fact with more certainty than this does. Martial’s testimony, as well indeed as Pliny’s, goes also to another point, viz. that the deaths of these men were martyrdoms in the strictest sense, that is to say, were so voluntary, that it was in their power, at the time of pronouncing the sentence, to have averted the execution by consenting to join in heathen sacrifices. The constancy, and by consequence the sufferings, of the Christians of this period, is also referred to by Epictetus, who imputes their intrepidity to madness, or to a kind of fashion or habit; and about fifty years afterward, by Marcus Aurelius, who ascribes it to obstinacy. “ Is it possible (Epictetus asks) that a man may arrive at this temper, and become indif¬ ferent to those things, from madness or from habit, as the Galilea7is\?” u Let this pre¬ paration of the mind (to die) arise from its own judgment, and not from obstinacy like the Christians §.” * Lard. Heath. Test. vol. ii. p. 110. L In matutina nnper spectatus arena Mucius, imposuit qui sua membra focis, Si patiens fortisque tibi durusqne videtnr, Abderitanae pectora plebis babes; Nam cum dicatur, tunica prsesente molesta, Ure a manuiu : plus est dicerc, Non facie. + Epict. 1. iv. c. 7. § Mare. Aur. Med. 1. xi. c. 3. a Forsan “ thurc manum.” 212 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. CHAPTER III. THERE IS SATISFACTORY EVIDENCE THAT MANY, PROFESSING TO BE ORIGINAL WITNESSES OF THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES, PASSED THEIR LIVES IN LABOURS, DANGERS, AND SUFFER¬ INGS, VOLUNTARILY UNDERGONE IN ATTESTATION OF THE ACCOUNTS WHICH THEY DELI¬ VERED, AND SOLELY IN CONSEQUENCE OF THEIR BELIEF OF THOSE ACCOUNTS; AND THAT THEY ALSO SUBMITTED, FROM THE SAME MOTIVES, TO NEW RULES OF CONDUCT. Of the primitive condition of Christianity, a distant only and general view can be acquired from heathen writers. It is in our own books that the detail and interior of the transaction must be sought for. And this is nothing different from what might be expected. Who would write a history of Christianity, but a Christian ? Who was likely to record the travels, sufferings, labours, or successes, of the apostles, but one of their own number, or of their followers ? Now these books come up in their accounts to the full extent of the proposition which we maintain. We have four histories of Jesus Christ. We have a history taking up the narrative from his death, and carrying on an account of the propaga¬ tion of the religion, and of some of the most eminent persons engaged in it, for a space of nearly thirty years. We have, what some may think still more original, a collection of letters, written by certain principal agents in the business, upon the business, and in the midst of their concern and connexion with it. And we have these writings severally attesting the point which we contend for, viz. the sufferings of the witnesses of the history, and attesting it in every variety of form in which it can be conceived to appear: directly, and indirectly, expressly and incidentally, by assertion, recital, and allusion, by narratives of facts, and by arguments and discourses built upon these facts, either referring to them, or necessarily presupposing them. I remark this variety, because, in examining ancient records, or indeed any species of testimony, it is, in my opinion, of the greatest importance to attend to the information or grounds of argument which are carnally and undesignedly disclosed; forasmuch as this species of proof is, of all others, the least liable to be corrupted by fraud or misrepresentation. I may be allowed, therefore, in the inquiry which is now before us, to suggest some con¬ clusions of this sort, as preparatory to more direct testimony. 1. Our books relate, that Jesus Christ, the founder of the religion, was, in consequence of his undertaking, put to death, as a malefactor, at Jerusalem. This point at least will be granted, because it is no more than what Tacitus has recorded. They then proceed to tell us, that the religion was, notwithstanding , set forth at this same city of Jerusalem, propa¬ gated thence throughout Judea, and afterward preached in other parts of the Roman empire. These points also are fully confirmed by Tacitus, who informs us, that the religion, after a short check, broke out again in the country where it took its rise; that it not only spread throughout Judea, but had reached Rome, and that it had there great multitudes of converts : and all this within thirty years after its commencement. Now these facts afford a strong inference in behalf of the proposition which we maintain. What could the disciples of Christ expect for themselves when they saw their Master put to death ? Could they hope to escape the dangers in which he had perished ? If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you, was the warning of common sense. With this example before their eyes, they could not be without a full sense of the peril of their future enterprise, 2. Secondly, all the histories agree in representing Christ as foretelling the persecution of his followers: — 44 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you, and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake * Matt. xxiv. 9. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 213 “ When affliction or persecution ariseth for the word’s sake, immediately thev are offended*.” 44 They shall lay hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name’s sake :—and ye shall be betrayed both by parents and brethren, and kinsfolks and friends, and some of you shall they cause to be put to death t.” 44 The time cometh, that he that killeth you, will think that he doetli God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me. But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them];.” I am not entitled to argue from these passages, that Christ actually did foretell these events, and that they did accordingly come to pass ; because that would be at once to assume the truth of the religion : but I am entitled to contend, that one side or other of the following disjunction is true; either that the Evangelists have delivered what Christ really spoke, and that the event corresponded with the prediction; or that they put the prediction into Christ’s mouth, because, at the time of writing the history, the event had turned out so to be: for, the only two remaining suppositions appear in the highest degree incredible; which are, either that Christ filled the minds of his followers with fears and apprehensions, without any reason or authority for what he said, and contrary to the truth of the case ; or that, although Christ had never foretold any such thing, and the event would have contradicted him if he had, yet historians who lived in the age when the event was known, falsely, as well as officiously, ascribed these words to him. 3. Thirdly, these books abound with exhortations to patience, and with topics of comfort under distress. 44 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or perse¬ cution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us§.” “ We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body;—knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise us up also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. For which cause we faint not; but, though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory ||.” 44 Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience. Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy^j.” 44 Call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions, partly whilst ye were made a gazing-stock both by reproaches and afflictions, and partly whilst ye became companions of them that were so used; for ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance. Cast not away, therefore, your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward; for ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise 44 So that we ourselves glory in you in the churches of God, for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure. Which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom for which ye also suffer f t.” 44 We rejoice in hope of the glory of God; and not only so, but we glory in tribula¬ tions also; knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and expe¬ rience hope];];.” * Mark iv. 17. See also chap. x. 30. J Luke xxi. 12—16. See also chap. xi. 49. X John xvi. 4. See also chap. xv. 20; xvi. 33. § Rom. viii. 35—37. || 2 Cor. iv. 8 10. 14. 16, 17. f James v. 10, 11. ** Heb. x. 32_36. ft 2 Thess. i. 4, 5. ++ Rom. v. 3, 4. 214 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. “ Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you ; but rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ s sufferings.—Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God, commit the keeping of their souls to him in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator*.” What could all these texts mean, if there was nothing in the circumstances of the times which required patience,—which called for the exercise of constancy and resolution ? Or will it be pretended, that these exhortations (which, let it be observed, come not from one author, but from many) were put in, merely to induce a belief in after-ages, that the first Christians were exposed to dangers which they were not exposed to, or underwent sufferings which they did not undergo ? If these books belong to the age to which they lay claim, and in which age, whether genuine or spurious, they certainly did appear, this supposition cannot be maintained for a moment; because I think it impossible to believe, that passages, which must be deemed not only unintelligible, but false, by the persons into whose hands the books upon their publication were to come, should nevertheless be inserted, for the purpose of producing an effect upon remote generations. In forgeries which do not appear till many ages after that to which they pretend to belong, it is possible that some contrivance of that sort may take place; but in no others can it be attempted. CHAPTER IV. THERE IS SATISFACTORY EVIDENCE THAT MANY, PROFESSING TO BE ORIGINAL WITNESSES OF THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES, PASSED THEIR LIVES IN LABOURS, DANGERS, AND SUF¬ FERINGS, VOLUNTARILY UNDERGONE IN ATTESTATION OF THE ACCOUNTS WHICH THEY DELIVERED, AND SOLELY IN CONSEQUENCE OF THEIR BELIEF OF THOSE ACCOUNTS ; AND THAT THEY ALSO SUBMITTED, FROM THE SAME MOTIVES, TO NEW RULES OF CONDUCT. The account of the treatment of the religion, and of the exertions of its first preachers, as stated in our Scriptures (not in a professed history of persecutions, or in the connected manner in which I am about to recite it, but dispersedly and occasionally, in the course of a mixed general history, which circumstance alone negatives the supposition of any fraudu¬ lent design), is the following: “ That the Founder of Christianity, from the commencement of his ministry to the time of his violent death, employed himself wholly in publishing the institution in Judea and Galilee; that, in order to assist him in this purpose, he made choice, out of the number of his followers, of twelve persons, who might accompany him as he travelled from place to place; that, except a short absence upon a journey in which he sent them, two by two, to announce his mission, and one of a few days, when they went before him to Jerusalem, these persons were steadily and constantly attending upon him; that they were with him at Jerusalem when he was apprehended and put to death; and that they were commissioned by him, when his own ministry was concluded, to publish his gospel, and collect disciples to it from all countries in the world.” The account then proceeds to state, “ that a few days after his departure, these persons, with some of his relations, and some who had regularly frequented their society, assembled at Jerusalem; that, considering the office of preaching the religion as now devolved upon them, and one of their number having deserted the cause, and, repenting of his perfidy, having destroyed himself, they proceeded to elect another into his place, and that they were careful to make their election out of the number of those who had accompanied their Master from the first to the last, in order, as they alleged, that he might be a witness, together with themselves, of the principal facts which they were about to produce and relate concerning him I ; that they began their work at Jerusalem by publicly asserting that this Jesus, whom the rulers and inhabitants of that place had so lately crucified, was, in truth, the person in whom all their prophecies and long expectations terminated; that he had been sent amongst them by God; and that he 1 Pet. iv. 12, 13. 19. f Acts i. 21, 22. * EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANI 1’Y. 215 was appointed by God the future judge of the human species; that all who were solicitous to secure to themselves happiness after death, ought to receive him as such, and to make profession of their belief, by being baptized in his name*.” The history goes on to relate, “ that considerable numbers accepted this proposal, and that they who did so, formed amongst themselves a strict union and society t; that the attention of the Jewish government being soon drawn upon them, two of the principal persons of the twelve, and who also had lived most intimately and constantly with the Founder of the religion, were seized as they were discoursing to the people in the temple; that, after being kept all night in prison, they were brought the next day before an assembly composed of the chief persons of the Jewish magistracy and priesthood; that this assembly, after some consultation, found nothing, at that time, better to be done towards suppressing the growth of the sect, than to threaten their prisoners with punishment if they persisted ; that these men, after expressing, in decent but firm language, the obligation under which they considered themselves to be, to declare what they knew, “ to speak the things which they had seen and heard,” returned from the council, and reported what had passed to their companions; that this report, whilst it apprised them of the danger of their situation and undertaking, had no other effect upon their conduct than to produce in them a general resolution to persevere, and an earnest prayer to God to furnish them with assistance, and to inspire them with fortitude, propor¬ tioned to the increasing exigency of the serviceA very short time after this, we read “ that all the twelve apostles were seized and cast into prison § ; that being brought a second time before the Jewish Sanhedrim, they were upbraided with their disobedience to the injunction which had been laid upon them, and beaten for their contumacy; that, being charged once more to desist, they were suffered to depart; that however they neither quitted Jerusalem, nor ceased from preaching, both daily in the temple, and from house to house || ; and that the twelve considered themselves as so entirely and exclusively devoted to this office, that they now transferred what may called the temporal affairs of the society to other hands Hitherto the preachers of the new religion seem to have had the common people on their side ; which is assigned as the reason why the Jewish rulers did not, at this time, think it prudent to proceed to greater extremities. It was not long, however, before the enemies of the insti¬ tution found means to represent it to the people as tending to subvert their law, degrade their lawgiver, and dishonour their temple**. And these insinuations were dispersed with so much success, as to induce the people to join with their superiors in the stoning of a very active member of the new community. The death of this man was the signal of a general persecution, the activity of which may be judged of from one anecdote of the time:—“ As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women, committed them to prison ft.” This persecution raged at Jerusalem with so much fury, as to drive J j: most of the new converts out of the place, except the twelve apostles. The converts, thus “ scattered abroad,” preached the religion wherever they came; and their preaching was, in effect, the preaching of the twelve ; for it was so far carried on in concert and correspondence with them , that when they heard of the success of their emissaries in a particular country, they sent two of their number to the place, to complete and confirm the mission. * Acts xi. •f' Acts iv. 32. + Acts iv. § Acts v. 18. || Acts v. 42. I do not know that it has ever been insinuated, that the Christian mission, in the hands of the apostles, was a scheme for making a fortune, or for getting money. But it may nevertheless be fit to remark upon this passage of their history, how perfectly free they appear to have been from any pecuniary or interested views whatever. The most tempting opportunity which occurred, of making a gain of their converts, was by the custody and manage¬ ment of the public funds, when some of the richer mem¬ bers, intending to contribute their fortunes to the common support of the society, sold their possessions, and laid down the prices at the apostles’ feet. Yet, so insensible, or undesirous, were they of the advantage which that con¬ fidence afforded, that we find, they very soon disposed of the trust, by putting it into the hands, not of nominees of their own, but of stewards formally elected for the purpose by the society at large. We may add also, that this excess of generosity, which cast private property into the public stock, was so far from being required by the apostles, or imposed as a law of Christianity, that Peter reminds Ananias that he had been guilty, in his behaviour, of an officious and voluntary pre¬ varication ; “ for whilst,” says he, “ thy estate remained unsold, was it not thine own ? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power?” ** Acts vi. 12. ft Acts viii. 3. XX Acts viii. 1. “ And they were all scattered abroad but the term “ all” is not, I think, to be taken strictly, as denoting more than the generality ; in like manner as in Acts ix. 35. “ And all that dwelt at Lydda and Saron, saw him, and turned to the Lord.” 210 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. An event now took place, of great importance in the future history of the religion. The persecution * which had begun at Jerusalem, followed the Christians to other cities, in which the authority of the Jewish Sanhedrin over those of their own nation was allowed to be exercised. A young man, who had signalized himself by his hostility to the profession, and had procured a commission from the council at Jerusalem to seize any converted Jews whom he might find at Damascus, suddenly became a proselyte to the religion which he was going about to extirpate. The new convert not only shared, on this extraordinary change, the fate of his companions, but brought upon himself a double measure of enmity from the party which he had left. The Jews at Damascus, on his return to that city, watched the gates night and day, with so much diligence, that he escaped from their hands only by being let down in a basket by the wall. Nor did he find himself in greater safety at Jerusalem, whither he immediately repaired. Attempts were there also soon set on foot to destroy him; from the danger of which he was preserved by being sent away to Cilicia, his native country t. From some reason, not mentioned, perhaps not known, but probably connected with the civil history of the Jews, or with some danger j which engrossed the public attention, an intermission about this time took place in the sufferings of the Christians. This happened, at the most, only seven or eight, perhaps only three or four, years after Christ’s death. Within which period, and notwithstanding that the late persecution occupied part of it, churches, or societies of believers, had been formed in all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria; for we read that the churches in these countries “ had now rest , and were edified, and, walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied §.” The origi¬ nal preachers of the religion did not remit their labours or activity during this season of quietness; for we find one, and he a very principal person among them, passing throughout all quarters. We find also those who had been before expelled from Jerusalem by the per¬ secution which raged there, travelling as far Phoenice, Cyprus, and Antioch || ; and lastly, we find Jerusalem again in the centre of the mission, the place whither the preachers returned from their several excursions, where they reported the conduct and effects of their ministry, where questions of public concern were canvassed and settled, whence directions were sought, and teachers sent forth. The time of this tranquillity did not, however, continue long. Herod Agrippa, who had lately acceded to the government of Judea, “stretched forth his hand to vex certain of the church 5f-” He began his cruelty by beheading one of the twelve original apostles, a kinsman and constant companion of the Founder of the religion. Perceiving that this execution gratified the Jews, he proceeded to seize, in order to put to death, another of the number,— and him, like the former, associated with Christ during his life, and eminently active in the service since his death. This man was, however, delivered from prison, as the account states**, miraculously, and made his escape from Jerusalem. These things are related, not in the general terms under which, in giving the outlines of the history, we have here mentioned them, but with the utmost particularity of names, persons, places, and circumstances; and, what is deserving of notice, without the smallest discoverable propensity in the historian to magnify the fortitude, or exaggerate the sufferings of his party. When they fled for their lives, he tells us. When the churches had rest, he remarks it. When the people took their part, he does not leave it without notice. When the apostles were carried a second time before the Sanhedrin, ho is careful to observe that they were brought without violence. When milder counsels were suggested, he gives us the author of the advice, and the speech which contained it. When, in consequence of this advice, the rulers contented themselves with threatening the apostles, and commanding them to be beaten with stripes, without urging at that time the persecution farther, the historian candidly and distinctly records their forbearance. When, therefore, in other instances, he states heavier persecutions, or actual martyrdoms, it is reasonable to believe that he states * Acts ix. -f- Lyttleton’s Conversion of St. Paul. nation thereby excited in the minds of the Jewish people; Dr. Lardner (in which he is followed also by Dr. which consternation for a season suspended every other Benson) ascribes this cessation of the persecution of the contest. Christians to the attempt of Caligula to set up his own § Acts ix. 31. || Acts xi. 19. statue in the temple of Jerusalem, and to the conster- 51 Acts xii. 1. ** Acts xii. 3—17. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 217 them because they were true, and not from any wish to aggravate, in his account, the suffer¬ ings which Christians sustained, or to extol, more than it deserved, their patience under them. Our history now pursues a narrower path. Leaving the rest of the apostles, and the origi¬ nal associates of Christ, engaged in the propagation of the new faith (and who there is not the least reason to believe abated in their diligence or courage), the narrative proceeds with the separate memoirs of that eminent teacher, whose extraordinary and sudden conversion to the religion, and corresponding change of conduct, had before been circumstantially described. This person, in conjunction with another, who appeared among the earlier members of the society at Jerusalem, and amongst the immediate adherents* of the twelve apostles, set out from Antioch, upon the express business of carrying the new religion through the various provinces of the Lesser Asia t. During this expedition, we find that in almost every place to which they came, their persons were insulted, and their lives endangered. After being expelled from Antioch in Pisidia, they repaired to Iconium j. At Iconium, an attempt was made to stone them ; at Lystra, whither they fled from Iconium, one of them actually was stoned and drawn out of the city for dead§. These two men, though not themselves original apostles, were acting in connexion and conjunction with the original apostles; for, after the completion of their journey, being sent on a particular commission to Jerusalem, they there related to the apostles || and elders the events and success of their ministry, and were, in return, recommended by them to the churches, “ as men who had hazarded their lives in the cause.” The treatment which they had experienced in the first progress, did not deter them from preparing for a second. Upon a dispute, however, arising between them, but not connected with the common subject of their labours, they acted as wise and sincere men would act; they did not retire in disgust from the service in which they were engaged, but, each devoting his endeavours to the advancement of the religion, they parted from one another, and set forwards upon separate routes. The history goes along with one of them; and the second enterprise to him was attended with the same dangers and persecutions as both had met with in the first. The apostle’s travels hitherto had been confined to Asia. He now crosses, for the first time, the iEgean sea, and carries with him, amongst others, the person whose accounts supply the information we are stating ^[. The first place in Greece at which he appears to have stopped was Philippi, in Macedonia. Here himself and one of his compa¬ nions were cruelly whipped, cast into prison, and kept there under the most rigorous custody, being thrust, whilst yet smarting with their wounds, into the inner dungeon, and their feet made fast in the stocks**. Notwithstanding this unequivocal specimen of the usage which they had to look for in that country, they went forward in the execution of their errand. After passing throngh Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica; in which city the house in which they lodged was assailed by a party of their enemies, in order to bring them out to the populace. And when, fortunately for their preservation, they were not found at home, the master of the house was dragged before the magistrate for admitting them within liis doorsff. Their reception at the next city was something better: but neither here had they continued long before their turbulent adversaries, the Jews, excited against them such commotions amongst the inhabitants, as obliged the apostle to make his escape by a private journey to Athens jj;. The extremity of the progress was Corinth. His abode in this city, for some time, seems to have been without molestation. At length, however, the Jews found means to stir up an insurrection against him, and to bring him before the tribu¬ nal of the Roman president §§. It was to the contempt which that magistrate entertained for the Jews and their controversies, of which he accounted Christianity to be one, that our aj>ostle owed his deliverance || [|. This indefatigable teacher, after leaving Corinth, returned by Ephesus into Syria; and again visited Jerusalem, and the society of Christians in that city, which, as hath been re¬ peatedly observed, still continued the centre of the mission 11 IT. It suited not, however, with the activity of his zeal to remain long at Jerusalem. We find him going thence to Antioch, * Acts iv. 36. -j- Ibid. xiii. 2. t Ibid. xiii. 51. § Ibid. xiv. 19. || Ibid. xv. 12 26. Ibid. xvi. 11. ** Ibid. ver. 23, 24. 33. ft Ibid. xvii. 1 — 5. XX Ibid. xvii. 13. , §§ Ibid, xviii. 12. |||| Ibid. ver. 15. 5151 Ibid, xviii. 22. 218 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. and, after some stay there, traversing once more the northern provinces of Asia Minor *. This progress ended at Ephesus; in which city, the apostle continued in the daily exercise of his ministry two years, and until his success, at length, excited the apprehensions of those who were interested in the support of the national worship. Their clamour produced a tumult, in which he had nearly lost his lifet. Undismayed, however, by the dangers to which he saw himself exposed, he was driven from Ephesus only to renew his labours in Greece. After passing over Macedonia, he thence proceeded to his former station at Corinth^. When he had formed his design of returning by a direct course from Corinth into Syria, he was com¬ pelled by a conspiracy of the Jews, who were prepared to intercept him on his way, to trace back his steps through Macedonia to Philippi, and thence to taking shipping into Asia. Along the coast of Asia, he pursued his voyage with all the expedition he could command, in order to reach Jerusalem against the feast of Pentecost §. His reception at Jerusalem was of a piece with the usage he had experienced from the Jews in other places. He had been only a few days in that city, when the populace, instigated by some of his old opponents in Asia, who attended this feast, seized him in the temple, forced him out of it, and were ready immediately to have destroyed him, had not the sudden presence of the Roman guard rescued him out of their hands'||. The officer, however, who had thus seasonably interposed acted from his care of the public peace, with the preservation of which he was charged, and not from any favour to the apostle, or indeed any disposition to exercise either justice or humanity towards him ; for he had no sooner secured his person in the fortress, than he was proceeding to examine him by torture ^f. From this time to the conclusion of the history, the apostle remains in public custody of the Roman government. After escaping assassination by a fortunate discovery of the plot, and delivering himself from the influence of his enemies by an appeal to the audience of the emperor**, he was sent, but not until he had suffered two years’ imprisonment to Rome.'j'f He reached Italy, after a tedious voyage, and after encountering, in his passage, the perils of a desperate shipwreck % But although still a prisoner, and his fate still depending, neither the various and long continued sufferings which he had undergone, nor the danger of his present situation, deterred him from persisting in preaching the religion : for the historian closes the account by telling us, that, for two years, he received all that came unto him in his own hired house, where he was permitted to dwell with a soldier that guarded him, “ preach¬ ing the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence. ’ Now the historian, from whom we have drawn this account, in the part of his narrative which relates to Saint Paul, is supported by the strongest corroborating testimony that a history can receive. We are in possession of letters written by St. Paul himself upon the subject of his ministry, and either written during the period which the history comprises, or if written afterward, reciting and referring to the transactions of that period. These letters, without borrowing from the history, or the history from them, unintentionally confirm the account which the history delivers, in a great variety of particulars. What belongs to our present purpose is the description exhibited of the apostle’s sufferings : and the representation given, in the history, of the dangers and distresses which he underwent, not only agrees, in general, with the language which he himself uses whenever he speaks of his life or ministry, but is also, in many instances, attested by a specific correspondency of time, place, and order of events. If the historian puts down in his narrative, that at Philippi the apostle “ was beaten with many stripes, cast into prison, and there treated with rigour and indignity §§ we find him, in a letter |||| to a neighbouring church, reminding his converts, that, “after he had suffered before, and was shamefully entreated at Philippi, he was bold nevertheless, to speak unto them (to whose city he next came) the gospel of God.” If the history relate ^1 ^[, that, at Tliessalonica, the house in which the apostle was lodged, when he first came to that place, was assaulted by the populace, and the master of it dragged before the magistrate for admitting such a guest within his doors; the apostle, in his letter to the Christians of Thessa- * Acts xviii. 23. -f Ibid. xix. 1. 9, 10. t Ibid. xx. 1, 2. § Ibid. xx. 16. || Ibid. xxi. 27—33. % Ibid. xxii. 24. ** Ibid. xxv. 9. 11. ~t+ Ibid. xxiv. 27. Ibid, xxvii. §§ Ibid. xvi. 23, 24. 1111 1 Thess. ii. 2. 51^1 Acts xvii. 5. EVIDENCE^OF CHRISTIANITY. 219 lonica, calls to their remembrance “how they had received the gospel in much affliction If the history deliver an account of an insurrection at Ephesus, which had nearly cost the apostle his life ; we have the apostle himself, in a letter written a short time after his depar¬ ture from that city, describing his despair, and returning thanks for his deliverance t. If the history informs us, that the apostle was expelled from Antioch in Pisidia, attempted to be stoned at Iconium, and actually stoned at Lystra; there is preserved a letter from him to a favourite convert, whom, as the same history tells us, he first met with in these parts ; in which letter he appeals to that disciple’s knowledge “ of the persecutions which befel him at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra;f.” If the history make the apostle, in his speech to the Ephesian elders, remind them, as one proof of the disinterestedness of his views, that, to their know¬ ledge, he had supplied his own and the necessities of his companions by personal labour we find the same apostle, in a letter written during his residence at Ephesus, asserting of himself, that “ even to that hour he laboured, working with his own hands ||.” These coincidences, together with many relative to other parts of the apostle’s history, and all drawn from independent sources, not only confirm the truth of the account, in the particular points as to which they are observed, but add much to the credit of the narrative in all its parts ; and support the author’s profession of being a contemporary of the person whose history he writes, and, throughout a material portion of his narrative, a companion ones . In both these passages, we perceive the high respect paid to the words of Christ as recorded by the evangelists: “ Remember the words of the Lord Jesus;—by this command, and by these rules, let us establish ourselves, that we may always walk obediently to his holy words.” We perceive also in Clement a total unconsciousness of doubt, whether these were the real words of Christ, which are read as such in the Gospels. This observation indeed belongs to the whole series of testimony, and especially to the most ancient part of it. Whenever any thing now read in the Gospels is met with in an early Christian writing, it is always observed to stand there as acknowledged truth, i. e. to be introduced without hesitation, doubt, or apology. It is to be observed also, that, as this epistle was written in the name of the church of Rome, and addressed to the church of Corinth, it ought to be taken as exhibiting the judgment not only of Clement, who drew up the latter, but of these churches themselves, at least as to the authority of the books referred to. It may be said, that, as Clement has not used words of quotation, it is not certain that he refers to any book whatever. The words of Christ, which he has put down, he might himself have heard from the apostles, or might have received through the ordinary medium of oral tradition. This has been said; but that no such inference can be drawn from the absence of words of quotation, is proved by the three following considerations:—First, that Clement, in the very same manner, namely, without any mark of reference, uses a passage now found in the Epistle to the Romans'}'; which passage, from the peculiarity of the words which compose it, and from their order, it is manifest that he must have taken from the book. The same remark may be repeated of some very singular sentiments in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Secondly, that there are many sentences of Saint Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians standing in Clement’s epistle without any sign of quotation, which yet certainly are quotations; because it appears that Clement had Saint Paul’s epistle before him, inasmuch as in one place he mentions it in terms too express to leave us in any doubt:—“ Take into your hands the epistle of the blessed apostle Paul.” Thirdly, that this method of adopting words of Scripture without reference or acknowledgment, was, as will appear in the sequel, a method in general use amongst the most ancient Christian writers.— These analogies not only repel the objection, but cast the presumption on the other side, and afford a considerable degree of positive proof, that the words in question have been borrowed from the places of Scripture in which we now find them. But take it if you will the other way, that Clement had heard these words from the apostles or first teachers of Christianity; with respect to the precise point of our argument, viz. that the Scriptures contain what the apostles taught, this supposition may serve almost as well. III. Near the conclusion of the Epistle to the Romans, Saint Paul, amongst others, sends the following salutation : “ Salute Asyncritus, Plilegon, Hermas , Patrobas, Hermes, and the brethren which are with them.” Of Hermas, who appears in this catalogue of Roman Christians as contemporary with Saint Paul, a book bearing the name, and it is most probable rightly, is still remaining. It is called the Shepherd J, or Pastor of Hermas. Its antiquity is incontestible, from the quotations of it in Irenaeus, A.D. 178; Clement of Alexandria, A.D. 194; Tertullian, A.I). 200 §; Origen, A.D. 230. The notes of time extant in the epistle itself, agree with * Matt, xviii. 6. “ But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were cast into the sea.” The latter part of the passage in Clement agrees more exactly with Luke xvii. 2 : “ It were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and lie cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.” f Rom. i. 29. t Lardner, Cred. vol. i. p. 111. § This author, the first Latin of the primitive church , whose works have been spared to us, was a native of Carthage, born in some year between 194 and 216. His father was stationed at that city as a centurion in the army under the proconsul of Africa. Born a heathen, his morals were despicable, his behaviour profligate ; but EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 243 its title, and with the testimonies concerning it, for it purports to have been written during the lifetime of Clement. In this piece are tacit allusions to Saint Matthew’s, Saint Luke’s, and Saint John’s Gospels; that is to say, there are applications of thoughts and expressions found in these Gospels, without citing the place or writer from which they were taken. In this form appear in ITermas the confessing and denying of Christ* ; the parable of the seed sown'j'; the comparison of Christ’s disciples to little children; the saying, 44 he that putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery:}:;” the singular expression, 44 having received all power from his Father,” in probable allusion to Matt, xxviii. 18; and Christ being the 44 gate/’ or only way of coming 44 to God,” in plain allusion to John xiv. 6; x. 7- 9- There is also a probable allusion to Acts v. 32. This piece is the representation of a vision, and has by many been accounted a weak and fanciful performance. I therefore observe, that the character of the writing has little to do with the purpose for which we adduce it. It is the age in which it was composed, that gives the value to its testimony§. IV. Ignatius, as it is testified by ancient Christian writers, became bishop of Antioch about thirty-seven years after Christ’s ascension; and, therefore, from his time, and place, and station, it is probable that he had known and conversed with many of the apostles. Epistles of Ignatius are referred to by Polycarp, his contemporary. Passages found in the epistles now extant under his name, are quoted by Irenseus, A. D. 173; by Origen, A. D. 230 : and the occasion of writing the epistles is given at large by Eusebius and Jerome. What are called the smaller epistles of Ignatius, are generally deemed to be those which were read by Irenseus, Origen, and Eusebius||. In these epistles are various undoubted allusions to the Gospels of Saint Matthew and Saint John ; yet so far of the same form with those in the preceding articles, that, like them, they are not accompanied with marks of quotation. Of these allusions the following are clear specimens :— ^ 44 Christ was baptized of John, that all righteousness might he fulfilled by Matt. 5j l him." 44 Be ye wise as serpents in all things, and harmless as a dovefi f “ Yet the Spirit is not deceived, being from God : for it knows, whence it comes , and whither it goes." 44 He (Christ) is the door of the Father, by which enter in Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the apostles, and the church.” As to the manner of quotation, this is observable: — Ignatius, in one place, speaks of Saint Paul in terms of high respect, and quotes his Epistle to the Ephesians by name ; yet, in several other places, he borrows words and sentiments from the same epistle without lie was not so degraded by these, as to lose his percep¬ tion of truth, since he became a convert to Christianity, and, according to Jerome, a priest of the church of Christ. He was not however a blind convert for he was anxious in his searches, wavering, and unsettled,—left the church, and attached himself to the austere sect of the Montanists, and finally founded one of his own called the Tertul- lianists. The period of his death is uncertain. His works (the best edition of which is that of Rigaltius, in 1734,) were highly commended by Eusebius and Cyprian. They have been harshly criticised by some more modern and less competent authorities.—Mosheim. Dupin. Cave. — Ed. * Matt. x. 32, 33; or Luke xii. 8, 9. f Matt. xiii. 3 ; or Luke viii. 5. £ Luke xvi. 18. § Hernias, who is supposed to have been the same mentioned by St. Paul, Rom. xvi. 14, was surnamed “ the Shepherd,” from his book, which bears this title. It is the only work of this father which has escaped to us ; and the authenticity of this is very doubtful. The original Greek version is lost, with the exception of some quoted passages in other authors, which confirm however the fidelity of the Latin translation which remains to us. The best edition of his works is that of Cotelerius and Le Clerc, in 1698; afterwards translated and published, with a copious preliminary discourse, by archbishop Wake. It would seem that Hernias was the contemporary of the earliest Christians, since he belonged to the church of Rome about 65 to 80. He was rich, originally a pagan, and is supposed to have suffered martyrdom, at least the church of Rome keep the 9th of May as his anniversary. —Cave. Lardner_ Ed. || Lardner, Cred. vol. i. p. 147. Chap. iii. 15. “ For thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.” Chap. x. 16. “ Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” **■ Chap. iii. 8. “ The wind bloweth where it listetli, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth ; so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” Chap. x. 9. “ I am the door ; by me if any man enter- in, he shall be saved.” R 2 241 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. mentioning it; which shows, that this was his general manner of using and applying writings then extant, and then of high authority. V. Polycarp* * * § had been taught by the apostles; had conversed with many who had seen Christ; was also by the apostles appointed bishop of Smyrna. This testimony concerning Polycarp is given by Irenaeus, who in his youth had seen him:— 44 I can tell the place,” saith Irenaeus, 44 in which the blessed Polycarp sat and taught, and his going out and coming in, and the manner of his life, and the form of his person, and the discourses he made to the people, and how he related his conversation with John, and others who had seen the Lord, and how he related their sayings, and wliat he had heard concerning the Lord, both concern¬ ing his miracles and his doctrine, as he had received them from the eye-witnesses of the word of life: all which Polycarp related agreeable to the Scriptures.” Of Polycarp, whose proximity to the age and country and persons of the apostles is thus attested, we have one undoubted epistle remaining. And this, though a short letter, contains nearly forty clear allusions to books of the New Testament; which is strong evidence of the respect which Christians of that age bore for these books. Amongst these, although the writings of Saint Paul are more frequently used by Polycarp than any other parts of Scripture, there are copious allusions to the Gospel of Saint Matthew, some to passages found in the Gospels both of Matthew and Luke, and some which more nearly resemble the words in Luke. I select the following, as fixing the authority of the Lord's prayer, and the use of it amongst the primitive Christians : 44 If therefore we pray the Lord, that he will forgive us , ice ought also to forgive .” 44 With supplication beseeching the all-seeing God not to lead us into temptation .” And the following, for the sake of repeating an observation already made, that words of our Lord found in our Gospels, were at this early day quoted as spoken by him; and not only so, but quoted with so little question or consciousness of doubt about their being really his words, as not even to mention, much less to canvass, the authority from which they were taken : — 44 But remembering what the Lord said, teaching, Judge not, that ye be not judged; forgive, and ye shall be forgiven; be ye merciful, that ye may obtain mercy; with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again Supposing Polycarp to have had these words from the books in which we now find them, it is manifest that these books were considered by him, and, as he thought, considered by his readers, as authentic accounts of Christ’s discourses; and that that point was incontestible. The following is a decisive, though what we call a tacit, reference to Saint Peter’s speech in the Acts of the Apostles: — 44 whom God hath raised, having loosed the pains of death J.” VI. Papias§, a hearer of John, and companion of Polycarp, as Irenaeus attests, and of that age, as all agree, in a passage quoted by Eusebius, from a work now lost, expressly ascribes the respective Gospels to Matthew and Mark ; and in a manner which proves that these Gospels must have publicly borne the names of these authors at that time, and probably long before; for Papias does not say that one Gospel was written by Matthew, and another by Mark; but, assuming this as perfectly well known, he tells us from what materials Mark collected his account, viz. from Peter’s preaching, and in what language Matthew wrote, viz. in Hebrew. Whether Papias was well informed in this statement, or not; to the point for which I produce this testimony, namely, that these books bore these names at this time, his authority is complete ||. The writers hitherto alleged, had all lived and conversed with some of the apostles. The * Lardner, Cred. vol. i. p. 192. f Matt. vii. 1,2; v. 7 ; Luke vi. 37, 38. t Acts ii. 24. § Lardner, Cred. vol. i. p. 239. j| This early Christian author is positively asserted by Irenaeus to have been the disciple of St. John the evan¬ gelist and the companion of Polycarp. Of his book, “ The Exposition of the Discourses of the Lord,” we have only the fragments preserved in the writings of Irenaeus and Eusebius ; and from these we learn, amongst other things, that Papias believed in the future temporal reign of Christ : an opinion in which Irenaeus and several other ancient authors concurred. He became bishop of Hiera- polis, in Phrygia. — Cave. Dupin. Lardner.— Ed. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 2 45 works of theirs which remain, are in general very short pieces, yet rendered extremely valuable by their antiquity; and none, short as they are, but what contain some important testimony to our historical Scriptures*. VII. Not long after these, that is, not much more than twenty years after the last, follows Justin Martyr j~. His remaining works are much larger than any that have yet been noticed. Although the nature of his two principal writings, one of which was addressed to heathens, and the other was a conference with a Jew, did not lead him to such frequent appeals to Christian books, as would have appeared in a discourse intended for Christian readers; we nevertheless reckon up in them between twenty and thirty quotations of the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, certain, distinct, and copious: if each verse be counted separately, a much greater number; if each expression, a very great onej. We meet with quotations of three of the Gospels within the compass of half a page : “ And in other words he says, Depart from me into outer darkness, which the Father hath prepared for Satan and his angels,” (which is from Matthew xxv. 41.) u And again he said, in other words, I give unto you power to tread upon serpents, and scorpions, and venomous beasts, and upon all the power of the enemy.” (This from Luke x 19.) “ And before he was crucified, he said, The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the Scribes and Pharisees, and be crucified, and rise again the third day.” (This from Mark viii. 31.) In another place, Justin quotes a passage in the history of Christ’s birth, as delivered by Matthew and John, and fortifies his quotation by this remarkable testimony: “ As they have taught, who have written the history of all things concerning our Saviour Jesus Christ: and we believe them.” Quotations are also found from the Gospel of Saint John. What, moreover, seems extremely material to be observed is, that in all Justin’s works, from which might be extracted almost a complete life of Christ, there are but two instances, in which he refers to any thing as said or done by Christ, which is not related concerning him in our present Gospels; which shows, that these Gospels, and these we may say, alone, were the authorities from which the Christians of that day drew the information upon which they depended. One of these instances is of a saying of Christ, not met with in any book now extant§. The other, of a circumstance in Christ’s baptism, namely, a fiery or luminous appearance upon the water, which, according to Epiphanius, is noticed in the Gospel of the Hebrews: and which might be true: but which, whether true or false, is mentioned by Justin, with a plain mark of diminution when compared with what lie quotes as resting * That the quotations are more thinly strewn in these, than in the writings of the next and of succeeding ages, is in a good measure accounted for by the observation, that the Scriptures of the New Testament had not yet , nor by their recency hardly could have, bceome a general part of Christian education ; read as the Old Testament was by Jews and Christians from their childhood, and thereby intimately mixing, as that had long done, with all their religious ideas, and with their language upon reli¬ gious subjects. In process of time, and as soon perhaps as could be expected, this came to be the case. And then we perceive the effect, in a proportionably greater frequency, as well as copiousness of allusion a . T Lardner, Cred. vol. i. p. 258. X “ He cites our present Canon, and particularly our four Gospels continually, I dare say, about two hundred times.” Jones’s New and Full Method. Append, vol. i. p. 589. ed. 172,6. Jeremiah Jones, whose “ New and Full Method of settling the Canonical Authority of the New Testament” Paley often employs, was a learned dissenting divine and schoolmaster, who lived at Nailsworth, in Gloucestershire, where he died in 1724. His works, which betray pro¬ foundlearning, have been reprinted at the Clarendon Press. In private life he was exceedingly amiable, and though a hard student, was facetious and merry : the life and soul of a neighbom'ing bowling club, which he constantly attended.—Gen. Biog. Diet.— Ed. § “ Wherefore also our Lord Jesus Christ has said, In whatsoever I shall find you, in the same I will also judge you.” Possibly Justin designed not to quote any text, but to represent the sense of many of our Lord’s sayings. Fabricius has observed, that this saying has been quoted by many writers, and that Justin is the only one who ascribes it to our Lord, and that perhaps by a slip of his memory. Words resembling these arc read repeatedly in Ezekiel : “ I will judge them according to their ways ’ (chap* vii. 3 ; xxxiii. 20). It is remarkable that Justin had just before expressly.quoted Ezekiel. Mr. Jones upon this circumstance founded a conjecture, that Justin wrote only ‘ the Loid hath said,” intending to quote the words of God, or rathei the sense of those words, in Ezekiel; and that some transcriber, imagining these to be the words of Christ, inserted in his copy the addition 1-4 Jesus Ghiist. \ol. i. p. 539. Mich. Introd. c. ii. sect. vi. 24 G EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. upon Scripture authority. The reader will advert to this distinction : u And then, when Jesus came to the river Jordan, where John was baptizing, as Jesus descended into the water, a fire also was kindled in Jordan ; and when he came up out of the water, the apostles of this our Christ have written , that the Holy Ghost lighted upon him as a dove.” All the references in Justin are made without mentioning the author; which proves that these books were perfectly notorious, and that there were no other accounts of Christ then extant, or, at least, no others so received and credited as to make it necessary to distinguish these from the rest. But although Justin mentions not the author’s name, he calls the books, “ Memoirs com¬ posed by the Apostles;” “ Memoirs composed by the Apostles and their Companions;” which descriptions, the latter especially, exactly suit with the titles which the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles now bear*. VIII. ITegesippusf came about thirty years after Justin j. His testimony is remarkable only for this particular; that he relates of himself, that, travelling from Palestine to Rome, he visited, on his journey, many bishops; and that, “ in every succession, and in every city, the same doctrine is taught, which the Law, and the Prophets, and the Lord teacheth.” This is an important attestation, from good authority, and of high antiquity. It is generally understood that by the word “ Lord,” Ilegesippus intended some writing or writings containing the teaching of Christ, in which sense alone the term combines with the other terms, “ Law and Prophets,” which denote writings ; and together with them admit of the verb u teacheth” in the present tense. Then, that these writings were some or all of the books of the New Testament, is rendered probable from hence, that in the fragments of his works, which are preserved in Eusebius, and in a writer of the ninth century, enough, though it be little, is left to show, that Ilegesippus expressed divers things in the style of the Gospels, and of the Acts of the Apostles; that he referred to the history in the second chapter of Matthew, and recited a text of that Gospel as spoken by our Lord. IX. At this time, viz. about the year 170, the churches of Lyons and Vienne, in France, sent a relation of the sufferings of their martyrs to the churches of Asia and Phrygia§. The epistle is preserved entire by Eusebius. And what carries in some measure the testi¬ mony of these churches to a higher age, is, that they had now for their bishop, Potliinus, who was ninety years old, and whose early life consequently must have immediately joined on with the times of the apostles. In this epistle are extant references to the Gospels of Luke and John, and to the Acts of the Apostles; the form of reference the same as in all the preceding articles. That from Saint John is in these words : “ Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by the Lord, that whosoever killcth you, will think that he doeth God service 11.” X. The evidence now opens upon us full and clear. IrenaeusV succeeded Pothinus as bishop of Lyons'"*. In his youth he had been a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of * Justin, surnamed the Martyr, was another early Christian who united with the most enthusiastic devotion all that learning and philosophy could teach. He was the public opponent of objecting pagan philosophers, and was moreover himself a distinguished philosopher, when lie from conviction embraced Christianity. He lived almost in the days of the apostles, for he became a Christian about 132 ; published his first Apology not more than eight years after, and suffered martyrdom in 165. He never, amid his zeal for Christianity, forgot his long cherished love of the Platonic philosophy, which continually peeps out even in his Christian works ; and hence he was led to make attempts to reconcile the two in a manner not altogether consistent with truth. Whatever were the errors of Justin Martyr, he must always be regarded with venera¬ tion, as the earliest of the many learned Christian philoso¬ phers who have adorned the church, and who attested even to death the sincerity of his convictions. He was a native of Neapolis, in Samaria; travelled through many coun¬ tries—Egypt, Greece, Rome, &c. ; at which last place he was sacrificed to paganism. His works were collected and published in folio, by Maran, in 1742 ; and in 1777, by Oberthur, 3 vols. 8vo. There are also several editions of portions of his works : such as his Dialogues, and his Discourses with Trypho._ Lardner. Cave. Chalmers.— Ed. f Lardner, Cred. vol. i. p. 314. $ Hegesippus was nearly a contemporary of Justin Martyr. He came to Rome in 157, and remained there nearly thirty years : he is supposed to have died about the year 180. Some fragments preserved by Eusebius, are all that remain of his Ecclesiastical History, which comprehended the period from the promulgation of Christianity to his own time.—Cave. Dupin. —Ed. § Lardner, Cred. vol. i. p. 332. || John xvi. 2. Lardner, vol. i. p. 344. ** Irenseus was a Greek, and is supposed to have been EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 247 Jolm. In the time in which lie lived, he was distant not much more than a century from the publication of the Gospels ; in his instruction, only by one step separated from the persons of the apostles. He asserts of himself and his contemporaries, that they were able to reckon up, in all the principal churches, the succession of bishops from the first*. I remark these particulars concerning Irenteus with more formality than usual; because the testimony which this writer affords to the historical books of the New Testament, to their authority, and to the titles which they bear, is express, positive, and exclusive. One principal passage, in which this testimony is contained, opens with a precise assertion of the point which we have laid down as the foundation of our argument, viz. that the story which the Gospels exhibit, is the story which the apostles told. “ We have not received,” saith Irenseus, “ the knowledge of the way of our salvation by any others than those by whom the Gospel has been brought to us. Which Gospel they first preached, and afterward, by the will of God, committed to writing, that it might be for time to come the foundation and pillar of our faith.—For after that our Lord arose from the dead, and they (the apostles) were endowed from above with the power of the Holy Ghost coming down upon them, they received a perfect knowledge of all things. They then went forth to all the ends of the earth, declaring to men the blessing of heavenly peace, having all of them, and every one, alike the Gospel of God. Matthew then, among the Jews, wrote a Gospel in their own language, while Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel at Rome, and founding a church there: and after their exit, Mark also, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, delivered to us in writing the things that had been preached by Peter ; and Luke, the companion of Paul, put down in a book the Gospel preached by him (Paul). Afterward John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned upon his breast, he likewise published a Gospel wdiile he dwelt at Ephesus in Asia.” If any modern divine should write a book upon the genuineness of the Gospels, he could not assert it more expressly, or state their original more distinctly, than Irenasus hath done within little more than a hundred years after they were published. The correspondency, in the days of Irenseus, of the oral and written tradition, and the deduction of the oral tradition through various channels from the age of the apostles, which was then lately passed, and, by consequence, the probability that the books truly delivered what the apostles taught, is inferred also with strict regularity from another passage of his works. a The tradition of the apostles,” this father saith, “ hath spread itself over the whole universe; and all they, who search after the sources of truth, will find this tradition to be held sacred in every church. We might enumerate all those who have been appointed bishops to these churches by the apostles, and all their successors, up to our days. It is by this uninterrupted succession that we have received the tradition which actually exists in the church, as also the doctrines of truth, as it was preached by the apostles +.” The reader will observe upon this, that the same Irenseus, who is now stating the strength and uniformity of the tradition, w^e have before seen recognising, in the fullest manner, the authority of the written records; from which we are entitled to conclude, that they were then conformable to each other. I have said, that the testimony of Irenseus in favour of our Gospels is exclusive of all others. I allude to a remarkable passage in his works, in which, for some reasons sufficiently fanciful, he endeavours to show, that there could be neither more nor fewer Gospels than four. With his argument we have no concern. The position itself proves that four, and only four, Gospels were at that time publicly read and acknowledged. That these were our Gospels, and in the state in which we now have them, is shewn, from many other places of tins writer beside that which we have already alleged. He mentions how Matthew begins his Gospel, a native of Smyrna. Papias and Polycarp were his tutors, escaped to us, and even that is imperfect. This was pub- and by them he was carefully initiated into human and lislied by Grabe, at Oxford, in 170-2, in folio ; with a divine learning. He travelled much ; was anxious for Life of Irenseus, from whence this notice is principally the propagation of Christianity; and finally, when bishop derived.—E d. of Lyons, suffered martyrdom under the emperor Seve- * Adv. Haeres, 1. iii. c. 3. rus, about A.D. 202. t Iren, in User. 1. iii. c. 3. Of his learned works, only that against Heresies has 248 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. how Mark begins and ends liis, and their supposed reasons for so doing. He enumerates at length the several passages of Christ’s history in Luke, which are not found in any of the other evangelists. lie states the particular design with which Saint John composed his Gospel, and accounts for the doctrinal declarations which precede the narrative. To the book of the Acts of the apostles, its author, and credit, the testimony of Irenseus is no less explicit. Referring to the account of Saint Paul’s conversion and vocation, in the ninth chapter of that book, “Nor can they,” says he, meaning the parties with whom he argues, u show that he is not to be credited, who has related to us the truth with the greatest exactness.” In another place, he has actually collected the several texts, in which the writer of the history is represented as accompanying Saint Paul; which leads him to deliver a sum¬ mary of almost the whole of the last twelve chapters of the book. In an author thus abounding with references and allusions to the Scriptures, there is not one to any apocryphal Christian writing whatever. This is a broad line of distinction between our sacred books, and the pretensions of all others. The force of the testimony of the period which we have considered, is greatly strengthened by the observation, that it is the testimony, and the concurring testimony, of writers who lived in countries remote from one another. Clement flourished at Rome, Ignatius at Antioch, Polycarp at Smyrna, Justin Martyr in Syria, and Irenasus in France. NI. Omitting Athenagoras*, and Theophilust, who lived about this time];; in the rem amino- works of the former of whom are clear references to Mark and Luke; and in the works of the latter, who was bishop of Antioch, the sixth in succession from the apostles, evident allusions to Matthew and John, and probable allusions to Luke (which, considering the nature of the compositions, that they were addressed to heathen readers, is as much as could be expected) ; observing also, that the works of two learned Christian writers of the same age, Miltiades and Pantagnus §, are now lost; of which Militades, Eusebius records, that his writing's “ were monuments of zeal for the Divine Oraclesand which Panttenus, as Jerome testifies, was a man of prudence and learning, both in the Divine Scriptures and secular literature, and had left many commentaries upon the Holy Scriptures then extant ||; passing by these without farther remark, we come to one of the most voluminous of ancient Christian writers, Clement - of Alexandria^]. Clement followed Irenieus at the distance of only sixteen years, and therefore may be said to maintain the series of testimony in an unin¬ terrupted continuation. In certain of Clement’s works, now lost, but of which various parts are recited by Eusebius, there is given a distinct account of the order in which the four Gospels were written. The Gospels which contain the genealogies, were (he says) written first; Mark’s next, at the instance of Peter’s followers; and John’s the last: and this account he tells us that he had received from presbyters of more ancient times. This testimony proves the following points ; that these Gospels were the histories of Christ then publicly received, and relied upon; and that the dates, occasions, and circumstances of their publication were at that time subjects of attention and inquiry amongst Christians. In the works of Clement which remain, the four Gospels are repeatedly quoted by the names of their authors, and the Acts of the Apostles is expressly ascribed to Luke. In one place, after mentioning a particular circumstance, he * Athenagoras was an Athenian philosopher who, becoming a convert to Christianity, was remarkable for his zeal and his learning. He flourished about 180, in which year hi-; work, the “ Apology for Christianity,” is said to have been presented to the Emperor Aurelius. Besides this work, we have also one by the same author upon c ‘ the Resurrection,” the best edition of which is that in Greek and Latin, by De Chair, in octavo, 1706—Cave. Lardner. —Ed. •f* This author w ? as one of the earliest Christian prelates, being made bishop of Antioch in 170. He was originally a heathen; but became, after his conversion, one of the most zealous of Christian ministers. He wrote, besides others which have perished, a very learned work in answer to Autolyeus, one of his learned heathen acquaintances, in which, curiously enough, having to address a heathen, he employs almost entirely infidel authorities. An edition of this work was printed in 1684 at Oxford, 12mo., under the direction of Dr. Fell. Lardner. Mosheim. Cave.— Ed. J Lardner, vol. i. p. 400.—lb. 422. § lb. vol. i. p. 413, 450. || Pantamus was a Christian philosopher, having pre¬ viously been a disciple of the Stoic school. He flourished about the end of the second century. He is said to have taught the Stoic philosophy in the School at Alexandria; and to have died in 218. His “ Commentaries” upon the Bible have perished. In these, we are told he mixed, not very successfully, the Christian doctrines with his Stoical philosophy. Lardner. Cave. _Ed. ^ Lardner, vol. ii. p. 469. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 249 adds these remarkable words : “We have not this passage in the four Gospels delivered to us , but in that according to the Egyptianswhich puts a marked distinction between the four Gospels and all other histories, or pretended histories, of Christ. In another part of his works, the perfect confidence, with which he received the Gospels, is signified by him in these words : “ That this is true, appears from hence, that it is written in the Gospel according to Saint Luke and again, “ I need not use many words, but only to allege the evangelic voice of the Lord.” His quotations are numerous. The sayings of Christ, of which he alleges many, are all taken from our Gospels; the single exception to this observation appearing to be a loose* quotation of a passage in Saint Matthew’s Gospel. NIL In the age in which they livedf, Tertullian joins on with Clement. The number of the Gospels then received, the names of the evangelists, and their proper descriptions, are exhibited by this writer in one short sentence :—“ Among the apostles , John and Matthew teach us the faith; among apostolical men , Luke and Mark refresh it.” The next passage to be taken from Tertullian, affords as complete an attestation to the authenticity of our books, as can be well imagined. After enumerating the churches which had been founded by Paul, at Corinth, in Galatia, at Philippi, Thessalonica, and Ephesus ; the church of Rome established by Peter and Paul, and other churches derived from John; he proceeds thus:—“ I say then, that with them, but not with them only which are apostolical, but with all who have fellowship with them in the same faith, is that Gospel of Luke received from its first publication, which we so zealously maintain and presently afterward adds; u The same authority of the apostolical churches will support the other Gospels, which we have from them and according to them, I mean John’s and Matthew’s; although that like¬ wise which Mark published may be said to be Peter’s, whose interpreter Mark was.” In another place Tertullian affirms, that the three other Gospels were in the hands of the churches from the beginning, as well as Luke’s. This noble testimony fixes the universality with which the Gospels were received, and their antiquity; that they were in the hands of all, and had been so from the first. And this evidence appears not more than one hundred and fifty years after the publication of the books. The reader must be given to understand that, when Tertullian speaks of maintaining or defending (tuendi) the Gospel of Saint Luke, he only means maintaining or defending the integrity of the copies of Luke received by Christian churches, in opposition to certain curtailed copies used by Marcion, against whom he writes. This author frequently cites the Acts of the Apostles under that title, once calls it Luke’s Commentary, and observes how Saint Paul’s epistles confirm it. After this general evidence, it is unnecessary to add particular quotations. These, how¬ ever, are so numerous and ample, as to have led Dr. Lardner to observe, u that there are more, and larger quotations of the small volume of the New Testament in this one Christian author, than there are of all the works of Cicero in writers of all characters for several ages J. Tertullian quotes no Christian writing as of equal authority with the Scriptures, and no spurious books at all; a broad line of distinction, we may once more observe, between our sacred books and all others. We may again likewise remark the wide extent through which the reputation of the Gospels, and of the Acts of the Apostles, had spread, and the perfect consent, in this point, of distant and independent societies. It is now only about one hundred and fifty years since Christ was crucified; and within this period, to say nothing of the apostolical fathers who have been noticed already, we have Justin Martyr at Neapolis, Theophilus at Antioch, Irenaeus in France, Clement at Alexandria, Tertullian at Carthage, quoting the same books of historical Scriptures, and, I may say, quoting these alone. XIII. An interval of only thirty years, and that occupied by no small number of Christian % * “ Ask great things, and the small shall be added unto heaven and its righteousness, for these are the great things : you.” Clement rather chose to expound the words of but the small things, and things relating to this life, shall Matthew (chap. vi. 33), than literally to cite them; and be added unto you.” Jones s New and Full Method, this is most undeniably proved by another place in the vol. i. p. 553. same Clement, where he both produces the text and these f Lardner, vol. ii. p. 561. words as an exposition ;—“Seek ye first the kingdom of + Ibid., vol. ii. p. 64 1 . 2.50 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. writers whose works only remain in fragments and quotations, and in every one of which is some reference or other to the Gospels (and in one of them, Hippolytus, as preserved in Theodoret, is an abstract of the whole Gospel history), brings us to a name of great celebrity in Christian antiquity, Origenof Alexandria, who, in the quantity of his writings, exceeded the most laborious of the Greek and Latin authors. Nothing can be more peremptory upon the subject now under consideration, and from a writer of his learning and information, more satisfactory, than the declaration of Origen, preserved, in an extract from his works, by Eusebius; u That the four Gospels alone are received without dispute by the whole church of God under heaven to which declaration is immediately subjoined a brief history of the respective authors, to whom they were then, as they are now, ascribed. The language liolden concerning the Gospels, throughout the works of Origen which remain, entirely corresponds with the testimony here cited. His attestation to the Acts of the Apostles is no less positive: a And Luke also once more sounds the trumpet, relating the acts of the Apostles.” The universality with which the Scriptures were then read, is well signified by this writer, in a passage in which he has occasion to observe against Celsus, “ That it is not in any private books, or such as are read by a few only, and those studious persons, but in books read by every body, that it is written, The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by things that are made.” It is to no purpose to single out quotations of Scripture from such a writer as this. We might as well make a selection of the quotations of Scripture in Dr. Clarke’s Sermons. They are so thickly sown in the works of Origen, that Dr. Mill says, a If we had all his works remaining, we should have before us almost the whole text of the Bible J.” Origen notices, in order to censure, certain apocryphal Gospels. He also uses four writings of this sort; that is, throughout his large works he once or twice, at the most, quotes each of the four; but always with some mark, either of direct reprobation or of caution to his readers, manifestly esteeming them of little or no authority §. XIV. Gregory, bishop of Neocaesarea, and Dionysius of Alexandria, were scholars of Origen ||. Their testimony, therefore, though full and particular, may be reckoned a repe- * Minucius Felix, Apollonius, Caius, Asterius, Urba- nus, Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, Hippolytus, Ammo- nius Julius Africanus. Lardner, vol. iii. p. 234. J Mill, Pi'oleg. cap. vi. p. 66. § Origen was surnamed Adamantias, from his invincible constancy and strength of mind. He was born at Alex¬ andria in or about the year 185, of Christian parents, according to Eusebius, although Porphyry makes them out to be heathens. He possessed a mind at once ardent and inquisitive, anxiously dived into the deepest mysteries, and possessed in his enquiries all the restlessness of genius. He had for his tutors, first, his father Leonides, then Ammonius, in philosophy, and Clement of Alexandria, in divinity, so that he was not a likely man to believe in a fable. Jerome describes him as being equally skilled in geometry, arithmetic, music, rhetoric, and grammar. Suffering persecution, his father being martyred before Origen was eighteen years of age, he had to support his mother and his brothers, at first, by teaching grammar, and afterwards by filling the chair, as professor of sacred learning, at Alexandria. His austerities, in this period of his life, at least demonstrated his sincerity; he even mutilated himself from a sudden impulse, and mistaken reading of the text, “ there be some who make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God.” A mistake which he afterwards very candidly acknowledged and denounced. Of his profound learning, his “ Tetrapla ” bore ample testimony: this was a Bible, in which, in parallel columns, he gave the Hebrew text, and four translations, that of the Seventy, of Aquila, of Theodotian, and of Sym- machus. To this he afterwards added two anonymous versions, and another of the Psalms only which he had discovered at Jericho. These are known as Origen’s “ Hexapla.” Consequently he was the first who con¬ structed a Polyglctt Bible, and although others have improved upon his valuable, erudite labours, yet his was the first, and consequently by far the most difficult effort. It was long after this, that he was ordained a priest, and it is quite certain, that his awn diocesan, Demetrius, was not his friend. If the early prelates were conscious of any imposture in their profession, it is evident that they were not harmonious conspirators, for Demetrius absolutely refused to allow Origen, when he was a layman, to preach. Origen Avas the author of “ Commentaries upon the Holy Scriptures,” five books upon St. John’s Gospel, eight upon Genesis, and others upon the first twenty-five Psalms, and the Lamentations of Jeremiah, besides his works, “ de Principiis,” and ‘‘Stromata.” He suffered persecutions of all kinds, was banished by his own diocesan, was imprisoned and tortured by Roman emperors; but died a natural death, according to Eusebius, in the sixty- ninth vear of his age. To those who would examine more minutely the herculean works of this splendid early Christian author, the editors would recommend the collection of the remain¬ ing works of Origen in Latin, by Merlinus and Erasmus, 1512, 2 vols. folio; or that by Ginnebrand, in 1619, 2 vols. folio. All the Greek fragments of Origen, upon the Scriptures, were collected by Huetius, 1685, 2 vols. folio, with an able account of his life, writings, and doc¬ trines. The works of this author are the more valuable, since, amongst others, are some against not only heretics, but against infidels and objectors. Huetius. Cave. Dupin. Jortin_ Ed. |j Dionysius of Alexandria Avas another of Origen’s celebrated pupils; he Avas made bishop of Alexandria in EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 251 tition only of his. The series, however, of evidence, is continued by Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, who flourished within twenty years after Origen. “ The church,” says this father, “ is watered, like Paradise, by four rivers, that is, by four Gospels.” The Acts of the Apos¬ tles is also frequently quoted by Cyprian under that name, and under the name of the “ Divine Scriptures.” In his various writings are such constant and copious citations of Scripture, as to place this part of the testimony beyond controversy. Nor is there, in the works of this eminent African bishop, one quotation of a spurious or apocryphal Christian writing *. XY. Passing over a crowd-j- of writers following Cyprian at different distances, but all within forty years of his time; and who all, in the imperfect remains of their works, either cite the historical Scriptures of the New Testament, or speak of them in terms of profound respect; I single out Yictorin, bishop of Pettaw in Germany, merely on account of the remoteness of his situation from that of Origen and Cyprian, who were Africans; by which circumstance his testimony, taken in conjunction with theirs, proves that the Scripture histories, and the same histories, were known and received from one side of the Christian world to the other. This bishop ^ lived about the year 290 : and in a commentary upon this text of the Revelation, u The first was like a lion, the second was like a calf, the third like a man, and the fourth like a flying eagle,” he makes out that by the four creatures are intended the four Gospels; and, to show the propriety of the symbols, he recites the subject with which each evangelist opens his history. The explication is fanciful, but the testi¬ mony positive. He also expressly cites the Acts of the Apostles. XYI. Arnobius and Lactantius§, about the year 300, composed formal arguments upon the credibility of the Christian religion. As these arguments were addressed to Gentiles, the authors abstain from quoting Christian books by name; one of them giving this very reason for his reserve ; but when they come to state, for the information of their readers, the outlines of Christ’s history, it is apparent that they draw their accounts from our Gospels, and from no other sources; for these statements exhibit a summary of almost every thing which is related of Christ’s actions and miracles by the four evangelists. Arnobius vindi¬ cates, without mentioning their names, the credit of these historians; observing, that they were eye-witnesses of the facts which they relate, and that their ignorance of the arts of com¬ position was rather a confirmation of their testimony, than an objection to it. Lactantius also argues in defence of the religion, from the consistency, simplicity, disinterestedness, and sufferings, of the Christian historians, meaning by that term our evangelists [|. 247. Ilis works have perished, with the exception of some fragments preserved by Eusebius-Dupin. Theodorus Gregory, surnamed Thaumaturgus, or won¬ der-worker, was born at Neocsesarea, in Cappadocia, of which place he was afterwards made bishop ; although it is probable that he was originally intended for the prac¬ tice of the law, which he was first diverted from by an ardent taste for philosophy. Afterwards attending the school of Origen, he was converted to Christianity, and became an able and a zealous minister. He died soon after the Council of Antioch, about the year 264, and left behind the character of an eloquent, learned, yet humble, minister: most of his works are supposed to be lost. An edition of all that have been spared to us was printed by Gerard Vossius at Mentz in 1604.—Douglas’ Criterion of Miracles, 397. Mosheim. Cave.— Ed. * Thascius Csecilius Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, was born at that city towards the beginning of the third cen¬ tury. He was of heathen parents, but embraced Christi¬ anity in the year 246 ; he was distinguished for his oratory, and as a teacher of rhetoric. He suffered persecution of all kinds from Roman emperors, and heretics of his own church, and finally martyrdom in 258. He is one of the most eloquent of all the Latin fathers, and his notices of Ecclesiastical History are particularly valuable; his works were printed at Oxford in 1682, under the editorship of bishops Fell and Pearson, and they were published in English by Dr. Marshall, in 1717. —Milner’s Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 369. —Ed- f Novatus, Rome, A. D. 251; Dionysius, Rome, A. D. 259 ; Commodian, A.D. 270; Anatolius, Laodicea, A.D. 270 ; Theognostus, A. D. 282 ; Methodius, Lycia, A.D. 290 ; Phileas, Egypt, A. D. 296. X Lardner, vol. v. p. 214. § Ibid. vol. viii. p. 43. 201. |1 Of Arnobius, the celebrated apologist of Christianity, few particulars are known; he flourished about the year 300. His “ Apology ” is supposed to be only a frag¬ ment of the original work. He was a teacher of rhetoric, and embraced Christianity in the midst of persecutions, and candidly admits in his writings that he was once a blind idolater. His work “ Adversus Gentes ’’ has been often reprinted, as at Rome in 1542, and at Hamburgh 1610.—Lardner. Cave- Ed. Of Lactantius, one of the eminent primitive fathers of the church, and perhaps the most eloquent of the Latin ecclesiastical writers, the particulars are few and doubtful. He is said to have been a native of Fermo, in the March of Ancona; to have been a teacher of rhetoric; and had, among other pupils, Crispus the son of Constantine. The best edition of his collected works, known to the editors, is that of Paris 1748, 2 vols. quarto. An admirable edition of his fifth book “de Justitia,” was published in 1777, by Lord Hailes, and a translation of his works by the same learned editor in 1782.—Lardner. Cave.— Ed. 252 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. KVTI. We close the series of testimonies with that of Eusebius* bishop of Caesarea, who flourished in the year 315, contemporary with, or posterior only by fifteen years to, the authors last cited. This voluminous writer, and most diligent collector of the writings of others, beside a variety of large works, composed a history of the affairs of Christianity from its origin to his own time. His testimony to the Scriptures is the testimony of a man much conversant in the works of Christian authors, written during the first three centuries of its era, and who had read many which are now lost. In a passage of his Evangelical Demon¬ stration, Eusebius remarks, with great nicety, the delicacy of two of the evangelists, in their manner of noticing any circumstance which regarded themselves; and of Mark, as writing under Peter s direction, in the circumstances which regarded him. The illustration of this remark leads him to bring together long quotations from each of the evangelists; and the whole passage is a proof, that Eusebius, and the Christians of those days, not only read the Gospels, but studied them with attention and exactness. In a passage of his Ecclesiastical History, he treats, in form, and at large, of the occasions of writing the four Gospels, and of the order in which they were written. The title of the chapter is, “ Of the Order of the Gospels and it begins thus : “ Let us observe the writings of this apostle John, which are not contradicted by any : and, first of all, must be mentioned, as acknowledged by all, the Gos¬ pel according to him, well known to all the churches under heaven ; and that it has been justly placed by the ancients the fourth in order, and after the other three, may be made evident in this manner.”—Eusebius then proceeds to shew that John wrote the last of the four, and that his Gospel was intended to supply the omissions of the others; especially in the part of our Lord’s ministry, which took place before the imprisonment of John the Baptist. He observes, “that the apostles of Christ were not studious of the orna¬ ments of composition, nor indeed forward to write at all, being wholly occupied with their ministry.” This learned author makes no use at all of Christian writings, forged with the names of Christ’s apostles, or their companions f. We close this branch of our evidence, here, because, after Eusebius, there is no room for any question upon the subject; the works of Christian writers being as full of texts of Scrip¬ ture, and of references to Scripture, as the discourses of modern divines. Future testimonies to the books of Scripture could only prove that they never lose their character or authority. SECTION II. When the Scriptures are quoted , or alluded to , they are quoted with peculiar respect , as books sui generis ; as possessing an authority which belonged to no other books ; and as conclusive in all questions and controversies amongst Christians. Beside the general strain of reference and quotation, which uniformly and strongly indi¬ cates this distinction, the following may be regarded as specific testimonies : * Lardner, vol. viii. p. 33. T Eusebius, whom Dr. Jortin styled “ the most learned bishop of his age, and the father of ecclesiastical history,” was surnamed Pamphilius, from his friendship with the martyr Pamphilius. He was born in Palestine about 267, became bishop of Caesarea in 315, and died about 338. He was befriended by the emperor Constan¬ tine, and appears to have been mild, tolerant, learned, and laborious. Unfortunately many of his works have either partially or entirely perished; but the fragments which have been spared, bear ample testimony to his profound erudition, his zeal, and his love of truth. Amongst his great and important works, too long to particularise in this note, we may mention, 1. His “Chronicon;” which was translated into Latin by St. Jerome, and the Greek fragments of which were first collected and published at Leyden, in 1606, folio, by Joseph Scaliger; which has been justly described by Dupin, as displaying ‘‘a prodigious extent of reading and consummate erudition.” It is a history of the Chaldeans, Assyrians, Medes, Persians, &c., from the creation to his own time. 2. Prseparationes Evangelicse, Libri xv. 3. Demonstratione Evangelica. These two were printed in 1554-5, by Stephens. 4. Historise Ecclesiasticse, Libri v. ; or, History of the Church from the earliest period to about the year 324 ; the best editions of which are those of Yalesius. Paris : 1659. Franckfort: 1672. Reprinted at Cambridge, 1720, by William Reading. Eusebius was evidently a man of profound research ; his replies to a work of the pagan Hierocles, and to the heretic Marcellus, which have escaped to us, evince also his zeal for truth ; and besides these, he wrote a much longer Avork in answer to the objections of the learned philosopher Porphyry, Avhich has unfortunately perished.—Jortin on Ecclesiastical History. Cave. Lardner. Dupin.— Ed. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 258 I. Theopliilus *, bishop of Antioch, the sixth in succession from the apostles, and who flourished little more than a century after the books of the New Testament were written, having occasion to quote one of our Gospels, writes thus : “ These things the Holy Scriptures teach us, and all who were moved by the Holy Spirit, among whom John says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” Again: “Concerning the right¬ eousness which the law teaches, the like things are to be found in the Prophets and the Gospels , because that all, being inspired, spoke by one and the same Spirit of God t.” No words can testify more strongly than these do, the high and peculiar respect in which these books were holden. II. A writer against Artemon|, who may be supposed to come about one hundred and fifty-eight years after the publication of the Scripture, in a passage quoted by Eusebius, uses these expressions: “ Possibly what they (our adversaries) say, might have been credited, if first of all the Divine Scriptures did not contradict them ; and then the writings of certain brethren more ancient than the times of Victor.” The brethren mentioned by name, are, Justin, Miltiades, Tatian, Clement, Irenteus, Melito, with a general appeal to many more not named. This passage proves, first, that there was at that time a collection called Divine Scriptures; secondly, that these Scriptures were esteemed of higher authority than the writings of the most early and celebrated Christians. III. In a piece ascribed to IJyppolitus §, who lived near the same time, the author professes, in giving his correspondent instruction in the things about which he inquires, “ to draw out of the sacred fountain , and to set before him from the Sacred Scriptures, what may afford him satisfaction.” He then quotes immediately Pauls Epistles to Timothy, and afterward many books of the New Testament. This preface to the quotations carries in it a marked distinction between the Scriptures and other books ||. IV. “ Our assertions and discourses,” saith Origen ^[, “are unworthy of credit; we must receive the Scriptures as witnesses.” After treating of the duty of prayer, he proceeds witli his argument thus : “ What we have said, may be proved from the Divine Scriptures.” In his books against Celsus, we find this passage : “ That our religion teaches us to seek after wisdom, shall be shewn, both out of the ancient Jewish Scriptures, which we also use, and out of those written since Jesus, which are believed in the churches to be divine.” These expressions afford abundant evidence of the peculiar and exclusive authority which the Scrip¬ tures possessed. V. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage whose age lies close to that of Origen, earnestly exhorts Christian teachers, in all doubtful cases, “to go back to the fountain ; and, if the truth has in any case been shaken, to recur to the Gospels and apostolic writings.”—“ The precepts of the Gospel,” says he in another place, “ are nothing less than authoritative divine lessons, the foundations of our hope, the supports of our faith, the guides of our way, the safeguards of our course to heaven.” VI. Novatusff, a Roman contemporary with Cyprian, appeals to the Scriptures, as the authority by which all errors were to be repelled, and disputes decided. “ That Christ is not only man, but God also, is proved by the sacred authority of the Divine Writings.”—“ The Divine Scripture easily detects and confutes the frauds of heretics.”—“It is not by the fault of the heavenly Scriptures, which never deceive.” Stronger assertions than these could not be used. VII. At the distance of twenty years from the writer last cited, Anatolius, §§ a learned Alexandrian, and bishop of Laodicea, speaking of the rule for keeping Easter, a question at * Lardner, Cred. part ii. vol. i. p. 429. t Ibid. p. 448. + Ibid. vol. iii. p. 40. § Ibid. p. 112. || Of the works of Hyppolitus, who suffered martyrdom about 230, in the reign of the emperor Severus, unfortu¬ nately there are no remains which can be certainly attri¬ buted to his pen ; although it is certain that he wrote many excellent works. All those which are attributed to him, were edited by Fabricius, in Greek and in Latin, in 1716-18; 2 vols. folio -Lardner. Cave.— Ed. 5[ Lardner, Cred. vol. iii.^p. 287—289. * Ibid. vol. iv. p. 840. f J- Lardner, Cred. vol. v. p. 102. ++ Novatus was a priest in the Christian church of Car¬ thage, and the founder of a schism in the church, whose followers long were known as the Novatians. He is said to have been talented and unquiet, eloquent and profligate ; but let us bear in mind that his enemies are his historians. That he had considerable influence is very evident; for his doctrines extended very widely, and his followers were certainly pretty numerous, even to the end of the eighth century.—Lardner. Milner. Dupin. —Ed. §§ Lardner, Cred. vol. v. p. 140. 254 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. that day agitated with much earnestness, says of those whom he opposed, “ They can by no means prove their point by the authority of the Divine Scripture.” VIII. The Arians, who sprang up about fifty years after this, argued strenuously against the use of the words consubstantial and essence, and like phrases ; “ because they icere not in Scripture And in the same strain one of their advocates opens a conference with Augus¬ tin, after the following manner: “If you say what is reasonable, I must submit. If you allege any thing from the Divine Scriptures, which are common to both, I must hear. But unscriptural expressions (quas extra Scripturam sunt) deserve no regard.” Athanasius, the great antagonist of Arianism, after having enumerated the books of the Old and New Testament, adds, “ These are the fountain of salvation, that he wdio thirsts may be satisfied with the oracles contained in them. In these alone the doctrine of salvation is proclaimed. Let no man add to them, or take any thing from them!.” IX. Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem J, who wrote about twenty years after the appearance of Arianism, uses these remarkable words : “ Concerning the divine and holy mysteries of faith, not the least article ought to be delivered without the Divine Scriptures.” We are assured that Cyril’s Scriptures were the same as ours, for he has left us a catalogue of the books included under that name X. Epiphanius ||, twenty years after Cyril, challenges the Arians, and the followers of Origen, “ to produce any passage of the Old and New Testament, favouring their sentiments ^[.” XI. Poebadius, a Gallic bishop, who lived about thirty years after the council of Nice, testifies, that “ the bishops of that council first consulted the sacred volumes, and then declared their faith XII. Basil, bishop of Cmsarea, in Cappadocia, contemporary with Epiphanius, says, “ that hearers, instructed in the Scriptures, ought to examine what is said by their teachers, and to embrace what is agreeable to the Scriptures, and to reject what is otherwise j-f.” XIII. Ephraim, the Syrian, a celebrated writer of the same times, bears this conclusive testimony to the proposition which forms the subject of our present chapter : “ The truth written in the Sacred Volume of the Gospel, is a perfect rule. Nothing can be taken from it nor added to it, without great guilt XIV. If we add Jerome to these, it is only for the evidence which he affords of the judg¬ ment of preceding ages. Jerome observes, concerning the quotations of ancient Christian writers, that is, of writers who were ancient in the year 400, that they made a distinction between books ; some they quoted as of authority, and others not : which observation relates to the books of Scripture, compared with other writings, apocryphal or heathen §§.” * Lardner, Cred. vol. vii. p. 283, 284. Ibid. vol. xii. p. 182. Athanasius was born of heathen parents, at Alexan¬ dria, of which place he became bishop in 326 ; and for forty-six years presided over the church at that place with great talent and success. The best edition of his works is, perhaps, that of Montfaucon, in 3 vols. folio, 1698. They principally relate to the Arian controversy, which very long engaged the attention of Athanasius, and which he controverted with much clearness and elegance. The Creed which bears his name, is supposed by Usher, Pearson, Cave, Dupin, and other eminent critics, to be the production of a later author.—Waterland’s History of the Athanasian Creed. Cave. —Ed. X Lardner, Cred. vol. iii.p. 276. § Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, was ordained a priest about the year 350. He was deposed from his see of Jerusalem in the reign of the emperor Julian, and died in 386. There are several editions of his works, amongst which we need only mention that of Milles; Oxford, 1703. They consist principally of eighteen discourses, a Letter to Constantius, &c. Cave. — Ed. || Lardner, Cred. vol. iii. p. 314. Epiphanius was born about the year 320, at the village of Besanduce, in Palestine : he died at sea, on his return from Constantinople to Cyprus, about the year 403. He was an excellent linguist, being well versed in Syriac, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Egyptian, besides being learned in ecclesiastical antiquities. He had great zeal and piety, but was not always discreet; and his de¬ tractors have readily found out that he paid little atten¬ tion to grammar, and still less to the polishing of his sentences. Epiphanius had his mind employed upon far more important subjects than the rounding of a period. He was ever the friend of what he deemed genuine Chris¬ tianity, and even quarrelled with Origen upon some doctrinal points : his zeal betrayed his sincerity, though it certainly annoyed his contemporaries. Chrysostom be¬ trayed this feeling when he told him, on his departure from Constantinople, “ I hope you will never return to your own country.” The best edition of his works is that of Petavius, in Greek and Latin. Paris : 1662. 2 vols. folio.—Mosheim. Cave. Unpin_ Ed. ** Lardner, Cred. vol. ix. p. 52. Ibid. vol. ix. p. 124. Basil, bishop of Caesarea, in 370, at which place he was born in 326, was called “ the Great,” from his extensive learning and piety. He was indefatigably industrious, and profoundly learned. The best edition of his works, in three folio volumes, in Greek and Latin, is that of 1722 •—1730, by the Benedictines of St. Maur. Cave. Dupin. —Ed. +4 Lardner, Cred. vol. ix. p. 202. §§ Ibid. vol. x. p. 123, 124. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 255 SECTION III. The Scriptures were in very early times collected into a distinct volume. Ignatius, who was bishop of Antioch within forty years after the Ascension, and who had lived and conversed with the apostles, speaks of the Gospel and of the apostles in terms which render it very probable that he meant by the Gospel, the book or volume of the Gos¬ pels, and by the apostles, the book or volume of their Epistles. His words in one place are *, “ Fleeing to the Gospel as the flesh of Jesus, and to the apostles as the presbytery of the church ;” that is, as Le Clerc interprets them, “in order to understand the will of God, he fled to the Gospels, which he believed no less than if Christ in the flesh had been speak¬ ing to him; and to the writings of the apostles, whom he esteemed as the presbytery of the whole Christian Church. It must be observed, that about eighty years after this, we have direct proof, in the writings of Clement of Alexandria f, that these two names, “ Gospel,” and “ Apostles,” were the names by which the writings of the New Testament, and the division of these writings, were usually expressed. Another passage from Ignatius is the following :—“ But the Gospel has somewhat in it more excellent, the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ, his passion and resurrection^.” And a third : “Ye ought to hearken to the Prophets, but especially to the Gospel, in which the passion has been manifested to us, and the resurrection perfected.” In this last passage, the Prophets and the Gospel are put in conjunction; and as Ignatius undoubtedly meant by the Prophets a collection of writings, it is probable that he meant the same by the Gospel, the two terms standing in evident parallelism with each other. This interpretation of the word “ Gospel,” in the passages above quoted from Ignatius, is confirmed by a piece of nearly equal antiquity, the relation of the martyrdom of Polycarp by the church of Smyrna. “ All things, 11 say they, “that went before, were done, that the Lord might shew us a martyrdom according to the Gospel, for he expected to be delivered up as the Lord also did §.” And in another place, “We do not commend those who offer themselves, forasmuch as the Gospel teaches us no such thing ||.” In both these places, what is called the Gospel , seems to be the history of Jesus Christ, and of his doctrine. If this be the true sense of the passages, they are not only evidences of our proposition, but strong and very ancient proofs of the high esteem in which the books of the New Tes¬ tament were holden. II. Eusebius relates, that Quadratus and some others, who were the immediate successors of the apostles, travelling abroad to preach Christ, carried the Gospels with them, and de¬ livered them to their converts. The words of Eusebius are : “ Then travelling abroad, they performed the work of evangelists, being ambitious to preach Christ, and deliver the Scrip¬ ture of the divine Gospels* f|.” Eusebius had before him the writings both of Quadratus himself, and of many others of that age, which are now lost. It is reasonable, therefore, to believe, that he had good grounds for his assertion. What is thus recorded of the Gospels, took place within sixty, or, at the most, seventy years after they were published: and it is evident that they must, before this time, (and, it is probable, long before this time), have been in general use, and in high esteem in the churches planted by the apostles, inasmuch as they were now, we find, collected into a volume; and the immediate successors of the apostles, they who preached the religion of Christ to those who had not already heard it, carried the volume with them, and delivered it to their converts. III. Irenasus, in the year 178 puts the evangelic and apostolic writings in connexion with the Law and the Prophets, manifestly intending by the one a code or collection of Christian sacred writings, as the other expressed the code or collection of Jewish sacred writings. And, IV. Melito, at this time bishop of Sardis, writing to one Onesimus, tells his corre- * Lardner, Cred. part ii. vol. i. p. 180. f Ibid. vol. ii. p. 516. + Ibid. p. 132. § Ignat. Ep. c. i. || Ibid. c. iv. U Lardner, Cred. part ii. vol. i. p. 236. ** Ibid. vol. i. p. 383. 250 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. spondent *, that he had procured an accurate account of the books of the Old Testament. The occurrence in this passage, of the term Old Testament, has been brought to prove, and it certainly does prove, that there was then a volume or collection of writings called the New Testament f. Y. In the time of Clement of Alexandria, about fifteen years after the last quoted testi¬ mony, it is apparent that the Christian Scriptures were divided into two parts, under the general titles of the Gospels and Apostles; and that both these were regarded as of the highest authority. One, out of many expressions of Clement, alluding to this distribution, is the following :—“ There is a consent and harmony between the Law and the Prophets, the Apostles and the Gospel YI. The same division, “ Prophets, Gospels, and Apostles,” appears in Tertullian §, the contemporary of Clement. The collection of the Gospels is likewise called by this writer the “Evangelic Instrument ||the whole volume, the “ New Testament ;” and the tw T o parts, the “ Gospels and Apostles ^f.” YII. From many writers also of the third century, and especially from Cyprian, who lived in the middle of it, it is collected that the Christian Scriptures w r ere divided into two codes or volumes, one called the “ Gospels or Scriptures of the Lord,” the other, the “ Apostles, or Epistles of the Apostles **.” YIII. Eusebius, as we have already seen, takes some pains to shew, that the Gospels of Saint John had been justly placed by the ancients “the fourth in order, and after the other three j' f .” These are terms of his proposition : and the very introduction of such an argu¬ ment proves incontestibly, that the four Gospels had been collected into a volume, to the exclusion of every other; that their order in the volume had been adjusted with much con¬ sideration ; and that this had been done by those who were called ancients in the time of Eusebius. In the Diocletian persecution, in the year 303, the Scriptures w^ere sought out and burnt : many suffered death rather than deliver them up ; and those who betrayed them to the persecutors, were accounted as lapsed and apostate. On the other hand, Constantine, after his conversion, gave directions for multiplying copies of the Divine Oracles, and for magnificently adorning them at the expense of the imperial treasury §§. What the Christians of that age so richly embellished in their prosperity, and, which is more, so tenaciously pre¬ served under persecution, was the very volume of the New Testament which w T e now read. SECTION IV. Our present Sacred Writings were soon distinguished hg appropriate names and titles of respect. I. Polycarp. “ I trust that ye are well exercised in the Holy Scriptures ;—as in these Scriptures it is said, Be ye angry and sin not, and let not the sun go down upon your wrath ||||. r) This passage is extremely important; because it proves that, in the time of Polycarp, who had lived with the apostles, there were Christian writings distinguished by the name of “Holy Scriptures,” or Sacred Writings. Moreover, the text quoted by Poly¬ carp is a text found in the collection at this day. What also the same Polycarp hath elsewhere quoted in the same manner, may be considered as proved to belong to the collec¬ tion ; and this comprehends Saint Matthew’s, and, probably, Saint Luke’s Gospel, the Acts of the Apostles, ten Epistles of Paul, the First Epistle of Peter, and the First of John^j". In another place, Polycarp has these words : “ Whoever perverts the Oracles of the Lord to * Lardner, Cred. vol. i. p. 331. T Melito was bishop of Sardis ; his works are only- known to us by some fragments preserved by Eusebius, in the 4th book of his Ecclesiastical History, in one of which he challenges the emperor Marcus Antoninus to examine the accusations commonly urged against Christians. He died about the year 192.—Lardner. Cave.— Ed. X Lardner, Cred. vol. ii. p. 516. § Ibid. p. 631. || Ibid. p. 574. Ibid. p. 632. ** Ibid. vol. iv. p. 846. T f' Ibid. vol. viii. p. 90. XX Ibid. vol. vii. p. 214, et scq. §§ Ibid. p. 432. mi Ibid. vol. i. p. 203. f f Ibid. p. 223. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 257 his own lusts, and says there is neither resurrection nor judgment, he is the first- horn of Satan It does not appear what else Polycarp could mean by the “ Oracles of the Lord,” but those same “Holy Scriptures,” or Sacred Writings, of which he had spoken before. II. Justin Martyr, whose apology was written about thirty years after Polycarp’s epistle, expressly cites some of our present histories under the title of Gospel, and that not as a name by him first ascribed to them, but as the name by which they were generally known in his time. His words are these : — “For the apostles in the memoirs composed by them, which arc called Gospels , have thus delivered it, that Jesus commanded them to take bread, and give thanks t.” There exists no doubt, but that, by the memoirs above mentioned, Justin meant our present historical Scriptures ; for throughout his works he quotes these, and no others. III. Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, who came thirty years after Justin, in a passage pre¬ served in Eusebius (for his works are lost), speaks “ of the Scriptures of the Lord;£.” IV. And at the same time, or very nearly so, by Irenseus, bishop of Lyons in France §, they are called “ Divine Scriptures,”—“ Divine Oracles, 1 ’’—“ Scriptures of the Lord,”— “Evangelic and Apostolic Writings ||. 11 The quotations of Irena3us prove decidedly, that our present Gospels, and these alone, together with the Acts of the Apostles, were the his¬ torical books comprehended by him under these appellations. V. Saint Matthew’s Gospel is quoted by Theopliilus, bishop of Antioch, contemporary with Irenseus, under the title of the “Evangelic Voiced;” and the copious works of Clement of Alexandria, published within fifteen years of the same time, ascribe to the books of the New Testament the various titles of “Sacred Books,”—“Divine Scriptures,”— “Divinely inspired Scriptures,”—“Scriptures of the Lord,”—“the true Evangelical Canon VI. Tertullian, who joins on with Clement, besides adopting most of the names and epi¬ thets above noticed, calls the Gospels “ our Digesta,” in allusion, as it should seem, to some collection of Roman laws then extant j'f. VII. By Origen, who came thirty years after Tertullian, the same, and other no less strong titles, are applied to the Christian Scriptures: and, in addition thereunto, this writer frequently speaks of the “ Old and New Testaments,”—“ the Ancient and New Scriptures,” —“ the Ancient and New Oracles fX” VIII. In Cyprian, who was not twenty years later, they are “ Books of the Spirit,”— “ Divine Fountains,”—“ Fountains of the Divine Fulness §§.” The expressions we have just quoted, are evidences of high and peculiar respect. They all occur within two centuries from the publication of the books. Some of them commence with the companions of the apostles ; and they increase in number and variety, through a series of writers touching upon one another, and deduced from the first age of the religion. SECTION Y. Our Scriptures were publicly read and expounded in the religious assemblies of the early Christians. Justin Martyr, who wrote in the year 140, which was seventy or eighty years after some, and less, probably, after others of the Gospels were published, giving in his first apology, an account, to the emperor, of the Christian worship, has this remarkable passage : “ The Memoirs of the Apostles , or the Writings of the Prophets, are read according as the * Lardner, Cred. vol. i. p. 222. f Ibid. p. 271. tyrdom, about the year 178. Milner’s Church History, £ Ibid. p. 298. vol. i p. 283 .—Ed All that remain of the works of Dionysius, bishop of § The reader will observe tbe remoteness of these two Corinth, are some fragments of his Letters, preserved in writers in country and situation. the works of Eusebius, which evince much zeal for the fur- || Lardner, Cred. vol. i. p. 343, et seq. 51 Rid. p. 427. therance of the Christian doctrines. The particulars of his ** Ibid. vol. ii. p. 515. TT Ibid. p. 630. life are very scanty : he is supposed to have suffered mar- ++ Ibid, vol. iii. p. 280. §§ Ibid. vol. iv. p. 844. S 258 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. time allows: and when the reader has ended, the president makes a discourse, exhorting to the imitation of so excellent things A few short observations will shew the value of this testimony. 1. The “Memoirs of the Apostles,'” Justin in another place expressly tells us, are what are called “ Gospels:” and that they were the Gospels which we now use, is made certain by Justin’s numerous quotations of them , and his silence about any others. 2. Justin describes the general usage of the Christian church. 3. Justin does not speak of it as recent or newly instituted, but in the terms in which men speak of established customs. II. Tertullian, who followed Justin at the distance of about fifty years, in his account of the religious assemblies of Christians as they were conducted in his time, says, “We come together to recollect the Divine Scriptures; we nourish our faith, raise our hope, confirm our trust, by the Sacred Word-j*. III. Eusebius records of Origen, and cites for his authority the letters of bishops contem¬ porary with Origen, that when he went into Palestine about the year 216, which was only sixteen years after the date of Tertullian’s testimony, he was desired by the bishops of that country to discourse and expound the Scriptures publicly in the church, though he was not yet ordained a presbyter |. This anecdote recognises the usage, not only of reading, but of expounding the Scriptures; and both as subsisting in full force. Origen also himself bears witness to the same practice : “ This,” says he, “ we do, when the Scriptures are read in the church, and when the discourse for explication is delivered to the people §.” And, what is a still more ample testimony, many homilies of his upon the Scriptures of the New Testa¬ ment, delivered by him in the assemblies of the church, are still extant. IV. Cyprian, whose age was not twenty years lower than that of Origen, gives his people an account of having ordained two persons, who were before confessors, to be readers; and what they were to read, appears by the reason which he gives for his choice : “ Nothing,” says Cyprian, “ can be more fit, than that he, who has made a glorious confession of the Lord, should read publicly in the church ; that he who has shewn himself willing to die a martyr, should read the Gospel of Christ , by which martyrs are made ||.” V. Intimations of the same custom may be traced in a great number of writers in the beginning, and throughout the whole of the fourth century. Of these testimonies I will only use one, as being, of itself, express and full. Augustin, who appeared near the conclu¬ sion of the century, displays the benefit of the Christian religion on this very account, the public reading of the Scriptures in the churches, “ where,” says he, “ is a confluence of all sorts of people of both sexes ; and where they hear how they ought to live well in this world, that they may deserve to live happily and eternally in another :” And this custom he declares to be universal: “ The canonical books of Scripture being read every where, the miracles therein recorded are well known to all people It does not appear that any books, other than our present Scriptures, were thus publicly read, except that the epistle of Clement was read in the church of Corinth, to which it had been addressed, and in some others; and that the Shepherd of Hernias was read in many churches. Nor does it subtract much from the value of the argument, that these two writings partly come within it, because we allow them to be the genuine writings of apostolical men. There is not the least evidence, that any other Gospel, than the four which we receive, was ever admitted to this distinction. Lardner, Cred. vol. i. p. 273. + Ibid, vo], 2. p. 628. + Ibid. vol. iii. p. 68. § Ibid. p. 302. |J Rid, vol. iv. p. 842. Ibid. vol. x. p. 276, etseq. * EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 259 SECTION VI. Commentaries were anciently written upon the Scriptures; harmonies formed out of them ; different copies carefully collated ; and versions made of them into different languages. No greater proof can be given of the esteem in which these books were holclen by the ancient Christians, or of the sense then entertained of their value and importance, than the industry bestowed upon them. And it ought to be observed, that the value and importance of these books consisted entirely in their genuineness and truth. There was nothing in them, as works of taste, or as compositions, which could have induced any one to have written a note upon them. Moreover it shews, that they were even then considered as ancient books. Men do not write comments upon publications of their own times : therefore the testimonies cited under this head, afford an evidence which carries up the evangelic writings much beyond the age of the testimonies themselves, and to that of their reputed authors. I. Tatian, a follower of Justin Martyr, and who flourished about the year 170, composed a harmony, or collation of the Gospels, which he called Diatessaron , Of the four *. The title, as well as the work, is remarkable ; because it shews that then, as now, there were four, and only four, Gospels in general use with Christians. And this was little more than a hundred years after the publication of some of them t. II. Pantsenus, of the Alexandrian school, a man of great reputation and learning, who came twenty years after Tatian, wrote many commentaries upon the Holy Scriptures, which, as Jerome testifies, were extant in his time III. Clement of Alexandria wrote short explications of many books of the Old and New Testament §. IV. Tertullian appeals from the authority of a later version, then in use, to the authentic Greek ||. V. An anonymous author, quoted by Eusebius, and who appears to have written about the year 212, appeals to the ancient copies of the Scriptures, in refutation of some corrupt readings alleged by the followers of Artemon^. VI. The same Eusebius, mentioning by name several writers of the church who lived at this time, and concerning whom he says, “ There still remain divers monuments of the laudable industry of those ancient and ecclesiastical men ” (i. e. of Christian writers who were considered as ancient in the year 300), adds, “ There are, besides, treatises of many others, whose names we have not been able to learn, orthodox and ecclesiastical men, as the interpretations of the Divine Scriptures given by each of them show VII. The last five testimonies may be referred to the year 200; immediately after which, a period of thirty years gives us— Julius Africanus, who wrote an epistle upon the apparent difference in the genealogies in Matthew and Luke, which he endeavours to reconcile by the distinction of natural and legal descent, and conducts his hypothesis with great industry through the whole series of generations tf- Ammonius, a learned Alexandrian, who composed, as Tatian had done, a harmony of the four Gospels ; which proves, as Tatian’s work did, that there were four Gospels, and no more, at this time in use in the church. It affords also an instance of the zeal of Christians for those writings, and of their solicitude about them JJ. * Lardner, Cred. vol. i. p. 307. t Tatian was an early writer of the primitive church, for he flourished about the year 170. He was a learned scholar, a teacher of rhetoric, and the pupil of JustinMartyr. The true spirit of oriental philosophy breathed through his “ Oratio ad Grsecas,” the only genuine work of his which we possess. The best edition is that printed at Oxford, in 12mo. 1700. He was what is denominated a Platonic Christian. Cave.. —Ed. X Lardner,Cred. vol. i. p. 455. § lb. vol. ii. p. 462. || lb. p. 638. f lb. vol. ii. p. 46. ** lb. vol. ii. p. 551. lb. vol. iii. p. 122. ft Saccas Ammonius, one of the most celebrated philosophers ©f his age, was a native of Alexandria, where he flourished towards the beginning of the third century. He was of the sect of the Eclectics, and is certainly an impartial witness, for he taught that Jews, Pagans, and Christians w r ere all of the same creed. He died about 243. Longinus and Plotinus were his disciples.—Lard- ner’s Credibility.— Ed. s 2 260 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. And, above both these, Origen, who wrote commentaries, or homilies, upon most of the books included in the New Testament, and upon no other books but these. In particular, he wrote upon Saint John’s Gospel, very largely upon Saint Matthew’s, and commentaries, or homilies, upon the Acts of the Apostles *. VIII. In addition to these, the third century likewise contains— Dionysius of Alexandria, a very learned man, who compared, with great accuracy, the accounts in the four Gospels of the time of Christ’s resurrection, adding a reflection which show’ed his opinion of their authority: “ Let us not think that the evangelists disagree, or contradict each other, although there be some small difference; but let us honestly and faith¬ fully endeavour to reconcile what we read f.” Victorin, bishop of Pettaw, in Germany, who wrote comments upon Saint Matthew’s Gospel $. Lucian, a presbyter of Antioch; and Hesycliius, an Egyptian bishop, who put forth editions of the New Testament. IX. The fourth century supplies a catalogue § of fourteen writers, who expended their labours upon the books of the New 7 Testament, and whose works or names are come down to our times; amongst which number it may be sufficient, for the purpose of shewing the sentiments and studies of learned Christians of that age, to notice the following : Eusebius, in the very beginning of the century, wrote expressly upon the discrepancies observable in the Gospels, and likewise a treatise, in which he pointed out what things are related by four, what by three, what by two, and what by one evangelist ||. This author also testifies what is certainly a material piece of evidence, “ that the writings of the apostles had obtained such an esteem, as to be translated into every language both of Greeks and Bar¬ barians, and to be diligently studied by all nations ^I.” This testimony was given about the year 300; how long before that date these translations were made, does not appear. Damasus, bishop of Rome, corresponded with Saint Jerome upon the exposition of difficult texts of Scripture; and, in a letter still remaining, desires Jerome to give him a clear explanation of tbe word Hosanna, found in the New Testament; “he (Damasus) having- met with very different interpretations of it in the Greek and Latin commentaries of Catholic writers which he had read**.” This last clause shows the number and variety of commen¬ taries then extant. Gregory of Nyssen, at one time, appeals to the most exact copies of Saint Mark’s Gospel; at another time, compares together, and proposes to reconcile, the several accounts of the resurrection given by the four Evangelists ; which limitation proves, that there were no other histories of Christ deemed authentic beside these, or included in the same character with these. This writer observes acutely enough, that the disposition of the clothes in the sepulchre, the napkin that was about our Saviour’s head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself, did not bespeak the terror and hurry of thieves, and therefore refutes the story of the body being stolen j'-f*. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, remarked various readings in the Latin copies of the New Testament, and appeals to the original Greek ; And Jerome, towards the conclusion of this century, put forth an edition of the New Testament in Latin, corrected, at least as to the Gospels, by Greek copies, “ and those (he says) ancient.” * Lardner, Cred. vol. iii. p. 352. 192. 202. 245. f lb. vol. iv. p. 661. J lb. p. 195. § Eusebius, A. D. . . .315 Juvencus, Spain . . . 330 Theodore, Thrace . . . 334 Hilary, Poictiers . . . . 354 Fortunatus .... 340 Apollinarius of Laodicca . . . 362 Damasus, Rome . . . . 366 Gregory, Nyssen . . . .371 Didimus of Alex. . . . . 370 Ambrose of Milan . . . 374 Diodore of Tarsus . . . . 373 Gaudent of Brescia . . . 387 Theodore of Cilicia . . . . 394 Jerome ..... 392 Chrysostom . . . . 398 || Lardner, Cred. vol. viii. p. 46. 11 lb. p. 201. ** lb. vol. ix. p. 108. ft Ibid. p. 163. Gregory (Nyssen) the brother of St. Basil, was made bishop of Nyssa, in Cappadocia, about 371. He had attained a great age at the time of his death in 396. His works, which have never been in much estimation, were published in 1615 by Fronton du Due, in 2 vols. folio.— Cave’s Primitive Fathers_Eo. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 261 Lastly, Chrysostom, it is well known, delivered and published a great many homilies, or sermons, upon the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles *. It is needless to bring down this article lower; but it is of importance to add, that there is no example of Christian writers of the first three centuries composing comments upon any other books than those which are found in the New Testament, except the single one of Clement of Alexandria, commenting upon a book called the Revelation of Peter. Of the ancient versions of the New Testament, one of the most valuable is the Syriac. Syriac was the language of Palestine when Christianity was there first established. And although the books of Scripture were written in Greek, for the purpose of a more extended circulation than within the precincts of Judea, yet it is probable that they would soon be translated into the vulgar language of the country where the religion first prevailed. Accordingly, a Syriac translation is now extant, all along, so far as it appears, used by the inhabitants of Syria, bearing many internal marks of high antiquity, supported in its pre¬ tensions by the uniform tradition of the East, and confirmed by the discovery of many very ancient manuscripts in the libraries of Europe. It is about 200 years since a bishop of Antioch sent a copy of this translation into Europe, to be printed; and this seems to be the first time that the translation became generally known to these parts of the world. The bishop of Antioch’s Testament was found to contain all our books, except the Second Epistle of Peter, the second and third of John, and the Revelation; which books, however, have since been discovered in that language in some ancient manuscripts of Europe. But in this collection, no other book, beside what is in ours, appears ever to have had a place. And, which is very worthy of observation, the text, though preserved in a remote country, and without communication with ours, differs from ours very little, and in nothing that is important f. SECTION VII. Our Scriptures were received by ancient Christians of different sects and persuasions , by many Heretics as icell as Catholics , and were usually appealed to by both sides in the controversies which arose in those days. The three most ancient topics of controversy amongst Christians, were, the authority of the Jewish constitution, the origin of evil, and the nature of Christ. Upon the first of these we find, in very early times, one class of heretics rejecting the Old Testament entirely; another contending for the obligation of its law, in all its parts, throughout its whole extent, and over every one who sought acceptance with God. Upon the two latter subjects, a natural, perhaps, and venial, but a fruitless, eager, and impatient curiosity, prompted by the philosophy and by the scholastic habits of the age, which carried men much into bold hypotheses and conjectural solutions, raised, amongst some who professed Christianity, very wild and unfounded opinions. I think there is no reason to believe that the number of these bore any considerable proportion to the body of the Christian church; and amidst the disputes which such opinions necessarily occasioned, it is a great satisfaction to perceive, what, in a vast plurality of instances, we do perceive, all sides recurring to the same Scriptures. £ I. Basilides lived near the age of the apostles, about the year 120, or, perhaps, sooner§. He rejected the Jewish institution, not as spurious, but as proceeding from a being inferior to the true God; and in other respects advanced a scheme of theology widely different from * John Chrysostom, or the golden-mouthed, was in- in 1613. B vols. folio.—Milner’s Church Hist. vol. ii. tended originally for the bar, for which, by his learning p. 279.— Ed. and eloquence, lie was admirably adapted; lie studied for + Jones on the Canon, vol. i. c. 14. this purpose under Libanius, who when asked who should X The materials of the former part of this section are succeed him in his school, replied “Chrysostom, if the taken from Dr. Lardner’s History of the Heretics of the Christians had not stolen him from us.’’ He became first two centuries, published since his death, with additions, bishop of Constantinople in 397, and died at Comanis, in by the Rev. Mr. Hogg, of Exeter, and inserted in the Armenia, in the year 407. A beautiful edition of his ninth volume of Ins works, ot the edition of 1788. works in Greek was published by Sir Henry Savilleat Eton, § Vol. ix, p. 2/1. 262 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. the general doctrine of the Christian church, and which as it gained over some disciples, was warmly opposed by Christian writers of the second and third century. In these writings, there is positive evidence that Basilides received the Gospel of Matthew’; and there is no sufficient proof that he rejected any of the other three : on the contrary, it appears that he wrote a commentary upon the Gospel, so copious as to be divided into twenty- four books * ** II. The Yalentinians appeared about the same time t. Their heresy consisted in certain notions concerning angelic natures, which can hardly be rendered intelligible to a modern reader. They seem, liow T ever, to have acquired as much importance as any of the separatists of that early age. Of this sect, Irenseus, who w’rote A. D. 172, expressly records that they endeavoured to fetch arguments for their opinions from the evangelic and apostolic writings ITeracleon, one of the most celebrated of the sect, and who lived probably so early as the year 125, wrote commentaries upon Luke and John§. Some observations also of his upon Matthew are preserved by Origen ||. Nor is there any reason to doubt that he received the whole New Testament. III. The Carpocratians were also an early heresy, little, if at all, later than the two pre¬ ceding 51- Some of their opinions resembled what we at this day mean by Socinianism. With respect to the Scriptures, they are specifically charged, by Irenseus and by Epiphanius, with endeavouring to pervert a passage in Matthew, which amounts to a positive proof that they received that Gospel ## . Negatively, they are not accused, by their adversaries, of rejecting any part of the New Testament. IY. The Sethians, A.D. 150 ft; the Montanists, A.D. 156 JJ; the Marcosians, A.D. 160 §§; Hermogenes, A.D. 180 || ||; Praxias, A.D. 196 ; Artemon, A.D. 200***; Theodotus, A. D. 200; all included under the denomination of heretics, and all engaged in controver¬ sies wfith Catholic Christians, received the Scriptures of the New Testament. Y. Tatian, who lived in the year 172, went into many extravagant opinions, was the founder of a sect called Encratites, and was deeply involved in disputes with the Christians of that age; yet Tatian so received the four Gospels, as to compose a Harmony from them. YI. From a W’riter, quoted by Eusebius, of about the year 200, it is apparent that they who at that time contended for the mere humanity of Christ, argued from the Scriptures ; for they are accused by this writer of making alterations in their copies, in order to favour their opinions YII. Origen’s sentiments excited great controversies—the bishops of Rome and Alexan¬ dria, and many others, condemning, the bishops of the East espousing them; yet there is not the smallest question, but that both the advocates and adversaries of these opinions acknowledged the same authority of Scripture. In his time, which the reader will remember was about one hundred and fifty years after the Scriptures were published, many dissensions subsisted amongst Christians, with which they were reproached by Celsus; yet Origen, who has recorded this accusation without contradicting it, nevertheless testifies, that the four Gospels were received without dispute , by the whole church of God under heaven Xtt‘ YIII. Paul of Samosata, about thirty years after Origen, so distinguished himself in the controversy concerning the nature of Christ, as to be the subject of two councils or synods, assembled at Antioch, upon his opinions. Yet he is not charged by his adversaries with rejecting any book of the New Testament. On the contrary, Epiphanius, who wrote a history of heretics a hundred years afterward, says, that Paul endeavoured to support his doctrine by texts of Scripture. And Yincentius Lirinensis, A. D. 434, speaking of Paul and other heretics of the same age, has these words : “ Here, perhaps, some one may ask, whether heretics also urge the testimony of Scripture. They urge it, indeed, explicitly and vehemently; for you may see them flying through every book of the sacred law §§§•” IX. A controversy at the same time existed with the Noetians or Sabellians, who seem * Lardner, vol. ix. ed. 1788, p. 305, 306. t Ibid. p. 350, 351. § Ibid. vol. ix. ed. 1788, p. 352. || Ibid. 353. ** Ibid. 318. tt Ibid. 455. §§ Ibid. 3 8. |||| Ibid. 473. *** Ibid. 466. Ibid. vol. iii. p. 46. +7+ lbid.vol. iv.p. 642. X Ibid. vol. i. p. 383. If Ibid. 309. t: Ibid. 482. tlf Ibid. 433. §§§ Ibid. vol. xi. p. 158. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 263 to have gone into the opposite extreme from that of Paul of Samosata and his followers. Yet, according to the express testimony of Epiphanius, Sabellius received all the Scrip¬ tures. And with both sects Catholic writers constantly allege the Scriptures, and reply to the arguments which their opponents drew from particular texts. We have here, therefore, a proof, that parties, who were the most opposite and irreconcilable to one another, acknowledged the authority of Scripture with equal deference. X. And as a general testimony to the same point, may be produced what was said by one of the bishops of the council of Carthage, which was holden a little before this time :— u I am of opinion that blasphemous and wicked heretics, who pervert the sacred and adorable words of the Scripture, should be execrated*.” Undoubtedly what they perverted, they received. XI. The Millennium, Novatianism, the baptism of heretics, the keeping of Easter, engaged also the attention and divided the opinions of Christians, at and before that time (and, by the way, it may be observed, that such disputes, though on some accounts to be blamed, showed how much men were in earnest upon the subject) ; yet every one appealed for the grounds of his opinion to Scripture authority. Dionysius of Alexandria, who flourished A. D. 247, describing a conference or public disputation with the Millennarians of Egypt* confesses of them, though their adversary, “ that they embrace whatever could be made out by good arguments from the Holy Scriptures t.” Novatus, A. D. 251, distin¬ guished by some rigid sentiments concerning the reception of those who had lapsed, and the founder of a numerous sect, in his few remaining works quotes the Gospel with the same respect as other Christians did; and concerning his followers, the testimony of Socrates, who wrote about the year 440, is positive, viz. “ That in the disputes between the Catholics and them, each side endeavoured to support itself by the authority of the Divine Scriptures £.” XII. The Donatists, who sprang up in the year 328, used the same Scriptures as we do. “ Produce,” saith Augustin, “ some proof from the Scriptures, whose authority is common to us both §.” XIII. It is perfectly notorious, that, in the Arian controversy, which arose soon after the year 300, both sides appealed to the same Scriptures, and with equal professions of deference and regard. The Arians, in their council of Antioch, A. D. 341, pronounce, that, “ if any one, contrary to the sound doctrine of the Scriptures, say, that the Son is a creature, as one of the creatures, let him be an anathema ||.” They and the Athanasians mutually accuse each other of using unscriptural phrases; which w r as a mutual acknowledgment of the conclusive authority of Scripture. XIV. The Priscillianists, A. D. 378 ^[, the Pelagians, A. D. 405**, received the same Scriptures as we do. XV. The testimony of Chrysostom, who lived near the year 400, is so positive in affirm¬ ation of the proposition which we maintain, that it may form a proper conclusion of the argument. “ The general reception of the Gospels is a proof that their history is true and consistent; for, since the writing of the Gospels, many heresies have arisen, holding opinions contrary to what is contained in them, who yet receive the Gospels either entire or in part f f 3’ I am not moved by what may seem a deduction from Chrysostom's testimony, the words, u entire, or in partfor, if all the parts, which were ever questioned in our Gospels, were given up, it would not affect the miraculous origin of the religion in the smallest degree: e. g. Cerinthus is said by Epiphanius to have received the Gospel of Matthew, but not entire. What the omissions were, does not appear. The common opinion, that he rejected the first two chapters, seems to have been a mistakeJJ. It is agreed, however, by all who have given any account of Cerinthus, that he taught that the Holy Ghost (whether he meant by that name a person or a power) descended upon Jesus at his baptism ; that Jesus from this time performed many miracles, and that he appeared after his death. He must have retained therefore the essential parts of the history. * Lardner, vol. xi. p. 839. f Ibid. vol. iv. p. 666. + Ibid. vol. v. p. 105. § Ibid. vol. vii. p. 243. || Ibid. p. 277. ’ll Ibid. vol. ix. p. 325. ** Ibid. vol. xi. p. 52. ft Ibid. vol. ix. p. 329. +£ lb. vol. ix. ed. 1788,p. 322. 264 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. Of all the ancient heretics, the most extraordinary was Marcion *. One of his tenets was the rejection of the Old Testament, as proceeding from an inferior and imperfect deity ; and in pursuance of this hypothesis, he erased from the New, and that, as it should seem, without entering into any critical reasons, every passage which recognised the Jewish Scriptures. He spared not a text which contradicted his opinion. It is reasonable to believe that Marcion treated books as he treated texts : yet this rash and wild controversialist published a recension, or chastised edition, of Saint Luke’s Gospel, containing the leading facts, and all which is necessary to authenticate the religion. This example affords proof, that there were always some points, and those the main points, which neither wildness nor rashness, neither the fury of opposition nor the intemperance of controversy, would venture to call in question. There is no reason to believe that Marcion, though full of resentment against the Catholic Christians, ever charged them with forging their books. “ The Gospel of Saint Matthew, the Epistle to the Hebrews, with those of Saint Peter and Saint James, as well as the Old Testament in general,” he said, u were writings not for Christians but for Jewsj'.” This declaration shows the ground upon which Marcion proceeded in his mutilation of the Scriptures, viz. his dislike of the passages or the books. Marcion flourished about the year 130 J. Dr. Lardner, in his General Review, sums up this head of evidence in the following words: —“ Noetus, Paul of Samosata, Sabellius, Marcellus, Photinus, the Novatians, Donatists, Manicheans§, Priscillianists, besides Artemon, the Audians, the Arians, and divers others, all received most or all the same books of the New Testament which the Catholics received; and agreed in a like respect for them as written by apostles, or their disciples and companions 11.” SECTION VIII. The four Gospels , the Acts of the Apostles , thirteen Epistles of Saint Paul , the First Epistle of John , and the First of Peter , were received icithout doubt by those who doubted concerning the other books which are included in our present Canon . I state this proposition, because, if made out, it shows that the authenticity of their books was a subject amongst the early Christians of consideration and inquiry; and that, where there was cause of doubt, they did doubt; a circumstance which strengthens very much their testimony to such books as were received by them with full acquiescence. I. Jerome, in his account of Caius, who was probably a presbyter of Rome, and who flourished near the year 200, records of him, that, reckoning up only thirteen epistles of Paul, he says the fourteenth, which is inscribed to the Hebrews, is not his: and then Jerome adds, “ With the Romans to this day it is not looked upon as Paul’s.” This agrees in the main with the account given by Eusebius of the same ancient author and his work ; except that Eusebius delivers his own remark in more guarded terms: “ And indeed to this very time by some of the Romans, this epistle is not thought to be the apostle’s 1j.” II. Origen, about twenty years after Caius, quoting the Epistle to the Hebrews, observes that some might dispute the authority of that epistle; and therefore proceeds to quote to the same point, as undoubted books of Scripture, the Gospel of Saint Matthew, the Acts of the Apostles, and Paul’s First Epistle to the Thessalonians**.” And in another place, this * Lardner, vol. ix. ed. 1788, sect. ii. c. x. Also Mi¬ chael. vol. i. c. i sect, xviii. •f- I have transcribed this sentence from Michaelis (p 38), who has not, however, referred to the authority upon which he attributes these words to Marcion. X Of Marcion, who appears to have been a heretic of sufficient importance to annoy and provoke the anathemas of the early Christian authors, our principal accounts are necessarily derived from his enemies. He appears to have been originally a sailor, and had many of the profligate habits incident to such a profession. He was born at Sinope, a city on the Black Sea, most probably about the year 100 of the Christian era, and went to Rome in 127. The period of his death is uncertain. Polycarp denounced him as “ the firstborn of Satan and Tertullian informs us that he lived long enough to renounce his heresies, and abandon his sect, which, under the name of Mar- cionites, long continued to exist.—Mosheim. Milner. Cave.— Ed. § This must he with an exception, however, of Faus- tus, who lived so late as the year 384. || Lardner, vol. xii. p. 12. — Dr. Lardner’s further in- qui lies supplied him with many other instances. Lardner, vol. iii. p. 240. ** lb. p. 246. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 2G5 author speaks of the Epistle to the Hebrews thus:—“ The account come down to us is various; some saying that Clement, who was bishop of Rome, wrote this epistle; others, that it was Luke, the same who wrote the Gospel and the Acts.” Speaking also, in the same paragraph, of Peter, u Peter,” says he, “ has left one epistle, acknowledged ; let it be granted likewise that he wrote a second, for it is doubted of.” And of John, “ He has also left one epistle, of a very few lines; grant also a second and a third, for all do not allow these to be genuine.” Now let it be noted, that Origen, who thus discriminates, and thus confesses his own doubts, and the doubts which subsisted in his time, expressly witnesses concerning the four Gospels, “ that they alone are received without dispute by the whole church of God under heaven*.” III. Dionysius of Alexandria, in the year 247, doubts concerning the Book of Revelation, whether it was written by Saint John; states the grounds of his doubt, represents the diversity of opinion concerning it, in his own time, and before his time f. Yet the same Dionysius uses and collates the four Gospels in a manner which shows that he entertained not the smallest suspicion of their authority, and in a manner also which shows that they, and they alone, were received as authentic histories of Christ IV. But this section may be said to have been framed on purpose to introduce to the reader two remarkable passages extant in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History. The first passage opens with these words:—“ Let us observe the writings of the apostle John which are uncontradicted; and first of all must be mentioned, as acknowledged of all, the Gospel according to him, well known to all the churches under heaven.” The author then proceeds to relate the occasions of writing the Gospels, and the reasons for placing Saint John’s the last, manifestly speaking of all the four as parallel in their authority, and in the certainty of their original^. The second passage is taken from a chapter, the title of which is, u Of the Scriptures universally acknowledged , and of those that are not such.” Eusebius begins his enumeration in the following manner :— u In the first place are to be ranked the sacred four Gospels; then the book of the Acts of the Apostles; after that are to be reckoned the Epistles of Paul. In the next place, that called the First Epistle of John, and the Epistle of Peter, are to be esteemed authentic. After this is to be placed, if it be thought fit, the Revelation of John, about which we shall observe the different opinions at proper seasons. Of the controverted, but yet well known or approved by the most, are, that called the Epistle of James, and that of Jude, and the Second of Peter, and the Second and Third of John, whether they are written by the evangelist, or another of the same name||.’' He then proceeds to reckon up five others, not in our canon, which he calls in one place spurious , in another controverted , meaning, as appears to me, nearly the same thing by these two words . It is manifest from this passage, that the four Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles (the parts of Scripture with which our concern principally lies), were acknowledged without dispute, even by those who raised objections, or entertained doubts, about some other parts of the same collection. But the passage proves something more than this. The author was extremely conversant in the writings of Christians, which had been published from the commencement of the institution to his own time : and it was from these writings that he drew his knowledge of the character and reception of the books in question. That Eusebius recurred to this medium of information, and that he had examined with attention this species of proof, is shown, first, by a passage in the very chapter we are quoting, in which, speaking of the books which he calls spurious, “ None,” he says, “ of the ecclesiastical writers, in the succession of the apostles, have vouchsafed to make any mention of them in their writings;” and secondly, by another passage of the same work, wherein, speaking of the First Epistle of Peter, u This,” he says, “ the presbyters of ancient times have quoted in their writings as undoubtedly genuine**;” and then, speaking of some other writings * Lardner, vol. iii. p. 234. evident from a clause in this very chapter, where, speak- f lb. vol. iv. p. 670. ing of the Gospels of Peter, and Thomas, and Matthias, $ lb. p. 661. § lb. vol. viii. p. 90. and some others, be says, “ They are not so much as to || lb. p. 89. be reckoned among the spurious , but are to be rejected That Eusebius could not intend, by the word ren- as altogether absurd and impious.” Vol. iii. p. 98. dered “spurious,” what we at present mean by it, is ** Lardner, vol. viii. p. 99. 266 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. bearing the name of Peter, “ We know,” he says, “that they have not been delivered down to us in the number of Catholic writings, forasmuch as no ecclesiastical writer of the ancients, or of our times, has made use of testimonies out of them.” u But in the progress of this history,” the author proceeds, “ we shall make it our business to show, together with the successions from the apostles, what ecclesiastical writers, in every age, have used such writings as these which are contradicted, and what they have said with regard to the Scriptures received in the New Testament, and acknowledged by all, and with regard to those which are not such After this it is reasonable to believe, that when Eusebius states the four Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles, as uncontradicted, uncontested, and acknowledged by all; and when he places them in opposition, not only to those which were spurious, in our sense of that term, but to those which were controverted, and even to those which were well known and approved by many, yet doubted of by some; he represents not only the sense of his own age, but the result of the evidence which the writings of prior ages, from the apostles’ time to his own, had furnished to his inquiries. The opinion of Eusebius and his contempo¬ raries appears to have been founded upon the testimony of writers whom they then called ancient: and we may observe, that such of the works of these writers as have come down to our times, entirely confirm the judgment, and support the distinction, which Eusebius proposes. The books which he calls “ books universally acknowledged,” are in fact used and quoted in the remaining works of Christian writers, during the 250 years between the apostles’ time and that of Eusebius, much more frequently than, and in a different manner from, those, the authority of which, he tells us, was disputed. SECTION IX. Our historical Scriptures icere attacked by the early adversaries of Christianity, as containing the accounts upon which the Religion was founded. Near the middle of the second century, Celsus, a heathen philosopher, wrote a professed treatise against Christianity. To this treatise, Origen, who came about fifty years after him, published an answer, in which he frequently recites his adversary’s words and argu¬ ments. The work of Celsus is lost; but that of Origen remains. Origen appears to have given us the words of Celsus, where he professes to give them, very faithfully; and, amongst other reasons for thinking so, this is one, that the objection, as stated by him from Celsus, is sometimes stronger than his own answer. I think it also probable, that Origen, in his answer, has retailed a large portion of the work of Celsus : “ That it may not be suspected,” he says, “ that we pass by any chapters, because we have no answers at hand, I have thought it best, according to my ability, to confute every thing proposed by him, not so much observing the natural order of things, as the order which he has taken himselff.” Celsus wrote about one hundred years after the Gospels were published ; and therefore any notices of these books from him are extremely important for their antiquity. They are, however, rendered more so by the character of the author; for, the reception, credit, and notoriety, of these books must have been well established among Christians, to have made them subjects of animadversion and opposition by strangers and by enemies. It evinces the truth of what Chrysostom, two centuries afterward, observed, that “ the Gospels, when written, were not hidden in a corner, or buried in obscurity, but they were made known to all the world, before enemies as well as others, even as they are nowj.” 1. Celsus, or the Jew whom he personates, uses these words :—“ I could say many things concerning the affairs of Jesus, and those, too, different from those written by the disciples of Jesus; but I purposely omit tliem§. r> Upon this passage it has been rightly observed, that it is not easy to believe, that if Celsus could have contradicted the disciples upon good evidence in any material point, he would have omitted to do so, and that the assertion is, what Origen calls it, a mere oratorical flourish. * Lardner, vol. viii. p. 111. J In Matt. Horn. 1. 7. •f Orig. cont. Cels. 1. i. sect. 41. § Lardner, Jewish and Heathen Test. vol. ii. p. 274. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 267 It is sufficient, however, to prove, that, in the time of Cclsus, there were hooks well known, and allowed to be written by the disciples of Jesus, which books contained a history of him. By the term disciples , Celsus does not mean the followers of Jesus in general; for them he calls Christians, or believers, or the like; but those who had been taught by Jesus himself, i. e. his apostles and companions. 2. In another passage, Celsus accuses the Christians of altering the Gospel*. The accusation refers to some variations in the readings of particular passages: for Celsus goes on to object, that when they are pressed hard, and one reading has been confuted, they disown that, and fly to another. We cannot perceive from Origen, that Celsus specified any particular instances, and without such specification the charge is of no value. But the true conclusion to be drawn from it is, that there were in the hands of the Christians, histories, which were even then of some standing: for various readings and corruptions do not take place in recent productions. The former quotation, the reader will remember, proves that these books were composed by the disciples of Jesus, strictly so called; the present quotation shows, that, though objections were taken by the adversaries of the religion to the integrity of these books, none were made to their genuineness. 3. In a third passage, the Jew, whom Celsus introduces, shuts up an argument in this manner:— 44 These things then we have alleged to you out of your own writings , not needing any other weapons j'." It is manifest that this boast proceeds upon the supposition that the books, over which the writer affects to triumph, possessed an authority by which Christians confessed themselves to be bound. 4. That the books to which Celsus refers were no other than our present Gospels, is made out by his allusions to various passages still found in these Gospels. Celsus takes notice of the genealogies , which fixes two of these Gospels; of the precepts, Resist not him that injures you, and, If a man strike thee on the one cheek, offer to him the other also j ; of the woes denounced by Christ; of his predictions; of his saying, that it is impossible to serve two masters §; of the purple robe, the crown of thorns, and the reed in his hand; of the blood that flowed from the body of Jesus upon the cross ||, which circumstance is recorded by John alone; and (what is instar omnium for the purpose for which we produce it) of the difference in the accounts given of the resurrection by the evangelists, some mentioning two angels at the sepulchre, others only one^j. It is extremely material to remark, that Celsus not only perpetually referred to the accounts of Christ contained in the four Gospels * # , but that he referred to no other accounts ; that he founded none of his objections to Christianity upon any thing delivered in spurious Gospels. II. What Celsus was in the second century, Porphyry became in the third. His work, which w T as a large and formal treatise against the Christian religion, is not extant. We must be content therefore to gather his objections from Christian writers, who have noticed in order to answer them; and enough remains of this species of information, to prove completely, that Porphyry’s animadversions were directed against the contents of our present Gospels, and of the Acts of the Apostles; Porphyry considering that to overthrow them was to overthrow the religion. Thus lie objects to the repetition of a generation in St. Matthew’s genealogy; to Matthew’s call; to the quotation of a text from Isaiah, which is found in a psalm ascribed to Asaph; to the calling of the lake of Tiberias a sea; to the expression in Saint Matthew, 44 the abomination of desolation;” to the variation in Matthew and Mark upon the text, 44 The voice of one crying in the wilderness,” Matthew citing it from Isaias, Mark from the Prophets; to John’s application of the term 44 Word;” to Christ’s change of intention about going up to the feast of tabernacles (John vii. 8) ; to the judgment denounced by St. Peter upon Ananias and Sapphira, which he calls an imprecation of death ff. The instances here alleged, serve, in some measure, to show the nature of Porphyry’s * Lardner, vol. ii. p. 275. + lb. p. 276. ** The particulars, of which the above are only a few, J lb. vol. ii. 276. § lb. p. 277. are well collected by Mr. Bryant, p 140. || lb. p. 280, 281. 4 lb. p. 282. tf Jewish and Heathen Test. vol. iii. p. 166, et seq. 268 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. objections, and prove tliat Porphyry had read the Gospels with that sort of attention which a writer would employ who regarded them as the depositories of the religion which he attacked. Beside these specifications, there exists, in the writings of ancient Christians, general evidence that the places of Scripture upon which Porphyry had remarked were very numerous. In some of the above-cited examples, Porphyry, speaking of Saint Matthew, calls him your evangelist; he also uses the term evangelists in the plural number. What was said of Celsus, is true likewise of Porphyry, that it does not appear that he considered any history of Christ, except these, as having authority with Christians. III. A third great writer against the Christian religion was the emperor Julian, whose work was composed about a century after that of Porphyry. In various long extracts, transcribed from this work by Cyril and Jerome, it appears*, that Julian noticed by name Matthew and Luke, in the difference between their genealogies of Christ; that he objected to Matthew’s application of the prophecy, u Out of Egypt have I called my son” (ii. 15), and to that of u A virgin shall conceive” (i. 23) ; that he recited sayings of Christ, and various passages of his history, in the very words of the evangelists; in particular, that Jesus healed lame and blind people, and exorcised demoniacs, in the villages of Betlisaida and Bethany; that he alleged that none of Christ’s disciples ascribed to him the creation of the world, except John; that neither Paul, nor Matthew, nor Luke, nor Mark, have dared to call Jesus, God; that John wrote later than the other evangelists, and at a time when a great number of men in the cities of Greece and Italy were converted; that he alludes to the conversion of Cornelius and of Sergius Paul us, to Peter’s vision, to the circular letter sent by the apostles and elders at slerusalem, which are all recorded in the Acts of the Apostles: by which quoting of the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, and by quoting no other, Julian shows that these were the historical books, and the only historical books received by Christians as of authority, and as the authentic memoirs of Jesus Christ, of his apostles, and of the doctrines taught by them. But Julian’s testimony does something more than represent the judgment of the Christian church in his time. It discovers also his own. He himself expressly states the early date of these records; he calls them by the names which they now bear. He all along supposes, he no where attempts to question, their genuineness. The argument in favour of the books of the New Testament, drawn from the notice taken of their contents by the early writers against the religion, is very considerable. It proves that the accounts, which Christians had then, were the accounts which we have now: that our present Scriptures were theirs. It proves, moreover, that neither Celsus in the second, Porphyry in the third, nor Julian in the fourth century, suspected the authenticity of these books, or ever insinuated that Christians were mistaken in the authors to whom they ascribed them. Not one of them expressed an opinion upon this subject different from that which was holden by Christians. And when we consider how much it would have availed them to have cast a doubt upon this point, if they could; and how ready they showed themselves to be, to take every advantage in their power; and that they were all men of learning and inquiry; their concession, or rather their suffrage, upon the subject, is extremely valuable. In the case of Porphyry, it is made still stronger, by the consideration that he did in fact support himself by this species of objection when he saw any room for it, or when his acuteness could supply any pretence for alleging it. The prophecy of Daniel he attacked upon this very ground of spuriousness, insisting that it was written after the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, and maintains his charge of forgery by some far-fetched indeed, but very subtle criticisms. Concerning the writings of the New Testament, no trace of this suspicion is any where to be found in him j~. * Jewish and Heathen Test. vol. iv. p 77, etseq. works on the credibility of the Gospel History Paley’s T Michaelis’s Introduction to the New Testament, unrivalled “ Evidences of Christianity” are avowedly vol. i. p. 43. Marsh’s Translation. founded a , a brief notice will not be considered, unne- Of Dr. John Lardner, on whose elaborate and learned cessary. a See note to chap. ix. sect. 1 and 7. He EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 2G9 SECTION X. Formal catalogues of authentic Scriptures ucere published , in all which our present sacred histories were included. This species of evidence comes later than the rest; as it was not natural that catalogues of any particular class of books should be put forth until Christian writings became numerous; or until some writings showed themselves, claiming titles which did not belong to them, and thereby rendering it necessary to separate books of authority from others. But when it does appear, it is extremely satisfactory; the catalogues, though numerous, and made in countries at a wide distance from one another, differing very little, differing in nothing which is material, and all containing the four Gospels. To this last article there is no exception. I. In the writings of Origen which remain, and in some extracts preserved by Eusebius, from works of his which are now lost, there are enumerations of the books of Scripture, in which the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are distinctly and honourably specified, and in which no books appear beside what are now received*. The reader, by this time, will easily recollect that the date of Origen's works is A. D. 230. II. Athanasius, about a century afterward, delivered a catalogue of the books of the New Testament in form, containing our Scriptures and no others; of which he says, 44 In these alone the doctrine of religion is taught; let no man add to them, or take any thing from themff.” III. About twenty years after Athanasius, Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, set forth a catalogue of the books of Scripture, publicly read at that time in the church of Jerusalem, exactly the same as ours, except that the 44 Revelation” is omitted:}:. IV. And fifteen years after Cyril, the council of Laodicea delivered an authoritative catalogue of canonical Scripture, like Cyril’s, the same as ours, with the omission of the 44 Revelation.” V. Catalogues now become frequent. Within thirty years of the last date, that is, from the year 363, to near the conclusion of the fourth century, we have catalogues by Epiphanius§, by Gregory Nazianzen||, by Philaster, bishop of Brescia, in Italyby Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium, all, as they are sometimes called, clean catalogues (that is, they admit no books into the number beside what we now receive), and all, for every purpose of historic evidence, the same as ours**. VI. Within the same period Jerome, the most learned Christian writer of his age, delivered a catalogue of the books of the New Testament, recognising every book now He was born, the son of a dissenting minister, at Hawkhurst, in Kent, on the 6th of June, 1684; and re¬ ceived from his father his early education, which he com¬ pleted at the universities of Utrecht and Leyden. Of his great work, the Credibility of the Gospel His¬ tory, the first part appeared in February, 1727 ; and was continued, at occasional intervals, for many years, this, with his other works, now filling eleven octavo volumes. Previous^to this, he had been glad to receive the ap¬ pointment of tutor to the son of chief justice Treby, with whose widow and son he resided from 1713 to 1721, until the death of lady Treby rendered .young Treby in¬ dependent, and then his tutor w 7 as speedily dismissed. Lardner continued until his 45th year an occasional preacher among the dissenters; hut in 1729 he received the appointment of assistant to Dr. Harris, at Crutched- friars : an appointment whose emoluments were necessa¬ rily very limited, and which he resigned after about twenty years’ labour. A decline, which seized him in the summer of 1768, finally carried him away on the 24th of July. He died at his native place, where he had been conveyed in the hope that change of air might prolong his days. His writings, which have been translated into almost all the European languages, have never been so popular with the public at large as they ought: to this result Paley in some degree contributed, by extracting from them almost all that was suitable to his purpose; for what Paley has so well abridged and improved, few will be at the labour of consulting in its original form. Lardner was never married. His only sister was the wife of the Rev. David Neal, the well known author of the History of the Puritans.—Life, by Dr. Kippis.— Ed. * Lardner, Cred. vol. iii. p. 234, et scq. ; vol. viii. p. 1 96. T lb. vol. viii. p. 223. $ lb. p. 270. § lb. p. 368. || lb. vol. ix. p. 132. U lb. p. 373. ** Epipbanius omits the Acts of the Apostles. This must have been an accidental mistake, either in him or in some copyist of his work; for he elsewhere expressly refers to this book, and ascribes it to Luke. 270 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. received, with the intimation of a doubt concerning the Epistle to the Hebrews alone, and taking not the least notice of any book which is not now received *. VII. Contemporary with Jerome, who lived in Palestine, was Saint Augustin, in Africa, who published likewise a catalogue, without joining to the Scriptures, as books of authority, any other ecclesiastical writing whatever, and without omitting one which we at this day acknowledge j*. VIII. And with these concurs another contemporary writer, Rufen, presbyter of Aquileia, wdiose catalogue, like theirs, is perfect and unmixed, and concludes with these remarkable w r ords: u These are the volumes which the fathers have included in the canon, and out of which they would have us prove the doctrine of our faith;};.” SECTION XI. These propositions cannot be predicated of any of those books which are commonly called Apocryphal Books of the New Testament. I do not know that the objection taken from apocryphal writings is at present much relied upon by scholars. But there are many, who, hearing that various Gospels existed in ancient times under the names of the apostles, may have taken up a notion, that the selection of our present Gospels from the rest, was rather an arbitrary or accidental choice, than founded on any clear and certain cause of preference. To these it may be very useful to know the truth of the case. I observe, therefore, I. That, beside our Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, no Christian history, claiming to be written by an apostle or apostolical man, is quoted within three hundred years after the birth of Christ, by any writer now extant, or known; or, if quoted, is not quoted wdtli marks of censure and rejection. I have not advanced this assertion without inquiry ; and I doubt not, but that the passages cited by Mr. Jones and Dr. Lardner, under the several titles which the apocryphal books bear; or a reference to the places where they are mentioned as collected in a very accurate table, published in the year 1773? by the Rev. J. Atkinson, will make out the truth of the proposition to the satisfaction of every fair and competent judgment. If there be any book which may seem to form an exception to the observation, it is a Hebrew Gospel, which w T as circulated under the various titles of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel of the Nazarenes, of the Ebionites, sometimes called of the Twelve, by some ascribed to Saint Matthew. This Gospel is once , and only once , cited by Clemens Alexandrinus, who lived, the reader will remember, in the latter part of the second century, and which same Clement quotes one or other of our four Gospels in almost every page of his work. It is also twice mentioned by Origen, A. D. 230; and both times with marks of diminution and discredit. And this is the ground upon which the exception stands. But what is still more material to observe is, that this Gospel, in the main, aoreed with our present Gospel of Saint Matthew §. Now if, with this account of the apocryphal Gospels, we compare what w r e have read concerning the canonical Scriptures in the preceding sections; or even recollect that general but well-founded assertion of Dr. Lardner, u That in the remaining works of Irenseus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, who all lived in the first two centuries, there are more and larger quotations of the small volume of the New Testament, than of all the works of Cicero, by writers of all characters, for several ages ||and if to this we add that, notwithstanding the loss of many works of the primitive times of Christianity, we have, within the above-mentioned period, the remains of Christian writers, who lived in Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, the part of Africa that used the Latin tongue, in Crete, Greece, Italy, and Gaul, in all which remains references are found to our evangelists ; I apprehend, * Lardner, Cred. vol. x. p. 77. Gospel, I think it probable that we sometimes confound t lb. p. 213. | Tb. p. 187. it with a Hebrew copy of Saint Matthew’s Gospel, whe- § In applying to this Gospel, what Jerome in the latter ther an original or version, which was then extant, end of the fourth century has mentioned of a Hebrew || Lardner, Cred. vol. xii. p. 53. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 271 that we shall perceive a clear and broad line of division, between those writings, and all others pretending to similar authority. II. But beside certain histories which assumed the names of apostles, and which were forgeries properly so called, there were some other Christian writings, in the whole or in part of an historical nature, which, though not forgeries, are denominated apocryphal, as being of uncertain or of no authority. Of this second class of writings, I have found only two which are noticed by any author of the first three centuries, without express terms of condemnation ; and these are, the one, a book entitled the Preaching of Peter, quoted repeatedly by Clemens Alexandrinus, A. D. 196; the other, a book entitled the Revelation of Peter, upon which the above-mentioned Clemens Alexandrinus is said, by Eusebius, to have written notes ; and which is twice cited in a work still extant, ascribed to the same author. I conceive, therefore, that the proposition we have before advanced, even after it hath been subjected to every exception, of every kind, that can be alleged, separates, by a wide interval, our historical Scriptures from all other writings which profess to give an account of the same subject. We may be permitted however to add, 1. That there is no evidence that any spurious or apocryphal books whatever existed in the first centuryof the Christian era, in which century all our historical books are proved to have been extant. “ There are no quotations of any such books in the apostolical fathers, by whom I mean Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Hernias, Ignatius, and Polycarp, whose writings reach from about the year of our Lord 79, to the year 108 (and some of whom have quoted each and every one of our historical Scriptures) : I say this,” adds Dr. Lardner, “ because I think it has been proved*.” 2. These apocryphal writings were not read in the churches of Christians; 3. Were not admitted into their volume ; 4. Do not appear in their catalogues; 5. Were not noticed by their adversaries; 6. Were not alleged by different parties, as of authority in their controversies; 7. Were not the subjects, amongst them, of commentaries, versions, collations, expositions. Finally; beside the silence of three centuries, or evidence within that time, of their rejection, they were, with a consent nearly universal, reprobated by Christian writers of succeeding ages. Although it be made out by these observations, that the books in question never obtained any degree of credit and notoriety which can place them in competition with our Scriptures; yet it appears, from the writings of the fourth century, that many such existed in that cen¬ tury, and in the century preceding it. It may be difficult at this distance of time to account for their origin. Perhaps the most probable explication is, that they were in general com¬ posed with a design of making a profit by the sale. Whatever treated of the subject, would find purchasers. It was an advantage taken of the pious curiosity of unlearned Christians. With a view to the same purpose, they were many of them adapted to the particular opinions of particular sects, which would naturally promote their circulation amongst the favourers of those opinions. After all, they were probably much more obscure than we imagine. Except the Gospel according to the Hebrews, there is none of which we hear more than the Gospel of the Egyptians ; yet there is good reason to believe that Clement, a presbyter of Alexandria in Egypt, A. D. 18 J, and a man of almost universal reading, had never seen itf. A Gospel according to Peter, was another of the most ancient books of this kind ; yet Sera- pion, bishop of Antioch, A. D. 200, had not read it, when he heard of such a book being in the hands of the Christians of Rhossus in Cilicia; and speaks of obtaining a sight of this Gospel from sectaries who used it Even of the Gospel of the Hebrews, which confessedly stands at the head of the catalogue, Jerome, at the end of the fourth century, was glad to procure a copy by the favour of the Nazarenes of Berea. Nothing of this sort ever happened, or could have happened, concerning our Gospels. * Lardner, Cred. vol. xii. p. 158. •f Jones, vol. i. p. 243. + + Lardner, Cred. vol. ii. p. 557. 272 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. One tiling is observable of all tlie apocryplial Christian writings, viz. that they proceed upon the same fundamental history of Christ and his apostles, as that which is disclosed in our Scriptures. The mission of Christ, his power of working miracles, his communication of that power to the apostles, his passion, death, and resurrection, are assumed or asserted by every one of them. The names under which some of them came forth are the names of men of eminence in our histories. What these books give, are not contradictions, but unauthorised additions. The principal facts are supposed, the principal agents the same; which shews, that these points were too much fixed to be altered or disputed. If there be any book of this description, which appears to have imposed upon some con¬ siderable number of learned Christians, it is the Sibylline oracles ; but, when we reflect upon the circumstances which facilitated that imposture, we shall cease to wonder either at the attempt or its success. It was at that time universally understood, that such a pro¬ phetic writing existed. Its contents were kept secret. This situation afforded to some one a hint, as well as an opportunity, to give out a writing under this name, favourable to the already established persuasion of Christians, and which writing, by the aid and recommenda¬ tion of these circumstances, would in some degree, it is probable, be received. Of the ancient forgery we know but little : what is now produced, could not, in my opinion, have imposed upon any one. It is nothing else than the Gospel history, woven into verse; perhaps was at first rather a fiction than a forgery; an exercise of ingenuity, more than an attempt to deceive. CHAPTER X. RECAPITULATION. The reader will now be pleased to recollect, that the two points which form the subject of our present discussion, are, first, that the Founder of Christianity, his associates, and immediate followers, passed their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings; secondly, that they did so, in attestation of the miraculous history recorded in our Scriptures, and solely in consequence of their belief of the truth of that history. The argument, by which these two propositions have been maintained by us, stands thus : No historical fact, I apprehend, is more certain, than that the original propagators of Christi¬ anity voluntarily subjected themselves to lives of fatigue, danger, and suffering, in the prosecution of their undertaking. The nature of the undertaking ; the character of the per¬ sons employed in it; the opposition of their tenets to the fixed opinions and expectations of the country in which they first advanced them ; their undissembled condemnation of the religion of all other countries ; * their total want of power, authority, or force ; render it in the highest degree probable that this must have been the case. The probability is increased, by what we know of the fate of the Founder of the institution, who was put to death for his attempt; and by what we also know of the cruel treatment of the converts to the institution, within thirty years after its commencement: both which points are attested by Heathen writers, and, being once admitted, leave it very incredible that the primitive emissaries of the religion, who exercised their ministry, first, amongst the people who had destroyed their Master, and, afterward amongst those who persecuted their converts, should themselves escape with impunity, or pursue their purpose in ease and safety. This probability, thus sustained by foreign testimony, is advanced, I think, to historical certainty, by the evidence of our own books ; by the accounts of a writer who w T as the companion of the persons whose sufferings he relates; by the letters of the persons themselves; by predictions of persecu-- tions ascribed to the Founder of the religion, which predictions would not have been inserted in his history, much less have been studiously dwelt upon, if they had not accorded with the event, and which, even if falsely ascribed to him, could only have been so ascribed, be¬ cause the event suggested them ; lastly, by incessant exhortations to fortitude and patience, EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 273 and by an earnestness, repetition, and urgency upon the subject, which were unlikely to have appeared, if there had not been, at the time, some extraordinary call for the exercise of these virtues. It is made out also, I think, with sufficient evidence, that both the teachers and converts of the religion, in consequence of their new profession, took up a new course of life and behaviour. The next great question is, what they did this for. That it was for a miraculous story of some kind or other, is to my apprehension extremely manifest; because, as to the funda¬ mental article, the designation of the person, viz. that this particular person, Jesus of Nazareth, ought to be received as the Messiah, or as a messenger from God, they neither had, nor could have, any thing but miracles to stand upon. That the exertions and suffer¬ ings of the apostles were for the story which we have now, is proved by the consideration that this story is transmitted to us by two of their own number, and by two others person¬ ally connected with them ; that the particularity of the narrative proves, that the writers claimed to possess circumstantial information, that from their situation they had full opportunity of acquiring such information, that they certainly, at least, knew what their colleagues, their companions, their masters, taught; that each of these books contains enough to prove the truth of the religion ; that, if any one of them therefore be genuine, it is suffi¬ cient ; that the genuineness, however, of all of them is made out, as wadi by the general arguments which evince the genuineness of the most undisputed remains of antiquity, as also by peculiar and specific proofs, viz. by citations from them in writings belonging to a period immediately contiguous to that in which they were published ; by the distinguished regard paid by early Christians to the authority of these books (which regard was manifested by their collecting of them into a volume, appropriating to that volume titles of peculiar respect, translating them into various languages, digesting them into harmonies, writing commentaries upon them, and, still more conspicuously, by the reading of them in their public assemblies in all parts of the world) ; by a universal agreement with respect to these books, whilst doubts were entertained concerning some others ; by contending sects appeal¬ ing to them ; by the early adversaries of the religion not disputing their genuineness, but, on the contrary, treating them as the depositaries of the history upon which the religion was founded ; by many formal catalogues of these, as of certain and authoritative writings, pub¬ lished in different and distant parts of the Christian world; lastly, by the absence or defect of the above-cited topics of evidence, when applied to any other histories of the same subject. These are strong arguments to prove, that the books actually proceeded from the authors whose names they bear (and have always borne, for there is not a particle of evidence to shew that they ever went under any other) ; but the strict genuineness of the books is perhaps more than is necessary to the support of our proposition. For even supposing that, by reason of the silence of antiquity, or the loss of records, we knew not who were the writers of the four Gospels, yet the fact, that they were received as authentic accounts of the trans¬ action upon which the religion rested, and were received as such by Christians, at or near the age of the apostles, by those whom the apostles had taught, and by societies which the apostles had founded; this fact, I say, connected with the consideration, that they are corroborative of each others testimony, and that they are farther corroborated by another contemporary history, taking up the story where they had left it, and, in a narrative built upon that story, ' accounting for the rise and production of changes in the world, the effects of which subsist at this day; connected, moreover, with the confirmation which they receive, from letters writ¬ ten by the apostles themselves, which both assume the same general story, and, as often as occasion leads them to do so, allude to particular parts of it; and connected also with the reflection, that if the apostles delivered any different story, it is lost (the present and no other being referred to by a series of Christian writers, down from their age to our own ; being likewise recognised in a variety of institutions, which prevailed early and universally, amongst the disciples of the religion) ; and that so great a change as the oblivion of one story and the substitution of another, under such circumstances, could not have taken place : this evidence would be deemed, I apprehend, sufficient to prove concerning these books, that, T 274 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. whoever were the authors of them, they exhibit the story which the apostles told, and for which, consequently, they acted, and they suffered. If it be so, the religion must he true. These men could not be deceivers. By only not bearing testimony, they might have avoided all their sufferings, and have lived quietly. Would men in such circumstances pretend to have seen what they never saw; assert facts which they had no knowledge of; go about lying, to teach virtue ; and, though not only convinced of Christ’s being an impostor, but having seen the success of his imposture in his crucifixion, yet persist in carrying it on ; and so persist, as to bring upon themselves, for nothing, and with a full knowledge of the consequence, enmity and hatred, danger, and death ? EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 275 OF THE DIRECT HISTORICAL EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. PROPOSITION II. CHAPTER I. Our first proposition was, “ That there is satisfactory evidence that many , pretending to be original witnesses of the Christian miracles , passed their lives in labours , dangers , and sufferings , voluntarily undertaken and undergone in attestation of the accounts which they delivered , and solely in consequence of their belief of the truth of those accounts ; and that they also submitted, from the same motives , to new rules of conduct.” Our second proposition, and which now remains to be treated of, is, “ That there is not satisfactory evidence , that persons pretending to be original witnesses of any other similar miracles , have acted in the same manner , in attestation of the accounts which they delivered , and solely in consequence of their belief of the truth of those accounts. I enter upon this part of my argument, by declaring how far my belief in miraculous accounts goes. If the reformers in the time of Wickliffe, or of Luther; or those of England, in the time of Henry the Eighth, or of Queen Mary ; or the founders of our religious sects since, such as were Mr. Whitfield and Mr. Wesley in our own times; had undergone the life of toil and exertion, of danger and sufferings, which we know that many of them did undergo, for a miraculous story; that is to say, if they had founded their public ministry upon the allegation of miracles wrought within their own knowledge, and upon narratives which could not be resolved into delusion or mistake ; and if it had appeared, that their con¬ duct really had its origin in these accounts, I should have believed them. Or, to borrow an instance which will be familiar to every one of my readers, if the late Mr. Howard had undertaken his labours and journeys in attestation, and in consequence of a clear and sensible miracle, I should have believed him also. Or, to represent the same thing under a third supposition ; if Socrates had professed to perform public miracles at Athens ; if the friends of Socrates, Phsedo, Cebes, Crito, and Simmias, together with Plato, and many of his followers, relying upon the attestations which these miracles afforded to his pretensions, had, at the hazard of their lives, and the certain expense of their ease and tranquillity, gone about Greece, after his death, to publish and propagate his doctrines : and if these things had come to our knowledge, in the same way as that in which the life of Socrates is now transmitted to us, through the hands of his companions and disciples, that is, by writings received without doubt as theirs, from the age in which they were published to the present, I should have believed this likewise. And my belief would, in each case, be much strengthened, if the subject of the mission were of importance to the conduct and happiness of human life ; if it testified any thing which it behoved mankind to know from such authority ; if the nature of what it delivered, required the sort of proof which it alleged; if the occasion was adequate to the interposition, the end worthy of the means. In the last case, my faith would be much confirmed, if the effects of the transaction remained; more especially, if a change had been wrought, at the time, in the opinion and conduct of such numbers, as to lay the foundation 276 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. of an institution, and of a system of doctrines, which had since overspread the greatest part of the civilised world. I should have believed, I say, the testimony, in these cases; yet none of them do more than come up to the apostolic history. If any one choose to call assent to its evidence credulity, it is at least incumbent upon him to produce examples in which the same evidence hath turned out to be fallacious. And this contains the precise question which we are now to agitate. In stating the comparison between our evidence, and what our adversaries may bring into competition with ours, we will divide the distinctions which we wish to propose into two kinds,—those which relate to the proof, and those which relate to the miracles. Under the former head we may lay out of the case, I. Such accounts of supernatural events as are found only in histories by some ages poste¬ rior to the transaction, and of which it is evident that the historian could know little more than his reader. Ours is contemporary history. This difference alone removes out of our way, the miraculous history of Pythagoras, who lived five hundred years before the Christian era, written by Porphyry and Jamblicus, who lived three hundred years after that era ; the prodigies of Livy’s history ; the fables of the heroic ages ; the whole of the Greek and Roman, as well as of the Gothic mythology ; a great part of the legendary history of Popish saints, the very best attested of which is extracted from the certificates that are exhibited during the process of their canonization, a ceremony which seldom takes place till a century after their deaths. It applies also, with considerable force, to the miracles of Apollonius Tyaneus, which are contained in a solitary history of his life, published by Philostratus, above a hundred years after his death; and in which, whether Philostratus had any prior account to guide him, depends upon his single unsupported assertion. Also to some of the miracles of the third century, especially to one extraordinary instance, the account of Gregory, bishop of Neocesarea, called Thaumaturgus, delivered in the writings of Gregory of Nyssen, who lived one hundred and thirty years after the subject of his panegyric. The value of this circumstance is shown to have been accurately exemplified in the history of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the order of Jesuits *. His life, written by a companion of his, and by one of the order, was published about fifteen years after his death. In which life, the author, so far from ascribing any miracles to Ignatius, industriously states the reasons why he was not invested with any such power. The life was republished fifteen years afterward, with the addition of many circumstances, which were the fruit, the author says, of farther inquiry, and of diligent examination; but still with a total silence about miracles. When Ignatius had been dead nearly sixty years, the Jesuits, conceiving a wish to have the founder of their order placed in the Roman calendar, began, as it should seem, for the first time, to attribute to him a catalogue of miracles, which could not then be distinctly disproved ; and which there was, in those who governed the church, a strong disposition to admit upon the slenderest proofs. II. We may lay out of the case, accounts published in one country, of what passed in a distant country, without any proof that such accounts were known or received at home. In the case of Christianity, Judea, which was the scene of the transaction, was the centre of the mission. The story was published in the place in which it was acted. The church of Christ was first planted at Jerusalem itself. With that church, others corresponded. From thence the primitive teachers of the institution went forth; thither they assembled. The church ot Jerusalem, and the several churches of Judea, subsisted from the beoiimino-, and for many ages j~: received also the same books and the same accounts, as other churches did. * Douglas’s Criterion of Miracles, p. 74. No one, perhaps, was more distinguished for an aptitude to detect the most carefully planned, and best conducted literary impositions than this learned prelate, the author of the Criterion of Miracles. He was the first who suc¬ cessfully examined and demonstrated the impositions of Lauder, and of Archibald Bowyer, and was one of David Hume’s most talented and successful opponents. Dr. John Douglas was ever distinguished for his love of truth, and through a long and prosperous career, never deviated from this distinguishing passion. He was the friend and assistant of most of the literary characters of his day ; a native of the county of Fife, born in 1721, he became bisbop of Carlisle in 1787, and was translated to Salisbury in 1791, where he died in 1807.'— Ed. f The succession of many eminent bishops of Jeru¬ salem in the first three centuries is distinctly preserved ; as Alexander, A. D. 212, who succeeded Narcissus, then 116 years old. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 277 This distinction disposes, amongst others, of the above-mentioned miracles of Apollonius Tyaneus, most of which are related to have been performed in India; no evidence remaining that either the miracles ascribed to him or the history of those miracles, were ever heard of in India. Those of Francis Xavier, the Indian missionary, with many others of the Romish breviary, are liable to the same objection, viz. that the accounts of them were published at a vast distance from the supposed scene of the wonders # . III. We lay out of the case transient rumours. Upon the first publication of an extra¬ ordinary account, or even of an article of ordinary intelligence, no one who is not personally acquainted with the transaction, can know whether it be true or false, because any man may publish any story. It is in the future confirmation, or contradiction, of the account; in its permanency, or its disappearance; its dying away into silence, or its increasing in notoriety; its being followed up by subsequent accounts, and being repeated in different and indepen¬ dent accounts; that solid truth is distinguished from fugitive lies. This distinction is altogether on the side of Christianity. The story did not drop. On the contrary, it was succeeded by a train of action and events dependent upon it. The accounts, which we have in our hands, were composed after the first reports must have subsided. They were followed by a train of writings upon the subject. The historical testimonies of the transaction were many and various, and connected wutli letters, discourses, controversies, apologies, successively produced by the same transaction. IV. We may lay out of the case what I call naked history. It has been said, that if the prodigies of the Jewish history had been found only in fragments of Manetho, or Berosus, we should have paid no regard to them: and I am willing to admit this. If we knew nothing of the fact, but from the fragment; if we possessed no proof that these accounts had been credited and acted upon, from times, probably, as ancient as the accounts them¬ selves ; if we had no visible effects connected with the history, no subsequent or collateral testimony to confirm it; under these circumstances, I think that it would be undeserving of credit. But this certainly is not our case. In appreciating the evidence of Christianity, the books are to be combined with the institution; with the prevalency of the religion at this day; with the time and place of its origin, which are acknowledged points; with the circumstances of its rise and progress, as collected from external history; with the fact of our present books being received by the votaries of the institution from the beginning; with that of other books coming after these, filled with accounts of effects and consequences resulting from the transaction, or referring to the transaction, or built upon it; lastly, with the consideration of the number and variety of the books themselves, the different writers from which they proceed, the different views with which they were written, so disagreeing as to repel the suspicion of confederacy, so agreeing as to show that they were founded in a common original, i. e. in a story substantially the same. Whether this proof be satisfactory or not, it is properly a cumulation of evidence, by no means a naked or solitary record. V. A mark of historical truth, although only a certain way, and to a certain degree, is 'particularity , in names, dates, places, circumstances, and in the order of events preceding or following the transaction : of which kind, for instance, is the particularity in the description of Saint Paul’s voyage and shipwreck, in the 27th chapter of the Acts, which no man, I think, can read without being convinced that the writer was there; and also in the account of the cure and examination of the blind man, in the ninth chapter of Saint John’s Gospel, which bears every mark of personal knowledge on the part of the historian *f\ I do not deny that fiction has often the particularity of truth ; but then it is of studied and elaborate fiction, or of a formal attempt to deceive, that we observe this. Since, however, experience proves that particularity is not confined to truth, I have stated that it is a proof of truth only to a certain extent, i. e. it reduces the question to this, whether we can depend or not upon the probity of the relater ? which is a considerable advance in our present argument; for an express attempt to deceive, in which case alone particularity can appear without truth, is charged upon the evangelists by few. If the historian acknowledge himself to have received his intelligence from others, the particularity of the narrative shows, * Douglas’s Criterion, p. 84. -J* Both these chapters ought to be read for the sake of this very observation. 278 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. primd facie , the accuracy of his inquiries, and the fulness of his information. This remark belongs to Saint Luke’s history. Of the particularity which we allege, many examples may be found in all the Gospels. And it is very difficult to conceive, that such numerous particu¬ larities, as are almost every where to be met with in the Scriptures, should be raised out of nothing, or be spun out of the imagination without any fact to go upon *. It is to be remarked, however, that this particularity is only to be looked for in direct history. It is not natural in references or allusions, which yet, in other respects, often afford, as far as they go, the most unsuspicious evidence. VI. We lay out of the case such stories of supernatural events, as require, on the part of the hearer, nothing more than an otiose assent; stories upon which nothing depends, in which no interest is involved, nothing is to be done or changed in consequence of believing them. Such stories are credited, if the careless assent that is given to them deserve that name, more by the indolence of the hearer, than by his judgment: or, though not much credited, are passed from one to another without inquiry or resistance. To this case, and to this case alone, belongs what is called the love of the marvellous. I have never known it carry men farther. Men do not suffer persecution from the love of the marvellous. Of the indif¬ ferent nature we are speaking of, are most vulgar errors and popular superstitions: most, for instance, of the current reports of apparitions. Nothing depends upon their being true or false. But not, surely, of this kind were the alleged miracles of Christ and his apostles. They decided, if true, the most important question upon which the human mind can fix its anxiety. They claimed to regulate the opinions of mankind, upon subjects in which they are not only deeply concerned, but usually refractory and obstinate. Men could not be utterly careless in such a case as this. If a Jew took up the story, he found his darling partiality to his own nation and law wounded; if a Gentile, he found his idolatry and polytheism reprobated and condemned. Whoever entertained the account, whether Jew or Gentile, could not avoid the following reflection : —“ If these things be true, I must give up the opinions and principles in which I have been brought up, the religion in which my fathers lived and died.” It is not conceivable that a man should do this upon any idle report or frivolous account, or, indeed without being fully satisfied and convinced of the truth and credibility of the narrative to which he trusted. But it did not stop at opinions. They who believed Christianity acted upon it. Many made it the express business of their lives to publish the intelligence. It was required of those who admitted that intelligence, to change forthwith their conduct and their principles, to take up a different course of life, to part with their habits and gratifications, and begin a new set of rules, and system of beha¬ viour. The apostles, at least, were interested not to sacrifice their ease, their fortunes, and their lives, for an idle tale; multitudes beside them were induced, by the same tale, to encounter opposition, danger, and sufferings. If it be said, that the mere promise of a future state would do all this; I answer, that the mere promise of a future state, without any evidence to give credit or assurance to it, would do nothing. A few wandering fishermen talking of a resurrection of the dead, could produce no effect. If it be farther said, that men easily believe what they anxiously desire; I again answer that, in my opinion, the very contrary of this is nearer to the truth. Anxiety of desire, earnestness of expectation, the vastness of an event, rather causes men to disbelieve, to doubt, to dread a fallacy, to distrust, and to examine. When our Lord’s resurrection was first reported to the apostles, they did not believe, we are told, for joy. This was natural, and is agreeable to experience. VII. We have laid out of the case those accounts which require no more than a simple assent; and we now also layout of the case those which come merely in affirmance of opinions already formed. This last circumstance is of the utmost importance to notice well. * “ There is always some truth where there are con- and, agreeably thereto, the accounts have much fiction siderable particularities related ; and they always seem to and falsehood, with some truth : whereas Thucydides’s bear some proportion to one another. Thus there is a History of the Peloponnesian War, and Caesar's of the great want of the particulars of time, place, and persons, War in Gaul, in both which the particulars of time, place, in Manetho’s account of the Egyptian Dynasties, Etesias’s and persons, are mentioned, are universally esteemed true of the Assyrian King9, and those which the technical to a great degree of exactness.” Hartley, vol. ii. p. 109. chronologers have given of the ancient kingdoms of Greece ; EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 279 It has long been observed that Popish miracles happen in Popish countries; that they make no converts ; which proves that stories are accepted, when they fall in with principles already fixed, with the public sentiments, or with the sentiments of a party already engaged on the side the miracle supports, which would not be attempted to be produced in the face of enemies, in opposition to reigning tenets or favourite prejudices, or when, if they be believed, the belief must draw men away from their preconceived and habitual opinions, from their modes of life and rules of action. In the former case, men may not only receive a miracu¬ lous account, but may both act and suffer on the side, and in the cause, which the miracle supports, yet not act nor suffer for the miracle, but in pursuance of a prior persuasion. The miracle, like any other argument which only confirms what was before believed, is admitted with little examination. In the moral, as in the natural world, it is change which requires a cause. Men are easily fortified in their old opinions, driven from them with great difficulty. Now how does this apply to the Christian history? The miracles, there recorded, were wrought in the midst of enemies, under a government, a priesthood, and a magistracy, decidedly and vehemently adverse to them, and to the pretensions which they supported. They were Protestant miracles in a Popish country; they were Popish miracles in the midst of Protestants. They produced a change ; they established a society upon the spot, adhering to the belief of them; they made converts; and those who were converted gave up to the testimony their most fixed opinions and most favourite prejudices. They who acted and suffered in the cause, acted and suffered for the miracles : for there was no anterior persuasion to induce them, no prior reverence, prejudice, or partiality, to take hold of. Jesus had not one follower when he set up his claim. His miracles gave birth to his sect. No part of this description belongs to the ordinary evidence of Heathen or Popish miracles. Even most of the miracles alleged to have been performed by Christians, in the second and third century of its era, want this confirmation. It constitutes indeed a line of partition between the origin and the progress of Christianity. Frauds and fallacies might mix themselves with the progress, which could not possibly take place in the commencement, of the religion; at least, according to any laws of human conduct that we are acquainted with. What should suggest to the first propagators of Christianity, especially to fishermen, tax-gatherers, and husbandmen, such a thought as that of changing the religion of the world; what could bear them through the difficulties in which the attempt engaged them; what could procure any degree of success to the attempt; are questions which apply with great force, to the setting out of the institution, with less, to every future stage of it. To hear some men talk, one would suppose the setting up a religion by miracles to be a thing of every day’s experience: whereas the whole current of history is against it. Hath any founder of a new sect amongst Christians pretended to miraculous powers, and succeeded by his pretensions? u Were these powers claimed or exercised by the founders of the sects of the Waldenses and Albigenses ? Did Wickliffe in England pretend to it? Did Huss or Jerome in Bohemia ? Did Luther in Germany, Zuinglius in Switzerland, Calvin in France, or any of the reformers advance this plea *?” The French prophets, in the beginning of the present century j~, ventured to allege miraculous evidence, and immediately ruined their cause by their temerity. “ Concerning the religion of ancient Rome, of Turkey, of Siam, of China, a single miracle cannot be named, that was ever offered as a test of any of those religions before their establishment We may add to what has been observed of the distinction which we are considering, that, where miracles are alleged merely in affirmance of a prior opinion, they who believe the doctrine may sometimes propagate a belief of the miracles which they do not themselves entertain. This is the case of what are called pious frauds ; but it is a case, I apprehend, which takes place solely in support of a persuasion already established. At least it does not hold of the apostolical history. If the apostles did not believe the miracles, they did not believe the religion; and, without this belief, where was the piety, what place was there for any thing which could bear the name or colour of piety, in publishing and attesting miracles in its behalf ? If it be said that many promote the belief of revelation, and of any accounts * Campbell on Miracles, p. 120. ed. 1/66. X Adams on Miracles, p. 75. f The eighteenth. 280 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. which favour that belief, because they think them, whether well or ill founded, of public and political utility ; I answer, that if a character exist, which can with less justice than another be ascribed to the founders of the Christian religion; it is that of politicians, or of men capable of entertaining political views. The truth is, that there is no assignable character which will account for the conduct of the apostles, supposing their story to be false. If bad men, what could have induced them to take such pains to promote virtue ? If good men, they would not have gone about the country with a string of lies in their mouths. In appreciating the credit of any miraculous story, there are distinctions which relate to the evidence. There are other distinctions of great moment in the question, which relate to the miracles themselves. Of which latter kind the following ought carefully to be retained. I. It is not necessary to admit as a miracle, what can be resolved into a false perception. Of this nature was the demon of Socrates; the visions of Saint Anthony, and of many others; the vision which Lord Herbert of Cherbury describes himself to have seen ; Colonel Gardiner’s vision, as related in his life, written by Dr. Doddridge. All these may be accounted for by a momentary insanity; for the characteristic symptom of human madness is the rising up in the mind of images not distinguishable by the patient from impressions upon the senses*. The cases, however, in which the possibility of this delusion exists, are divided from the cases in which it docs not exist, by many, and those not obscure marks. They are, for the most part, cases of visions or voices. The object is hardly ever touched. The vision submits not to be handled. One sense does not confirm another. They are likewise almost always cases of a solitary witness. It is in the highest degree improbable, and I know not, indeed, whether it hath ever been the fact, that the same derangement of the mental organs should seize different persons at the same time; a derangement, I mean, so much the same as to represent to their imagination the same objects. Lastly, these are always cases of momentary miracles; by which term I mean to denote miracles, of which the whole existence is of short duration, in contradistinction to miracles which are attended with permanent effects. The appearance of a spectre, the hearing of a supernatural sound, is a momentary miracle. The sensible proof is gone, when the apparition or sound is over. But if a person born blind be restored to sight, a notorious cripple to the use of his limbs, or a dead man to life, here is a permanent effect produced by supernatural means. The change indeed was instantaneous, but the proof continues. The subject of the miracle remains. The man cured or restored is there: his former condition was known, and his present condition may be examined. This can by no possibility be resolved into false perception : and of this kind are by far the greater part of the miracles recorded in the New Testament. When Lazarus was raised from the dead, he did not merely move, and speak, and die again; or come out of the grave, and vanish away, lie returned to his home and family, and there continued ; for we find him, some time afterward in the same town, sitting at table with Jesus and his sisters; visited by great multitudes of the Jews, as a subject of curiosity; giving by his presence so much uneasiness to the Jewish rulers as to beget in them a design of destroying him j . No delusion can account for this. The French prophets in England, some time since, gave out that one of their teachers would come to life again; but their enthusiasm never made them believe that they actually saw him alive. The blind man, whose restoration to sight at Jerusalem is recorded in the ninth chapter of Saint John’s Gospel, did not quit the place or conceal himself from inquiry. On the contrary, he was forthcoming, to answer the call, to satisfy the scrutiny, and to sustain the brow¬ beating of Christ’s angry and powerful enemies. When the cripple at the gate of the temple was suddenly cured by Peter J, he did not immediately relapse into his former lameness, or disappear out of the city; but boldly and honestly produced himself along with the apostles, when they were brought the next day before the Jewish council §. Here, though the miracle was sudden, the proof was permanent. The lameness had been notorious, the cure continued. This, therefore, could not be the effect of any momentary delirium, * Batty on Lunacy. -f- John xii. 1, 2, 9, 10. + Acts, iii. 2. § lb. iv. 14. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 281 cither in the subject or in the witnesses of the transaction. It is the same with the greatest number of the Scripture miracles. There are other cases of a mixed nature, in which, although the principal miracle be momentary, some circumstance combined with it is permanent. Of this kind is the history of St. Paul’s conversion *. The sudden light and sound, the vision and the voice, upon the road to Damascus, were momentary : but Paul's blindness for three days in consequence of what had happened; the communication made to Ananias in another place, and by a vision independent of the former; Ananias finding out Paul in consequence of intelligence so received, and finding him in the condition described, and Paul’s recovery of his sight upon Ananias’ laying his hands upon him : are circumstances, which take the transaction, and the principal miracle as included in it, entirely ont of the case of momentary miracles, or of such as may be accounted for by false perceptions. Exactly the same thing may be observed of Peter’s vision preparatory to the call of Cornelius, and of its connexion with what was imparted in a distant place to Cornelius himself, and with the message dispatched by Cornelius to Peter. The vision might be a dream; the message could not. Either communication, taken separately, might be a delusion; the concurrence of the two was impossible to happen without a supernatural cause. Besides the risk of delusion which attaches upon momentary miracles, there is also much more room for imposture. The account cannot be examined at the moment: and, when that is also a moment of hurry and confusion, it may not be difficult for men of influence to gain credit to any story which they may wish to have believed. This is precisely the case of one of the best attested of the miracles of Old Rome, the appearance of Castor and Pollux in the battle fought by Posthumius with the Latins at the lake Regillus. There is no doubt but that Posthumius, after the battle, spread the report of such an appearance. No person could deny it, whilst it was said to last. No person, perhaps, had any inclination to dispute it afterward; or, if they had, could say with positiveness, what was or what was not seen, by some or other of the army, in the dismay and amidst the tumult of a battle. In assigning false perceptions as the origin to which some miraculous accounts may be referred, I have not mentioned claims to inspiration, illuminations, secret notices or direc¬ tions, internal sensations, or consciousnesses of being acted upon by spiritual influences, good or bad; because these, appealing to no external proof, however convincing they may be to the persons themselves, form no part of what can be accounted miraculous evidence. Their own credibility stands upon their alliance with other miracles. The discussion, therefore, of all such pretensions may be omitted. II. It is not necessary to bring into the comparison what may be called tentative miracles ; that is, where, out of a great number of trials, some succeed; and in the accounts of which, although the narrative of the successful cases be alone preserved, and that of the unsuccessful cases sunk, yet enough is stated to show that the cases produced are only a few out of many in which the same means have been employed. This observation bears, with consi¬ derable force, upon the ancient oracles and auguries, in which a single coincidence of the event with the prediction is talked of and magnified, whilst failures are forgotten, or suppressed, or accounted for. It is also applicable to the cures wrought by relics, and at the tombs of saints. The boasted efficacy of the king’s touch, upon which Mr. Hume lays some stress, falls under the same description. Nothing is alleged concerning it, which is not alleged of various nostrums, namely, out of many thousands who have used them, certified proofs of a few who have recovered after them. No solution of this sort is applicable to the miracles of the gospel. There is nothing in the narrative, which can induce, or even allow, us to believe, that Christ attempted cures in many instances, and succeeded in a few; or that he ever made the attempt in vain. lie did not profess to heal every where all that were sick; on the contrary, he told the Jews, evidently meaning to represent his own case, that, 44 although many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land, yet unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widowand that c< many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet, * Acts ix. 282 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. and none of them was cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian By which examples, he gave them to understand, that it was not the nature of a Divine interposition, or necessary to its purpose, to be general; still less to answer every challenge that might be made, which would teach men to put their faith upon these experiments. Christ never pronounced the word, but the effect followed -f. It was not a thousand sick that received his benedic¬ tion, and a few that were benefited; a single paralytic is let down in his bed at Jesus’s feet, in the midst of a surrounding multitude; Jesus bid him walk, and he did so;f. A man with a withered hand is in the synagogue; Jesus bid him stretch forth his hand, in the presence of the assembly, and it was a restored whole like the other There was nothing tentative in these cures; nothing that can be explained by the power of accident. We may observe also that many of the cures which Christ wrought, such as that of a person blind from his birth, also many miracles beside cures, as raising the dead, walking upon the sea, feeding a great multitude with a few loaves and fishes, are of a nature which does not in anywise admit of the supposition of a fortunate experiment. III. We may dismiss from the question all accounts in which, allowing the phenomenon to be real, the fact to be true, it still remains doubtful whether a miracle were wrought. This is the case with the ancient history of what is called the thundering legion, of the extraordinary circumstances which obstructed the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem by Julian, the circling of the flames and fr;igrant smell at the martyrdom of Polycarp, the sudden shower that extinguished the fire into which the Scriptures were thrown in the Diocletian persecution; Constantine’s dream; his inscribing in consequence of it the cross upon his standard and the shields of his soldiers ; his victory, and the escape of the standard- bearer ; perhaps also the imagined appearance of the cross in the heavens, though this last circumstance is very deficient in historical evidence. It is also the case with the modern annual exhibition of the liquefaction of the blood of Saint Januarius at Naples. It is a doubt, likewise, which ought to be excluded by very special circumstances, from those narratives which relate to the supernatural cure of hypochondriacal and nervous complaints, and of all diseases which are much affected by the imagination. The miracles of the second and third century are, usually, healing the sick, and casting out evil spirits, miracles in which there is room for some error and deception. We hear nothing of causing the blind to see, the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, the lepers to be cleansed||. There are also instances in Christian writers, of reputed miracles, which were natural operations, though not known to be such at the time; as that of articulate speech after the loss of a great part of the tongue. IV. To the same head of objection nearly, may also be referred accounts, in which the variation of a small circumstance may have transformed some extraordinary appearance, or some critical coincidence of events, into a miracle ; stories, in a word, which may be resolved into exaggeration. The miracles of the gospel can by no possibility be explained away in this manner. Total fiction will account for any thing; but no stretch of exaggeration that has any parallel in other histories, no force of fancy upon real circumstances, could produce the narratives which we now have. The feeding of the five thousand with a few loaves and fishes surpasses all bounds of exaggeration. The raising of Lazarus, of the widow’s son at Nain, as well as many of the cures which Christ wrought, come not within the compass of misrepresentation. I mean that it is impossible to assign any position of circumstances however peculiar, any accidental effects however extraordinary, any natural singularity, which could supply an origin or foundation to these accounts. Having thus enumerated several exceptions, which may justly be taken to relations of * Luke iv. 25. tended, as it was well suited, to display the superiority of 't One, and only one, instance may be produced in Christ above all who performed miracles in his name; a which the disciples of Christ do seem to have attempted distinction which, during his presence in the world, it a cure, and not to have been able to perform it. The might be necessary to inculcate by some such proof as story is very ingenuously related by three of the evange- this. lists’. The patient was afterward healed by Christ him- ^ Mark ii. 3. § Matt. xii. 10. self; and the whole transaction seems to have been in- || Jortin’s Remarks, vol. ii. p. 51. a Matt. xvii. 14. Mark ix. 14. Luke ix. 33. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 283 miracles, it is necessary when we read the Scriptures, to hear in our minds this general remark ; that, although there be miracles recorded in the New Testament, which fall within some or other of the exceptions here assigned, yet that they are united with others, to which none of the same exceptions extend, and that their credibility stands upon this union. Thus the visions and revelations which St. Paul asserts to have been imparted to him, may not, in their separate evidence, be distinguishable from the visions and revelations which many others have alleged. But here is the difference. St. Paul’s pretensions were attested by external miracles wrought by himself, and by miracles wrought in the cause to which these visions relate; or, to speak more properly, the same historical authority, which informs us of one, informs us of the other. This is not ordinarily true of the visions of enthusiasts, or even of the accounts in which they are contained. Again, some of Christ’s own miracles were momentary; as the transfiguration, the appearance and voice from heaven at his baptism, a voice from the clouds on one occasion afterward, (John xii. 28,) and some others. It is not denied, that the distinction which we have proposed concerning miracles of this species, applies, in diminution of the force of the evidence, as much to these instances, as to others. But this is the case, not with all the miracles ascribed to Christ, nor with the greatest part, nor with many. Whatever force therefore there may be in the objection, we have numerous miracles which are free from it; and even those to which it is applicable, are little affected by it in their credit, because there are few who, admitting the rest, will reject them. If there be miracles of the New Testament, which come within any of the other heads into which we have distributed the objections, the same remark must be repeated. And this is one way, in which the unexampled number and variety of the miracles ascribed to Christ strengthens the credibility of Christianity. For it precludes any solution, or conjecture about a solution, which imagination, or even which experience, might suggest concerning some particular miracles, if considered independently of others. The miracles of Christ were of various kinds*, and performed in great varieties of situation, form, and manner; at Jerusalem, the metropolis of the Jewish nation and religion; in different parts of Judea and Galilee ; in cities and villages ; in synagogues, in private houses; in the street, in highways; with preparation, as in the case of Lazarus; by accident, as in the case of the widow’s son of Nain; when attended by multitudes, and when alone with the patient; in the midst of his disciples, and in the presence of his enemies; with the common people around him, and before Scribes and Pharisees, and rulers of the synagogues. I apprehend that, when we remove from the comparison, the cases which are fairly disposed of by the observations that have been stated, many cases will not remain. To those which do remain, we apply this final distinction : “ that there is not satisfactory evidence, that persons, pretending to be original witnesses of the miracles, passed their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undertaken and undergone in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and properly in consequence of their belief of the truth of those accounts.” CHAPTER II. But they, with whom we argue, have undoubtedly a right to select their own examples. The instances with which Mr. Hume has chosen to confront the miracles of the New Testament, and which, therefore, we are entitled to regard as the strongest which the history of the world could supply to the inquiries of a very acute and learned adversary, are the three following:— * Not only healing every species of disease, hut (Matt. iii. 16; afterward, John xii. 28); his transfigura- turning water into wine (John ii.) ; feeding multitudes tion (Matt. xvii. 1-—8; Mark ix. 2; Luke ix. 28; 2 Ep. with a few loaves and fishes (Matt. xiv. 15 ; Mark vi. 35 ; Peter i. 16, 17); raising the dead, in three distinct in- Luke ix. 12; Johnvi. 5); walking on the sea (Matt. xiv. stances (Matt. ix. 18; Mark v. 22; Luke viii. 41; 25); calming a storm (Matt. viii. 26; Luke viii. 24); a Luke vii. 14 ; John xi.) celestial voice at his baptism, and miraculous appearance 284 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. I. The cure of a blind and of a lame man at Alexandria, by the emperor Vespasian, as related by Tacitus; II. The restoration of the limb of an attendant in a Spanish church, as told by cardinal de Retz; and, III. The cures said to be performed at the tomb of the abbe Paris, in the early part of the eighteenth century. I. The narrative of Tacitus is delivered in these terms: “ One of the common people of Alexandria, known to be diseased in his eyes, by the admonition of the god Serapis, whom that superstitious nation worship above all other gods, prostrated himself before the emperor, earnestly imploring from him a remedy for his blindness, and entreating that he would deign to anoint with his spittle his cheeks and the balls of his eyes. Another, diseased in his hand, requested, by the admonition of the same god, that he might be touched by the foot of the emperor. Vespasian at first derided and despised their application; afterward, when they continued to urge their petitions, he sometimes appeared to dread the imputation of vanity; at other times, by the earnest supplication of the patients, and the persuasion of his flatterers, to be induced to hope for success. At length he commanded an inquiry to be made by the physicians, whether such a blindness and debility were vincible by human aid. The report of the physicians contained various points ; that in the one the power of vision was not destroyed, but would return if the obstacles were removed; that in the other, the diseased joints might be restored, if a healing power were applied; that it was, perhaps, agreeable to the gods to do this; that the emperor was elected by divine assistance; lastly, that the credit of the success would be the emperors, the ridicule of the disappointment would fall upon the patients. Vespasian believing that every thing was in the power of his fortune, and that nothing was any longer incredible, whilst the multitude, which stood by, eagerly expected the event, with a countenance expressive of joy, executed what he was desired to do. Immediately the hand was restored to its use, and light returned to the blind man. They who were present relate both these cures, even at this time, when there is nothing to be gained by lying Now, though Tacitus wrote this account twenty-seven years after the miracle is said to have been performed, and wrote at Rome of what passed at Alexandria, and wrote also from report: and although it does not appear that he had examined the story, or that he believed it (but rather the contrary), yet I think his testimony sufticient to prove that such a transaction took place : by which I mean, that the two men in question did apply to Vespasian; that Vespasian did touch the diseased in the manner related; and that a cure was reported to have followed the operation. But the affair labours under a strong and just suspicion, that the whole of it was a concerted imposture brought about by collusion between the patients, the physician, and the emperor. This solution is probable, because there was every thing to suggest, and every thing to facilitate, such a scheme. The miracle was calculated to confer honour upon the emperor, and upon the god Serapis. It was achieved in the midst of the emperors flatterers and followers ; in a city, and amongst a populace, beforehand devoted to his interest, and to the worship of the god: where it would have been treason and blasphemy together, to have contradicted the fame of the cure, or even to have questioned it. And what is very observable in the account is, that the report of the physicians is just such a report as would have been made of a case, in which no external marks of the disease existed, and which, consequently, was capable of being easily counterfeited, viz. that in the first of the patients the organs of vision were not destroyed, that the weakness of the second was in his joints. The strongest circumstance in Tacitus’s narration is, that the first patient was, u notus tabe oculorum,” remarked or notorious for the disease in his eyes. But this was a circumstance which might have found its way into the story in its progress from a distant country, and during an interval of thirty years ; or it might be true that the malady of the eyes was notorious, yet that the nature and degree of the disease had never been ascertained; a case by no means uncommon. The emperor’s reserve was easily affected; or it is possible he might not be in the secret. There does not seem to be much weight in the observation of Tacitus, that they who were present, * Tacit. Hist. lib. iv. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 285 continued even then to relate the story when there was nothing to be gained by the lie. It only proves that those who had told the story for many years persisted in it. The state of mind of the witnesses and spectators at the time , is the point to be attended to. Still less is there of pertinency in Mr. Hume’s eulogium upon the cautious and penetrating genius of the historian; for it does not appear that the historian believed it. The terms in which he speaks of Serapis, the deity to whose interposition the miracle was attributed, scarcely suffer us to suppose that Tacitus thought the miracle to be real: “ by the admonition of the god Serapis, whom that superstitious nation (dedita superstitionibus gens) worship above all other gods.” To have brought this supposed miracle within the limits of comparison with the miracles of Christ, it ought to have appeared, that a person of a low and private station, in the midst of enemies, with the whole power of the country opposing him, with every one around him prejudiced or interested against his claims and character, pretended to perform these cures, and required the spectators, upon the strength of what they saw, to give up their firmest hopes and opinions, and follow him through a life of trial and danger; that many were so moved, as to obey his call, at the expense both of every notion in which they had been brought up, and of their ease, safety, and reputation; and that by these beginnings, a change was produced in the world, the effects of which remain to this day : a case, both in its circumstances and consequences, very unlike any thing we find in Tacitus’s relation. II. The story taken from the Memoirs of cardinal de Retz, which is the second example alleged by Mr. Hume, is this: “ In the church of Saragossa in Spain, the canons showed me a man whose business it was to light the lamps; telling me, that he had been several years at the gate with one leg only. I saw him with two*.” It is stated by Mr. Hume, that the cardinal, who relates this story, did not believe it: and it no where appears, that he either examined the limb, or asked the patient, or indeed any one, a single question about the matter. An artificial leg, wrought with art, would be sufficient, in a place where no such contrivance had ever before been heard of, to give origin and currency to the report. The ecclesiastics of the place would, it is probable, favour the story, inasmuch as it advanced the honour of their image and church. And if they patronised it, no other person at Saragossa, in the middle of the last century, would care to dispute it. The story likewise coincided, not less with the wishes and preconceptions of the people, than with the interests of their ecclesiastical rulers: so that there was prejudice backed by authority, and both operating upon extreme ignorance, to account for the success of the imposture. If, as I have suggested, the contrivance of an artificial limb was then new, it would not occur to the cardinal himself to suspect it; especially under the carelessness of mind with which he heard the tale, and the little inclination he felt to scrutinize or expose its fallacy. III. The miracles related to have been wrought at the tomb of the abbe Paris, admit in general of this solution. The patients who frequented the tomb were so affected by their devotion, their expectation, the place, the solemnity, and, above all, by the sympathy of the surrounding multitude, that many of them were thrown into violent convulsions, which convulsions, in certain instances, produced a removal of disorder, depending upon obstruction. We shall, at this day, have the less difficulty in admitting the above account, because it is the very same thing, as hath lately been experienced in the operations of animal magnetism : and the report of the French physicians upon that mysterious remedy is very applicable to the present consideration, viz. that the pretenders to the art, by working upon the imagina¬ tions of their patients, were frequently able to produce convulsions; that convulsions so produced, are amongst the most powerful, but, at the same time, most uncertain and un¬ manageable applications to the human frame which can be employed. Circumstances, which indicate this explication in the case of the Parisian miracles, are the following:— 1. They were tentative. Out of many thousand sick, infirm, and diseased persons, who resorted to the tomb, the professed history of the miracles contains only nine cures. 2. The convulsions at the tomb are admitted. 3. The diseases were, for the most part, of that sort which depends upon inaction and obstruction, as dropsies, palsies, and some tumours. * Liv. iv. A.D. 1(354. 286 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 4. The cures were gradual; some patients attending many days, some several weeks, and some several months. 5. The cures were many of them incomplete. 6. Others were temporary*. So that all the wonder we are called upon to account for is, that, out of an almost innu¬ merable multitude which resorted to the tomb for the cure of their complaints, and many of whom were there agitated by strong convulsions, a very small proportion experienced a beneficial change in their constitution, especially in the action of the nerves and glands. Some of the cases alleged, do not require that we should have recourse to this solution. The first case in the catalogue is scarcely distinguishable from the progress of a natural recovery. It was that of a young man, who laboured under an inflammation of one eye, and had lost the sight of the other. The inflamed eye was relieved, but the blindness of the other remained. The inflammation had before been abated by medicine; and the young man, at the time of his attendance at the tomb, was using a lotion of laudanum. And, what is a still more material part of the case, the inflammation after some interval returned. Another case was that of a young man who had lost his sight by the puncture of an awl, and the discharge of the aqueous humour through the wound. The sight, which had been gradually returning, was much improved during his visit to the tomb, that is, probably, in the same degree in which the discharged humour was replaced by fresh secretions. And it is observable, that these two are the only cases which, from their nature, should seem unlikely to be affected by convulsions. In one material respect I allow that the Parisian miracles were different from those related by Tacitus, and from the Spanish miracle of the cardinal de Retz. They had not, like them, all the power and all the prejudice of the country on their side to begin with. They were alleged by one party against another, by the Jansenists against the Jesuits. These were of course opposed and examined by their adversaries. The consequence of which examination was, that many falsehoods were detected, that with something really extraor¬ dinary much fraud appeared to be mixed. And if some of the cases upon which designed misrepresentation could not be charged, were not at the time satisfactorily accounted for, it was because the efficacy of strong spasmodic affections was not then sufficiently known. Finally, the cause of Jansenism did not rise by the miracles, but sunk, although the mira¬ cles had the anterior persuasion of all the numerous adherents of that cause to set out with. These, let us remember, are the strongest examples, which the history of ages supplies. In none of them, was the miracle unequivocal; by none of them, were established prejudices and persuasions overthrown; of none of them, did the credit make its way, in opposition to authority and power; by none of them, were many induced to commit themselves, and that in contradiction to prior opinions, to a life of mortification, danger, and sufferings; none were called upon to attest them, at the expense of their fortunes and safety f. * The reader will find these particulars verified in the detail, by the accurate inquiries of Dr. Douglas, bishop of Sarum, in his Criterion of Miracles, p. 132, et seq. T It may be thought that the historian of the Parisian miracles, M. Montgeron, forms an exception to this last assertion. He presented his book (with a suspicion, as it should seem, of the danger of what he was doing) to the king; and was shortly afterward committed to prison; from which he never came out. Had the miracles been unequivocal, and had M. Montgeron been originally con¬ vinced by them, I should have allowed this exception. It W T ould have stood, I think, alone, in the argument of our adversaries. But, beside what has been observed of the dubious nature of the miracles, the account which M. Montgeron has himself left of his conversion, shows both the state of his mind, and that this persuasion was not built upon external miracles. —“ Scarcely had he en¬ tered the churchyard, when he was struck,” he tells us, “ with awe and reverence, having never before heard prayers pronounced with so much ardour and transport as he observed amongst the supplicants at the tomb. Upon this, throwing himself on his knees, resting his elbows on the tomb-stone, and covering his face with his hands, he spake the following prayer :— O thou, by whose inter¬ cession so many miracles are said to be performed , if it be true that a part of thee surviveth the grave, and that thou hast influence with the Almighty , have pity on the darkness of my understanding, and through his mercy obtain the removal of it.” Having prayed thus, “ many thoughts,” as he sayeth, “ began to open themselves to his mind; and so profound was his atten¬ tion, that he continued on his knees four hours, not in the least disturbed by the vast crowd of surrounding sup¬ plicants. During this time, all the arguments which he had ever beard or read in favour of Christianity, occurred to him with so much force, and seemed so strong and con¬ vincing, that he went home fully satisfied of the truth of religion in general, and of the holiness and power of that person, who,” as he supposed, “ had engaged the Divine Goodness to enlighten his understanding so suddenly.” Douglas’s Ciit. of Mir. p. 214. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 287 PART II. OF THE AUXILIARY EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. CHAPTER I. PROPHECY. Isaiah, lii. 13., liii. “ Behold, my servant shall deal prudently; he shall he exalted and extolled, and be very high. As many were astonished at thee (his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men) : so shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them, shall they see; and that which they had not heard, shall they consider.—AVho hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid, as it were, our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him ; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment; and who shall declare his generation ? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people, was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death; and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors/’ These words are extant in a book, purporting to contain the predictions of a writer who lived seven centuries before the Christian era. That material part of every argument from prophecy, namely, that the words alleged were actually spoken or written before the fact to which they are applied took place, or could by any natural means be foreseen, is, in the present instance, incontestable. The record comes out of the custody of adversaries. The Jews, as an ancient father well observed, are our librarians. The passage is in their copies, as well as in ours. With many attempts to explain it away, none has ever been made by them to discredit its authenticity. And, what adds to the force of the quotation is, that it is taken from a writing declaredly prophetic; a writing, professing to describe such future transactions and changes in the 288 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. world, as were connected with the fate and interests of the Jewish nation. It is not a passage in an historical or devotional composition, which, because it turns out to he applicable to some future events, or to some future situation of affairs, is presumed to have been oracular. The words of Isaiah were delivered by him in a prophetic character, with the solemnity belonging to that character: and what he so delivered, was all along understood by the Jewish reader to refer to something that was to take place after the time of the author. The public sentiments of the Jews concerning the design of Isaiah’s writings arc set forth in the book of Ecclesiasticus* : “ lie saw by an excellent spirit what should come to pass at the last, and he comforted them that mourned in Sion. He showed what should come to pass for ever, and secret things or ever they came.” It is also an advantage which this prophecy possesses, that it is intermixed with no other subject. It is entire, separate, and uninterruptedly directed to one scene of things. The application of the prophecy to the evangelic history is plain and appropriate. Here is no double sense ; no figurative language, but what is sufficiently intelligible to every reader of every country. The obscurities (by which I mean the expressions that require a knowledge of local diction, and of local allusion) arc few, and not of great importance. Nor have I found that varieties of reading, or a different construing of the original, produce any material alteration in the sense of the prophecy. Compare the common translation with that of Bishop Lowth, and the difference is not considerable'!". So far as they do differ, Bishop Lowth’s corrections, which are the faithful result of an accurate examination, bring the description nearer to the New Testament history than it was before. In the fourth verse of the fifty-third chapter, what our Bible renders “stricken,” he translates “judi¬ cially stricken:” and in the eighth verse, the clause “ he was taken from prison and from judgment,” the bishop gives “ by an oppressive judgment he was taken off.” The next words to these “ who shall declare his generation ?” are much cleared up in their meaning, by the bishop’s version ; “ his manner of life who would declare ?” i. e. who would stand forth in his defence ? The former part of the ninth verse, “ and he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death,” which inverts the circum¬ stances of Christ’s passion, the bishop brings out in an order perfectly agreeable to the event; “ and his grave was appointed with the wicked, but with the rich man was his tomb.” The words in the eleventh verse, “ by his knowledge shall my righteous ser¬ vant justify many,” are, in the bishop’s version, “by the knowledge of him shall my righteous servant justify many.” It is natural to inquire what turn the Jews themselves give to this prophecy J. There is good proof that the ancient Rabbins explained it of their expected Messiah § : but their modern expositors concur, I think, in representing it as a description of the calami¬ tous state, and intended restoration of the Jewish people, who are here, as they say, exhibited under the character of a single person. I have not discovered that their expo¬ sition rests upon any critical arguments, or upon these in any other than in a very minute degree. The clause in the ninth verse, which we render “ for the transgression of my people was he stricken,” and in the margin, “ was the stroke upon him,” the Jews read, “ for the transgression of my people was the stroke upon them .” And what they allege in support of the alteration amounts only to this, that the Hebrew pronoun is capable of a plural as well as of a singular signification ; that is to say, is capable of their construction as well as ours ||. And this is all the variation contended for; the * Chap, xlviii. ver. 24. de quo aliqui Judsei mihi confessi sunt, Rahbinos suos, ex j' Lowth was, perhaps, one of the most learned of propheticis scripturis facile se extricare potuissc, motlo Paley’s contemporaries; he was equally excellent as a Esaias tacuisset." Hulse, Theol. Jud. p. 318, quoted linguist, a poet, and a theologian ; as a controversialist, by Poole, in loc. he, by his wit, triumphed over all his antagonists. § Hulse, Theol. Jud. p. 430. His fine translation of Isaiah is certainly his masterpiece. || Bishop Lowth adopts in this place the reading of the He was born in 1710; successively became bishop of St. Seventy, which gives smitten to death , “for the trans- David’s, Oxford, and London ; and on the death of Dr. gression of my people was he smitten to death.” The Cornwallis, refused the offered Primacy. He died in addition of the words “to death,” makes an end of the 1787.— Ed. Jewish interpretation of the clause. And the authority J “ Vaticinium hoc Esaise est carnificina Rabbinorum, upon which this reading (though not given by the present EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 289 rest of tlie prophecy they read as we do. The probability therefore, of their exposition, is a subject of which we areas capable of judging as themselves. This judgment is open indeed to the good sense of every attentive reader. The application which the Jews contend for, appears to me to labour under insuperable difficulties ; in particular, it may be demanded of them to explain, in whose name or person, if the Jewish people be the sufferer, does the prophet speak, when he says, 44 He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows, yet ice did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted; but he was wounded for our trans¬ gressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastiment of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed/' Again, the description in the seventh verse, 44 he was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth ; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openetlr not his mouth,” quadrates with no part of the Jewish history with which we are acquainted. The mention of the 44 grave,” and the 44 tomb,” in the ninth verse, is not very applicable to the fortunes of a nation ; and still less so is the conclusion of the prophecy in the twelfth verse, which expressly represents the sufferings as voluntary , and the sufferer as interceding for the offen¬ ders ; 44 because he hath poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” There are other prophecies of the Old Testament interpreted by Christians to relate to the gospel history, which are deserving both of great regard, and of a very attentive consider¬ ation : but I content myself with stating the above, as well because I think it the clearest and the strongest of all, as because most of the rest, in order that their value be repre¬ sented with any tolerable degree of fidelity, require a discussion unsuitable to the limits and nature of this work. The reader will find them disposed in order, and distinctly explained, in Bishop Chandlers treatise upon the subject; and he will bear in mind, what has been often, and, I think, truly, urged by the advocates of Christianity, that there is no other eminent person, to the history of whose life so many circumstances can be made to apply. They who object that much has been done by the power of chance, the ingenuity of accommodation, and the industry of research, ought to try whether the same, or any thing like it, could be done, if Mahomet, or any other person, were proposed as the subject of Jewish prophecy. II. A second head of argument from prophecy, is founded upon our Lord’s predictions concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, recorded by three out of the four evangelists. Luke, xxi. 5—25. 44 And as some spake of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts, he said, As for these things which ye behold, the days will come in which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. And they asked him, saying, Master, but when shall these things be ? and what sign will there be when these things shall come to pass ? And he said, Take heed that ye be not deceived ; for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and the time draweth near; go ye not therefore after them. But when ye shall hear of wars and commotions, be not terrified: for these things must first come to pass; but the end is not by-and-by. Then said he unto them, Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom ; and great earthquakes Hebrew text) is adopted, Dr. Kennicot has set forth by an argument not only so cogent, hut so clear and popular, that I beg leave to transcribe the substance of it into this note : Origen, after having quoted at large this prophecy concerning the Messiah, tells us, that, having once made use of this passage, in a dispute against some that were accounted wise among the Jews, one of them replied that the words did not mean one man, but one people, the Jews, who were smitten of God, and dispersed among the Gentiles for their conversion ; that he then urged many parts of this prophecy, to shew the absurdity of this inter¬ pretation, and that he seemed to press them the hardest by this sentence,—‘for the transgression of my people was he smitten to death.’ Now as Origen, the author of the Hexapla, must have understood Hebrew, we cannot suppose that he would have urged this last text as so de¬ cisive, if the Greek version had not agreed here with the Hebrew text; nor that these wise Jews would have been at all distressed by this quotation, unless the Hebrew text had read agreeably to the words ‘ to death, 1 on which the argument principally depended ; for, by quoting it immediately, they would have triumphed over him, and reprobated his Greek version. This, whenever they could do it, was their constant practice in their disputes with the Christians. Origen himself, who laboriously compared the Hebrew text with the Septuagint, has recorded the necessity of arguing with the Jews, from such passages only, as were in the Septuagint agreeable to the Hebrew. Wherefore, as Origen had carefully compared the Greek version of the Septuagint with the Hebrew text; and as he puzzled and confounded the learned Jews, by urging upon them the reading “ to death” in this place ; it seems almost impossible not to conclude, both from Origen’s argument, and the silence of his Jewish adversaries, that the Hebrew text at that time actually had the word agreeably to the version of the Seventy.” Lowth’s Isaiah, p. 242, U 290 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. shall be in divers places, and famines and pestilences ; and fearful sights, and great signs shall there be from heaven. But before all these, they shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name’s sake. And it shall turn to you for a testimony. Settle it therefore in your hearts not to meditate before, what ye shall answer : for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist. And ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolk, and friends ; and some of you shall they cause to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake. But there shall not a hair of your head perish. In your patience possess ye your souls. And when ye shall sec Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days : for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” In terms nearly similar, this discourse is related in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, and the thirteenth of Mark. The prospect of the same evils drew from our Saviour, on another occasion, the following affecting expressions of concern, which are preserved by Saint Luke (xix. 41—44) : “ And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy last day, the things which belong unto thy peace ! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee ; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another ; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”—These passages are direct and explicit predictions. Refer¬ ences to the same event, some plain, some parabolical, or otherwise figurative, are found in divers other discourses of our Lord*. The general agreement of the description with the event, viz. with the ruin of the Jewish nation, and the capture of Jerusalem under Vespasian, thirty-six years after Christ’s death, is most evident; and the accordancy in various articles of detail and circumstances has been shewn by many learned writers. It is also an advantage to the inquiry, and to the argu¬ ment built upon it, that we have received a copious account of the transaction from Josephus, a Jewish and contemporary historian. This part of the case is perfectly free from doubt. The only question which, in my opinion, can be raised upon the subject, is, whether the prophecy was really delivered before the event; I shall apply, therefore, my observations to this point solely. 1. The judgment of antiquity, though varying in the precise year of the publication of the three gospels, concurs in assigning them a date prior to the destruction of Jerusalem t. 2. This judgment is confirmed by a strong probability arising from the course of human life. The destruction of Jerusalem took place in the seventieth year after the birth of Christ. The three evangelists, one of whom was his immediate companion, and the other two asso¬ ciated with his companions, were, it is probable, not much younger than he was. They must, consequently, have been far advanced in life when Jerusalem was taken ; and no reason has been given why they should defer writing their histories so long. 3. X If the evangelists, at the time of writing the Gospels, had known of the destruction of Jerusalem, by which catastrophe the prophecies were plainly fulfilled, it is most probable, that, in recording the predictions, they would have dropped some word or other about the com¬ pletion ; in like manner as Luke, after relating the denunciation of a dearth by Agabus, adds, “ which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar § whereas the prophecies are given distinctly in one chapter of each of the first three gospels, and referred to in several different * Matt. xxi. 33—46; xxii. 1—7. Mark xii. 1—12. Luke xiii. 1—9; xx. 9—20; xxi. 5—13. t Lardner, vol, xiii. £ I.e Clerc. Diss. Ill, de Quat. Evang. num. vii. p. 541. § Acts xi. 28. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 291 passages of each, and, in none of all these places, does there appear the smallest intimation that the things spoken of had come to pass. I do admit, that it would have been the part of an impostor, who wished his readers to believe that his book was written before the event, when in truth it was written after it, to have suppressed any such intimation carefully. But this was not the character of the authors of the Gospel. Cunning was no quality of theirs. Of all writers in the world, they thought the least of providing against objections. Moreover, there is no clause in any one of them, that makes a pro¬ fession of their having written prior to the Jewish wars, which a fraudulent purpose would have led them to pretend. They have done neither one thing nor the other; they have neither inserted any words, which might signify to the reader that their accounts were written before the destruction of Jerusalem, which a sophist would have done; nor have they dropped a hint of the completion of the prophecies recorded by them, which an unde- signing writer, writing after the event, could hardly on some or other of the many occasions that presented themselves, have missed of doing. 4. The admonitions* which Christ is represented to have given to his followers to save themselves by flight, are not easily accounted for, on the supposition of the prophecy being fabricated after the event. Either the Christians, when the siege approached, did make their escape from Jerusalem, or they did not : if they did, they must have had the prophecy amongst them : if they did not know of any such prediction at the time of the siege, if they did not take notice of any such warning, it was an improbable fiction, in a writer pub¬ lishing his work near to that time (which, on any even the lowest and most disadvantageous supposition, was the case with the Gospels now in our hands), and addressing his work to Jews and to Jewish converts (which Matthew certainly did) to state that the followers of Christ had received admonition, of which they made no use when the occasion arrived, and of which experience then recent proved, that those, who were most concerned to know and regard them, were ignorant or negligent. Even if the prophecies came to the hands of the evangelists through no better vehicle than tradition, it must have been by a tradition which subsisted prior to the event. And to suppose that, without any authority whatever, with¬ out so much as even any tradition to guide them, they had forged these passages, is to impute to them a degree of fraud and imposture, from every appearance of which their compositions are as far removed as possible. 5. I think that, if the prophecies had been composed after the event, there would have been more specification. The names or descriptions of the enemy, the general, the emperor, would have been found in them. The designation of the time would have been more deter¬ minate. And I am fortified in this opinion by observing, that the counterfeited prophecies of the Sibylline oracles, of the twelve patriarchs, and I am inclined to believe, most others of the kind, are mere transcripts of the history, moulded into a prophetic form. It is objected, that the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem is mixed, or connected, with expressions which relate to the final judgment of the world; and so connected, as to lead an ordinary reader to expect, that these two events would not be far distant from each other. To which I answer, that the objection does not concern our present argument. If our Saviour actually foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, it is sufficient; even although we should allow, that the narration of the prophecy had combined together what had been said by him on kindred subjects, without accurately preserving the order, or always noticing the transition, of the discourse. * “ When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh; then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains ; then let them which are in the midst of it depart out, and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto.” Luke xxi. 20, 21. “ When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies then let them which be in Judea flee unto the mountains ; let him which is on the house-top not come down to take any thing out of his house; neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.” Matt. xiv. 18. 202 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. CHAPTER II. THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. In stating tlie morality of the Gospel as an argument of its truth, I am willing to admit two points ; first, that the teaching of morality was not the primary design of the mission; secondly, that morality, neither in the Gospel, nor in any other hook, can be a subject, pro¬ perly speaking, of discovery. If I were to describe in a very few words the scope of Christianity, as a revelation *, I should say, that it was to influence the conduct of human life, by establishing the proof of a future state of reward and punishment,—“ to bring life and immortality to light.” The direct object, therefore, of the design is, to supply motives, and not rules; sanctions, and not precepts. And these were what mankind stood most in need of. The members of civilized society can, in all ordinary cases, judge tolerably well how they ought to act: but without a future state, or, which is the same thing, with¬ out credited evidence of that state, they want a motive to their duty ; they want at least strength of motive, sufficient to bear up against the force of passion, and the temptation of present advantage. Their rules want authority. The most important service that can be rendered to human life, and that, consequently, which one might expect beforehand, would be the great end and office of a revelation from God, is to convey to the world authorized assurances of the reality of a future existence. And although in doing this, or by the ministry of the same person by whom this is done, moral precepts or examples, or illustra¬ tions of moral precepts, may be occasionally given, and be highly valuable, yet still they do not form the original purpose of the mission. Secondly; morality, neither in the Gospel, nor in any other book, can be a subject of discovery, properly so called. By which proposition, I mean that there cannot, in morality, be any thing similar to what are called discoveries in natural philosophy, in the arts of life, and in some sciences ; as the system of the universe, the circulation of the blood, the polarity of the magnet, the laws of gravitation, alphabetical writing, decimal arithmetic, and some other things of the same sort; facts, or proofs, or contrivances, before totally unknown and unthought of. Whoever, therefore, expects, in reading the New Testa¬ ment, to be struck with discoveries in morals in the manner in which his mind was affected when he first came to the knowledge of the discoveries above mentioned ; or rather in the manner in which the world was affected by them, when they were first published; expects what, as I apprehend, the nature of the subject renders it impossible that he should meet with. And the foundation of my opinion is this, that the qualities of actions depend entirely upon their effects, which effects must all along have been the subject of human experience. When it is once settled, no matter upon what principle, that to do good is virtue, the rest is calculation. But since the calculation cannot be instituted concerning each particular action, we establish intermediate rules ; by which proceeding, the business of morality is much facilitated, for then it is concerning our rules alone that we need inquire, whether in their tendency they be beneficial; concerning our actions, we have only to ask, whether * Great and inestimably beneficial effects may accrue from the mission of Christ, and especially from his death, which do not belong to Christianity as a revelation ; that is, they might have existed, and they might have been accomplished, though vve had never, in this life, been made acquainted with them. These effects may be very exten¬ sive ; they may be interesting even to other orders of intelligent beings. I think it is a general opinion, and one to which T have long come, that the beneficial effects of Christ’s death extend to the whole human species. It was the redemption of the world. {C He is the propitia¬ tion for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world 1 John ii. 2. Probably the future happiness, perhaps the future existence of the species, and more gra¬ cious terms of acceptance extended to all , might depend upon it or he procured hv it- Now these effects, whatever they he, do not belong to Christianity as a revelation ; because they exist with respect to those to whom it is not revealed. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 293 they be agreeable to the rules. We refer actions to rules, and rules to public happiness. Now, in the formation of these rules, there is no place for discovery, properly so called, but there is ample room for the exercise of wisdom, judgment, and prudence. As I wish to deliver argument rather than panegyric, I shall treat of the morality of the Gospel, in subjection to these observations. And after all, I think it such a morality, as, considering from whom it came, is most extraordinary; and such as, without allowing some degree of reality to the character and pretensions of the religion, it is difficult to account for : or to place the argument a little lower in the scale, it is such a morality as completely repels the supposition of its being the tradition of a barbarous age or of a barbarous people, of the religion being founded in folly, or of its being the production of craft; and it repels also, in a great degree, the supposition of its having been the effusion of an enthusiastic mind. The division, under which the subject may be most conveniently treated of, is that of the things taught, and the manner of teaching. Under the first head, 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 The Internal Evidence of Christianity ; because it perfectly agrees with my own opinion, and because it is impossible to say the same things so well. This acute observer of human nature, and, as I believe, sincere convert to Christianity, appears to me to have made out satisfactorily the two following positions, viz. I. That the Gospel omits some qualities, which have usually engaged the praises and admiration of mankind, but which, in reality, and in their general effects, have been preju¬ dicial to human happiness. II. That the Gospel has brought forward some virtues, which possess the highest intrinsic value, but which have commonly been overlooked and contemned. The first of these propositions he exemplifies in the instances of friendship, patriotism, active courage: in the sense in which these qualities are usually understood, and in the conduct which they often produce. The second, in the instances of passive courage or endurance of sufferings, patience under affronts and injuries, humility, irrcsistance, placability. The truth is, there are two opposite descriptions of character, under which mankind may generally be classed. The one possesses vigour, firmness, resolution ; is daring and active, quick in its sensibilities, jealous of its fame, eager in its attachments, inflexible in its purpose, violent in its resentments. The other, meek, yielding, complying, forgiving; not prompt to act, but willing to suffer; silent and gentle under rudeness and insult, suing for reconciliation, where others would demand satisfaction, giving way to the pushes of impudence, conceding and indulgent to the prejudices, the wrong-headedness, the intractability, of those with whom it has to deal. The former of these characters is, and ever hath been, the favourite of the world. It is the character of great men. There is a dignity in it which universally commands respect. The latter is poor-spirited, tame, and abject. Yet so it hath happened, that, with the Founder of Christianity, this latter is the subject of his commendation, his precepts, his example ; and that the former is so, in no part of its composition. This, and nothing else, is the character designed in the following remarkable passages: 44 Resist not evil: but whoso¬ ever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also ; and if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also : and whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain : love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which dcspitefully use you and perse¬ cute you.” This certainly is not common-place morality. It is very original. It shews at least (and it is for this purpose we produce it), that no two things can be more different than the Heroic and the Christian character. Now the author, to whom I refer, has not only remarked this difference more strongly than any preceding writer, but has proved, in contradiction to first impressions, to popular opinion, to the encomiums of orators and poets, and even to the suffrages of historians and moralists, that the latter character possesses the most of true worth, both as being most difficult either 294 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. to be acquired or sustained, and as contributing most to the happiness and tranquillity of social life. The state of his arguments is as follows : I. If this disposition were universal, the case is clear; the world would be a society of friends. Whereas, if the other disposition were universal, it would produce a scene of uni¬ versal contention. The world could not hold a generation of such men. II. If, what is the fact, the disposition be partial; if a few be actuated by it, amongst a multitude who are not; in whatever degree it does prevail, in the same proportion it pre¬ vents, allays, and terminates quarrels, the great disturbers of human happiness, and the great sources of human misery, so far as man’s happiness and misery depend upon man. Without this disposition, enmities must not only be frequent, but, once begun, must be eternal: for, each retaliation being a fresh injury, and, consequently, requiring a fresh satisfaction , no period can be assigned to the reciprocation of affronts, and to the progress of hatred, but that which closes the lives, or at least the intercourse, of the parties. I would only add to these observations, that although the former of the two characters above described may be occasionally useful; although, perhaps, a great general, or a great statesman, may be formed by it, and these may be instruments of important benefits to mankind, yet is this nothing more than what is true of many qualities, which are acknow¬ ledged to be vicious. Envy is a quality of this sort; I know not a stronger stimulus to exertion ; many a scholar, many an artist, many a soldier, has been produced by it; never¬ theless, since in its general effects it is noxious, it is properly condemned, certainly is not praised, by sober moralists. It was a portion of the same character as that we are defending, or rather of his love of the same character, which our Saviour displayed, in his repeated correction of the ambition of his disciples; his frequent admonitions, that greatness with them was to consist in humi¬ lity ; his censure of that love of distinction, and greediness of superiority, which the chief persons amongst his countrymen were wont on all occasions, great and little, to betray. “ They (the Scribes and Pharisees) love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. But be not ye called Rabbi, for one is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren : and call no man your father upon the earth, for one is your Father, which is in heaven; neither be ye called masters, for one is your Master, even Christ ; but he that is greatest among you , shall be your servant: and whosoever shall exalt himself, shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself, shall be exalted I make no farther remark upon these passages (because they are, in truth, only a repetition of the doctrine, different expressions of the principle, which we have already stated), except that some of the passages, especially our Lord’s advice to the guests at an entertainment 'j~, seem to extend the rule to what we call manners ; which was both regular in point of consistency, and not so much beneath the dignity of our Lord's mission as may at first sight be supposed, for bad manners are bad morals. It is sufficiently apparent, that the precepts we have recited, or rather the disposition which these precepts inculcate, relate to personal conduct from personal motives ; to cases in which men act from impulse, for themselves and from themselves. When it comes to be con¬ sidered, what is necessary to be done for the sake of the public, and out of a regard to the general welfare (which consideration, for the most part, ought exclusively to govern the duties of men in public stations), it comes to a case to which the rules do not belong. This distinction is plain ; and if it were less so, the consequence would not be much felt: for it is very seldom that, in the intercourse of private life, men act with public views. The personal motives, from which they do act, the rule regulates. The preference of the patient to the heroic character, which we have here noticed, and which the reader will find explained at large in the work to which we have referred him, is a peculiarity in the Christian institution, which I propose as an argument of wisdom very much beyond the situation and natural character of the person who delivered it. II. A second argument, drawn from the morality of the New Testament, is the stress which is laid by our Saviour upon the regulation of the thoughts. And I place this consider- * Matt, x.viii, 6. See also Mark xii. 39. Luke xx. 46; xiv. 7, f Luke xiv. 7. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 205 ation next to the other, because they are connected. The other related to the malicious passions ; this, to the voluptuous. Together, they comprehend the whole character. “ Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications,” &c.—“These are the things which defile a man “Wo unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.—Ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness ; even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity ~f\” And more particularly that strong expression^:, “ Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” There can be no doubt with any reflecting mind, but that the propensities of our nature must be subject to regulation ; but the question is, where the check ought to be placed, upon the thought, or only upon the action. In this question, our Saviour, in the texts here quoted, has pronounced a decisive judgment. He makes the control of thought essential. Internal purity with him is every thing. Now I contend that this is the only discipline which can succeed ; in other words, that a moral system, which prohibits actions, but leaves the thoughts at liberty, will be ineffectual, and is therefore unwise. I know not how to go about the proof of a point, which depends upon experience, and upon a knowledge of the human constitution, better than by citing the judgment of persons, who appear to have given great attention to the subject, and to be well qualified to form a true opinion about it. Boerhaave, speaking of this very declaration of our Saviour, “ Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart,” and under¬ standing it, as we do, to contain an injunction to lay the check upon the thoughts, was wont to say, that, “ Our Saviour knew mankind better than Socrates.” Haller, who has recorded this saying of Boerhaave, adds to it the following remarks of his own§, “ It did not escape the observation of our Saviour, that the rejection of any evil thoughts was the best defence against vice : for when a debauched person fills his imagination with impure pictures, the licentious ideas which he recals, fail not to stimulate his desires with a degree of violence which he cannot resist. This will be followed by gratification, unless some external obstacle should prevent him from the commission of a sin, which he had internally resolved on.” “ Every moment of time,” says our author, “that is spent in meditations upon sin, increases the power of the dangerous object which has possessed our imagination.” I suppose these reflections will be generally assented to. III. Thirdly, had a teacher of morality been asked concerning a general principle of con¬ duct, and for a short rule of life; and had he instructed the person who consulted him, “ constantly to refer his actions to what he believed to be the will of his Creator, and con¬ stantly to have in view not his own interest and gratification alone, but the happiness and comfort of those about him,” he would have been thought, I doubt not, in any age of the world, and in any, even the most improved, state of morals, to have delivered a judicious answer ; because by the first direction, he suggested the only motive which acts steadily and uniformly, in sight and out of sight, in familiar occurrences and under pressing temptations ; and in the second, he corrected, what, of all tendencies in the human character, stands most in need of correction, selfishness , or a contempt of other men’s conveniency and satisfaction. In estimating the value of a moral rule, we are to have regard not only to the particular duty, but to the general spirit; not only to what it directs us to do, but to the character which a compliance with its direction is likely to form in us. So, in the present instance, the rule here recited, will never fail to make him who obeys it considerate , not only of the rights, but of the feelings of other men, bodily and mental, in great matters and in small; of the ease, the accommodation, the self-complacency, of all with whom he has any concern, especially of all who are in his power, or dependent upon his will. Now what, in the most applauded philosopher of the most enlightened age of the world, would have been deemed worthy of his wisdom, and of his character, to say, our Saviour hath said, and upon just such an occasion as that which we have feigned. * Matt. xv. 19, f Matt, xxiii. 25. 27. f Ibid, v, 28. § Letters to his Daughter. 296 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. “ Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and say¬ ing, Master, which is the great commandment in the law ? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind ; this is the first and great commandment; and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets*.” The second precept occurs in Saint Matthew (xix. 16), on another occasion similar to this ; and both of them, on a third similar occasion, in Luke (x. 27). In these two latter instances, the question proposed was, “ What shall I do to inherit eternal life ?” Upon all these occasions, I consider the words of our Saviour as expressing precisely the same thing as what I have put into the mouth of the moral philosopher. Nor do I think that it detracts much from the merit of the answer, that these precepts are extant in the Mosaic code : for his laying his finger, if I may so say, upon these precepts ; his drawing them out from the rest of that voluminous institution ; his stating of them, not simply amongst the number, but as the greatest and the sum of all the others ; in a word, his pro¬ posing of them to his hearers for their rule and principle, was our Saviour's own. And what our Saviour had said upon the subject, appears to me to have fixed the sentiment amongst his followers. Saint Paul has it expressly, “ If there be any other commandment, it is briefly compre-* bended in this saying, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself1q” and again, “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself Saint John, in like manner, “ This commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God, loveth his brother also §.” Saint Peter, not very differently : “ Seeing that ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently ||.” And it is so well known, as to require no citations to verify it, that this love, or charity, or, in other words, regard to the welfare of others, runs in various forms through all the preceptive parts of the apostolic writings. It is the theme of all their exhortations, that with which their morality begins and ends, from which all their details and enumerations set out, and into which they return. And that this temper, for some time at least, descended in its purity to succeeding Christians, is attested by one of the earliest and best of the remaining writings of the apos¬ tolical fathers, the epistle of the Roman Clement. The meekness of the Christian character reigns throughout the whole of that excellent piece. The occasion called for it. It was to compose the dissensions of the church of Corinth. And the venerable hearer of the apostles does not fall short, in the display of this principle, of the finest passages of their writings. He calls to the remembrance of the Corinthian church its former character, in which “ ye were all of you,* he tells them, “ humble-minded, not boasting of any thing, desiring rather to be subject than to govern, to give than to receive, being content with the portion God had dispensed to you, and hearkening diligently to his word; ye were enlarged in your bowels, having his sufferings always before your eyes. Ye contended day and night for the whole brotherhood, that with compassion and a good conscience the number of his elect might be saved. Ye were sincere, and without offence, towards each other. Ye bewailed every one liis neighbours’ sins, esteeming their defects your own ^[.” His prayer for them was for the “ return of peace, long-suffering, and patience **.” And his advice to those, who might have been the occasion of difference in the society, is conceived in the true spirit, and with a perfect knowledge, of the Christian character : “ Who is there among you that is generous ? who that is compassionate ? who that has any charity ? Let him say, if this sedition, this contention, and these schisms, be upon my account, I am ready to depart, to go away whithersoever ye please, and do whatsoever ye shall command me; only let the flock of Christ be in peace with the elders who are set over it. lie that shall do this, shall get to himself a very great honour in the Lord; and there is no place but what will be ready to receive him; for the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof. These things they, who * Matt. xxii. 35—40* f Rom. xiii- 9. t Gal. v; 14. § 1 John iv. 21. || 1 Peter, i. 22. Ep. Clem. Rom. c. 2.; Abp. Wake’s Translation. ** lb. c. 58. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 297 have their conversation towards God, not to he repented of, both have done, and will always be ready to do *.” This sacred principle, this earnest recommendation of forbearance, lenity, and forgiveness, mixes with all the writings of that age. There are more quotations in the apostolical fathers, of texts which relate to these points, than of any other. Christ’s sayings had struck them. “Not rendering,” said Polycarp, the disciple of John, “ evil for evil, or railing for railing, or striking for striking, or cursing for cursing Again, speaking of some whose behaviour had given great offence, “ Be ye moderate,” says he, “ on this occasion, and look not upon such as enemies, but call them back as suffering and erring members, that ye save your whole body X “ Be ye mild at their anger,” saith Ignatius, the companion of Polycarp, “ humble at their boastings, to their blasphemies return your prayers, to their error your firmness in the faith; when they are cruel, be ye gentle; not endeavouring to imitate their ways, let us be their brethren in all kindness and moderation: but let us be followers of the Lord; for who was ever more unjustly used, more destitute, more despised?” IY. A fourth quality, by which the morality of the Gospel is distinguished, is the exclusion of regard to fame and reputation. “ Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them, otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven §.” “ When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seetli in secret, shall reward thee openly || And the rule, by parity of reason, is extended to all other virtues. I do not think, that either in these, or in any other passage of the New Testament, the pursuit of fame is stated as a vice; it is only said that an action, to be virtuous, must be independent of it. I would also observe, that it is not publicity, but ostentation, which is prohibited; not the mode, but the motive, of the action, which is regulated. A good man will prefer that mode, as well as those objects of his beneficence, by which he can produce the greatest effect; and the view of this purpose may dictate sometimes publication, and sometimes concealment. Either the one or the other may be the mode of the action, according as the end to be promoted by it appears to require. But from the motive , the reputation of the deed, and the fruits and advantage of that reputation to ourselves, must be shut out, or, in whatever proportion they are not so, the action in that proportion fails of being virtuous. This exclusion of regard to human opinion, is a difference, not so much in the duties, to which the teachers of virtue would persuade mankind, as in the manner and topics of per¬ suasion. And in this view the difference is great. When we set about to give advice, our lectures are full of the advantages of character, of the regard that is due to appearances and to opinion; of what the world, especially of what the good or great, will think and say; of the value of public esteem, and of the qualities by which men acquire it. Widely different from this was our Saviour’s instruction ; and the difference was founded upon the best reasons. For, however the care of reputation, the authority of public opinion, or even of the opinion of good men, the satisfaction of being well received and well thought of, the benefit of being known and distinguished, are topics to which we are fain to have recourse in our exhortations ; the true virtue is that which discards these considerations absolutely, and which retires from them all to the single internal purpose of pleasing God. This at least was the virtue which our Saviour taught. And in teaching this, he not only confined the views of his followers to the proper measure and principle of human duty, but acted in consistency with his office as a monitor from heaven. Next to what our Saviour taught, may be considered the manner of his teaching; which was extremely peculiar, yet, I think, precisely adapted to the peculiarity of his character and situation. His lessons did not consist of disquisitions; of any thing like moral essays, or like sermons, or like set treatises upon the several points which lie mentioned. When lie delivered a precept, it was seldom that lie added any proof or argument; still more * Ep. Clem. Rom. c. 54. ; Abp. Wake’s Translation. t Pol. Ep. ad Phil. c. 2. 298 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. seldom, that he accompanied it with, what all precepts require, limitations and distinctions. His instructions were conceived in short, emphatic, sententious rules, in occasional reflections, or in round maxims. I do not think that this was a natural, or would have been a proper method for a philosopher or a moralist; or that it is a method which can be successfully imitated by us. But I contend that it was suitable to the character which Christ assumed, and to the situation on which, as a teacher, he was placed. He produced himself as a messenger from God. He put the truth of what he taught upon authority *. In the choice, therefore, of his mode of teaching, the purpose by him to be consulted was impression: because conviction, which forms the principal end of our discourses, was to arise in the minds of his followers from a different source, from their respect to his person and authority. Now, for the purpose of impression singly and exclusively (I repeat again, that we are not here to consider the convincing of the understanding), I know nothing which would have so great force as strong ponderous maxims, frequently urged, and frequently brought back to the thoughts of the hearers. I know nothing that could in this view be said better, than u Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you “ The first and great command¬ ment is, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; and the second is like unto it, Thou slialt love thy neighbour as thyself.” It must also be remembered, that our Lord’s ministry, upon the supposition either of one year or three, compared with his work, was of short duration ; that, within this time, he had many places to visit, various audiences to address; that his person was generally besieged by crowds of followers ; that he was, sometimes, driven away from the place where he was teaching by persecution, and, at other times, thought fit to withdraw himself from the commotions of the populace. LTnder these circumstances, nothing appears to have been so practicable, or likely to be so efficacious, as leaving, wherever he came, concise lessons of duty. These circumstances at least show the necessity he was under of comprising what he delivered within a small compass. In par¬ ticular, his sermon upon the Mount ought always to be considered with a view to these observations. The question is not, whether a fuller, a more accurate, a more systematic, or a more argumentative discourse upon morals might not have been pronounced; but whether more could have been said in the same room, better adapted to the exigences of the hearers, or better calculated for the purpose of impression ? Seen in this light, it has always appeared to me to be admirable. Dr. Lardner thought this discourse was made up of what Christ had said at different times, and on different occasions, several of which occasions are noticed in Saint Luke’s narrative. I can perceive no reason for this opinion. I believe that our Lord delivered this discourse at one time and place, in the manner related by Saint Matthew, and that he repeated the same rules and maxims at different times, as opportunity or occasion suggested; that they were often in his mouth, and were repeated to different audiences, and in various conversations. It is incidental to this mode of moral instruction, which proceeds not by proof but upon authority, not by disquisition but by precept, that the rules will be conceived in absolute terms, leaving the application, and the distinctions that attend it, to the reason of the hearer. It is likewise to be expected that they will be delivered in terms by so much the more forcible and energetic, as they have to encounter natural or general propensities. It is farther also to be remarked, that many of those strong instances, which appear in our Lord’s sermon, such as, “ If any man will smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also“ If any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also “ Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twainthough they appear in the form of specific precepts, are intended as descriptive of disposition and character. A specific compliance with the precepts would be of little value, but the disposition which they inculcate is of the highest. He who should content himself with waiting for the occasion, and with literally observing the rule when the occasion offered, would do nothing, or worse than nothing ; but he who considers the character and disposition which is hereby inculcated, and places that disposition before him as the model to which he should bring his own, takes, * I say unto you. Swear not at all : / say unto you, Resist not evil; I say unto you, Love your enemies a . a Matt. v. 34. 30. 44. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 299 perhaps, the best possible method of improving the benevolence, and of calming and rectifying the vices of his temper. If it be said that this disposition is unattainable, I answer, so is all perfection : ought therefore a moralist to recommend imperfections ? One excellency, however, of our Saviours rules, is, that they are either never mistaken, or never so mistaken as to do harm. I could feign a hundred cases, in which the literal application of the rule, “ of doing to others as we would that others should do unto us,” might mislead us : but I never yet met with the man who was actually misled by it. Notwithstanding that our Lord bade his followers, u not to resist evil,” and to “ forgive the enemy who should trespass against them, not till seven times, but till seventy times seven,” the Christian world has hitherto suffered little by too much placability or forbearance. I would repeat once more, what has already been twice remarked, that these rules were designed to regulate personal conduct from personal motives, and for this purpose alone. I think that these observations will assist us greatly in placing our Saviours conduct, as a moral teacher, in a proper point of view: especially when it is considered, that to deliver moral disquisitions was no part of his design,—to teach morality at all was only a subor¬ dinate part of it; his great business being to supply, what was much more wanting than lessons of morality, stronger moral sanctions, and clearer assurances of a future judgment *. The parables of the New Testament are, many of them, such as would have done honour to any book in the world: I do not mean in style and diction, but in the choice of the sub¬ jects, in the structure of the narratives, in the aptness, propriety, and force of the circum¬ stances w T oven into them; and in some, as that of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Pharisee and the Publican, in a union of pathos and simplicity, which, in the best pro¬ ductions of human genius, is the fruit only of a much exercised, and well cultivated judgment. The LorcVs Prayer , for a succession of solemn thoughts, for fixing the attention upon a few great points, for suitableness to every condition, for sufficiency, for conciseness without obscurity, for the weight and real importance of its petitions, is without an equal or a rival. From whence did these come? Whence had this man this wisdom? Was our Saviour, in fact, a well-instructed philosopher, whilst he is represented to us as an illiterate peasant ? Or shall we say that some early Christians of taste and education composed these pieces and ascribed them to Christ ? Beside all other incredibilities in this account, I answer, with Dr. Jortin, that they could not do it. No specimens of composition, which the Christians of the first century have left us, authorize us to believe that they were equal to the task. And how little qualified the Jews, the countrymen and companions of Christ, were to assist him in the undertaking, may be judged of from the traditions and writings of theirs which were the nearest to that aoe. The whole collection of the Talmud is one continued proof, into what follies they fell whenever they left their Bible; and how little capable they were of furnishing out such lessons as Christ delivered. But there is still another view, in which our Lord’s discourses deserve to be considered; and that is, in their negative character,—not in what they did, but in what they did not, contain. Under this head, the following reflections appear to me to possess some weight. I. They exhibit no particular description of the invisible world. The future happiness of the good, and the misery of the bad, which is all we want to be assured of, is directly and positively affirmed, and is represented by metaphors and comparisons, which were plainly intended as metaphors and comparisons and as nothing more. As to the rest, a solemn reserve is maintained. The question concerning the woman who had been * Some appear to require a religious system, or, in the minutest questions both of property, and of all questions books which profess to deliver that system minute direc- which come under the cognisance of the magistrate, tions, for every case and occurrence that may arise. This, And to what length details of this kind are necessarily say they, is necessary, to render a revelation perfect, carried, when once begun, may be understood from an especially one which has for its object the regulation of anecdote of the Mussulman code, which we have received human conduct. Now, how prolix, and yet how incom- from the most respectable authority, that not less plete and unavailing, such an attempt must have been, is than seventy-five thousand traditional precepts have proved by one notable example : The Indoo and Mussul- been promulgated.” (Hamilton’s Translation of Iledaya, man religion are institutes of civil law, regulating the or Guide.) 300 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. married to seven brothers, u Whose shall she be on the resurrection ?” was of a nature calculated to have drawn from Christ a more circumstantial account of the state of the human species in their future existence. He cut short, however, the inquiry by an answer, which at once rebuked intruding curiosity, and was agreeable to the best appre¬ hensions we are able to form upon the subject, viz. “ That they who are accounted worthy of that resurrection, shall be as the angels of God in heaven.” I lay a stress upon this reserve, because it repels the suspicion of enthusiasm: for enthusiasm is wont to expatiate upon the condition of the departed, above all other subjects; and with a wild particularity. It is moreover a topic which is always listened to with greediness. The teacher, therefore, whose principal purpose is to draw upon himself attention, is sure to be full of it. The Koran of Mahomet is half made up of it. II. Our Lord enjoined no austerities. lie not only enjoined none as absolute duties, but he recommended none as carrying men to a higher degree of Divine favour. Place Chris¬ tianity, in this repect, by the side of all institutions which have been founded in the fanaticism, either of their author, or of his first followers: or rather compare, in this respect, Christianity as it came from Christ, with the same religion after it fell into other hands ; with the extravagant merit very soon ascribed to celibacy, solitude, voluntary poverty; with the rigours of an ascetic, and the vows of a monastic life ; the hair shirt, the watchings, the midnight prayers, the obmutescence, the gloom and mortification of religious orders, and of those who aspired to religious perfection. III. Our Saviour uttered no impassioned devotion. There was no heat in his piety, or in the language in which he expressed it; no vehement or rapturous ejaculations, no violent urgency, in his prayers. The Lord's prayer is a model of calm devotion. His words in the garden are unaffected expressions, of a deep indeed, but sober piety. He never appears to have been worked up into any thing like that elation, or that emotion of spirits, which is occasionally observed in most of those, to whom the name of enthusiast can in any degree be applied. I feel a respect for Methodists, because I believe that there is to be found amongst them much sincere piety, and availing, though not always well-informed, Chris¬ tianity : yet I never attended a meeting of theirs, but I came away with the reflection, how different what I heard was from what I read! I do not mean in doctrine, with which at present I have no concern, but in manner; how different from the calmness, the sobriety, the good sense, and I may add, the strength and authority of our Lord’s discourses! IV. It is very usual with the human mind, to substitute forwardness and fervency in a particular cause, for the merit of general and regular morality; and it is natural, and politic also, in the leader of a sect or party, to encourage such a disposition in his followers. Christ did not overlook this turn of thought; yet, though avowedly placing himself at the head of a new institution, he notices it only to condemn it. “ Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doetli the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name ? and in thy name have cast out devils ? and in thy name done many wonderful works ? And then will I profess unto you, I never knew you : depart from me, ye that work iniquity So far was the Author of Christianity from courting the attachment of his followers by any sacrifice of principle, or by a condescension to the errors which even zeal in his service might have inspired! This was a proof both of sincerity and judgment. V. Nor, fifthly, did he fall in with any of the depraved fashions of his country, or with the natural bias of his own education. Bred up a Jew, under a religion extremely technical, in an age and amongst a people more tenacious of the ceremonies than of any other part of that religion, he delivered an institution, containing less of ritual, and that more simple, than is to be found in any religion which ever prevailed amongst mankind. We have known, I do allow, examples of an enthusiasm, which has swept away all external ordinances before it. But this spirit certainly did not dictate our Saviour’s conduct, either in his treat¬ ment of the religion of his country, or in the formation of his own institution. In both he * Mat 1 * vii. 21, 22. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 301 displayed the soundness and moderation of his judgment. He censured an overstrained scrupulousness, or perhaps an affectation of scrupulousness, about the Sabbath : but how did he censure it ? not by contemning or decrying the institution itself, but by declaring that u the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath;” that is to say, that the Sabbath was to be subordinate to its purpose, and that that purpose was the real good of those who were the subjects of the law. The same concerning the nicety of some of the Pharisees, in paying tithes of the most trifling articles, accompanied with a neglect of justice, fidelity, and mercy. He finds fault with them for misplacing their anxiety. He does not speak disrespectfully of the law of tithes, nor of their observance of it; but he assigns to each class of duties its proper station in the scale of moral importance. All this might be ejected perhaps from a well instructed, cool, and judicious philosopher, but was not to be looked for from an illiterate Jew; certainly not from an impetuous enthusiast. VI. Nothing could be more quibbling, than were the comments and expositions of the Jewish doctors at that time; nothing so puerile as their distinctions. Their evasion of the fifth commandment, their exposition of the law of oaths, are specimens of the bad taste in morals which then prevailed. Whereas, in a numerous collection of our Saviour’s apoph¬ thegms, many of them referring to sundry precepts of the Jewish law, there is not to be found one example of sophistry, or of false subtilty, or of any thing approaching thereunto. VII. The national temper of the Jews was intolerant, narrow-minded, and excluding. In Jesus, on the contrary, whether we regard his lessons or his example, we see not only benevolence, but benevolence the most enlarged and comprehensive. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the very point of the story is, that the person relieved by him, was the national and religious enemy of his benefactor. Our Lord declared the equity of the Divine administration, when he told the Jews (what, probably, they were surprised to hear), 44 That many should come from the east and west, and should sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven; but that the children of the kingdom should be cast into outer darkness His reproof of the hasty zeal of his disciples, who would needs call down fire from heaven to revenge an affront put upon tlicir Master, shows the lenity of his character, and of his religion ; and his opinion of the manner in which the most unreasonable opponents ought to be treated, or at least of the manner in which they ought not to be treated. The terms, in which his rebuke was conveyed, deserve to be noticed :— 44 Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of f.” VIII. Lastly, amongst the negative qualities of our religion, as it came out of the hands of its Founder and his apostles, we may reckon its complete abstraction from all views either of ecclesiastical or civil policy; or, to meet a language much in fashion with some men, from the politics either of priests or statesmen. Christ’s declaration, that 44 his kingdom was not of this world,” recorded by Saint John; his evasion of the question whether it was lawful or not to give tribute unto Cassar, mentioned by the three other evangelists ; his reply to an application that was made to him, to interpose his authority in a question of property; 44 Man, who made me a ruler or judge over you?” ascribed to him by Saint Luke; his declining to exercise the office of a criminal judge in the case of the woman taken in adultery, as related by John, are all intelligible significations of our Saviour’s sentiments upon this head. And with respect to politics , in the usual sense of that word, or discussions concerning different forms of government, Christianity declines every question upon the subject. Whilst politicians are disputing about monarchies, aristocracies, and republics, the Gospel is alike applicable, useful, and friendly, to them all; inasmuch as, 1st, it tends to make men virtuous, and as it is easier to govern good men than bad men under any constitution; as, 2dly, it states obedience to government in ordinary cases, to be not merely a submission to force, but a duty of conscience ; as, 3dly, it induces dispositions favourable to public tran¬ quillity, a Christian’s chief care being to pass quietly through this world to a better; as, 4thly, it prays for communities, and for the governors of communities, of whatever description or denomination they be, with a solicitude and fervency proportioned to the influence which they possess upon human happiness. All which, in my opinion, is just as it * Matt. viii. 11. ■f Luke, ix. 55. 3 02 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. should be. tlad there been more to be found in Scripture of a political nature, or convertible to political purposes, the worst use would have been made of it, on whichever side it seemed to lie. When, therefore, we consider Christ as a moral teacher (remembering that this was only a secondary part of his office; and that morality, by the nature of the subject, does not admit of discovery, properly so called;)—when we consider either what he taught, or what he did not teach, either the substance or the manner of his instruction; his preference of solid to popular virtues, of a character which is commonly despised to a character which is universally extolled ; his placing, in our licentious vices, the check in the right place, viz. upon the thoughts; his collecting of human duty into two well-devised rules, his repetition of these rules,the stress he laid upon them, especially in comparison with positive duties, and his fixing thereby the sentiments of his followers; his exclusion of all regard to reputation in our devotion and alms, and, by parity of reason, in our other virtues;—when we consider that his instructions were delivered in a form calculated for impression, the precise purpose in his situation to be consulted; and that they were illustrated by parables, the choice and structure of which would have been admired in any composition whatever; when we observe him free from the usual symptoms of enthusiasm, heat and vehemence in devotion, austerity in institutions, and a wild particularity in the description of a future state; free also from the depravities of his age and country; without superstition amongst the most superstitious of men, yet not decrying positive distinctions or external observances, but soberly calling them to the principle of their establishment, and to their place in the scale of human duties; without sophistry or trifling, amidst teachers remarkable for nothing so much as frivolous subtilties and quibbling expositions; candid and liberal in his judgment of the rest of mankind, although belonging to a people who affected a separate claim to Divine favour, and, in consequence of that opinion, prone to uncharitableness, partiality, and restriction;—when we find in his religion, no scheme of building up an hierarchy, or of ministering to the views of human governments ;—in a word, when we compare Christianity, as it came from its Author, either with other religions, or with itself in other hands, the most reluctant under¬ standing will be induced to acknowledge the probity, I think also the good sense, of those to whom it owes its origin; and that some regard is due to the testimony of such men, when they declare their knowledge that the religion proceeded from God; and when they appeal, for the truth of their assertion, to miracles which they wrought, or which they saw. Perhaps the qualities which we observe in the religion, may be thought to prove something more. They would have been extraordinary, had the religion come from any person ; from the person from whom it did come, they are exceedingly so. What was Jesus in external appearance? A Jewish peasant, the son of a carpenter, living with his father and mother in a remote province of Palestine, until the time that he produced himself in his public character. He had no master to instruct or prompt him; he had read no books, but the works of Moses and the prophets; he had visited no polished cities; he had received no lessons from Socrates or Plato,—nothing to form in him a taste or judgment different from that of the rest of his countrymen, and of persons of the same rank of life with himself. Sup¬ posing it to be true, which it is not, that all his points of morality might be picked out of Greek and Roman writings, they were writings which lie had never seen. Supposing them to be no more than what some or other had taught in various times and places, he could not collect them together. Who were his coadjutors in the undertaking,—the persons into whose hands the religion came after his death ? A few fishermen upon the lake of Tiberias, persons just as uneducated, and, for the purpose of framing rules of morality, as unpromising as himself. Suppose the mission to be real, all this is accounted for; the unsuitableness of the authors to the produc¬ tion, of the characters to the undertaking, no longer surprises us : but without reality , it is very difficult to explain, how such a system should proceed from such persons. Christ was not like any other carpenter; the apostles were not like any other fishermen. But the subject is not exhausted by these observations. That j3ortion of it, which is most reducible to points of argument, has been stated, and, I trust, truly. There are, however, EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 303 some topics, of a more diffuse nature, which yet deserve to he proposed to the readers attention. The character of Christ is a part of the morality of the Gospel: one strong observation upon which is, that, neither as represented by his followers, nor as attacked by his enemies, is he charged with any personal vice. This remark is as old as Origen: “ Though innume¬ rable lies and calumnies had been forged against the venerable Jesus, none had dared to charge him with an intemperance* * * § .” Not a reflection upon his moral character, not an impu¬ tation or suspicion of any offence against purity and chastity, appears for five hundred years after his birth. This faultlessness is more peculiar than we are apt to imagine. Some stain pollutes the morals or the morality of almost every other teacher, and of every other lawgiver'!'. ^ eno the stoic, and Diogenes the cynic, fell into the foulest impurities; of which also Socrates himself was more than suspected. Solon forbade unnatural crimes to slaves. Lycurgus tolerated theft as a part of education. Plato recommended a community of women. Aristotle maintained the general right of making war upon barbarians. The elder Cato was remarkable for the ill usage of his slaves; the younger gave up the person of his wife.. One loose principle is found in almost all the Pagan moralists; is distinctly, however, perceived in the writings of Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus ; and that is, the allowing, and even the recommending to their disciples, a compliance with the reli¬ gion, and with the religious rites, of every country into which they came. In speaking of the founders of new institutions, we cannot forget Mahomet. His licentious transgressions of his own licentious rules; his abuse of the character which he assumed, and of the power which he had acquired, for the purposes of personal and privileged indulgence; his avowed claim of a special permission from Heaven, of unlimited sensuality, is known to every reader, as it is confessed by every writer, of the Moslem story. Secondly, in the histories which are left us of Jesus Christ, although very short, and although dealing in narrative, and not in observation or panegyric, we perceive, beside the absence of every appearance of vice, traces of devotion, humility, benignity, mildness, patience, prudence. I speak of traces of these qualities, because the qualities themselves are to be collected from incidents; inasmuch as the terms are never used of Christ in the Gospels, nor is any formal character of him drawn in any part of the New Testament. Thus we see the devoutness of his mind, in his frequent retirement to solitary prayer £ ; in his habitual giving of thanks § ; in his reference of the beauties and operations of nature to the bounty of Providence ||; in his earnest addresses to his Father, more particularly that short but solemn one before the raising of Lazarus from the dead^f; and in the deep piety of his behaviour in the garden, on the last evening of his life** * : his humility , in his constant reproof of con¬ tentions for superiority'j-f: the benignity and affectionateness of his temper, in his kindness to children^; in the tears which lie shed over his falling country §§, and upon the death of his friend || || ; in his noticing of the widow's mite 51^1; in his parables of the good Samaritan, of the ungrateful servant, and of the Pharisee and publican, of which parables no one but a man of humanity could have been the author: the mildness and lenity of his character is discovered, in his rebuke of the forward zeal of his disciples at the Samaritan village***; in his expostulation with Pilatej-; in his prayer for his enemies at the moment of his sufferingJJJ, which, though it has been since very properly and frequently imitated, was then, I apprehend, new. His prudence is discerned, where prudence is most w’anted, in his conduct on trying occasions, and in answers to artful questions. Of these, the following are examples:—His withdrawing, in various instances, from the first symptoms of tumult§§§, and with the express care, as appears from Saint Matthew || || ||, of carrying on his ministry in quietness; his declining of every species of interference with the civil affairs of the country, * Or. Ep. Cels. 1. 3. num. 36, ed. Bened. f See many instances collected by Grotius, de Veritate Christian® Religionis, in the notes to his second book, p. 116. Pocock’s edition. J Matt. xiv. 23. Luke ix. 28. Matt. xxvi. 36. § Matt. xi. 25. Mark viii. 6. John vi. 23. Luke xxii. 1 7. II Matt. vi. 26—28. U John xi. 41. vi ** Matt. xxvi. 36—47. tf Mark ix. 33. ++ Mark x. 16. §§ Luke xix. 41. HU John xi. 35. Iff Mark xii. 42. *** Luke ix. 55. ftf John xix. 11. Luke xxiii. 34. §§§ Matt. xiv. 22. Luke v. 15, 16. John v. 13. . 15. |j|||| Chap. xii. 19. U John xi. 41. 304 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. which disposition is manifested by his behaviour in the case of the woman caught in adultery*, and in his repulse of the application which was made to him, to interpose his decision about a disputed inheritance j -: his judicious, yet, as it should seem, unprepared answers, will be confessed in the case of the Roman tribute *; in the difficulty concerning the interfering relations of a future state, as proposed to him in the instance of a woman who had married seven brethren § ; and, more especially, in his reply to those who demanded from him an explanation of the authority by which he acted, which reply consisted, in propounding a question to them, situated between the very difficulties into which they were insidiously endeavouring to draw him 11. Our Saviour’s lessons, beside what has already been remarked in them, touch, and that oftentimes by very affecting representations, upon some of the most interesting topics of human duty, and of human meditation ; upon the principles, by which the decisions of the last day will be regulated^!, upon the superior, or rather the supreme importance of reli¬ gion** ; upon penitence, by the most pressing calls and the most encouraging invitations ff; upon self-denial |j, watchfulness §§, placability ||||, confidence in God 511[, the value of spiritual, that is, of mental worship***, the necessity of moral obedience,bind the directing of that obedience to the spirit and principle of the law, instead of seeking for evasions in a technical construction of its terms'j'j'j'. If we extend our argument to other parts of the New Testament, we may offer, as amongst the best and shortest rules of life, or, which is the same thing, descriptions of virtue, that have ever been delivered, the following passages :— 44 Pure religion, and undefiled, before God and the Father, is this; to visit the fatherless and widow's in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world^j;^;.” 44 Now the end of the commandment is, charity, out of a pure heart and a good con¬ science, and faith unfeigned §§§.” 44 For the grace of God that bringeth salvation, hath appeared to all men, teaching us, that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world || || || Enumerations of virtues and vices, and those sufficiently accurate, and unquestionably just, are given by Saint Paul to his converts in three several epistles The relative duties of husbands and wives, of parents and children, of masters and servants, of Christian teachers and their flocks, of governors and their subjects, are set forth by the same writer ****, not indeed with the copiousness, the detail, or the distinctness of a moralist, who should, in these days, sit down to write chapters upon the subject, but with the leading rules and principles in each; and, above all, with truth, and with authority. Lastly, the whole volume of the New Testament is replete with 'piety; with, what were almost unknown to heathen moralists, devotional virtues , the most profound veneration of the Deity, an habitual sense of his bounty and protection, a firm confidence in the final result of his counsels and dispensations, a disposition to resort, upon all occasions, to his mercy, for the supply of human wants, for assistance in danger, for relief from pain, for the pardon of sin. * John viii. 1. T Luke xii. 14. X Matt. xxii. 19. § Matt. xxii. 28. || Matt. xxi. 23, et seq. Matt. xxv. 31, et seq. ** Mark viii. 35. Matt. vi. 31—33. Luke xii. 4,5. 1G—21. TT Luke xv. Matt. v. 29. §§ Mark xiii. 37. Matt. xxiv. 42.—xxv. 13. || || Luke xvii. 4. Matt, xviii. 33, et seq. H If Matt. vi. 25—30. *** John iv. 23, 24. 't't't' Matt. v. 21. James i. 27. §§§ 1 Tim. i. 5. HUH Tit. ii. 11, 12. If^[11 Gal. v. 19. Col. iii. 12. 1 Cor. xiii. **** Eph. v. 33. vi. 1.5. 2 Cor. vi. 6, 7. Rom. xiii. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 30.5 CHAPTER III. THE CANDOUR OP THE WRITERS OP THE NEW TESTAMENT. I make this candour to consist, in their putting down many passages, and noticing many circumstances, which no writer whatever was likely to have forged; and which no writer would have chosen to appear in his book, who had been careful to present the story in the most unexceptionable form;, or who had thought himself at liberty to carve and mould the particulars of that story, according to his choice, or according to his judgment of the effect. A strong and well-known example of the fairness of the evangelists, offers itself in their account of Christ’s resurrection, namely, in their unanimously stating, that, after he was risen, he appeared to his disciples alone. I do not mean that they have used the exclusive word alone; but that all the instances which they have recorded of his appearance, are instances of appearance to his disciples ; that their reasonings upon it, and allusions to it, are confined to this supposition; and that, by one of them, Peter is made to say, “ Him God raised up the third day, and showed him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead*.” The most common understanding must have perceived, that the history of the resurrection would have come with more advantage, if they had related that Jesus appeared, after he was risen, to his foes as well as his friends, to the Scribes and Pharisees, the Jewish council, and the Roman governor: or even if they had asserted the public apjDearance of Christ in general unqualified terms, without noticing, as they have done, the presence of his disciples on each occasion, and noticing it in such a manner as to lead their readers to suppose that none but disciples were present. They could have represented in one way as well as the other. And if their point had been, to have the religion believed, whether true or false; if they fabricated the story ah initio ; or if they had been disposed either to have delivered their testimony as witnesses, or to have worked up their materials and information as historians, in such a manner as to render their narrative as specious and unobjectionable as they could; in a word, if they had thought of any thing but of the truth of the case, as they understood and believed it; they would, in their account of Christ’s several appearances after his resurrection, at least have omitted this restriction. At this distance of time, the account, as we have it, is perhaps more credible than it would have been the other way; because this manifestation of the historians’ candour, is of more advan¬ tage to their testimony, than the difference in the circumstances of the account would have been to the nature of the evidence. But this is an effect which the evangelists would not foresee: and I think that it was by no means the case at the time when the books were composed. Mr. Gibbon has argued for the genuineness of the Koran, from the confessions which it contains, to the apparent disadvantage of the Mahometan cause f. The same defence vindicates the genuineness of our Gospels, and without prejudice to the cause at all. There are some other instances in which the evangelists honestly relate what, they must have perceived, would make against them. Of this kind is John the Baptist’s message, preserved by Saint Matthew (xi. 2), and Saint Luke (vii. 18) : “ Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples, and said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or look we for another ?” To confess, still more to state, that John the Baptist had his doubts concerning the character of Jesus, could not but afford a handle to cavil and objection. But truth, like honesty, neglects appearances. The same observation, perhaps, holds concerning the apostacy of Judas * Acts x. 40, 41. concession, the remarkable words of Saint Matthew, in f Yol. ix. c. 50, note 96. his account of Christ’s appearance upon the Galilean * I had once placed amongst these examples of fair mountain: “ And when they saw him, they worshipped. X 306 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. John vi. 66. u From that time, many of his disciples went hack, and walked no more with him.” Was it the part of a writer, who dealt in suppression and disguise, to put down this anecdote ? Or this, which Matthew has preserved (xiii. 58) ? “ He did not many mighty works there ; because of their unbelief.” Again, in the same evangelist (v. 17, 18) : “ Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil; for, verily, I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle, shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” At the time the Gospels were written, the apparent tendency of Christ's mission was to diminish the authority of the Mosaic code, and it was so considered hy the Jews themselves. It is very improbable therefore, that, without the constraint of truth, Matthew should have ascribed a saying to Christ, which, primo intuitu , militated with the judgment of the age in which his Gospel was written. Marcion thought this text so objectionable, that he altered the words, so as to invert the sense*. Once more (Acts xxv. 18) : “ They brought none accusation against him, of such things as I supposed; but had certain questions against him of their own superstition, and of one Jesus, which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive.” Nothing could be more in the character of a Roman governor than these words. But that is not precisely the point I am concerned with. A mere panegyrist, or a dishonest narrator, would not have represented his cause, or have made a great magistrate represent it, in this manner, i. e. in terms not a little disparaging, and bespeaking, on his part, much unconcern and indifference about the matter. The same observation may be repeated of the speech, which is ascribed to Gallio (Acts xviii. 15) : “ If it be a question of words and names, and of your law, look ye to it; for I will be no judge of such matters.” Lastly, where do we discern a stronger mark of candour, or less disposition to extol and magnify, than in the conclusion of the same history ? in which the evangelist, after relating that Paul, on his first arrival at Rome, preached to the Jews from morning until evening, adds, “ And some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not.” The following, I think, are passages which were very unlikely to have presented them¬ selves to the mind of a forger or a fabulist. Matt. xxi. 21. “ Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done unto the fig-tree, but also, if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, it shall be done; all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, it shall be donet.” It appears to me very improbable that these words should have been put into Christ’s mouth, if he had not actually spoken them. The term “ faith," as here used, is perhaps rightly interpreted of confidence in that internal notice, by which the apostles were admonished of their power to perform any particular miracle. And this exposition renders the sense of the text more easy. But the words undoubtedly, in their obvious construction, carry with them a difficulty, which no writer would have brought upon himself officiously. Luke ix. 59. “ And he said unto another, Follow me: but he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of Godj.” This answer, though very expressive of the transcendent importance of religious concerns, was apparently harsh and repulsive; and such as would him; but some doubted a .” I have since, however, been convinced by what is observed concerning this pas¬ sage in Dr. Townsliend’s discourse b upon the resurrec¬ tion, that the transaction, as related by Saint Matthew, was really this : “ Christ appeared first at a distance ; the greater part of the company, the moment they saw him, worshipped, but some as yet, i. e. upon this first distant view of his person, doubted ; whereupon Christ came up c to them, and spake to them,” &c. : that the doubt, therefore, was a doubt only at first, for a moment, and upon his being seen at a distance, and was afterward dispelled by his nearer approach, and by his entering into conversation with them. * Lardner, Cred. vol. xv. p. 422. ■f See also chap. xvii. 20. Luke xvii. 6. See also Matt. viii. 21. a Chap, xxviii. 17. b Page 177. c Saint Matthew’s words are, Kca VQotxiXQwv o In(rou$ a.vrai<;. This intimates, that when lie first appeared, it was at a distance, at least, from many of the spectators. Ib. p. 197. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 307 not have been made for Christ, if he had not really used it. At least some other instance would have been chosen. The following passage, I, for the same reason, think impossible to have been the produc¬ tion of artifice, or of a cold forgery :—“ But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause, shall be in danger of the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire (Gehennse).” Matt. v. 22. It is emphatic, cogent, and well calculated for the purpose of impression; but is inconsistent with the supposition of art or wariness on the part of the relater. The short reply of our Lord to Mary Magdalen, after his resurrection (John xx. 16, 17), “ Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended unto my Father,” in my opinion, must have been founded in a reference or allusion to some prior conversation, for the want of knowing which, his meaning is hidden from us. This very obscurity, however, is a proof of genuine¬ ness. No one would have forged such an answer. John vi. The whole of the conversation, recorded in this chapter, is, in the highest degree, unlikely to be fabricated, especially the part of our Saviour s reply between the fiftieth and the fifty-eighth verse. I need only put down the first sentence: c< I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give him is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” Without calling in question the expositions that have been given of this passage, we may be permitted to say, that it labours under an obscurity, in which it is impossible to believe that any one, who made speeches for the persons of his narrative, would have volun¬ tarily involved them. That this discourse was obscure, even at the time, is confessed by the writer who has preserved it, when he tells us, at the conclusion, that many of our Lord’s disciples, when they had heard this, said, “ This is a hard saying; who can bear it?” Christ’s taking of a young child, and placing it in the midst of his contentious disciples (Matt, xviii. 2), though as decisive a proof, as any could be, of the benignity of his temper, and very expressive of the character of the religion which lie wished to inculcate, was not by any means an obvious thought. Nor am I acquainted with any thing in any ancient writing which resembles it. The account of the institution of the eucliarist bears strong internal marks of genuineness. If it had been feigned, it would have been more full; it would have come nearer to the actual mode of celebrating the rite, as that mode obtained very early in Christian churches: and it would have been more formal than it is. In the forged piece, called the Apostolic Constitutions, the apostles are made to enjoin many parts of the ritual which was in use in the second and third centuries, with as much particularity as a modern rubric could have done. Whereas, in the history of the Lord’s supper, as we read it in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, there is not so much as the command to repeat it. This, surely, looks like undesignedness. I think also that the difficulty arising from the conciseness of Christ’s expression, “ This is my body,” would have been avoided in a made-up story. I allow that the explication of these words, given by Protestants, is satisfactory; but it is deduced from a diligent compa¬ rison of the words in question with forms of expression used in Scripture, and especially by Christ upon other occasions. No writer would arbitrarily and unnecessarily have thus cast in his reader’s way a difficulty, which, to say the least, it required research and erudition to clear up. Now it ought to be observed, that the argument which is built upon these examples, extends both to the authenticity of the books and to the truth of the narrative: for it is improbable that the forger of a history in the name of another should have inserted such passages into it: and it is improbable also, that the persons whose names the books bear should have fabricated such passages; or even have allowed them a place in their work, if they had not believed them to express the truth. The following observation, therefore, of Dr. Lardner, the most candid of all advocates, and the most cautious of all inquirers, seems to be well-founded:—“ Christians are induced to believe the writers of the Gospel, by observing the evidences of piety and probity that appear in their writings, in which there is no deceit, or artifice, or cunning, or design. x 2 508 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. “ No remarks,” as Dr. Beattie hath properly said, “ are thrown in, to anticipate objections; nothing of that caution, which never fails to distinguish the testimony of those who are conscious of imposture; no endeavour to reconcile the reader's mind to what may be extra¬ ordinary in the narrative.” I beg leave to cite also another author *, who has well expressed the reflection which the examples now brought forward were intended to suggest. “ It doth not appear that ever it came into the mind of these writers, to consider how this or the other action would appear to mankind, or what objections might be raised upon them. But without at all attending to this, they lay the facts before you, at no pains to think whether they would appear credible or not. If the reader will not believe their testimony, there is no help for it; they tell the truth, and attend to nothing else. Surely this looks like sincerity, and that they published nothing to the world but what they believed themselves.” As no improper supplement to this chapter, I crave a place here for observing the extreme naturalness of some of the things related in the New Testament. Mark ix. 23. “ Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe ; help thou mine unbelief.” The struggle in the fathers heart, between solicitude for the preservation of his child, and a kind of involuntary distrust of Christ’s power to heal him, is here expressed with an air of reality which could hardly be counterfeited. Again (Matt. xxi. 9), the eagerness of the people to introduce Christ into Jerusalem, and their demand, a short time afterward, of his crucifixion, when he did not turn out what they expected him to be, so far from affording matter of objection, represents popular favour in exact agreement with nature and with experience, as the flux and reflux of a wave. The rulers and Pharisees rejecting Christ, whilst many of the common people received him, was the effect which, in the then state of Jewish prejudices, I should have expected. And the reason with which they who rejected Christ’s mission kept themselves in counte¬ nance, and with which also they answered the arguments of those who favoured it, is precisely the reason which such men usually give:—“ Have any of the Scribes or Pharisees believed on him?” (John vii. 48.) In our Lord’s conversation at the well (John iv. 29), Christ had surprised the Samaritan woman with an allusion to a single particular in her domestic situation, u Thou hast had five husbands; and he, whom thou now hast, is not thy husband.” The woman, soon after this, ran back to the city, and called out to her neighbours, “ Come, see a man which told me all things that ever I did.” This exaggeration appears to me very natural; especially in the hurried state of spirits into which the woman may be supposed to have been thrown. The lawyer’s subtilty in running a distinction upon the word neighbour, in the precept, u Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” was no less natural, than our Saviour’s answer was decisive and satisfactory (Luke x. 29). The lawyer of the New Testament, it must be observed, was a Jewish divine. The behaviour of Gallio (Acts xviii. 12—17), and of Festus (xxv. 18, 19), have been observed upon already. The consistency of Saint Paul’s character throughout the whole of his history (viz. the warmth and activity of his zeal, first against, and then for, Christianity), carries with it very much of the appearance of truth. There are also some proprieties , as they may be called, observable in the Gospels; that is, circumstances separately suiting with the situation, character, and intention of their respec¬ tive authors. Saint Matthew, who was an inhabitant of Galilee, and did not join Christ’s society until some time after Christ had come into Galilee to preach, has given us very little of his history prior to that period. Saint John, who had been converted before, and who wrote to supply omissions in the other Gospels, relates some remarkable particulars, which had taken place before Christ left Judea, to go into Galileef. * Duchal, p. 97, 98. *j* Hartley’s Observations, vol. ii. p. 103. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 309 Saint Matthew (xv. 1) lias recorded the cavil of the Pharisees against the disciples of Jesus, for eating “ with unclean hands. 1 ’ Saint Mark has also (vii. 1,) recorded the same transaction (taken probably from Saint Matthew), but with this addition; “ For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands often, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders: and when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not: and many other things there be which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups and pots, brazen vessels, and of tables.” Now Saint Matthew was not only a Jew himself, but it is evident, from the whole structure of his Gospel, especially from his numerous references to the Old Testament, that he wrote for Jewish readers. The above explanation, therefore, in him, would have been unnatural, as not being wanted by the readers whom he addressed. But in Mark, who, whatever use he might make of Matthew’s Gospel, intended his own narrative for a general circulation, and who himself travelled to distant countries in the service of the religion, it was properly added. CHAPTER IV. IDENTITY OF CHRISTS CHARACTER. The argument expressed by this title, I apply principally to the comparison of the first three Gospels with that of Saint John. It is known to every reader of Scripture, that the passages of Christ’s history, preserved by Saint John, are, except his passion and resurrec¬ tion, for the most part, different from those which are delivered by the other evangelists. And I think the ancient account of this difference to be the true one, viz. that Saint John wrote after the rest, and to supply what he thought omissions in their narratives, of which the principal were our Saviour’s conferences with the Jews of Jerusalem, and his discourses to his apostles at his last supper. But what I observe in the comparison of these several accounts is, that, although actions and discourses are ascribed to Christ by Saint John, in general different from what are given to him by the other evangelists, yet, under this diversity, there is a similitude of manner , which indicates that the actions and discourses proceeded from the same person. I should have laid little stress upon a repetition of actions substantially alike, or of discourses containing many of the same expressions, because that is a species of resemblance, which would either belong to a true history, or might easily be imitated in a false one. Nor do I deny, that a dramatic writer is able to sustain propriety and distinction of character, through a great variety of separate incidents and situations. But the evangelists were not dramatic writers; nor possessed the talents of dramatic writers; nor will it, I believe, be suspected, that they studied uniformity of character, or ever thought of any such thing, in the person who was the subject of their histories. Such uniformity, if it exist, is on their part casual; and if there be, as I contend there is, a perceptible resemblance of manner , in passages, and between discourses, which are in themselves extremely distinct, and are delivered by historians writing without any imita¬ tion of, or reference to, one another, it affords a just presumption, that these are, what they profess to be, the actions and the discourses of the same real person; that the evangelists wrote from fact, and not from imagination. The article in which I find this agreement most strong, is in our Saviour’s mode of teach¬ ing, and in that particular property of it, which consists in his drawing of his doctrine from the occasion ; or, which is nearly the same thing, raising reflections from the objects and incidents before him, or turning a particular discourse then passing, into an opportunity of general instruction. It will be my business to point out this manner in the first three evangelists ; and then to inquire, whether it do not appear also, in several examples of Christ’s discourses, preserved by Saint John. 310 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. The reader will observe in the following quotations, that the Italic letter contains the reflection ; the common letter, the incident or occasion from which it springs. Matt. xii. 47—50. “ Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered, and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother ? and who are my brethren ? And he stretched forth his hand towards his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren : for whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” Matt. xvi. 5. “ And when his disciples were come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread ; then Jesus said unto them, Take heed, and beware of the leaven of the Phari¬ sees and of the Sadducees. And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have taken no bread.—How is it that ye do not understand, that I speak it not to you con¬ cerning bread, that ye shall beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees ? Then understood they, how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees .” Matt. xv. ], 2. 10, 11. 15—20. “Then came to Jesus, Scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, Why do thy disciples transgress the traditions of the elders ? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.—And he called the multitude, and said unto them, Hear and understand : Not that which goetli into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth , this defileth a man .—Then answered Peter, and said unto him, Declare unto us this parable. And Jesus said, Are ye also without understanding ? Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth, goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught ? but those things which proceed out of the mouth, come forth from the heart, and they defile the man : for out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies ; these are the things which defile a man : but to eat with unwasiien hands, defileth not a man.'” Our Saviour, on this occasion, expatiates rather more at large than usual, and his discourse also is more divided; but the concluding sentence brings back the whole train of thought to the inci¬ dent in the first verse, viz. the objurgatory question of the Pharisees, and renders it evident that the whole sprang from that circumstance. Mark x. 13—15. “ And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them; and his disciples rebuked those that brought them : but when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not ; for of such is the kingdom of God: verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.” Mark i. 16, 17- “Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishers: and Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Luke xi. 27. “ And it came to pass as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked : but he said, Yea, rather blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.” Luke xiii. 1—3. “ There were present at that season, some that told him of the Gali¬ leans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices; and Jesus answering, said unto them, Suppose ye, that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things ? I tell you, Nay : but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” Luke xiv. 15. “ And when one of them that sat at meat with him, heard these things, he said unto him, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God. Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade rnanyf &c. The parable is rather too long for insertion, but affords a striking instance of Christ’s manner of raising a discourse from the occasion. Observe also in the same chapter two other examples of advice, drawn from the circumstances of the entertainment and the behaviour of the quests. We will now see, how this manner discovers itself in Saint Johns history of Christ. John vi. 25, 26. “ And when theyJiad found him on the other side of the sea, they said unto him, Rabbi, when earnest thou hither? Jesus answered them, and said, Verily I say unto you, ye seek me not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. Sll were filled. Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for the meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you!’ John iv. 12—14. H Chap. ii. 19. 314 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. could hardly arise from any thing hut the truth of the case. From any care or design in Saint John, to make his narrative tally with the narratives of the other evangelists, it certainly did not arise, for no such design appears, but the absence of it. A strong and more general instance of agreement, is the following.—The first three evan¬ gelists have related the appointment of the twelve apostles # ; and have given a catalogue of their names in form. John, without ever mentioning the appointment, or giving the catalogue, supposes, throughout his whole narrative, Christ to be accompanied by a select party of disciples ; the number of these to be twelve -j*; and whenever he happens to notice any one as of that number J, it is one included in the catalogue of the other evangelists: and the names principally occurring in the course of his history of Christ, are the names extant in their list. This last agreement, which is of considerable moment, runs through every Gospel, and through every chapter of each. All this bespeaks reality. CHAPTER Y. ORIGINALITY OF OUR SAVIOUR*^ CHARACTER. The Jews, whether right or wrong, had understood their prophecies to foretel the advent of a person, who by some supernatural assistance should advance their nation to indepen¬ dence, and to a supreme degree of splendour and prosperity. This was the reigning opinion and expectation of the times. Now, had Jesus been an enthusiast, it is probable that his enthusiasm would have fallen in with the popular delusion, and that, whilst he gave himself out to be the person intended by these predictions, he would have assumed the character to which they were universally supposed to relate. Had he been an impostor, it was his business to have flattered the prevailing hopes, be¬ cause these hopes were to be the instruments of his attraction and success. But, what is better than conjectures, is the fact, that all the pretended Messiahs actually did so. We learn, from Josephus, that there were many of these. Some of them, it is pro¬ bable, might be impostors, who thought that an advantage was to be taken of the state of public opinion. Others, perhaps, were enthusiasts, whose imagination had been drawn to this particular object, by the language and sentiments which prevailed around them. But, whether impostors or enthusiasts, they concurred in producing themselves in the character which their countrymen looked for, that is to say, as the restorers and deliverers of the nation, in that sense in which restoration and deliverance were expected by the Jews. Why therefore Jesus, if he was, like them, either an enthusiast or impostor, did not pursue the same conduct as they did, in framing his character and pretensions, it will be found difficult to explain. A mission, the operation and benefit of which was to take place in another life, was a thing unthought of as the subject of these prophecies. That Jesus, com¬ ing to them, as their Messiah, should come under a character totally different from that in which they expected him; should deviate from the general persuasion, and deviate into pretensions absolutely singular, and original-; appears to be inconsistent with the imputation of enthusiasm or imposture, both which, by their nature, I should expect, would, and both which, throughout the experience which this very subject furnishes, in fact have, followed the opinions that obtained at the time. If it be said, that Jesus, having tried the other plan, turned at length to this ; I answer, that the thing is said without evidence; against evidence ; that it was competent to the rest to have done the same, yet that nothing of this sort was thought of by any. * Matt. x. 1. Mark iii. 14. Luke vi. 12. f Chap. vi. 70. t Chap. xx. 24; vi. 71. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 315 CHAPTER VI. One argument, which has been much relied upon (but not more than its just weight deserves), is the conformity of the facts occasionally mentioned or referred to in Scripture, with the state of things in those times, as represented by foreign and independent accounts ; which conformity proves, that the writers of the New Testament possessed a species of local knowledge, which could belong only to an inhabitant of that country, and to one living in that age. This argument, if well made out by examples, is very little short of proving the absolute genuineness of the writings. It carries them up to the age of the reputed authors, to an age in which it must have been difficult to impose upon the Christian public, forgeries in the names of those authors, and in which there is no evidence that any forgeries were attempted. It proves, at least, that the books, whoever were the authors of them, were composed by persons living in the time and country in which these things were transacted ; and consequently capable, by their situation, of being well informed of the facts which they relate. And the argument is stronger when applied to the New Testament, than it is in the case of almost any other writings, by reason of the mixed nature of the allusions which this book contains. The scene of action is not confined to a single country, but displayed in the greatest cities of the Roman empire. Allusions are made to the manners and principles of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Jews. This variety renders a forgery proportionably more difficult, especially to writers of a posterior age. A Greek or Roman Christian, who lived in the second or third century, would have been wanting in Jewish literature; a Jewish convert in those ages would have been equally deficient in the knowledge of Greece and Rome # . This, however, is an argument which depends entirely upon an induction of particulars; and as, consequently, it carries with it little force, without a view of the instances upon which it is built, I have to request the reader's attention to a detail of examples, distinctly and articulately proposed. In collecting these examples, I have done no more than epito¬ mise the first volume of the first part of Dr. Lardner’s Credibility of the Gospel History. And I have brought the argument within its present compass, first, by passing over some of his sections in which the accordancy appeared to me less certain, or upon subjects not suffi¬ ciently appropriate or circumstantial; secondly, by contracting every section into the fewest words possible, contenting myself for the most part with a mere apposition of passages; and thirdly, by omitting many disquisitions, which though learned and accurate, are not abso¬ lutely necessary to the understanding or verification of the argument. The writer principally made use of in the inquiry, is Josephus. Josephus was born at Jerusalem four years after Christ’s ascension. He wrote his history of the Jewish war some time after the destruction of Jerusalem, which happened in the year of our Lord lnx, that is, thirty-seven years after the ascension; and his history of the Jews he finished in the year xcm, that is, sixty years after the ascension. At the head of each article, I have referred, by figures included in brackets, to the page of Dr. Lardner’s volume, where the section, from which the abridgment is made, begins. The edition used, is that of 1741. I. [p. 14.] Matt. ii. 22. “When he (Joseph) heard that Archelaus did reign in Judea, in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither : notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee.” In this passage it is asserted, that Archelaus succeeded Herod in Judea; and it is implied, that his power did not extend to Galilee. Now we learn from Josephus, that Herod the Great, whose dominion included all the land of Israel, appointed Archelaus his successor in * Michaelis’s Introduction to the New Testament (Marsh’s translation), c. ii. sect. xi. 316 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. Judea , and assigned the rest of his dominions to other sons ; and that this disposition was ratified, as to the main parts of it, by the Roman emperor * * * § . Saint Matthew says, that Archelaus reigned , was king in Judea. Agreeably to this, we are informed by Josephus, not only that Herod appointed Archelaus his successor in Judea, but that he also appointed him with the title of King; and the Greek verb fiaaiXevei, which the evangelist uses to denote the government and rank of Archelaus, is used likewise by J osephus f. The cruelty of Archelaus's character, which is not obscurely intimated by the evangelist, agrees with divers particulars in his history, preserved by Josephus :—“ In the tenth year of his government, the chief of the Jews and Samaritans, not being able to endure his cruelty and tyranny, presented complaints against him to Cmsar J.” II. Q>. 19.] Luke iii. 1. “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,—Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip, tetrarch of Iturea and of the region of Trachonitis,—the word of God came unto John.” By the will of Herod the Great, and the decree of Augustus thereupon, his two sons were appointed, one (Herod Antipas) tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea, and the other (Philip) tetrarch of Trachonitis and the neighbouring countries §. We have therefore these two persons in the situations in which Saint Luke places them ; and also, that they were in these situations in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, in other words, that they continued in possession of their territories and titles until that time, and afterward, appears from a passage of Josephus, which relates of Herod, “ that he was removed by Caligula, the successor of Tiberius || ; and of Philip, that he died in the twentieth year of Tiberius, when he had governed Trachonitis and Batanea and Gaulanitis thirty-seven years . 46.] Acts xxv. 13. “ And after certain days, king Agrippa and Berenice came to Cesarea, to salute Festus.” By this passage we are in effect told that Agrippa was a king, but not of Judea; for he came to salute Festus, who at this time administered the government of that country at Cesarea. Now, how does the history of the age correspond with this account ? The Agrippa here spoken of, was the son of Herod Agrippa, mentioned in the last article ; but that he did not succeed to his father’s kingdom, nor even recovered Judea, which had been a part of it, we learn by the information of Josephus, who relates of him that, when his father was dead, Claudius intended, at first, to have put him immediately in possession of his father’s domi¬ nions ; but that, Agrippa being then but seventeen years of age, the emperor was persuaded to alter his mind, and appointed Cuspius Fadus prefect of Judea and the whole kingdom J ; which Fadus was succeeded by Tiberius Alexander, Cumanus, Felix, Festus §. But that, though disappointed of his father’s kingdom, in which was included Judea, he was neverthe¬ less rightly styled King Agrippa, and that he was in possession of considerable territories bordering upon Judea, we gather from the same authority : for, after several successive dona¬ tions of country, “ Claudius, at the same time that he sent Felix to be procurator of Judea, promoted Agrippa from Chalcis to a greater kingdom , giving to him the tetrarchie which had * Antiq. xviii. c. 7. sect. 10. f lb. xix. c. 5. sect. 1. + lb. xix. c. 9. ad fin. § lb. xx. De Bell. lib. ii. 318 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. been Philip’s ; and he added moreover the kingdom of Lysanias, and the province that had belonged to Varus Saint Paul addresses this person as a Jew : “ King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets ? I know that thou believest/’ As the son of Herod Agrippa, who is described by Josephus to have been a zealous Jew, it is reasonable to suppose that he maintained the same profession. But what is more material to remark, because it is more close and circumstantial, is, that Saint Luke, speaking of the father (Acts xii. 1—3), calls him Herod the king, and gives an example of the exercise of his authority at Jerusalem : speaking of the son (xxv. 13), he calls him king, but not of Judea ; which distinction agrees correctly with the history. VIII. Qp. 51.] Acts xiii. 6. “ And when they had gone through the isle (Cyprus) to Paphos, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Bar-jesus, which was with the deputy of the country, Sergius Paulus, a prudent man.” The word, which is here translated deputy, signifies proconsul , and upon this word our observation is founded. The provinces of the Roman empire were of two kinds ; those be¬ longing to the emperor, in which the governor was called propraetor ; and those belonging to the senate, in which the governor was called proconsul. And this was a regular distinction. Now it appears from Dio Cassius f, that the province of Cyprus, which in the original dis¬ tribution was assigned to the emperor, had been transferred to the senate, in exchange for some others; and that, after this exchange, the appropriate title of the Roman governor was proconsul. Ib. xviii. 12. Qp. 55.] “ And when Gallio was deputy (proconsul) of Achaia.” The propriety of the title “proconsul” is in this passage still more critical. For the pro¬ vince of Achaia, after passing from the senate to the emperor, had been restored again by the emperor Claudius to the senate (and consequently its government had become proconsular ) only six or seven years before the time in which this transaction is said to have taken place J. And what confines with strictness the appellation to the time is, that Achaia under the following reign ceased to be a Roman province at all. IX. Qp. 152.] It appears, as well from the general constitution of a Roman province, as from what Josephus delivers concerning the state of Judea in particular §, that the power of life and death resided exclusively in the Roman governor; but that the Jews, neverthe¬ less, had magistrates and a council, invested with a subordinate and municipal authority. This economy is discerned in every part of the Gospel narrative of our Saviour’s crucifixion. X. Qp. 203.] Acts ix. 31. “Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea, and Galilee, and Samaria.” This rest synchronizes with the attempt of Caligula to place his statue in the temple of Jerusalem; the threat of which outrage produced amongst the Jews a consternation that, for a season, diverted their attention from every other object ||. XI. [p. 218.] Acts xxi. 30. “ And they took Paul, and drew him out of the temple ; and forthwith the doors were shut. And as they went about to kill him, tidings came to the chief captain of the band , that all Jerusalem was in an uproar. Then the chief captain came near, and took him, and commanded him to be bound with two chains, and demanded who he was, and what he had done; and some cried one thing, and some another, among the multitude : and, when he could not know the certainty for the tumult, he commanded him to be carried into the castle. And when he came upon the stairs , so it was, that he was borne of the soldiers for the violence of the people.” In this quotation, we have the band of Roman soldiers at Jerusalem, their office (to suppress tumults), the castle, the stairs, both, as it should seem, adjoining to the temple. Let us inquire whether we can find these particulars in any other record of that age and place. Joseph de Bell. lib. v. c. 5. sect. 8. “ Antonia was situated at the angle of the western and northern porticoes of the outer temple. It was built upon a rock fifty cubits high, steep on all sides.—On that side where it joined to the porticoes of the temple, there were stairs reaching to each portico, by which the guard descended; for there was always lodged * De Bell. lib. ii. c. 12. ad fin. f Lib. liv. ad A. U. 732 X Suet, in Claud, c. xxv. Dio, lib. Ixi. § Antiq. lib xx. c., 8. sect. 5. c. 1. sect. 2. || Joseph, de Bell. lib. xi. c. 13. sect. 1. 3, 4. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 319 here a Roman legion , and posting themselves in their armour in several places in the por¬ ticoes, they kept a watch on the people on the feast-days to prevent all disorders ; for, as the temple was a guard to the city, so was Antonia to the temple.” XII. Q). 224-3 Ads? i y * 1* 44 And as they spake unto the people, the priests, and the captain of the temple , and the Sadducees came upon them.” Here we have a public officer, under the title of captain of the temple, and he probably a Jew, as he accompanied the priests and Sadducees in apprehending the apostles. Joseph, de Bell. lib. ii. c. 17- sect. 2. 44 And at the temple , Eleazar, the son of Annanias the high priest, a young man of a bold and resolute disposition, then captain , persuaded those who performed the sacred ministrations, not to receive the gift or sacrifice of any stranger.” XIII. [p. 225.3 Acts xxv. 12. 44 Then Festus, when he had conferred with the council , answered, Hast thou appealed unto Cassar ? unto Csesar slialt thou go.” That it was usual for the Roman presidents to have a council consisting of their friends, and other chief Romans in the province, appears expressly in the following passage of Cicero’s oration against Verres: 44 Illud negare posses, aut nunc negabis, te, concilio tuo dimisso, viris primariis, qui in consilio C. Sacerdotis fuerant, tibique esse volebant, remotis, de re judicata judicasse ?” XIV. Qp. 235-3 Acts xvi. 13. 44 And (at Philippi) on the Sabbath we went out of the city by a river-side, where prayer was wont to be made,” or where a 7 rpoo-et^, oratory, or place of prayer, was allowed. The particularity to be remarked, is the situation of the place where prayer was wont to be made, viz. by a river-side. Philo, describing the conduct of the Jews of Alexandria, on a certain public occasion, relates of them, that, 44 early in the morning, flocking out of the gates of the city, they go to the neighbouring shores (for the npocrevxcu were destroyed), and, standing in a most pure place, they lift up their voices with one accord Josephus gives us a decree of the city of Halicarnassus, permitting the Jews to build oratories; a part of which decree runs thus :— 44 We ordain, that the Jews, who are willing, men and women, do observe the Sabbaths, and perform sacred rites according to the Jewish laws, and build oratories by the sea-side t.” Tertullian, among other Jewish rites and customs, such as feasts, sabbaths, fasts, and unleavened bread, mentions 44 orationes litoralesf that is, prayers by the river-side XV. Q). 255-3 Acts xxvi. 5. 44 After the most straitest sect of our religion, I lived a Pharisee.” Joseph, de Bell. lib. i. c. 5. sect. 2. 44 The Pharisees were reckoned the most religious of any of the Jews, and to be the most exact and skilful in explaining the laws .’ 1 In the original, there is an agreement not only in the sense but in the expression, it being the same Greek adjective, which is rendered 44 strait” in the Acts, and 44 exact” in Josephus. XVI. Qd. 255.3 y ii- 3, 4. 44 The Pharisees and all the Jews, except they wash, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders; and many other thing there be which they have received to hold.” Joseph. Antiq. lib. xiii. c. 10. sect. 6 . 44 The Pharisees have delivered to the people many institutions, as received from the fathers, which are not written in the law of Moses.” XVII. Q>. 259-3 Acts xxiii. 8 . 44 For the Sadducees say, that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both.” Joseph, de Bell. lib. ii. c. 8 . sect 14. 44 They (the Pharisees) believe every soul to be immortal, but that the soul of the good only passes into another body, and that the soul of the wicked is punished with eternal punishment.” On the other hand, (Antiq. lib. xviii. c. i. sect. 4.) 44 It is the opinion of the Sadducees, that souls perish with the bodies.” XVIII. £p. 268-3 Acts v. 17- 44 Then the high priest rose up, and all they that were with him (which is the sect of the Sadducees), and were filled with indignation.” Saint Luke here intimates, that the high priest was a Sadducee; which is a character one would not have expected to meet with in that station. This circumstance, remarkable as it is, was not however without examples. Joseph. Antiq. lib. xiii. c. 10. sect. 6 , 7* 44 John Hyrcanus, high priest of the Jews, * Philo in Flacc. p. 382. •f* Joseph. Antiq. lib. xiv. c. 10. sect. 24. X Tertull. ad. Nat. lib.i. c. 13. £20 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. forsook the Pharisees upon a disgust, and joined himself to the party of the Sadducees.” This high priest died one hundred and seven years before the Christian era. Again, (Antiq. lib. xx. c. 8. sect. 1.) “ This Ananus the younger, who, as we have said just now, had received the high priesthood, was fierce and haughty in his behaviour, and, above all men, hold and daring, and moreover, was of the sect of the Sadducees .” This high priest lived little more than twenty years after the transaction in the Acts. XIX. Q). 282.] Luke ix. 51. “ And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before his face. And they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him. And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem.” Joseph. Antiq. lib. xx. c. 5. sect. 1. a It was the custom of the Galileans, who went up to the holy city at the feasts, to travel through the country of Samaria. As they were in their journey, some inhabitants of the village called Ginaea, which lies on the borders of Samaria and the great plain, falling upon them, killed a great many of them. XX. ^p. 278.] John iv. 20. “ Our fathers,” said the Samaritan woman, “ worshipped in this mountain ; and ye say, that Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Joseph. Antiq. lib. xviii. c. 5. sect. 1. “ Commanding them to meet him at mount Gerizzim , which is by them (the Samaritans) esteemed the most sacred of all mountains.'” XXI. [p. 312.] Matt. xxvi. 3. “Then assembled together the chief priests, and the elders of the people, unto the palace of the high priest, icho was called Caiaphas.” That Caiaphas was high priest, and high priest throughout the presidentship of Pontius Pilate, and consequently at this time, appears from the following account:—He was made high priest by Valerius Gratus, predecessor of Pontius Pilate, and was removed from his office by Vitellius, president of Syria, after Pilate was sent away out of the province of Judea. Josephus relates the advancement of Caiaphas to the high priesthood in this manner: “ Gratus gave the high priesthood to Simon, the son of Camithus. He, having enjoyed this honour not above a year, was succeeded by Joseph, who is also called Caiaphas *. After this, Gratus went away for Rome, having been eleven years in Judea; and Pontius Pilate came thither as his successor. Of the removal of Caiaphas from his office, Josephus likewise after¬ ward informs us; and connects it with a circumstance which fixes the time to a date subsequent to the determination of Pilate’s government— u Vitellius,” he tells us, “ ordered Pilate to repair to Rome; and after that , went up himself to Jerusalem, and then gave direction concerning several matters. And having done these things, he took away the priesthood from the high priest Joseph, who is called Caiaphas t.” XXII. (Michaelis, c. xi. sect. 11.) Acts xxiii. 4. “And they that stood by, said, Revilest thou God’s high priest ? Then said Paul, I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest.” Now, upon inquiry into the history of the age, it turns out, that Ananias, of whom this is spoken, was, in truth, not the high priest, though he was sitting in judgment in that assumed capacity. The case was, that he had formerly holden the office, and had been deposed; that the person who succeeded him had been murdered; that another was not yet appointed to the station; and that, during the vacancy, he had, of his own authority, taken upon himself the discharge of the office This singular situation of the high priest¬ hood took place during the interval between the death of Jonathan, who was murdered by order of Felix, and the accession of Ismael, who was invested with the high priesthood by Agrippa; and precisely in this interval it happened that St. Paul was apprehended, and brought before the Jewish council. XXIII. Q). 323.] Matt. xxvi. 59. “ Now the chief priests and elders, and all the council, sought false witness against him.” Joseph. Antiq. lib. xviii. c. 15. sect. 3, 4. “ Then might be seen the high priests themselves , with ashes on their heads, and their breasts naked.” The agreement here consists in speaking of the high priests or chief priests (for the name in the original is the same), in the plural number , when in strictness, there was only one high * Antiq. lib. xviii. c. 2. sect. 2. J Ibid. lib. xvii. c. 5. sect. 3. X Joseph. Antiq. 1. xx. c. 5. sect. 2 ; c. 6, sect. 2 ; c. 9. sect. 2. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. .321 priest: which may be considered as a proof, that the evangelists were habituated to the manner of speaking then in use, because they retain it when it is neither accurate nor just. For the sake of brevity, I have put down, from Josephus, only a single example of the application of this title in the plural number; but it is his usual style. Ib. £p. 871.]] Luke iii. 1. “Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John.” There is a passage in Josephus very nearly parallel to this, and which may at least serve to vindicate the evan¬ gelist from objection, with respect to his giving the title of high priest specifically to two persons at the same time : “ Quadratus sent two others of the most powerful men of the Jews, as also the high priests Jonathan and Ananias # .” That Annas was a person in an eminent station, and possessed an authority co-ordinate with, or next to, that of the high priest properly so called, may be inferred from St. John’s Gospel, which, in the history of Christ s crucifixion, relates that “ the soldiers led him away to Annas firstAnd this might be noticed as an example of undesigned coincidence in the two evangelists. Again, |_p. 870.] Acts iv. 6. Annas is called the high priest, though Caiaphas w T as in the office of the high priesthood. I 11 like manner, in Josephus “ Joseph, the son of Gorion, and the high priest Ananus, were chosen to be supreme governors of all things in the city.” Yet Ananus, though here called the high priest Ananus, was not then in the office of the high priesthood. The truth is, there is an indeterminateness in the use of this title in the Gospel; sometimes it is applied exclusively to the person who held the office at the time : sometimes to one or two more, who probably shared with him some of the powers or functions of the office; and, sometimes, to such of the priests as were eminent by their station or character §; and there is the very same indeterminateness in Josephus. XXIV. Q). 347.] John xix. 19, 20. “And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. ’ That such was the custom of the Homans on these occasions, appears from passages of Suetonius and Dio Cassius : “ Patrem familias—canibus objecit, cum hoc titulo , Impie locutus parmularius.” Suet. Domit. cap. x. And in Dio Cassius we have the following : “ Having led him through the midst of the court or assembly, with a writing signifying the cause of his death , and afterward crucifying him.” Book liv. Ib. “ And it w r as written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.” That it was also usual about this time in Jerusalem, to set up advertisements in different languages, is gathered from the account which Josephus gives of an expostulatory message from Titus to the Jews, when the city was almost in his hands ; in which he says, Did ye not erect pillars with inscriptions on them, in the Greek and in our language , “ Let no one pass beyond these bounds.” XXV. [p. 3f)2.] Matt, xxvii. 26. “ V T hen he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.” The followin g passages occur in Josephus : “Being beaten , they were crucified opposite to the citadel ||.” “ Whom, having first scourged with whips , he crucified one. Joseph. Antiq. W. c. 8. sect. 21. “He that acts contrary hereto, let him receive forty stripes, wanting one , from the public officer.” The coincidence here is singular, because the law allowed forty stripes:—“ Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed.” Deut. xxv. 3. It proves that the author of the Epistle to the Corinthians was guided not by books, but by facts; because his statement agrees with the actual custom, even when that custom deviated from the written law, and from what he must have learnt by consulting the Jewish code, as set forth in the Old Testament. XXXII. Qp. 490.] Luke iii. 12. “Then came also publicans to be baptized.” From this quotation, as well as from the history of Levi or Matthew (Luke, v. 29), and of Zaccheus (Luke, xix. 2), it appears, that the publicans or tax-gatherers were, frequently at least, if not always, Jews : which, as the country was then under a Roman government, and the taxes were paid to the Romans, was a circumstance not to be expected. That it was the truth however of the case appears from a short passage of Josephus. De Bell. lib. ii. c. 14. sect. 45.—“ But, Floras not restraining these practices by his authority, the chief men of the Jews, among whom was John the publican, not knowing well what course to take, wait upon Florus, and give him eight talents of silver to stop the building.” XXXIII. Qp. 496.] Acts xxii. 25. “ And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said unto the centurion that stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman , and uncondemned ?” EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 323 “ Facinus est vinciri civem Romanum ; scelus verberari.” Cic. in Verr. “^Caedebatur virgis, in medio foro Messanee, civis Romanus, Judices: cum interea null us gemitus, nulla yox alia, istius miseri inter dolorem crepitumque plagarum audiebatur, nisi ha3c, Civis Romanus sum.” XXXIY. |[p. 513.] Acts xxii. 27- “Then the chief captain came, and said unto him (Paul), Tell me, art thou a Roman? He said, Y r ea.” The circumstance here to be noticed is, that a Jew was a Roman citizen. Joseph. Antiq. lib. xiv. c. 10. sect. 13. “Lucius Lentulus, the consul, declared, I have dismissed from the service the Jewish Roman citizens , who observe the rites of the Jewish religion at Ephesus.’” Acts, xxii. 28. “ And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom .” Dio Cassius, lib. lx. “ This privilege, which had been bought formerly at a great price, became so cheap, that it was commonly said, a man might be made a Roman citizen for a few pieces of broken glass.” XXXY. Q). 521.] Acts xxviii. 16. “And when we came to Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guard; but Paul was suffered to dwell by him¬ self, with a soldier that kept him.” With which join ver. 20. “ For the hope of Israel, I am bound with this chain.” “ Quemadmodiim eadem catena ct custodiam et militem copulat; sic ista, quae tarn dissi- milia sunt, pariter incedunt.” Seneca, Ep. v. “ Proconsul aestimare solet, utriim in carcerem recipienda sit persona, an militi tradenda.” Ulpian. 1. i. sect. De Custod. et Exhib. Reor. In the confinement of Agrippa by the order of Tiberius, Antonia managed, that the cen¬ turion who presided over the guards, and the soldier to whom Agrippa was to be bound , might be men of mild character. (Joseph. Antiq. lib. xviii. c. 7- sect. 5.) After the accession of Caligula, Agrippa also, like Paul, was suffered to dwell, yet as a prisoner, in his own house. XXXYI. Q>. 531.] Acts xxvii. 1. “ And when it was determined that we should sail into Italy, they delivered Paul, and certain other prisoners, unto one named Julius.” Since not only Paul, but certain other prisoners, were sent by the same ship into Italy, the text must be considered as carrying with it an intimation, that the sending of persons from Judea to be tried at Rome, was an ordinary practice. That in truth it was so, is made out by a variety of examples which the writings of Josephus furnish; and, amongst others, by the following, which comes near both to the time and the subject of the instance in the Acts. “ Felix, for some slight offence, bound and sent to Rome several priests of his acquaintance, and very good and honest men, to answer for themselves to Caesar.” Joseph, in Yit. sect. 3. XXXYII. Q). 539.] Acts xi. 27- “ And in these days came prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch; and there stood up one of them, named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be a great dearth throughout all the world (or all the country) ; which came to pass in the days of Claudius Ccesar.” Joseph. Antiq. 1. xx. c. 4. sect. 2. “ In their time (i. e. about the fifth or sixth year of Claudius) a great dearth happened in Judea.” XXXYIII. Q). 555.] Acts xviii. 1, 2. “ Because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome.” Suet. Claud, c. xxv. “ Judaeos, impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes, Roma expulit.” XXXIX. Q>. 064.] Acts v. 37- . “ After this man, rose up Judas of Galilee, in the days of the taxing, and drew away much people after him.” Joseph, de Bell. 1. vii. “ He (viz. the person who in another place is called, by Josephus, Judas the Galilean or Judas of Galilee) persuaded not a few not to enrol themselves, when Cyrenius the censor was sent into Judea.” XL. [p. 942.] Acts xxi. 38. “ Art not thou that Egyptian which, before these days, madest an uproar, and leddest out into the wilderness four thousand men that were murderers ?” Joseph, de Bell. 1. ii. c. 13. sect. 5. “ But the Egyptian false prophet brought a yet heavier disaster upon the Jews ; for this impostor, coming into the country, and gaining the y 2 324 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. reputation of a prophet, gathered together thirty thousand men, who were deceived by him. Having brought them round out of the wilderness, up to the mount of Olives, he intended from thence to make his attack upon Jerusalem; but Felix, coming suddenly upon him with the Roman soldiers, prevented the attack.—A great number, (or as it should rather be rendered) the greatest part of those that were with him, were either slain or taken prisoners.” In these two passages, the designation of this impostor, an “ Egyptian,” without his proper name; “ the wilderness;” his escape, though his followers were destroyed ; the time of the transaction, in the presidentship of Felix, which could not be any long time before the words in Luke are supposed to have been spoken ; are circumstances of close corre¬ spondency. There is one, and only one, point of disagreement, and that is, in the number of his followers, which in the Acts are called four thousand, and by Josephus thirty thou¬ sand : but, beside that the names of numbers, more than any other words, are liable to the errors of transcribers, we are in the present instance under the less concern to reconcile the evangelist with Josephus, as Josephus is not, in this point, consistent with himself. For whereas, in the passage here quoted, he calls the number thirty thousand, and tells us that the greatest part, or a great number (according as his words are rendered) of those that were with him, were destroyed; in his Antiquities, he represents four hundred to have been killed upon this occasion, and two hundred taken prisoners* : which certainly was not the “ greatest part,” nor “ a great part,” nor “ a great number,” out of thirty thousand. It is probable also, that Lysias and Josephus spoke of the expedition in its different stages : Lysias, of those who followed the Egyptian out of Jerusalem; Josephus, of all who were collected about him afterward, from different quarters. XLI. (Lardners Jewish and Heathen Testimonies, vol. iii. p. 21.) Acts xvii. 22. “Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars-hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious; for, as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” Diogenes Laertius , who wrote about the year 210, in his history of Epimenides, who is supposed to have flourished nearly six hundred years before Christ, relates of him the following story : that, being invited to Athens for the purpose, he delivered the city from a pestilence in this manner:—“ Taking several sheep, some black, others white, he had them up to the Areopagus, and then let them go where they would, and gave orders to those who followed them, wherever any of them should lie down, to sacrifice it to the god to whom it belonged; and so the plague ceased.—“ Hence,” says the historian, “ it has come to pass, that to this present time may he found in the boroughs of the Athenians anonymous altars: a memorial of the expiation then madet.” These altars, it may be presumed, were called anonymous , because there was not the name of any particular deity inscribed upon them. Pausanias , who wrote before the end of the second century, in his description of Athens, having mentioned an altar of Jupiter Olympius, adds, “ And nigh unto it is an altar of unknown gods And in another place, he speaks “ of altars of gods called unknown §.” Philostratus , who wrote in the beginning of the third century, records it as an observation of A pollonius Tyanagus, “ That it was wise to speak well of all the gods, especially at Athens , where altars of unknown demons were erected ||.” The author of the dialogue Philopatris , by many supposed to have been Lucian, who wrote about the year 170, by others some anonymous Heathen writer of the fourth century, makes Critias swear by the unknown god of Athens ; and, near the end of the dialogue, has these words, “ But let us find out the unknown god at Athens , and, stretching our hands to heaven, offer to him our praises and thanksgivings*j].” This is a very curious and a very important coincidence. It appears beyond controversy, that altars with this inscription were existing at Athens, at the time when Saint Paul is alleged to have been there. It seems also (which is very worthy of observation), that this inscription was peculiar to the Athenians. There is no evidence that there were altars T.ib. 20 c. 7. sect. 6. 4 In Epimenide, 1. i. scgm. 110. J Pans. 1. v. p. 412. § Ibid. 1. i. p. 4. || Philos. Apoll. Tyan. 1. vi. c. 3. H Lucian, in Philop. tom. ii. Grsev. p. 767. 780. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 325 inscribed 44 to the unknown god” in any other country. Supposing the history of Saint Paul to have been a fable, how is it possible that such a writer as the author of the Acts of the Apostles was, should hit upon a circumstance so extraordinary, and introduce it by an allusion so suitable to Saint Paul’s office and character ? The examples here collected will be sufficient, I hope, to satisfy us, that the writers of the Christian history knew something of what they were writing about. The argument is also strengthened by the following considerations :— I. That these agreements appear, not only in articles of public history, but sometimes, in minute, recondite, and very peculiar circumstances, in which, of all others, a forger is most likely to have been found tripping. II. That the destruction of Jerusalem, which took place forty years after the commence¬ ment of the Christian institution, produced such a change in the state of the country, and the condition of the Jews, that a writer who was unacquainted with the circumstances of the nation before that event, would find it difficult to avoid mistakes, in endeavouring to give detailed accounts of transactions connected with those circumstances, forasmuch as he could no longer have a living exemplar to copy from. III. That there appears, in the writers of the New Testament, a knowledge of the affairs of those times, which we do not find in authors of later ages. In particular, 44 many of the Christian writers of the second and third centuries, and of the following ages, had false no¬ tions concerning the state of Judea, between the nativity of Jesus, and the destruction of Jerusalem*.” Therefore they could not have composed our histories. Amidst so many conformities, we are not to wonder that we meet with some difficulties. The principal of these I will put down, together with the solutions which they have received. But in doing this, I must be contented with a brevity better suited to the limits of my volume than to the nature of a controversial argument. For the historical proofs of my assertions, and for the Greek criticisms upon which some of them are founded, I refer the reader to the second volume of the first part of Dr. Lardners large work. I. The taxing during which Jesus was born, was 44 first made,” as we read, according to our translation, in Saint Luke, 44 whilst Cyrenius was governor of Syria~f~.” Now it turns out that Cyrenius was not governor of Syria until twelve, or at the soonest, ten years after the birth of Christ; and that a taxing, census, or assessment, was made in Judea, in the be ginning of his government. The charge, therefore, brought against the evangelist is, that intending to refer to this taxing, he has misplaced the date of it by an error of ten or twelve years. The answer to the accusation is found in his using the word 44 first:”— 44 And this taxing was first made :” for, according to the mistake imputed to the evangelist, this word could have no signification whatever; it could have had no place in his narrative ; because, let it relate to what it will, taxing, census, enrolment, or assessment, it imports that the writer had more than one of these in contemplation. It acquits him therefore of the charge : it is inconsistent with the supposition of his knowing only of the taxing in the beginning of Cyrenius’s government. And if the evangelist knew (which this word proves that he did) of some other taxing beside that, it is too much, for the sake of convicting him of a mistake, to lay it down as certain that he intended to refer to that. The sentence in Saint Luke may be construed thus : 44 This was the first assessment (or enrolment) of Cyrenius, governor of Syria^the words 44 governor of Syria” being used after the name of Cyrenius as his addition or title. And this title belonging to him at the time of writing the account, was naturally enough subjoined to his name, though acquired after the transaction which the account describes. A modern writer who was not very exact in * Lardner, part i. vol. ii. p. 960. +• Chap. ii. ver. 2. X If the word which we render “ first,” be rendered 44 before,” which it has been strongly contended that the Greek idiom allows of, the whole difficulty vanishes : for then the passage would be ,— ei Now this taxing was made before Cyrenius was governor of Syria;” which corre¬ sponds with the chronology. But I rather choose to argue, that, however the word “first” be rendered, to give it a meaning at all, it militates with the objection. In this I think there can be no mistake. 32 G EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. the choice of his expressions, in relating the affairs of the East Indies, might easily say, that such a thing was done by Governor Hastings; though, in truth, the thing had been done by him before his advancement to the station from which he received the name of governor. And this, as we contend, is precisely the inaccuracy which has produced the difficulty in Saint Luke. At any rate, it appears from the form of the expression, that he had two taxings or enrolments in contemplation. And if Cyrenius had been sent upon this business into Judea, before he became governor of Syria (against which supposition there is no proof, but rather external evidence of an enrolment going on about this time under some person or other # ), then the census, on all hands acknowledged to have been made by him in the beginning of his government, would form a second, so as to occasion the other to be called the first . II. Another chronological objection arises upon a date assigned in the beginning of the third chapter of Saint Lukef. “ Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, —Jesus began to be about thirty years of age:” for, supposing Jesus to have been born, as Saint Matthew and Saint Luke also himself, relate, in the time of Herod, he must, according to the dates given in Josephus and by the Roman historians, have been at least thirty-one years of age in the fifteenth year of Tiberius. If he was bora, as St. Matthew's narrative intimates, one or two years before Herod's death, he would have been thirty-two or thirty- three years old at that time. This is the difficulty: the solution turns upon an alteration in the construction of the Greek. Saint Luke’s words in the original are allowed, by the general opinion of learned men, to signify, not u that Jesus began to be about thirty years of age,” but “ that he was about thirty years of age when he began his ministry.” This construction being admitted, the adverb “ about” gives us all the latitude we want, and more especially when applied, as it is in the present instance, to a decimal number; for such numbers, even without this qualifying addition, are often used in a laxer sense than is here contended for J. III. Acts v. 36. “ For before these days rose up Theudas, boasting himself to be some¬ body ; to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined themselves: who was slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were scattered and brought to nought.” Josephus has preserved the account of an impostor of the name of Theudas, who created some disturbances, and was slain; but according to the date assigned to this man’s appear¬ ance (in which, however, it is very possible that Josephus may have been mistaken) §, it must have been, at the least, seven years after Gamaliel’s speech, of which this text is a part, was delivered. It has been replied to the objection [|, that there might be two impostors of this name : and it has been observed, in order to give a general probability to the solution, that the same thing appears to have happened in other instances of the same kind. It is proved from Josephus, that there were not fewer than four persons of the name of Simon within forty years, and not fewer than three of the name of Judas within ten years, who were all leaders of insurrections : and it is likewise recorded by this historian, that upon the death of Herod the Great (which agrees very well with the time of the commotion referred to by Gamaliel, and with his manner of stating that time, “ before these days”), there were innumerable disturbances in Judea^[. Archbishop L T sher was of opinion, that one of the three Judases above-mentioned was Gamaliel’s Theudas** ; and that with a less * Josephus (Antiq. xvii. c. 2. sect. 6.) has this re¬ markable passage : “ AVhen therefore the whole Jewish nation took an oath to he faithful to Csesar, and the in¬ terests of the king.” This transaction corresponds in the course of the history with the time of Christ’s birth. What is called a census, and which we render taxing, was delivering upon oath an account of their property. This might be accompanied with an oath of fidelity, or might be mistaken by Josephus for it. f Lardner, part. i. vol. ii. p. 768. + Livy, speaking of the peace which the conduct of Romulus had procured to the state, during the whole reign of his successor (Numa), has these words a :—“ Ab illo enim profectis viribus datis tantum valuit, ut, in qua- draginta deinde annos, tutam pacem haberet:” yet afterward in the same chapter, “ Romulus,” he say3, “ septem et triginta regnavit annos. Numa tres et qua- draginta.” § Miehaelis’s Introduction to the New Testament (Marsh’s translation), vol. i. p. 61/ || Lardner, part i. vol. ii. p. 922. Antiq. 1. xvii. c. 12. sect. 4. ** Annals, p. 797. a Liv. Hist. c. i. sect. 16. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. variation of the name than we actually find in the Gospels, where one of the twelve apostles is called, by Luke, Judas; and by Mark, Thaddeus*. Origen, however he came at his information, appears to have believed that there was an impostor of the name of TheudaS before the nativity of Christf. IV. Matt. xxiii. 34. “ Wherefore, behold I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city; that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias , son of Barachias , whom ye sleic between the temple and the altar.” There is a Zacharias, whose death is related in the second book of Chronicles^:, in a manner which perfectly supports our Saviour’s allusion. But this Zacharias was the son of Jehoiada. There is also Zacharias the prophet; who was the son of Barachiah, and is so described in the superscription of his prophecy, but of whose death we have no account. I have little doubt, but that the first Zacharias was the person spoken of by our Saviour; and that the name of the father has been since added, or changed, by some one, who took it from the title of the prophecy, which happened to be better known to him than the history in the Chronicles. There is likewise a Zacharias, the son of Baruch, related by Josephus to have been slain in the temple a few years before the destruction of Jerusalem. It has been insinuated, that the words put into our Saviour's mouth contain a reference to this transaction, and were composed by some writer, who either confounded the time of the transaction with owr Saviour’s age, or inadvertently overlooked the anachronism. Now suppose it to have been so; suppose these words to have been suggested by the transaction related in Josephus, and to have been falsely ascribed to Christ; and observe what extraordinary coincidences (accidentally, as it must in that case have been) attend the forger's mistake. First, that we have a Zacharias in the book of Chronicles, whose death, and the manner of it, corresponds with the allusion. Secondly, that although the name of this person's father be erroneously put down in the Gospel, yet we have a way of accounting for the error by showing another Zacharias in the Jewish Scriptures much better known than the former, whose patronymic was actually that which appears in the text. Every one who thinks upon the subject, will find these to be circumstances which could not have met together in a mistake, which did not proceed from the circumstances themselves. I have noticed, I think, all the difficulties of this kind. They are few: some of them admit of a clear, others of a probable solution. The reader will compare them with the number, the variety, the closeness, and the satisfactoriness, of the instances which are to be set against them; and he will remember the scantiness, in many cases, of our intelligence, and that difficulties always attend imperfect information. * Luke vi. 16. Mark iii. 1 8. k Orig. cont. Cels. p. 44. ^ “ And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada the priest, which stood above the people, and said unto them, Thus saith God, Why transgress ye the commandments of the Lord, that ye cannot prosper? Because ye have forsaken the Lord, he hath also forsaken you. And they conspired against him, and stoned him with stones, at the commandment of the king , in the court of the house of the Lord.” 2 Chron. xxiv. 20, 2L EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. CHAPTER VIE UNDESIGNED COINCIDENCES. Between the letters which bear the name of Saint Paul in our collection, and his history in the Acts of the Apostles, there exist many notes of correspondency. The simple perusal of the writings is sufficient to prove that neither the history was taken from the letters, nor the letters from the history. And the undesignedness of the agreements (which undesigned¬ ness is gathered from their latency, their minuteness, their obliquity, the suitableness of the circumstances in which they consist, to the places in which those circumstances occur, and the circuitous references by which they are traced out) demonstrates that they have not been produced by meditation, or by any fraudulent contrivance. But coincidences, from which these causes are excluded, and which are too close and numerous to be accounted for by acci¬ dental concurrences of fiction, must necessarily have truth for their foundation. This argument appeared to my mind of so much value (especially for its assuming nothing beside the existence of the books), that I have pursued it through Saint Paul’s thirteen epis¬ tles, in a work published by me four years ago, under the title of Horse Pauli use. I am sensible how feebly any argument which depends upon an induction of particulars, is repre¬ sented without examples. On which account, I wished to have abridged my own volume, in the manner in which I have treated Dr. Lardner’s in the preceding chapter. But, upon making the attempt, I did not find it in my power to render the articles intelligible by fewer words than I have there used. I must be content, therefore, to refer the reader to the work itself. And I would particularly invite his attention to the observations which are made in it upon the first three epistles. I persuade myself that he will find the proofs, both of agree¬ ment and undesignedness, supplied by these epistles, sufficient to support the conclusion which is there maintained, in favour both of the genuineness of the writings, and the truth of the narrative. It remains only, in this place, to point out how the argument bears upon the general ques¬ tion of the Christian history. First, Saint Paul in these letters affirms, in unequivocal terms, his own performance of miracles, and, what ought particularly to be remembered, u That miracles icere the signs of an apostle If this testimony come from St. Paul’s own hand, it is invaluable. And that it does so, the argument before us fixes in my mind a firm assurance. Secondly, it shews that the series of action, represented in the Epistles of Saint Paul, was real ; which alone lays a foundation for the proposition which forms the subject of the first part of our present work, viz. that the original witnesses of the Christian history devoted themselves to lives of toil, suffering, and danger, in consequence of their belief of the truth of that history, and for the sake of communicating the knowledge of it to others. Thirdly, it proves that Luke, or whoever was the author of the Acts of the Apostles (for the argument does not depend upon the name of the author, though I know no reason for questioning it), was well acquainted with Saint Paul’s history ; and that he pro¬ bably was, what he professes himself to be, a companion of Saint Paul’s travels; which, if true, establishes, in a considerable degree, the credit even of his Gospel, because it shews, that the writer, from his time, situation, and connexions, possessed opportunities of informing him¬ self truly concerning the transactions which he relates. I have little difficulty in applying to the Gospel of Saint Luke what is proved concerning the Acts of the Apostles, consider¬ ing them as two parts of the same history; for, though there are instances of second parts being forgeries, I know none where the second part is genuine, and the first not so. I will only observe, as a sequel of the argument, though not noticed in my work, the re- m Rom. xv. 18, 19. 2 Cor. xii. 12. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 329 markable similitude between the style of Saint John’s Gospel, and of Saint John’s first Epistle. The style of Saint John’s is not at all the style of Saint Paul’s Epistles, though both are very- singular ; nor is it the style of St. James's or of Saint Peter’s Epistles : but it bears a resem¬ blance to the style of the Gospel inscribed with Saint John's name, so far as that resemblance can be expected to appear which is not in simple narrative, so much as in reflections, and in the representation of discourses. Writings so circumstanced, prove themselves, and one another, to be genuine. This correspondency is the more valuable, as the epistle itself as¬ serts, in St. John’s manner indeed, but in terms sufficiently explicit, the writers personal knowledge of Christ’s history : “ That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life ; that which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you Who would not desire,—who perceives not the value of an account, delivered by a w-riter so well informed as this ? CHAPTER VIII. OF THE HISTORY OF THE RESURRECTION. The history of the resurrection of Christ is a part of the evidence of Christianity : but I do not know, whether the proper strength of this passage of the Christian history, or wherein its peculiar value, as a head of evidence, consists, be generally understood. It is not that, as a miracle, the resurrection ought to be accounted a more decisive proof of super¬ natural agency than other miracles are ; it is not that, as it stands in the Gospels, it is better attested than some others; it is not, for either of these reasons, that more weight belongs to it than to other miracles, but for the following, viz. That it is completely certain that the apostles of Christ, and the first teachers of Christianity, asserted the fact. And this would have been certain, if the four Gospels had been lost, or never written. Every piece of Scrip¬ ture recognises the resurrection. Every epistle of every apostle, every author contemporary with the apostles, of the age immediately succeeding the apostles, every writing from that age to the present, genuine or spurious, on the side of Christianity or against it, concur in representing the resurrection of Christ as an article of his history, received without doubt or disagreement by all who called themselves Christians, as alleged from the beginning by the propagators of the institution, and alleged as the centre of their testimony. Nothing, I apprehend, which a man does not himself see or hear, can be more certain to him than this point. I do not mean, that nothing can be more certain, than that Christ rose from the dead ; but that nothing can be more certain, than that his apostles, and the first teachers of Christianity, gave out that he did so. In the other parts of the Gospel narrative, a question may be made, whether the things related of Christ be the very things which the apostles and first teachers of the religion delivered concerning him ? And this question depends a good deal upon the evidence we possess of the genuineness, or rather, perhaps, of the anti¬ quity, credit, and reception of the books. On the subject of the resurrection, no such discussion is necessary, because no such doubt can be entertained. The only points which can enter into our consideration are, whether the apostles knowingly published a falsehood, or whether they were themselves deceived; whether either of these suppositions be possible. The first, I think, is pretty generally given up. The nature of the undertaking, and of the men ; the extreme unlikelihood that such men should engage in such a measure as a scheme ; their personal toils, and dangers, and sufferings, in the cause ; their appropriation of their whole time to the object; the warm and seemingly unaffected zeal and earnestness with wdiich they profess their sincerity; exempt their memory from the suspicion of imposture. The solution more deserving of notice, is that which would resolve the conduct of the apostles into enthusiasm ; which would class the evidence of Christ’s resurrection with the numerous stories that are extant of the apparitions of dead men. There are circumstances in the nar- * Chap. i. ver. 1—3. 330 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. rative, as it is preserved in our histories, which destroy this comparison entirely. It was not one person, but many, who saw him ; they saw him not only separately but together, not only by night, but by day, not at a distance, but near, not once, but several times; they not only saw him, but touched him, conversed with him, ate with him, examined his person to satisfy their doubts. These particulars are decisive : but they stand, I do admit, upon the credit of our records. I would answer, therefore, the insinuation of enthusiasm, by a cir¬ cumstance which arises out of the nature of the thing; and the reality of which must be confessed by all wdio allow, what I believe is not denied, that the resurrection of Christ, whether true or false, was asserted by his disciples from the beginning ; and that circum¬ stance is, the non-production of the dead body. It is related in the history, what indeed the story of the resurrection necessarily implies, that the corpse was missing out of the sepul¬ chre : it is related also in the history, that the Jews reported that the followers of Christ had stolen it away *. And this account, though loaded with great improbabilities, such as the situation of the disciples, their fears for their own safety at the time, the unlikelihood of their expecting to succeed, the difficulty of actual success t, and the inevitable consequence of detection and failure, was, nevertheless, the most credible account that could be given of the matter. But it proceeds entirely upon the supposition of fraud, as all the old objections did. What account can be given of the body , upon the supposition of enthusiasm ? It is impossi¬ ble our Lord's followers could believe that he was risen from the dead, if his corpse was lying before them. No enthusiasm ever reached to such a pitch of extravagance as that: a spirit may be an illusion; a body is a real thing, an object of sense, in which there can be no mistake. All accounts of spectres leave the body in the grave. And, although the body of Christ might be removed by fraud , and for the purposes of fraud, yet without any such intention, and by sincere but deluded men (which is the representation of the apostolic cha¬ racter we are now examining), no such attempt could be made. The presence and the absence of the dead body are alike inconsistent with the hypothesis of enthusiasm; for, if present, it must have cured their enthusiasm at once; if absent, fraud, not enthusiasm, must have carried it away. But farther, if we admit, upon the concurrent testimony of all the histories, so much of the account as states that the religion of Jesus was set up at Jerusalem, and set up with asserting, in the very place in which he had been buried, and a few days after he had been buried, his resurrection out of the grave, it is evident that, if his body could have been found, the Jews would have produced it, as the shortest and completest answer possible to the whole story. The attempt of the apostles could not have survived this refutation a moment. If we also admit, upon the authority of Saint Matthew, that the Jews were advertised of the expectation of Christ’s followers, and that they had taken due precaution in consequence of this notice, and that the body was in marked and public custody, the observation receives more force still. For, notwithstanding their precaution, and although thus prepared and forewarned; when the story of the resurrection of Christ came forth, as it immediately did ; when it was publicly asserted by his disciples, and made the ground and basis of their preaching in his name, and collecting followers to his religion, the Jews had not the body to produce; but were obliged to meet the testimony of the apostles by an answer, not con¬ taining indeed any impossibility in itself, but absolutely inconsistent with the supposition of their integrity; that is, in other words, inconsistent with the supposition which would re¬ solve their conduct into enthusiasm. * “ And this saying,” Saint Matthew writes, “ is com¬ monly reported amongst the Jews until this day,” (chap, xxviii. 15). The evangelist may be thought good autho¬ rity as to this point, even by those who do not admit his evidence in every other point: and this point is sufficient to prove that the body was missing. It has been rightly, I think, observed by Dr. Town- shend (Di 3 . upon the Res. p. 126), that the story of tire guards carried collusion upon the face of it :—“ His dis¬ ciples came by night, and stole him away while w r e slept.” Men in their circumstances would not have made such an acknowledgment of their negligence, without previous assurances of protection and impunity. T “ Especially at the full moon, the city full of people, many probably passing the -whole night, as Jesus and his disciples had done, in the open air, the sepulchre so near the city as to be now enclosed within the walls.” Priest¬ ley on the Resurr. p. 24. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 331 CHAPTER IX. THE PROPAGATION OF CHRISTIANITY. In this argument, the first consideration is the fact; in what degree, within what time, and to what extent, Christianity actually was propagated. The accounts of the matter, which can he collected from our books, are as follow : a few days after Christ’s disappearance out of the world, we find an assembly of disciples at Jeru¬ salem, to the number of “ about one hundred and twenty * ” which hundred and twenty were, probably, a little association of believers, met together, not merely as believers in Christ, but as personally connected with the apostles, and with one another. Whatever was the num¬ ber of believers then in Jerusalem, we have no reason to be surprised that so small a company should assemble : for there is no proof, that the followers of Christ were yet formed into a society; that the society was reduced into any order; that it was at this time even under¬ stood that a new religion (in the sense which that term conveys to us) was to be set up in the world, or how the professors of that religion were to be distinguished from the rest of mankind. The death of Christ had left, we may suppose, the generality of his disciples in great doubt, both as to what they were to do, and concerning wliat was to follow. This meeting was liolden, as we have already said, a few days after Christ’s ascension: for, ten days after that event was the day of Pentecost, when, as our history relates j~, upon a signal display of divine agency attending the persons of the apostles, there were added to the society “ about three thousand souls J.” But here, it is not, I think, to be taken, that these three thousand were all converted by this single miracle ; but rather, that many, who before were believers in Christ, became now professors of Christianity; that is to say, when they found that a religion was to be established, a society formed and set up in the name of Christ, governed by his laws, avowing their belief in his mission, united amongst themselves, and separated from the rest of the world, by visible distinctions; in pursuance of their for¬ mer conviction, and by virtue of what they had heard and seen and known of Christ’s history, they publicly became members of it. We read in the fourth chapter § of the Acts, that, soon after this, “ the number of the men,” i. e. the society openly professing their belief in Christ, u was about five thousand.” So that here is an increase of two thousand within a very short time. And it is probable that there were many, both now and afterward, who, although they believed in Christ, did not think it necessary to join themselves to this society; or who waited to see what was likely to become of it. Gamaliel, whose advice to the Jewish council is recorded Acts v. 34, appears to have been of this description; perhaps Nicodemus, and perhaps also Joseph of Arimathea. This class of men, their character and their rank, are likewise pointed out by Saint John, in the twelfth chapter of his gospel: “ Nevertheless, among the chief rulers also, many believed on him : but because of the Pharisees, they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue, for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.” Persons such as these, might admit the miracles of Christ, without being imme¬ diately convinced that they were under obligation to make a public profession of Christianity, at the risk of all that was dear to them in life, and even of life itself jj. * Acts i. 15. f Acts ii. 1. t lb. ii. 41. § Verse 4. ||- “ Beside those who professed, and those who rejected and opposed, Christianity; there were, in all probability, multitudes between both, neither perfect Christians, nor yet unbelievers. They had a favourable opinion of the Gospel, but worldly considerations made them unwilling to own it. There were many circumstances which inclined them to think that Christianity was a divine revelation, but there were many inconveniences which attended the open profession of it; and they could not find in them¬ selves courage enough to bear them, to disoblige their friends and family, to ruin their fortunes, to lose their re¬ putation, their liberty and their life, for the sake of the new religion. Therefore they were willing to hope, that if they endeavoured to observe the great principles of morality, which Christ had represented as the principal part, the sum and substance of religion; if they thought 332 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. Christianity, however, proceeded to increase in Jerusalem by a progress equally rapid with its first success ; for, in the next * chapter of our history, we read that 44 believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.” And this enlargement of the new society appears in the first verse of the succeeding chapter, wherein we are told, that, 44 when the number of the disciples was multiplied , there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected f ;” and, afterward in the same chapter, it is declared expressly, that 44 the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly, and that a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.” This I call the first period in the propagation of Christianity. It commences with the ascension of Christ, and extends, as may be collected from incidental notes of time to something more than one year after that event. During which term, the preaching of Christianity, so far as our documents inform us, was confined to the single city of Jerusa¬ lem. And how did it succeed there ? The first assembly which we meet with of Christ’s disciples, and that a few days after his removal from the world, consisted of 44 one hundred and twenty.” About a week after this, 44 three thousand were added in one day;” and the num¬ ber of Christians, publicly baptized, and publicly associating together, was very soon increased to 44 five thousand.” 44 Multitudes both of men and women continued to be added;” 44 disciples multiplied greatly,” and 44 many of the Jewish priesthood, as well as others, became obedient to the faith;” and this within a space of less than two years from the commencement of the institution. By reason of a persecution raised against the church at Jerusalem, the converts were driven from that city, and dispersed throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria §. Wherever they came, they brought their religion with them ; for, our historian informs us|[, that 44 they, that were scattered abroad, went every where preaching the word.” The effect of this preaching comes afterwards to be noticed, where the historian is led, in the course of his narrative, to observe, that then (i. e. about three years posterior to this) 44 the churches had rest throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified, and, walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied.” This was the work of the second period, which comprises about four years. Hitherto the preaching of the Gospel had been confined to Jews, to Jewish proselytes, and to Samaritans. And I cannot forbear from setting down in this place an observation of Mr. Bryant, which appears to me to be perfectly well founded :— 44 The Jews still remain : but how seldom is it that we can make a single proselyte! There is reason to think, that there were more converted by the apostles in one day, than have since been won over in the last thousand years ## .” It was not yet known to the apostles, that they were at liberty to propose the religion to man¬ kind at large. That 44 mystery,” as Saint Paul calls it f-j-, and as it then was, was revealed to Peter by an especial miracle. It appears to have been about seven years after Christ’s ascen¬ sion, that the Gospel was preached to the Gentiles of Cesarea. A year after this, a great multi¬ tude of Gentiles were converted at Antioch in Syria. The expressions employed by the historian are these :— 44 A great number believed, and turned to the Lord;” “much people was added unto the Lord;” 44 the apostles Barnabas and Paul taught much people §§.” Upon Herod’s death, which happened in the next year ||||, it is observed, that 44 the word of God grew and multi¬ plied W.” Three years from this time, upon the preaching of Paul at Iconium, the metropolis of Lycaonia, 44 a great multitude both of Jews and Greeks believed :” and afterward, in the course of this very progress, he is represented as making many disciples” at Derbe, a princi¬ pal city in the same district. Three years ttt after this, which brings us to sixteen after the honourably of the Gospel ; if they offered no injury to the Christians; if they did them all the services that they could safely perform; they were willing to hope, that God would accept this, and that He would excuse and for¬ give the rest.” Jortin’s Dis. on the Christ. Rel. p. 91. cd. 4. * Acts v. 14. t lb. vi. 1. J Vide Pearson’s Antiq. 1. xviii. c. 7. Benson’s His¬ tory of Christ, b. i. p. 148. § Acts viii. 1. || Ver. 4. U Benson, book i. p. 207 ** Bryant on the Truth of the Christian Religion p. 112. f f- Ephes. iii. 3—6. tt Benson, book ii. p. 236. §§ Acts, xi. 21.24. 26. IHI Benson, book ii. p. 289. 11 Acts, xii. 24. *** Acts, xiv. 1. tft Benson’s History of Christ, book iii. p. 50. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 333 ascension, the apostles wrote a public letter from Jerusalem to the Gentile converts in Anti¬ och, Syria, and Cilicia, with which letter Paul travelled through these countries, and found the churches “ established in the faith, and increasing in number daily From Asia, the apostle proceeded into Greece, where, soon after his arrival in Macedonia, we find him at Thessalonica; in which city, “some of the Jews believed, and of the devout Greeks a great multitude f.” We meet also here with an accidental hint of the general progress of the Christian mission, in the exclamation of the tumultuous Jews of Thessalonica, “ that they, who had turned the world upside down, were come thither also J.” At Berea, the next city at which St. Paul arrives, the historian, who was present, informs us that “ many of the Jews believed §.” The next year and a half of Saint Paul’s ministry was spent at Corinth. Of his success in that city, we receive the following intimations : “ that many of the Corinthi¬ ans believed and were baptized and “ that it was revealed to the apostle by Christ, that he had much people in that city ||.” Within less than a year after his departure from Corinth, and twenty-five years after the ascension, Saint Paul fixed his station at Ephesus, for the space of two years and something more. The effect of his ministry in that city and neighbour¬ hood drew from the historian a reflection, how “ mightily grew the word of God and pre¬ vailed j-j* ** .” And at the conclusion of this period, we find Demetrius at the head of a party, who were alarmed by the progress of the religion, complaining, that “not only at Ephesus, but also throughout all Asia ( i . e. the province of Lydia, and the country adjoining to Ephe¬ sus), this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people %$.” Beside these accounts, there occurs, incidentally, mention of converts at Rome, Alexandria, Athens, Cyprus, Cyrene, Macedonia, Philippi. This is the third period in the propagation of Christianity, setting off in the seventh year after the ascension, and ending at the twenty-eighth. Now, lay these three periods to¬ gether, and observe how the progress of the religion by these accounts is represented. The institution, which properly began only after its Authors removal from the world, before the end of thirty years had spread itself through Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, almost all the numerous districts of Lesser Asia, through Greece, and the islands of the Aegean Sea, the sea-coast of Africa, and had extended itself to Rome, and into Italy. At Antioch in Syria, at Joppa, Ephe¬ sus, Corinth, Thessalonica, Berea, Iconium, Derbe, Antioch in Pisidia, at Lydcla, Saron, the number of converts is intimated by the expressions, “ a great number,” “ great multitudes,” “ much people.” Converts are mentioned, without any designation of their number §§, at Tyre, Cesarea, Troas, Athens, Philippi, Lystra, Damascus. During all this time, Jerusalem continued not only the centre of the mission, but a principal seat of the religion ; for when Saint Paul returned thither at the conclusion of the period of which we are now considering the accounts, the other apostles pointed out to him, as a reason for his complying with their advice, “how many thousands (myriads, ten thousands) there were in that city who believed ||||.” Upon this abstract, and the writing from which it is drawn, the following observations seem material to be made : I. That the account comes from a person who was himself concerned in a portion of what he relates, and was contemporary with the whole of it; who visited Jerusalem, and frequented the society of those who had acted, and were acting, the chief parts in the trans¬ action. I lay down this point positively; for had the ancient attestations to this valuable record been less satisfactory than they are, the unaffectedness and simplicity with which the author notes his presence upon certain occasions, and the entire absence of art and design from these notices, would have been sufficient to persuade my mind, that, whoever he was, * Acts xvi. 5. t lb. xvii. 6. || lb. xviii. 8—] 0. ** Acts xix. 10. lb xix. 26. §§ Considering the exti’emc conciseness of many parts of the history, the silence about the number of converts is no proof of their paucity ; for at Philippi, no mention what¬ ever is made of the number, yet St. Paul addressed an epistle to that church. The churches of Galatia, and the affairs of those churches, were considerable enough to be the subject of another letter, and of much of Saint Paul’s solicitude : yet no account is preserved in the history of his success, or even of his preaching in that country, ex¬ cept the slight notice which these words convey :—“ When they had gone throughout Phrygia, and the region of Galatia—they assayed to go into Bithyuia.” Acts xvi 6« llll Actsxxi.20. i~ lb. xvii. 4. § lb. xvii. 12. Benson, book iii. p. 160. •ft lb. xix. 20. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. lie actually lived in the times, and occupied the situation, in which he represents himself to be. When I say, “ whoever he was,” I do not mean to cast a doubt upon the name to which antiquity hath ascribed the Acts of the Apostles (for there is no cause that I am acquainted with, for questioning it), but to observe, that, in such a case as this, the time and situation of the author is of more importance than his name ; and that these appear from the work itself, and in the most unsuspicious form. II. That this account is a very incomplete account of the preaching and propagation of Christianity; I mean, that, if what we read in the history be true, much more than what the history contains must be true also. For, although the narrative from which our informa¬ tion is derived has been entitled the Acts of the Apostles, it is in fact a history of the twelve apostles only during a short time of their continuing together at Jerusalem ; and even of this period the account is very concise. The work afterward consists of a few important pas¬ sages of Peters ministry, of the speech and death of Stephen, of the preaching of Philip the deacon; and the sequel of the volume, that is, two thirds of the whole, is taken up with the conversion, the travels, the discourses, and history of the new apostle, Paul; in which his¬ tory, also, large portions of time are often passed over with very scanty notice. III. That the account, so far as it goes, is for this very reason more credible. Had it been the author’s design to have displayed the early progress of Christianity, he would undoubtedly have collected, or, at least, have set forth, accounts of the preaching of the rest of the apostles, who cannot, without extreme improbability, be supposed to have re¬ mained silent and inactive, or not to have met with a share of that success which attended their colleagues. To which may be added, as an observation of the same kind, IV. That the intimations of the number of converts, and of the success of the preach¬ ing of the apostles, come out for the most part incidentally; are drawn from the histo¬ rian by the occasion; such as the murmuring of the Grecian converts ; the rest from persecution; Ilerod^s death ; the sending of Barnabas to Antioch, and Barnabas calling Paul to his assistance ; Paul coming to a place, and finding there disciples ; the clamour of the Jews; the complaint of artificers interested in the support of the popular religion ; the reason assigned to induce Paul to give satisfaction to the Christians of Jerusalem. Had it not been for these occasions, it is probable that no notice whatever would have been taken of the number of converts in several of the passages in which that notice now ap¬ pears. All this tends to remove the suspicion of a design to exaggerate or deceive. Parallel testimonies with the history, are the letters of Saint Paul, and of the other apostles, which have come down to us. Those of Saint Paul are addressed to the churches of Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, the church of Galatia, and, if the inscription be right, of Ephesus; his ministry at all which places, is recorded in the history : to the church of Colosse, or rather to the churches of Colosse and Laodicea jointly, which he had not then visited. They recognise by reference the churches of Judea, the churches of Asia, “and all the churches of the Gentiles In the epistle to the Romans j~, the author is led to deliver a remarkable declaration concerning the extent of his preaching, its efficacy, and the cause to which he ascribes it,—“ to make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed, through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God ; so that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the Gospel of Christ.” In the Epistle to the Colossians we find an oblique but very strong signification of the then general state of the Christian mission, at least as it appeared to Saint Paul:—“If ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven which Gospel, he had reminded them near the beginning § of his letter, “ was present with them, as it was in all the worldy The expressions are hyperbolical; but they are hyperboles which could only be used by a writer who entertained a strong sense of the subject. The first epistle of Peter accosts the Christians dispersed throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. It comes next to be considered, how far these accounts are confirmed, or followed up, by other evidence. * 1 Thess. ii. 14. f Rom. xv. 18, 19. + Col. i. 23. § lb. i. 6. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. Tacitus, in delivering a relation, which has already been laid before the reader, of the fire which happened at Rome in the tenth year of Nero (which coincides with the thirtieth year after Christ’s ascension), asserts, that the emperor, in order to suppress the rumours of hav¬ ing been himself the author of the mischief, procured the Christians to be accused. Of which Christians, thus brought into his narrative, the following is so much of the historian’s account, as belongs to our present purpose : 44 They had their denomination from Cliristus, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to death as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate. This pernicious superstition, though checked for awhile, broke out again, and spread not only over Judea, but reached the city also. At first they only were apprehended who confessed themselves of that sect; afterward, a vast multitude were discovered by them.” This testi¬ mony to the early propagation of Christianity is extremely material. It is from an historian of great reputation, living near the time ; from a stranger and an enemy to the reli¬ gion ; and it joins immediately with the period through which the scripture accounts extend. It establishes these points: that the religion began at Jerusalem; that it spread throughout Judea ; that it had reached Rome, and not only so, but that it had there obtained a great number of converts. This was about six years after the time that Saint Paul wrote his Epistle to the Romans, and something more than two years after he arrived there himself. The converts to the religion were then so numerous at Rome, that of those who were betrayed by the information of the persons first persecuted, a great multitude (multitudo ingens) were discovered and seized. It seems probable, that the temporary check which Tacitus represents Christianity to have received (repressa in preesens), referred to the persecution at Jerusalem, which followed the death of Stephen ; (Acts viii.) and which, by dispersing the converts, caused the institution, in some measure, to disappear. Its second eruption at the same place, and within a short time, has much in it of the character of truth. It was the firmness and perseverance of men who knew what they relied upon. Next, in order of time, and perhaps superior in importance, is the testimony of Pliny the Younger. Pliny was the Roman governor of Pontus and Bithynia, two considerable dis¬ tricts in the northern part of Asia Minor. The situation in which he found his province, led him to apply to the emperor (Trajan) for his direction as to the conduct he was to hold towards the Christians. The letter in which this application is contained, was written not quite eighty years after Christ’s ascension. The president, in this letter, states the measures he had already pursued, and then adds, as his reason for resorting to the emperor’s counsel and authority, the following words :— 44 Suspending all judicial proceedings I have recourse to you for advice ; for it has appeared to me a matter highly deserving consideration, espe¬ cially on account of the great number of persons who are in danger of suffering : for, many of all ages, and of every rank, of both sexes likewise, are accused, and will be accused. Nor has the contagion of this superstition seized cities only, but the lesser towns also, and the open country. Nevertheless it seemed to me, that it may be restrained and corrected. It is certain that the temples, which were almost forsaken, begin to be more frequented; and the sacred solemnities, after a long intermission, are revived. Victims, likewise, are every where (passim) bought up ; whereas, for some time, there were few to purchase them. Whence it is easy to imagine, what numbers of men might be reclaimed, if pardon were granted to those that shall repent It is obvious to observe, that the passage of Pliny’s letter, here quoted, proves, not only that the Christians in Pontus and Bithynia were now numerous, but that they had subsisted there for some considerable time. 44 It is certain,” he says, 44 that the temples, which were almost forsaken (plainly ascribing this desertion of the popular worship to the prevalency of Christianity), begin to be more frequented; and the sacred solemnities, after a long inter¬ mission, are revived.” There are also two clauses in the former part of the letter which indicate the same thing; one, in which he declares that he had 44 never been present at any trials of Christians, and therefore knew not what was the usual subject of inquiry and punishment, or how far either was wont to be urged.” The second clause is the following : 44 others were named by an informer, who, at first, confessed themselves Christians, and * C. Plin. Trajano Imp. lib. x. ep. Xcvii. 336 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. afterward denied it ; the rest said, they had been Christians, some three years ago, some longer, and some about twenty years.’ 1 It is also apparent, that Pliny speaks of the Christians as a description of men well known to the person to whom he writes. His first sentence concerning them is, 44 I have never been present at the trials of Christians.” This mention of the name of Christians, without any preparatory explanation, shows that it was a term familiar both to the writer of the letter, and the person to whom it was addressed. Had it not been so, Pliny would naturally have begun his letter by informing the emperor, that he had met with a certain set of men in the province, called Christians. Here then is a very singular evidence of the progress of the Christian religion in a short space. It was not fourscore years after the crucifixion of Jesus, when Pliny wrote this letter; nor seventy years since the apostles of Jesus began to mention his name to the Gentile world. Bithynia and Pontus were at a great distance from Judea, the centre from which the religion spread ; yet in these provinces, Christianity had long subsisted, and Christians were nowin such numbers as to lead the Roman governor to report to the emperor, that they were found not only in cities, but in villages and in open countries ; of all ages, of every rank and condition; that they abounded so much, as to have produced a visible desertion of the temples ; that beasts brought to market for victims, had few purchasers; that the sacred solemnities were much neglected :—circumstances noted by Pliny, for the express purpose of showing to the emperor the effect and prevalency of the new institution. No evidence remains, by which it can be proved that the Christians were more numerous in Pontus and Bithynia than in other parts of the Roman empire ; nor has any reason been offered to show why they should be so. Christianity did not begin in these countries, nor near them. I do not know, therefore, that we ought to confine the description in Pliny's letter to the state of Christianity in those provinces, even if no other account of the same subject had come down to us; but, certainly, this letter may fairly be applied in aid and confirmation of the representations given of the general state of Christianity in the world, by Christian writers of that and the next succeeding age. Justin Martyr, who wrote about thirty years after Pliny, and one hundred and six after the ascension, has these remarkable words : 44 There is not a nation, either of Greek or Barbarian, or of any other name, even of those who wander in tribes, and live in tents, amongst whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered to the Father and Creator of the universe by the name of the crucified Jesus*.” Tertullian, who comes about fifty years after Justin, appeals to the governors of the Roman empire in these terms : 44 We were but of yesterday, and we have filled your cities, islands, towns, and boroughs, the camp, the senate, and the forum. They (the heathen adversaries of Christianity) lament that every sex, age, and condition, and persons of every rank also, are converts to that name j~.” I do allow that these expressions are loose, and may be called declamatory. Bnt even declamation hath its bounds: this public boasting on a subject which must be known to every reader, was not only useless, but unnatural, unless the truth of the case, in a considerable degree, corresponded with the description; at least, unless it had been both true and notorious, that great multitudes of Christians, of all ranks and orders, were to be found in most parts of the Roman empire. The same Tertullian, in another passage, by way of setting forth the extensive diffusion of Christianity, enumerates as belonging to Christ, besides many other countries, the 44 Moors and Gsetulians of Africa, the borders of Spain, several nations of France, and parts of Britain, inaccessible to the Romans, the Sarmatians, Daci, Germans, and Scythians^;” and, which is more material than the extent of the institution, the number of Christians in the several countries in which it prevailed, is thus expressed by him : 44 Although so great a multitude that in almost every city we form the greater part, we pass our time modestly and in silence §.” Clemens Alexandrinus, who preceded Tertullian by a few years, introduces a comparison between the success of Christianity, and that of the most celebrated philosophical institutions : 44 The philosophers were confined to Greece, and to their particular retainers; but the doctrine of the Master of Christianity did not remain in Judea, as philosophy did in Greece, but is spread throughout the whole world, in every nation, and village, and city, * Dial, cum Tryph. t Tertull. Apol. c. 37. £ Ad Jud.c. 7. $ Ad Scap. c. 111. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 33T both of Greeks and barbarians, converting both whole houses and separate individuals, having already brought over to the truth not a few of the philosophers themselves. If the Greek philosophy be prohibited, it immediately vanishes; whereas, from the first preaching of our doctrine, kings and tyrants, governors and presidents, with their whole train, and with the populace on their side, have endeavoured with their whole might to exterminate it, yet doth it flourish more and more*.” Origen, who follows Tertullian at the distance of only thirty years, delivers nearly the same account: “ In every part of the world,” says he, “ throughout all Greece, and in all other nations, there are innumerable and immense mul¬ titudes, who, having left the laws of their country, and those whom they esteemed gods, have given themselves up to the law of Moses, and the religion of Christ: and this not without the bitterest resentment from the idolaters, by whom they were frequently put to torture, and sometimes to death: and it is wonderful to observe, how, in so short a time, the religion has increased, amidst punishment and death, and every kind of torture •j\” In another passage, Origen draws the following candid comparison between the state of Chris¬ tianity in his time, and the condition of its more primitive ages: “ By the good providence of God, the Christian religion has so flourished and increased continually, that it is now preached freely without molestation, although there were a thousand obstacles to the spreading of the doctrine of Jesus in the world. But as it was the will of God that the Gentiles should have the benefit of it, all the counsels of men against the Christians were defeated : and by how much the more emperors and governors of provinces, and the people every where, strove to depress them ; so much the more have they increased, and prevailed exceedingly J.” It is well known, that within less than eighty years after this, the Roman empire became Christian under Constantine : and it is probable that Constantine declared himself on the side of the Christians, because they were the powerful party; for Arnobius, who wrote immediately before Constantine’s accession, speaks of “ the whole world as filled with Christ’s doctrine, of its diffusion throughout all countries, of an innumerable body of Christians in distant provinces, of the strange revolution of opinion of men of the greatest genius, orators, grammarians, rhetoricians, lawyers, physicians, having come over to the institution, and that also in the face of threats, executions, and tortures §.*” And not more than twenty years after Constantine’s entire possession of the empire, Julius Firmicus Maternus calls upon the emperors Constantius and Constans to extirpate the relics of the ancient religion ; the reduced and fallen condition of which is described by our author in the following words: “ Licet adhuc in quibusdam regionibus idololatrise morientia palpitent membra; tamen in eo res est, ut a Christianis omnibus terris pestiferum hoc malum funditus amputeturand in another place, “ Modicum tantum superest, ut legibus vestris—extincta idololatrise pereat funesta contagio |].” It will not be thought that we quote this writer in order to recommend his temper or his judgment, but to show the comparative state of Christianity and of Heathenism at this period. Fifty years afterward, Jerome represents the decline of Paganism in language which conveys the same idea of its approaching extinction : “ Solitu- dinem patitur et in urbe gentilitas. Dii quondam nationum, cum bubonibus et noctuis, in solis culminibus remanserunt ^[.” Jerome here indulges a triumph, natural and allowable in a zealous friend of the cause, but which could only be suggested to his mind by the consent and universality with which he saw the religion received. “ But now,” says he, “ the passion and resurrection of Christ are celebrated in the discourses and writings of all nations. I need not mention Jews, Greeks, and Latins. The Indians, Persians, Goths, and Egyptians, philosophize, and firmly believe the immortality of the soul, and future recompenses, which, before, the greatest philosophers had denied, or doubted of, or perplexed with their disputes. The fierceness of Thracians and Scythians is now softened by the gentle sound of the Gospel; and every where Christ is all in all Were therefore the motives of Constantine’s conversion ever so problematical, the easy establishment of Cliris- * Clem. Al. Strom, lib. vi. ad fin. + Orig. in Cels. lib. i. + Orig. cont. Cels. lib. vii. § Arnob. in Gentes, 1. i. p. 27. 9. 24. 42. 44. edit. Lug. Bat. 1650. |i De Error. Profan. Relig. c. xxi. p. 172 ; quoted by Lardner, vol. viii. p. 262. % Jer. ad Lect. ep. 57. ** lb. ep. 8. ad Heliod. Z 333 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. tianity, and the ruin of Heathenism under him and his immediate successors, is of itself a proof of the progress which Christianity had made in the preceding period. It may be added also, “ that Maxentius, the rival of Constantine, had shown himself friendly to the Christians. Therefore of those who were contending for worldly power and empire, one actually favoured and flattered them, and another may be suspected to have joined himself to them, partly from consideration of interest: so considerable were they become, under external disadvan¬ tages of all sorts This at least is certain, that throughout the whole transaction hitherto, the great seemed to follow, not to lead, the public opinion. It may help to convey to us some notion of the extent and progress of Christianity, or rather of the character and quality of many early Christians, of their learning and their labours, to notice the number of Christian writers who flourished in these ages. Saint Jerome’s catalogue contains sixty-six writers within the first three centuries, and the first six years of the fourth; and fifty-four between that time and his own, viz. A. D. 392. Jerome introduces his catalogue with the following just remonstrance :—“ Let those who say the church has had no philosophers, nor eloquent and learned men, observe who and what they were who founded, established, and adorned it; let them cease to accuse our faith of rusticity, and confess their mistake j-.” Of these writers, several, as Justin, Irenasus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, Bardesanes, Idippolitus, Eusebius, were volu¬ minous writers. Christian writers abounded particularly about the year 173. Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, founded a library in that city, A. D. 212. Pamphilus, the friend of Origen, founded a library at Cesarea, A. D. 294. Public defences were also set forth, by various advocates of the religion, in the course of its first three centuries. Within one hundred years after Christ’s ascension, Quadratus and Aristides, whose works, except some few fragments of the first, are lost; and, about twenty years afterward, Justin Martyr, whose works remain, presented apologies for the Christian religion to the Roman emperors; Quadratus and Aristides to Adrian, Justin to Antoninus Pius, and a second to Marcus Anto¬ ninus. Melito, bishop of Sardis, and Apollinaris, bishop of Hierapolis, and Miltiades, men of great reputation, did the same to Marcus Antoninus, twenty years afterward and ten years after this, Apollonius, who suffered martyrdom under the emperor Commodus, composed an apology for his faith, which he read in the senate, and which was afterward published §. Four¬ teen years after the apology of Apollonius, Tertullian addressed the work which now remains under that name to the governors of provinces in the Roman empire; and, about the same time, Minucius Felix composed a defence of the Christian religion, which is still extant; and, shortly after the conclusion of this century, copious defences of Christianity were published by Arnobius and Lactantius. SECTION II. Reflections upon the preceding account. In viewing the progress of Christianity, our first attention is due to the number of converts at Jerusalem, immediately after its Founder’s death; because this success was a success at the time, and upon the spot, when and where the chief part of the history had been transacted. We are, in the next place, called upon to attend to the early establishment of numerous Christian societies in Judea and Galilee; which countries had been the scene of Christ’s miracles and ministry, and where the memory of what had passed, and the knowledge of what was alleged, must have yet been fresh and certain. We are, thirdly, invited to recollect the success of the apostles and of tlieir companions, at the several places to which they came, both within and without Judea; because it was the credit given to original witnesses, appealing for the truth of their accounts to what themselves had seen and heard. The effect also of their preaching strongly confirms the * Lardner, vol. vii. p. 380. X Euseb. Ilist. lib. iv. c. 26. See also Lardner, vol. ii. p. 666. •f Jer. Prol. in Lib. de Ser. Eccl. § Lardner, vol. ii. p. 687. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 33Q truth of what our history positively and circumstantially relates, that they were able to exhibit to their hearers supernatural attestations of their mission. We are, lastly, to consider the subsequent growth and spread of the religion, of which we receive successive intimations, and satisfactory, though general and occasional, accounts, until its full and final establishment. In all these several stages, the history is without a parallel: for it must be observed, that we have not now been tracing the progress, and describing the prevalency, of an opinion, founded upon philosophical or critical arguments, upon mere deductions of reason, or the construction of ancient writings (of which kind are the several theories which have, at different times, gained possession of the public mind in various departments of science and literature ; and of one or other of which kind are the tenets also which divide the various sects of Christianity) ; but that we speak of a system, the very basis and postulatum of which was a supernatural character ascribed to a particular person; of a doctrine, the truth whereof depended entirely upon the truth of a matter of fact then recent. “ To establish a new religion, even amongst a few people, or in one single nation, is a thing in itself exceed¬ ingly difficult. To reform some corruptions which may have spread in a religion, or to make new regulations in it, is not perhaps so hard, when the main and principal part of that religion is preserved entire and unshaken ; and yet this very often cannot be accomplished without an extraordinary concurrence of circumstances, and may be attempted a thousand times without success. But to introduce a new faith, a new way of thinking and acting, and to persuade many nations to quit the religion in which their ancestors have lived and died, which had been delivered down to them from time immemorial, to make them forsake and despise the deities which they had been accustomed to reverence and worship ; this is a work of still greater difficulty The resistance of education, worldly policy, and super¬ stition, is almost invincible. If men, in these days, be Christians in consequence of their education, in submission to authority, or in compliance with fashion, let us recollect that the very contrary of this, at the beginning, was the case. The first race of Christians, as well as millions who succeeded them, became such in formal opposition to all these motives, to the whole power and strength of this influence. Every argument, therefore, and every instance, which sets forth the prejudice of education, and the almost irresistible effects of that prejudice (and no persons are more fond of expatiating upon this subject than deistical writers), in fact confirms the evidence of Christianity. But, in order to judge of the argument which is drawn from the early propagation of Christianity, I know no fairer way of proceeding, than to compare what we have seen on the subject, with the success of Christian missions in modern ages. In the East India mission, supported by the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, we hear sometimes of thirty, sometimes of forty, being baptised in the course of a year, and these principally children. Of converts properly so called, that is, of adults voluntarily embracing Chris¬ tianity, the number is extremely small. “ Notwithstanding the labour of missionaries for upwards of two hundred years, and the establishments of different Christian nations who support them, there are not twelve thousand Indian Christians, and those almost entirely outcasts 'j'/* I lament, as much as any man, the little progress which Christianity has made in these countries, and the inconsiderable effect that has followed the labours of its missionaries; but I see in it a strong proof of the Divine origin of the religion. What had the aj^ostles to assist them in propagating Christianity which the missionaries have not ? If piety and zeal had been sufficient, I doubt not but that our missionaries possess these qualities in a high degree : for, nothing except piety and zeal could engage them in the undertaking. If sanctity of life and manners was the allurement, the conduct of these men is unblamable. If the advantage of education and learning be looked to, there is not one of the modern missionaries, who is not, in this respect, superior to all the apostles: and that not only * Jortin’s Dis. on the Christ. Rel. p. 107, ed. 4th. "t Sketches relating to the history, learning, and manners of the Hindoos, p. 40; quoted by Dr. Robertson, Hist. Dis. concerning Ancient India, p. 236. z 2 .°40 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. absolutely, but, what is of more importance, relatively , in comparison, that is, with those amongst whom they exercise their office. If the intrinsic excellency of the religion, the perfection of its morality, the purity of its precepts, the eloquence or tenderness or sublimity of various parts of its writings, were the recommendations by which it made its way, these remain the same. If the character and circumstances, under which the preachers were introduced to the countries in which they taught, be accounted of importance, this advantage is all on the side of the modern missionaries. They come from a country and a people to which the Indian world look up with sentiments of deference. The apostles came forth amongst the Gentiles under no other name than that of Jews, which was precisely the character they despised and derided. If it be disgraceful in India to become a Christian, it could not be much less so to be enrolled amongst those, “ quos per flagitia invisos, vulgus Christianos appellabat.” If the religion which they had to encounter be considered, the difference, I apprehend, will not be great. The theology of both was nearly the same : “ what is supposed to be performed by the power of Jupiter, of Neptune, of iEolus, of Mars, of Venus, according to the mythology of the TVest, is ascribed, in the East, to the agency of Agrio the god of fire, Varoon the god of oceans, Vayoo the god of wind, Cama the god of love* * * § .” The sacred rites of the Western Polytheism were gay, festive, and licentious; the rites of the public religion in the East partake of the same character, with a more avowed indecency. “ In every function performed in the pagodas, as well as in every public pro¬ cession, it is the office of these women ( i . e. of women prepared by the Bramins for the purpose) to dance before the idol, and to sing hymns in his praise; and it is difficult to say whether they trespass most against decency by the gestures they exhibit, or by the verses which they recite. The walls of the pagodas were covered with paintings in a style no less indelicate ‘j-J.” On both sides of the comparison, the popular religion had a strong establishment. In ancient Greece and Rome, it was strictly incorporated with the state. The magistrate was the priest. The highest officers of government bore the most distinguished part in the celebration of the public rites. In India, a powerful and numerous caste possess exclusively the administration of the established worship; and are, of consequence, devoted to its service, and attached to its interest. In both, the prevailing mythology was destitute of any proper evidence : or rather, in both, the origin of the tradition is run up into ages long anterior to the existence of credible history, or of written language. The Indian chro¬ nology computes eras by millions of years, and the life of man by thousands §; and in these, or prior to these, is placed the history of their divinities. In both, the established superstition held the same place in the public opinion; that is to say, in both it was credited by the bulk of the people ||, but, by the learned and philosophical part of the community, either derided, or regarded by them as only fit to be upholden for the sake of its political uses * Baghvat Geta, p. 94 ; quoted by Dr. Robertson, I rid. Dis. p. 306 T Others of the deities of the East are of an austere and gloomy character, to be propitiated by victims, some¬ times by human sacrifices, and by voluntary torments of the most excruciating kind. £ Voyage de Gentil. vol. i. p. 244—260. Preface to Code of Gentoo Laws,p. 57, quoted by Dr.Robertson, p. 320. § “ that the Koran itself was a miracle The only place in the Koran in which it can be pretended that a sensible miracle is referred to (for I do not allow the secret visitations of Gabriel, the night-journey of Mahomet to heaven, or the presence in battle of invisible hosts of angels, to deserve the name of sensible miracles), is the beginning of the fifty-fourth chapter. The words are these :—“ The hour of judgment approacheth, and the moon hath been split in sunder: but if the unbelievers see a sign, they turn aside, saying, This is a powerful charm.” The Mahometan expositors disagree in their interpretation of this passage ; some explaining it to be a mention of the splitting of the moon, as one of the future signs of the approach of the day of judgment; others referring it to a miraculous appearance which had then taken place It seems to me not improbable, that Mahomet might have taken advantage of some extraordinary halo, or other unusual appearance of the moon, which had happened about this time ; and which supplied a foundation both for this passage, and for the story which in after-times had been raised out of it. After this more than silence, after these authentic confessions of the Koran, we are not to be moved with miraculous stories related of Mahomet by Abulfeda, who wrote his life about six hundred years after his death ; or which are found in the legend of Al-Jannabi, who came two hundred years later j j. On the contrary, from comparing what Mahomet himself wrote and said, with what was afterwards reported of him by his followers, the plain and fair conclusion is, that when the religion was established by conquest, then, and not till then, came out the stories of his miracles. Now this difference alone constitutes, in my opinion, a bar to all reasoning from one case to the other. The success of a religion founded upon a miraculous history, shews the credit which was given to the history ; and this credit, under the circumstances in which it was given, i. e. by persons capable of knowing the truth, and interested to inquire after it, is evidence of the reality of the history, and, by consequence, of the truth of the religion. Where a miraculous history is not alleged, no part of this argument can be applied. We admit, that multitudes acknowledged the pretensions of Mahomet; but these pretensions being destitute of miraculous evidence, we know that the grounds upon which they were acknowledged, could not be secure grounds of persuasion to liis followers, nor their example any authority to us. Admit the whole of Mahomet’s authentic history, so far as it was of a nature capa¬ ble of being known or witnessed by others, to be true (which is certainly to admit all that the reception of the religion can be brought to prove), and Mahomet might still be an im¬ postor, or enthusiast, or a union of both. Admit to be true almost any part of Christ’s history, of that, I mean, which was public, and within the cognizance of his followers, and * Sale’s Koran, c. xiii. p. 201, ed. quarto. "f* ** C. xvii. p. 232. J C. xxix. p. 328. § C. v. x. xiii. twice. || C. vi. C. iii xxi. xxviii. ** C. xvi. •f'f Vide Sale, in loc. It docs not, I think, appear, that these historians death. Mahomet died A. D. 632 ; Al-Bochari, one of had any written accounts to appeal to, more ancient than the six doctors who compiled the Sonnah, was born A.D. the Sonnah; which was a collection of traditions made by 809; died 869. Prideaux’s Life of Mahomet, p. 192, order of the Caliphs two hundred years after Mahomet’s ed. 7th. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 343 lie must liave come from God. Where matter of fact is not in question, where miracles are not alleged, I do not see that the progress of a religion is a better argument of its truth, than the prevalence of any system of opinions in natural religion, morality or physics, is a proof of the truth of those opinions. And we know that this sort of argument is inadmissible in any branch of philosophy whatever. But it will be said, if one religion could make its way without miracles, why might not another ? To which I reply, first, that this is not the question ; the proper question is not, whether a religious institution could be set up without miracles, but whether a religion, or a change of religion, founding itself in miracles, could succeed without any reality to rest upon ? I apprehend these two cases to be very different: and I apprehend Mahomet’s not taking this course, to be one proof, amongst others, that the thing is difficult, if not impossi¬ ble, to be accomplished : certainly it was not from an unconsciousness of the value and importance of miraculous evidence ; for it is very observable, that in the same volume, and sometimes in the same chapters, in which Mahomet so repeatedly disclaims the power of working miracles himself, he is incessantly referring to the miracles of preceding prophets. One would imagine, to hear some men talk, or to read some books, that the setting up of a religion by dint of miraculous pretences, was a thing of every day’s experience ; whereas, I believe that, except the Jewish and Christian religion, there is no tolerably well authenti¬ cated account of any such thing having been accomplished. II. The establishment of Mahomet’s religion was effected by causes which in no degree appertained to the origin of Christianity. During the first twelve years of his mission, Mahomet had recourse only to persuasion. This is allowed. And there is sufficient reason from the effect to believe that, if he had con¬ fined himself to this mode of propagating his religion, we of the present day should never have heard either of him or it. u Three years were silently employed in the conversion of fourteen proselytes. For ten years, the religion advanced with a slow and painful progress, within the walls of Mecca. The number of proselytes in the seventh year of his mission may be estimated by the absence of eighty-three men and eighteen women, who retired to ^Ethi¬ opia Yet this progress, such as it was, appears to have been aided by some very important advantages which Mahomet found in his situation, in his mode of conducting his design, and in his doctrine. 1. Mahomet was the grandson of the most powerful and honourable family in Mecca : and although the early death of his father had not left him a patrimony suitable to his birth, ho had, long before the commencement of his mission, repaired this deficiency by an opulent marriage. A person considerable by his wealth, of high descent, and nearly allied to the chiefs of his country, taking upon himself the character of a religious teacher, would not fail of attracting attention and followers. 2. Mahomet conducted his design, in the outset especially, with great art and prudence. He conducted it as a politician would conduct a plot. His first application was to his own family. This gained him his wife’s uncle, a considerable person in Mecca, together with his cousin Ali, afterward the celebrated Caliph, then a youth of great expectation, and even already distinguished by his attachment, impetuosity, and courage f. He next expressed himself to Abu Beer, a man among the first of the Koreish in wealth and influence. The interest and example of Abu Beer drew in five other principal persons in Mecca, whose soli¬ citations prevailed upon five more of the same rank. This was the work of three years ; during which time every thing was transacted in secret. Upon the strength of these allies, and under the powerful protection of his family, who, however some of them might disap¬ prove his enterprise, or deride his pretensions, would not suffer the orphan of their house, the relict of their favourite brother, to be insulted ; Mahomet now commenced his public preach¬ ing. And the advance which he made during the nine or ten remaining years of his peaceable * Gibbon’s Hist. vol. ix. p. 244, et seq; ed. Dub. his age, suddenly replied, O prophet! I am the man;— ■f Of which Mr. Gibbon has preserved the following whosoever rises against thee, I will dash out his teeth, specimen:—“ When Mahomet called out in an assembly tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip up his belly. O of his family, Who among you wall be my companion, prophet ! I will he thy vizier over them. * Vol. ix. and my vizier? Ali, then only in the fourteenth year of p. 245. 344 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. ministry, was by no means greater tlian what, with these advantages, and with the additional and singular circumstance of there being no established religion at Mecca at that time to contend with, might reasonably have been expected. How soon his primitive adherents were let into the secret of his views of empire, or in what stage of his undertaking these views first opened themselves to his own mind, it is not now easy to determine. The event however was, that these, his first proselytes, all ultimately attained to riches and honours, to the command of armies, and the government of kingdoms # . 3. The Arabs deduced their descent from Abraham through the line of Ishmael. The in¬ habitants of Mecca, in common probably with the other Arabian tribes, acknowledged, as I think may clearly be collected from the Koran, one supreme Deity, but had associated with him many objects of idolatrous worship. The great doctrine, with which Mahomet set out, was the strict and exclusive unity of God. Abraham, he told them, their illustrious ances¬ tor ; Ishmael, the father of their nation; Moses, the lawgiver of the Jews ; and Jesus, the author of Christianity; had all asserted the same thing ; but their followers had universally corrupted the truth, and that he was now commissioned to restore it to the world. Was it to be wondered at, that a doctrine so specious, and authorised by names, some or other of wdiicli were liolden in the highest veneration by every description of his hearers, should, in the hands of a popular missionary, prevail to the extent in which Mahomet succeeded by his pacific ministry ? 4. Of the institution which Mahomet joined with this fundamental doctrine, and of the Koran in which that institution is delivered, we discover, I think, two purposes that pervade the whole, viz. to make converts, and to make his converts soldiers. The following particu¬ lars, amongst others, may be considered as pretty evident indications of these designs : 1. When Mahomet began to preach, his address to the Jews, to the Christians, and to the Pagan Arabs, was, that the religion which he taught was no other than what had been origi¬ nally their own. — “ We believe in God, and that which hath been sent down unto us, and that which hath been sent down unto Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the Tribes, and that which was delivered unto Moses and Jesus, and that which was de¬ livered unto the prophets from their Lord: we make no distinction between any of them +.” “ He hath ordained you the religion which he commanded Noah, and which we have revealed unto thee, O Mohammed, and which we commanded Abraham, and Moses, and Jesus, say¬ ing, Observe this religion, and be not divided therein “ He hath chosen you, and hath not imposed on you any difficulty in the religion which he hath given you, the religion of your father Abraham §.” 2. The author of the Koran never ceases from describing the future anguish of unbelievers, their despair, regret, penitence, and torment. It is the point which he labours above all others. And these descriptions are conceived in terms which will appear in no small degree impressive even to the modem reader of an English translation. Doubtless they would operate with much greater force upon the minds of those to whom they were immediately directed. The terror which they seem well calculated to inspire, would be to many tempers a powerful application. 3. On the other hand: his voluptuous paradise; his robes of silk, his palaces of marble, his rivers and shades, his groves and couches, his wines, his dainties; and, above all, his seventy-two virgins assigned to each of the faithful, of resplendent beauty and eternal youth; intoxicated the imaginations and seized the passions of his Eastern followers. 4. But Mahomet’s highest heaven was reserved for those who fought his battles, or ex¬ pended their fortunes in his cause. — “ Those believers who sit still at home, not having any hurt, and those who employ their fortunes and their persons for the religion of God, shall not be held equal. God hath preferred those who employ their fortunes and their persons in that cause, to a degree above those who sit at home. God hath indeed promised every one Paradise ; but God hath preferred those who fight for the faith before those who sit still, by adding unto them a great reward : by degrees of honour conferred upon them from him, and by granting them forgiveness and mercy ||.” Again; “ Do ye reckon the giving drink * Gibbon, vol. ix. p. '244. f Sale’s Koran, c. ii. p. 17. X lb. c. xlii. p. 393. § lb. c. xxii. p. 281. || lb. c. iv. p. 73. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 345 to the pilgrims, and the visiting of the holy temple, to he actions as meritorious as those per¬ formed by him who believeth in God and the last day, and Jighteth for the religion of God ? They shall not be held equal with God.—They who have believed and fled their country, and employed their substance and their persons in the defence of God’s true religion, shall be in the highest degree of honour with God ; and these are they who shall be happy. The Lord sendeth them good tidings of mercy from him, and goodwill, and of gardens wherein they shall enjoy lasting pleasures. They shall continue therein for ever; for with God is a great reward*/' And, once more; 44 Verily God hath purchased of the true believers their souls and their substance, promising them the enjoyment of Paradise, on condition that they fight for the cause of God : whether they slay or be slain, the promise of the same is assuredly due by the law and the Gospel and the Koran 5. His doctrine of predestination was applicable, and was applied by him, to the same purpose of fortifying and of exalting the courage of his adherents.— 44 If any thing of the mat¬ ter had happened unto us, we had not been slain here. Answer : If ye had been in your houses, verily they would have gone forth to fight, whose slaughter was decreed, to the places where they died 6. In warm regions, the appetite of the sexes is ardent, the passion for inebriating liquors moderate. In compliance with this distinction, although Mahomet laid a restraint upon the drinking of wine, in the use of women he allowed an almost unbounded indulgence. Four wives, with the liberty of changing them at pleasure ||, together with the persons of all his captives «j], was an irresistible bribe to an Arabian warrior. 44 God is minded,” says he, speaking of this very subject, 44 to make his religion light unto you ; for man was created weak.” How different this from the unaccommodating purity of the Gospel! How would Mahomet have succeeded with the Christian lesson in his mouth,—“ 'Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart V* It must be added, that Mahomet did not venture upon the prohibition of wine, till the fourth year of the Hegira, or the seventeenth of his mission **, when his military successes had com¬ pletely established his authority. The same observation holds of the fast of the Ramadan and of the most laborious part of his institution, the pilgrimage to Mecca JJ. What has hitherto been collected from the records of the Mussulman history, relates to the twelve or thirteen years of Mahomet's peaceable preaching; which part alone of his life and enterprise admits of the smallest comparison with the origin of Christianity. A new scene is now unfolded. The city of Medina, distant about ten days’ journey from Mecca, was at that time distracted by the hereditary contentions of two hostile tribes. These feuds were exasperated by the mutual persecutions of the Jews and Christians, and of the different Christian sects by which the city was inhabited §§. The religion of Mahomet presented, in some measure, a point of union or compromise to these divided opinions. It embraced the principles which were common to them all. Each party saw in it an honourable acknow¬ ledgment of the fundamental truth of their own system. To the Pagan Arab, somewhat imbued with the sentiments and knowledge of his Jewish or Christian fellow-citizen, it offered no offensive, or very improbable, theology. This recommendation procured to Ma¬ hometanism a more favourable reception at Medina, than its author had been able, by twelve years' painful endeavours, to job tain for it at Mecca. Yet, after all, the progress of the reli¬ gion was inconsiderable. His missionary could only collect a congregation of forty persons || |j. It was not a religious, but a political association, which ultimately introduced Mahomet into Medina. Harassed, as it should seem, and disgusted by the long continuance of factions and * Sale's Koran, c. ix. p. 151. f- lb. c. ix. p. 164. X 44 The sword,” saith Mahomet, “ is the key of heaven and of hell; a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months’ fast¬ ing or prayer. Whosoever falls in battle, his sins arc forgiven at the day of judgment; his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion, and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of his limbs shall be supplied by the wings of an¬ gels and cherubim.’’ Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 256. § Sale’s Koran, c. iii. p. 54. |1 lb. c. iv. p. 63. Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 255. ** Mod. Univ. Hist, vol i. p. 126. ft lb. p. 112. t X This latter, however, already prevailed amongst the Arabs, and had grown out of their excessive veneration for the Caaba. Mahomet’s law in this respect, was rather a compliance than an innovation *. §§ Mod. Univ. Hist. vol. i. p. 100. |||| lb. p. 85, * Sale’s Prelim. Disc. p. 122. 346 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. disputes, tlie inhabitants of that city saw in the admission of the prophet’s authority a rest from the miseries which they had suffered, and a suppression of the violence and fury which they had learned to condemn. After an embassy, therefore, composed of believers and un¬ believers *, and of persons of both tribes, with whom a treaty was concluded of strict alliance and support, Mahomet made his public entry, and was received as the sovereign of Medina. From this time, or soon after this time, the impostor changed his language and his con¬ duct. Having now a town at his command, where to arm his party, and to head them with security, he enters upon new counsels. He now pretends that a divine commission is given him to attack the infidels, to destroy idolatry, and to set up the true faith by the sword +. An early victory over a very superior force, achieved by conduct and bravery, established the renown of his arms, and of his personal character J. Every year after this was marked by battles or assassinations. The nature and activity of Mahomet’s future exertions may be estimated from the computation, that, in the nine following years of his life, he commanded his army in person in eight general engagements §, and undertook, by himself or his lieu¬ tenants, fifty military enterprises. From this time we have nothing left to account for, but that Mahomet should collect an army, that his army should conquer, and that his religion should proceed together with his conquests. The ordinary experience of human affairs leaves us little to wonder at, in any of these effects : and they were likewise each assisted by peculiar facilities. From all sides, the roving Arabs crowded round the standard of religion and plunder, of freedom and victory, of arms and rapine. Beside the highly-painted joys of a carnal paradise, Mahomet rewarded his followers in this world with a liberal division of the spoils, and with the persons of their female captives ||. The condition of Arabia, occupied by small independent tribes, exposed it to the impression, and yielded to the progress, of a firm and resolute army. After the reduction of his native peninsula, the weakness also of the Roman provinces on the north and the west, as well as the distracted state of the Persian empire on the east, facilitated the successful invasion of neighbouring countries. That Mahomet’s conquests should carry his religion along with them, will excite little surprise, when we know the conditions which he proposed to the vanquished. Death or conversion was the only choice offered to idolaters. “Strike off their heads ! strike off all the ends of their fingers^ ! kill the idolaters, where¬ soever ye shall find them ! ” To the Jews and Christians was left the somewhat milder alternative, of subjection and tribute, if they persisted in their own religion, or of an equal participation in the rights and liberties, the honours and privileges, of the faithful, if they embraced the religion of their conquerors. “ Ye Christian dogs, you know your option ; the Koran, the tribute, or the sword ff.” The corrupted state of Christianity in the seventh cen¬ tury, and the contentions of its sects, unhappily so fell in with mens care of their safety or their fortunes, as to induce many to forsake its profession. Add to all which, that Mahomet’s victories not only operated by the natural effect of conquest, but that they were constantly represented, both to his friends and enemies, as divine declarations in his favour. Success was evidence. Prosperity carried with it, not only influence, but proof. “Ye have already,” says he, after the battle of Bedr, “ had a miracle shewn you, in two armies which attacked each other ; one army fought for God’s true religion, but the other were infidels Again ; “ Ye slew not those who were slain at Bedr, but God slew them.—If ye desire a decision of the matter between us, now hath a decision come unto you §§.” Many more passages might be collected out of the Koran to the same effect. But they are un¬ necessary. The success of Mahometanism during this, and indeed every future period of its his¬ tory, bears so little resemblance to the early propagation of Christianity, that no inference whatever can justly be drawn from it to the prejudice of the Christian argument. For, what are we comparing ? A Galilean peasant accompanied by a few fishermen, with a conqueror at the head of his army. We compare Jesus without force, without power, without support, without one external circumstance of attraction or influence, prevailing against the prejudices, the learning, the hierarchy, of his country ; against the ancient religious opinions,the pomp- * Mod. Univ. Hist. vol. i. p. 85. + lb. p. 88. f Victory of Bedr. Ib. p.106. § Mod. Univ. Hist. vol. i. p. 2.55. || Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 255. ^ Sale’s Koran, c viii. p. 140. ** Ib. c. ix. p. 149. 'f'f Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 337. Sale’s Koran, c. iii. p. 3b\ $§ Ib. c. viii. p. 141. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 347 ous religious rites, the philosophy, the wisdom, the authority, of the Roman empire, in the most polished and enlightened period of its existence ; with Mahomet making his way amongst Arabs ; collecting followers in the midst of conquests and triumphs, in the darkest ages and countries of the world, and when success in arms not only operated by that com¬ mand of men’s wills and persons which attends prosperous undertakings, but was considered as a sure testimony of divine approbation. That multitudes, persuaded by this argument, should join the train of a victorious chief: that still greater multitudes should, without any argument, bow down before irresistible power; is a conduct in which we cannot see much to surprise us ; in which we can see nothing that resembles the causes by which the establish¬ ment of Christianity was effected. The success, therefore, of Mahometanism, stands not in the way of this important con¬ clusion ; that the propagation of Christianity, in the manner and under the circumstances in which it was propagated, is unique in the history of the species. A Jewish peasant over¬ threw the religion of the world. I have, nevertheless, placed the prevalency of the religion amongst the auxiliary argu¬ ments of its truth; because, whether it had prevailed or not, or whether its prevalency can or cannot be accounted for, the direct argument remains still. It is still true that a great number of men upon the spot, personally connected with the history and with the Author of the religion, were induced by what they heard, and saw, and knew, not only to change their former opinions, but to give up their time, and sacrifice their ease, to traverse seas and king¬ doms without rest and without weariness, to commit themselves to extreme dangers, to undertake incessant toils, to undergo grievous sufferings ; and all this, solely in consequence, and in support, of their belief of facts, which, if true, establish the truth of the religion ; which, if false, they must have known to be so. 348 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. PART III. A BRIEF CONSIDERATION OF SOME POPULAR OBJECTIONS. CHAPTER I. THE DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN THE SEVERAL GOSPELS. I know not a more rash or unpliilosophical conduct of the understanding, than to reject the substance of a story, by reason of some diversity in the circumstances with which it is related. The usual character of human testimony is substantial truth under circumstantial variety. This is what the daily experience of courts of justice teaches. When accounts of a transaction come from the mouths of different witnesses, it is seldom that it is not possible to pick out apparent or real inconsistencies between them. These inconsistencies are studi¬ ously displayed by an adverse pleader, but oftentimes with little impression upon the minds of the judges. On the contrary, a close and minute agreement induces the suspicion of con¬ federacy and fraud. When written histories touch upon the same scenes of action, the com¬ parison almost always affords ground for a like reflection. Numerous, and sometimes important, variations present themselves ; not seldom also, absolute and final contradictions ; yet neither one nor the other are deemed sufficient to shake the credibility of the main fact. The embassy of the Jews to deprecate the execution of Claudian’s order to place his statue in their temple, Philo places in harvest, Josephus in seed-time ; both contemporary writers. No reader is led by this inconsistency to doubt, whether such an embassy was sent, or whether such an order was given. Our own history supplies examples of the same kind. In the account of the Marquis of Argyle’s death, in the reign of Charles the Second, we have a very remarkable contradiction : Lord Clarendon relates that he was condemned to be hanged, which was performed the same day; on the contrary, Burnet, Woodrow, Heath, Ecliard, concur in stating that he was beheaded; and that he was condemned upon the Saturday, and executed upon the Monday*. Was any reader of English history ever sceptic enough to raise from hence a question, whether the Marquis of Argyle was executed or not ? Yet this ought to be left in uncertainty, according to the principles upon which the Christian history has sometimes been attacked. Dr. Middleton contended, that the different hours of the day assigned to the crucifixion of Christ, by John and by the other evangelists, did not admit of the reconcilement which learned men had proposed : and then concludes the discussion with this hard remark ; u We must be forced, with several of the critics, to leave the difficulty just as we found it, chargeable with all the consequences of manifest in¬ consistency t.” But what are these consequences ? By no means the discrediting of the history as to the principal fact, by a repugnancy (even supposing that repugnancy not to be resolvable into different modes of computation) in the time of the day in which it is said to have taken place. A great deal of the discrepancy, observable in the Gospels, arises from omission ; from a fact or a passage of Christ’s life being noticed by one writer, which is unnoticed by another. Now, omission is at all times a very uncertain ground of objection. We perceive it, not only in the comparison of different writers, but even in the same writer, when compared with himself. There are a great many particulars, and some of them of importance, mentioned by Josephus in his Antiquities, which, as we should have supposed, ought to have been put down by him in their place, in the Jewish Wars Suetonius, Tacitus, Dio Cassius, have all three writ- * See Biog. Britann. -J* Middleton’s Reflections answered by Benson, Hist. Christ, vol. iii. p. 50. \ Lardner, part i. vol. ii. p. 735, et seq. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 349 ten of the reign of Tiberius. Each has mentioned many things omitted by the rest # , yet no objection is from thence taken to the respective credit of their histories. We have in our own times, if there were not something indecorous in the comparison, the life of an eminent person, written by three of his friends, in which there is very great variety in the incidents selected by them ; some apparent, and perhaps some real contradictions ; yet without any impeachment of the substantial truth of their accounts, of the authenticity of the books, of the competent information or general fidelity of the writers. But these discrepancies will be still more numerous, when men do not write histories but memoirs ; which is perhaps the true name and proper description of our Gospels : that is, when they do not undertake, nor ever meant to deliver, in order of time, a regular and com¬ plete account of all the things of importance, which the person, who is the subject of their history, did or said; but only, out of many similar ones, to give such passages, or such actions and discourses, as offered themselves more immediately to their attention, came in the way of their inquiries, occurred to their recollection, or were suggested by their particular design at the time of writing. This particular design may appear sometimes, but not always, nor often. Thus I think that the particular design which Saint Matthew had in view whilst he was writing the his¬ tory of the resurrection, was to attest the faithful performance of Christ’s promise to his disciples to go before them into Galilee ; because he alone, except Mark, who seems to have taken it from him, has recorded this promise, and he alone has confined his narrative to that single appearance to the disciples which fulfilled it. It was the preconcerted, the great and most public manifestation of our Lord’s person. It was the thing which dwelt upon Saint Matthew’s mind, and he adapted his narrative to it. But, that there is nothing in Saint Matthew’s language, which negatives other appearances, or which imports that this, his appearance to his disciples in Galilee, in pursuance of his promise, was his first or only appearance, is made pretty evident by Saint Mark's Gospel, which uses the same terms con¬ cerning the appearance in Galilee as Saint Matthew uses, yet itself records two other appear¬ ances prior to this : “ Go your way, tell his disciples and Peter, that he goeth before you into Galilee ; there shall ye see him as he said unto you. (xvi. 7-) We might be apt to infer from these words, that this was the first time they were to see him : at least, we might infer it, with as much reason as we draw the inference from the same words in Matthew : yet the historian himself did not perceive that he was leading his readers to any such conclusion; for, in the twelfth and two following verses of this chapter, he informs us of two appearances, which, by comparing the order of events, are shewn to have been prior to the appearance in Galilee. u He appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country : and they went and told it unto the residue, neither believed they them : afterward he appeared unto the eleven, as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief, because they believed not them that had seen him after he was risen.” Probably the same observation, concerning the particular design which guided the histo¬ rian, may be of use in comparing many other passages of the Gospels. CHAPTER II. ERRONEOUS OPINIONS IMPUTED TO THE APOSTLES. A species of candour which is shewn towards every other book, is sometimes refused to the Scriptures; and that is, the placing of a distinction between judgment and testimony. We do not usually question the credit of a writer, by reason of any opinion he may have de¬ livered upon subjects unconnected with his evidence ; and even upon subjects connected with his account, or mixed with in the same discourse or writing, we naturally separate facts from opinions, testimony from observation, narrative from argument. * Lnrdner, parti, vol ii. p. 743. 350 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. To apply tliis equitable consideration to the Christian records, much controversy and much objection has been raised concerning the quotations of the Old Testament found in the New ; some of which quotations, it is said, are applied in a sense, and to events, appa¬ rently different from that which they bear, and from those to which they belong in the original. It is probable to my apprehension, that many of those quotations were intended by the writers of the New Testament as nothing more than accommodations . They quoted passages of their Scripture, which suited, and fell in with, the occasion before them, without always undertaking to assert, that the occasion was in the view of the author of the words. Such accommodations of passages from old authors, from books especially which are in every one’s hands, are common with writers of all countries; but in none, perhaps, were more to be expected than in the writings of the Jews, whose literature was almost entirely confined to their Scriptures. Those prophecies which are alleged with more solemnity, and which are accompanied with a precise declaration, that they originally respected the event then related, are, I think, truly alleged. But were it otherwise ; is the judgment of the writers of the New Testament, in interpreting passages of the Old, or sometimes, perhaps, in receiving established interpretations, so connected either with their veracity, or with their means of information concerning what was passing in their own times, as that a critical mistake, even were it clearly made out, should overthrow their historical credit ?—Does it diminish it ? Has it any thing to do with it ? Another error imputed to the first Christians, was the expected approach of the day of judgment. I would introduce this objection by a remark upon what appears to me a some¬ what similar example. Our Saviour, speaking to Peter of John, said, a If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee * ?” These words, we find, had been so misconstrued, as that a report from thence “ went abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die.” Suppose that this had come down to us amongst the prevailing opinions of the early Christians, and that the particular circumstance, from which the mistake sprang, had been lost (which, humanly speaking, was most likely to have been the case), some, at this day, would have been ready to regard and quote the error, as an impeachment of the whole Christian system. Yet with how little justice such a conclusion would have been drawn, or rather such a presumption taken up, the information which we happen to possess enables us now to perceive. To those who think that the Scriptures lead us to believe, that the early Chris¬ tians, and even the apostles, expected the approach of the day of judgment in their own times, the same reflection will occur, as that which we have made with respect to the more partial, perhaps, and temporary, but still no less ancient, error concerning the duration of Saint John’s life. It was an error, it may be likewise said, which would effectually hinder those who entertained it from acting the part of impostors. The difficulty which attends the subject of the present chapter, is contained in this question; If we once admit the fallibility of the apostolic judgment, where are we to stop, or in what can we rely upon it ? To which question, as arguing with unbelievers, and as arguing for the substantial truth of the Christian history, and for that alone, it is competent to the advocate of Christianity to reply, Give me the apostles’ testimony, and I do not stand in need of their judgment; give me the facts, and I have complete security for every conclusion I want. But, although I think that it is competent to the Christian apologist to return this answer; I do not think that it is the only answer which the objection is capable of receiving. The two following cautions, founded, I apprehend, in the most reasonable distinctions, will ex¬ clude all uncertainty upon this head which can be attended with danger. First, to separate what was the object of the apostolic mission, and declared by them to be so, from what was extraneous to it, or only incidentally connected with it. Of points clearly extraneous to the religion, nothing need be said. Of points incidentally connected with it, something may be added. Demoniacal possession is one of these points : concerning the reality of which, as this place will not admit the examination, nor even the production of the arguments on either side of the question, it would be arrogance in me to deliver any judg¬ ment. And it is unnecessary. For what I am concerned to observe is, that even they who think that it was a general, but erroneous opinion of those times; and that the writers of the New * John, xxi. 22. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 351 Testament, in common with other Jewish writers of that age, fell into the manner of speak¬ ing and of thinking upon the subject, which then universally prevailed, need not be alarmed by the concession, as though they had any thing to fear from it, for the truth of Christianity. The doctrine was not what Christ brought into the world. It appears in the Christian records, incidentally and accidentally, as being the subsisting opinion of the age and country in which his ministry was exercised. It was no part of the object of his revelation, to regulate men’s opinions concerning the action of spiritual substances upon animal bodies. At any rate it is unconnected with testimony. If a dumb person was by a word restored to the use of his speech, it signifies little to what cause the dumbness was ascribed; and the like of every other cure wrought upon those who are said to have been possessed. The malady was real, the cure was real, whether the popular explication of the cause was well founded or not. The matter of fact, the change, so far as it was an object of sense, or of testimony, was in either case the same. Secondly, that, in reading the apostolic writings, we distinguish between their doctrines and their arguments. Their doctrines came to them by revelation properly so called ; yet in propounding these doctrines in their writings or discourses, they were wont to illustrate, support, and enforce them, by such analogies, arguments, and considerations, as their own thoughts suggested. Thus the call of the Gentiles, that is, the admission of the Gentiles to the Christian profession without a previous subjection to the law of Moses, was imparted to the apostles by revelation, and was attested by the miracles which attended the Christian ministry among them. The apostles’ own assurance of the matter rested upon this founda¬ tion. Nevertheless, Saint Paul, when treating of the subject, offers a great variety of topics in its proof and vindication. The doctrine itself must be received : hut it is not necessary, in order to defend Christianity, to defend the propriety of every comparison, or the validity of every argument, which the apostle has brought into the discussion. The same observation applies to some other instances; and is, in my opinion, very well founded ; “ When divine writers argue upon any point, we are always bound to believe the conclusions that their reasonings end in, as parts of divine revelation : but we are not bound to be able to make out, or even to assent to, all the premises made use of by them, in their whole extent, unless it appear plainly, that they affirm the premises as expressly as they do the conclusions proved by them CHAPTER III. THE CONNEXION OF CHRISTIANITY WITH THE JEWISH HISTORY. Undoubtedly our Saviour assumes the divine origin of the Mosaic institution: and, independently of his authority, I conceive it to be very difficult to assign any other cause for the commencement or existence of that institution; especially for the singular circum¬ stance of the Jews’ adhering to the unity, when every other people slid into polytheism ; for their being men in religion, children in every thing else ; behind other nation sin the arts of peace and war, superior to the most improved in their sentiments and doctrines relating to the Deity f. Undoubtedly, also, our Saviour recognises the prophetic character of many * Burnet’s Expos, art. 6. F £ ‘ In the doctrine, for example, of the unity, the eternity, the omnipotence, the omniscience, the omnipre¬ sence, the wisdom, and the goodness, of God ; in their opinions concerning providence, and the creation, preser¬ vation, and government, of the world.” Campbell on Mir. p. 207. To which w T e may add, in the acts of their religion not being accompanied either with cruelties or impurities : in the religion itself being free from a species of superstition which prevailed universally in the popular religions of the ancient world, and which is to be found pei’haps in all religions that have their origin in human artifice and credulity, viz. fanciful connexions between certain appearances and actions, and the destiny of nations or individuals. Upon these conceits rested the whole train of auguries and auspices, which formed so much even of the serious part of the religions of Greece and Rome, and of the charms and incantations which were practised in those countries by the common people. From every thing of this sort the religion of the Jews, and of the Jews alone, was free. Vide Priestley’s Lectures on the Truth of the Jewish and Christian Revelation ; 171)4. 352 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. of their ancient writers. So far, therefore, we are bound as Christians to go. But to make Christianity answerable with its life, for the circumstantial truth of each separate passage of the Old Testament, the genuineness of every book, the information, fidelity, and judgment of every writer in it, is to bring, I will not say great, but unnecessary difficulties, into the whole system. These books were universally read and received by the Jews of our Saviour’s time. Tie and his apostles, in common with all other Jews, referred to them, alluded to them, used them. Y r et, except where he expressly ascribes a divine authority to particular predictions, I do not know that we can strictly draw any conclusion from the books being so used and applied, beside the proof, which it unquestionably is, of their notoriety and reception at that time. In this view, our Scriptures afford a valuable testimony to those of the Jews. But the nature of this testimony ought to be understood. It is surely very different from, what it is sometimes represented to be, a specific ratification of each particular fact and opinion; and not only of each particular fact, but of the motives assigned for every action, together with the judgment of praise or dispraise bestowed upon them. Saint James, in his Epistle*, says, “ Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord.” Not¬ withstanding this text, the reality of Job’s history, and even the existence of such a person, has been always deemed a fair subject of inquiry and discussion amongst Christian divines. Saint James’s authority is considered as good evidence of the existence of the book of Job at that time, and of its reception by the Jews ; and of nothing more. Saint Paul, in his Second Epistle to Timothy t, has this similitude: “ Now, as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth.” These names are not found in the Old Testament. And it is uncertain, whether Saint Paul took them from some apocryphal writing then extant, or from tradition. But no one ever imagined, that Saint Paul is here asserting the authority of the writing, if it was a written account which he quoted, or making himself answerable for the authenticity of the tradition ; much less, that he so involves himself with either of these questions as that the credit of his own history and mission should depend upon the fact, whether Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, or not. For what reason a more rigorous interpretation should be put upon other references, it is difficult to know. I do not mean, that other passages of the Jewish history stand upon no better evidence than the history of Job, or of Jannes and Jambres (I think much otherwise) ; but I mean, that a reference in the New Testament, to a passage in the Old, does not so fix its authority, as to exclude all inquiry into its credibility, or into the separate reasons upon which that credibility, is founded; and that it is an unwarrantable, as well as unsafe rule to lay down concerning the Jewish history, what was never laid down concerning any other, that either every particular of it must be true, or the whole false. I have thought it necessary to state this point explicitly, because a fashion, revived by Voltaire, and pursued by the disciples of his school, seems to have much prevailed of late, of attacking Christianity through the sides of Judaism. Some objections of this class are founded in misconstruction, some in exaggeration; but all proceed upon a supposition, which has not been made out by argument, viz. that the attestation, which the Author and first teachers of Christianity gave to the divine mission of Moses and the prophets, extends to every point and portion of the Jewish history; and so extends as to make Christianity responsible in its own credibility, for the circumstantial truth (I had almost said for the critical exactness) of every narrative contained in the Old Testament. * Chap. v. 11. •f Chap. iii. 8. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 353 CHAPTER IV. REJECTION OF CHRISTIANITY. We acknowledge that the Christian religion, although it converted great numbers, did not produce a universal, or even a general conviction in the minds of men, of the age and countries in which it appeared. And this want of a more complete and extensive success, is called the rejection of the Christian history and miracles; and has been thought by some to form a strong objection to the reality of the facts which the history contains. The matter of the objection divides itself into two parts; as it relates to the Jews, and as it relates to Heathen nations : because the minds of these two descriptions of men may have been with respect to Christianity, under the influence of very different causes. The case of the Jews, inasmuch as our Saviours ministry was originally addressed to them, offers itself first to our consideration. Now, upon the subject of the truth of the Christian religion; with us , there is but one question, viz. whether the miracles were actually wrought ? From acknowledging the miracles, we pass instantaneously to the acknowledgment of the whole. No doubt lies between the premises and the conclusion. If we believe the works or any one of them, we believe in Jesus. And this order of reasoning is become so universal and familiar, that wo do not readily apprehend how it could ever have been otherwise. Yet it appears to me perfectly certain, that the state of thought, in the mind of a Jew of our Saviour’s age, was totally different from this. After allowing the reality of the miracle, he had a great deal to do to persuade himself that Jesus was the Messiah. This is clearly intimated by various passages of the Gospel history. It appears, that, in the apprehension of the writers of the New Testament, the miracles did not irresistibly carry, even those who saw them, to the conclusion intended to be drawn from them; or so compel assent, as to leave no room for suspense, for the exercise of candour, or the effects of prejudice. And to this point, at least, the evangelists may be allowed to be good witnesses: because it is a point, in which exaggeration or disguise would have been the other way. Their accounts, if they could be suspected of falsehood, would rather have magnified, than diminished, the effects of the miracles. John vii. 21—31. “Jesus answered, and said unto them, I have done one work, and ye all marvel.—If a man on the sabbath-day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath- day ? Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. Then said some of them of Jerusalem, Is not this he whom they seek to kill? But, lo, he speaketh boldly, and they say nothing to him : do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ ? Howbeit we know this man , whence he is: but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence lie is. Then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught, saying, Y r e both know me, and ye know whence I am : and I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not. But I know him, for I am from him, and he hath sent me. Then they sought to take him : but no man laid hands on him, because his hour w r as not yet come. And many of the people believed on him , and said , When Christ cometh , will he do more miracles than those which this man hath done ?” This passage is very observable. It exhibits the reasoning of different sorts of persons upon the occasion of a miracle, which persons of all sorts are represented to have acknow¬ ledged as real. One sort of men thought, that there was something very extraordinary in all this: but that still Jesus could not be the Christ, because there was a circumstance in his appearance which militated with an opinion concerning Christ, in which they had been brought up, and of the truth of which, it is probable, they had never entertained a particle A A 354 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. of doubt, viz. that 44 when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is.” Another sort were inclined to believe him to he the Messiah. But even these did not argue as we should; did not consider the miracle as of itself decisive of the question; as what, if once allowed, excluded all farther debate upon the subject; but founded their opinion upon a kind of com¬ parative reasoning, 44 When Christ cometh, will he do more miracles than those which this man hath done ?” Another passage in the same evangelist, and observable for the same purpose, is that in which he relates the resurrection of Lazarus; 44 Jesus,'’ he tells us (xi. 43, 44), 44 when he had thus spoken, cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth : and he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes, and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saitli unto them, Loose him, and let him go.” One might have suspected, that at least all those who stood by the sepulchre, when Lazarus was raised, would have believed in Jesus. Ybfc the evangelist does not so represent it:— 44 Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him; but some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done.” We cannot suppose that the evangelist meant by this account, to leave his readers to imagine, that any of the spectators doubted about the truth of the miracle. Far from it. Unquestionably, he states the miracle to have been fully allowed ; yet the persons who allowed it, were, according to his representation, capable of retaining hostile sentiments towards Jesus. 44 Believing in Jesus" was not only to believe that he wrought miracles, but that he was the Messiah. With us, there is no difference between these two things : with them, there was the greatest; and the difference is apparent in this transaction. If Saint John has represented the conduct of the Jews upon this occasion truly (and why he should not I cannot tell, for it rather makes against him than for him), it shows clearly the principles upon which their judgment proceeded. Whether he has related the matter truly or not, the relation itself discovers the writer's own opinion of those principles; and that alone possesses considerable authority. In the next chapter, we have a reflection of the evangelist, entirely suited to this state of the case : 44 but though he had done so many miracles before them, yet believed they not on him The evangelist does not mean to impute the defect of their belief to any doubt about the miracles; but to their not perceiving, what all now sufficiently perceive, and what they would have perceived, had not their understandings been governed by strong prejudices, the infallible attestation which the works of Jesus bore to the truth of his pretensions. The ninth chapter of Saint John’s Gospel contains a very circumstantial account of the cure of a blind man; a miracle submitted to all the scrutiny and examination which a sceptic could propose. If a modern unbeliever had drawn up the interrogatories, they could hardly have been more critical or searching. The account contains also a very curious conference between the Jewish rulers and the patient, in which the point for our present notice is, their resistance of the force of the miracle, and of the conclusion to which it led, after they had failed in discrediting its evidence. 44 We know that God spake unto Moses : but as for this fellow, we know not whence he is.” That was the answer which set their minds at rest. And by the help of much prejudice, and great unwillingness to yield, it might do so. In the mind of the poor man restored to sight, which was under no such bias, and felt no such re¬ luctance, the miracle had its natural operation. “ Herein,’' says he, 44 is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, yet he hath opened mine eyes. Now we know, that God heareth not sinners : but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doetli his will, him he heareth. Since the world began, was it not heard, that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. If this man were not of God, he could do nothing.” We do not find, that the Jewish rulers had any other reply to make to this defence, than that which authority is sometimes apt to make to argument, 44 Dost thou teach us ?” If it shall be inquired, how a turn of thought, so different from what prevails at present, should obtain currency with the ancient Jews; the answer is found in two opinions which are proved to have subsisted in that age and country. The one was, their expectation of a Messiah of a kind totally contrary to what the appearance of Jesus bespoke him to be; the * Chap. xii. 37. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. So a other, their persuasion of the agency of daemons in the production of supernatural effects. These opinions are not supposed by us for the purpose of argument, but are evidently recog¬ nised in the Jewish writings, as well as in ours. And it ought moreover to be considered, that in these opinions the Jews of that age had been from their infancy brought up ; that they were opinions, the grounds of which they had probably few of them inquired into, and of the truth of which they entertained no doubt. And I think that these two opinions con¬ jointly afford an explanation of their conduct. The first put them upon seeking out some excuse to themselves for not receiving Jesus in the character in which he claimed to be re¬ ceived; and the second supplied them with just such an excuse as they wanted. Let Jesus work what miracles he would, still the answer was in readiness, u that he wrought them by the assistance of Beelzebub.’ 1 And to this answer no reply could be made, but that which our Saviour did make, by shewing that the tendency of his mission was so adverse to the views with which this being was, by the objectors themselves, supposed to act, that it could not reasonably be supposed that he would assist in carrying it on. The power displayed in the miracles did not alone refute the Jewish solution, because the interposition of invisible agents being once admitted, it is impossible to ascertain the limits by which their efficiency is cir¬ cumscribed. We of this day may be disposed, possibly, to think such opinions too absurd to have been ever seriously entertained. I am not bound to contend for the credibility of the opinions. They were at least as reasonable as the belief in witchcraft. They were opinions in which the Jews of that age had from their infancy been instructed ; and those who cannot see enough in the force of this reason, to account for their conduct towards our Saviour, do not sufficiently consider how such opinions may sometimes become very general in a country, and with what pertinacity, when once become so, they are, for that reason alone, adhered to. In the suspense which these notions, and the prejudices resulting from them, might occasion, the candid and docile and humble-mindecl would probably decide in Christ’s favour; the proud and obstinate, together with the giddy and the thoughtless, almost universally against him. This state of opinion dicovers to us also the reason of what some choose to wonder at, why the Jews should reject miracles when they saw them, yet rely so much upon the tradition of them in their own history. It does not appear, that it had ever entered into the minds of those who lived in the time of Moses and the prophets, to ascribe their miracles to the supernatural agency of evil beings. The solution was not then invented. The authority of Moses and the prophets being established, and become the foundation of national polity and religion, it was not probable that the later Jews, brought up in a reverence for that religion, and the subjects of that polity, should apply to their history a reasoning which tended to overthrow the foundation of both. II. The infidelity of the Gentile world, and that more especially of men of rank and learn¬ ing in it, is resolvable into a principle which, in my judgment, will account for the inefficacy of any argument or any evidence whatever, viz. contempt prior to examination. The state of religion amongst the Greeks and Romans, had a natural tendency to induce this disposi¬ tion. Dionysius Halicarnassensis remarks, that there were six hundred different kinds of religions or sacred rites exercised at Rome *. The superior classes of the community treated them all as fables. Can we wonder then, that Christianity was included in the number, without inquiry into its separate merits, or the particular grounds of its pretensions ? It might be either true or false for any thing they knew about it. The religion had nothing in its character which immediately engaged their notice. It mixed with no politics. It pro¬ duced no fine writers. It contained no curious speculations. When it did reach their know¬ ledge, I doubt not but that it appeared to them a very strange system—so unphilosophical — dealing so little in argument and discussion, in such arguments however and discussions as they were accustomed to entertain. What is said of Jesus Christ, of his nature, office, and ministry would be, in the highest degree, alien from the conceptions of their theology. The Redeemer and the destined Judge of the human race, a poor young man, executed at Jeru¬ salem with two thieves upon a cross ! Still more would the language in which the Christian * Jortin’s Remarks on Eccl. Hist. vol. i. p. 3/1. A A 2 356 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. doctrine was delivered, be dissonant and barbarous to their ears. What knew they of grace, of redemption, of justification, of the blood of Christ shed for the sins of men, of reconcile¬ ment, of mediation ? Christianity was made up of points they had never thought of; of terms which they had never heard of. It was presented also to the imagination of the learned Heathen under additional disad¬ vantage, by reason of its real, and still more of its nominal, connexion with Judaism. It shared in the obloquy and ridicule, with which that people and their religion were treated by the Greeks and Romans. They regarded Jehovah himself only as the idol of the Jewish nation, and what was related of him, as of a piece with what was told of the tutelar deities of other countries; nay, the Jews were in a particular manner ridiculed for being a credu¬ lous race ; so that whatever reports of a miraculous nature came out of that country, were looked upon by the Heathen world as false and frivolous. When they heard of Christianity, they heard of it as a quarrel amongst this people, about some articles of their own supersti¬ tion. Despising, therefore, as they did, the whole system, it was not probable that they would enter, with any degree of seriousness or attention, into the detail of its disputes, or the merits of either side. How little they knew, and with what carelessness they judged, of these matters, appears, I think, pretty plainly from an example of no less weight than that of Tacitus, p who, in a grave and professed discourse upon the history of the Jews, states, that they worshipped the effigy of an ass *. The passage is a proof, how prone the learned men of those times were, and upon how little evidence, to heap together stories which might increase the contempt and odium in which that people was lioldcn. The same foolish charge is also confidently repeated by Plutarch j~. It is observable, that all these considerations are of a nature to operate with the greatest force upon the highest ranks; upon men of education, and that order of the public from which writers are principally taken: I may add also, upon the philosophical as well as the libertine character; upon the Antonines or Julian, not less than upon Nero or Domitian ; and more particularly, upon that large and polished class of men, who acquiesced in the general persuasion, that all they had to do was to practise the duties of morality, and to worship the deity more patrio ; a habit of thinking, liberal as it may appear, which shuts the door against every argument for a new religion. The considerations above-mentioned, would acquire also strength from the prejudice which men of rank and learning universally entertain against any thing that originates with the vulgar and illiterate; which prejudice is known to be as obstinate as any prejudice whatever. Yet Christianity was still making its way: and, amidst so many impediments to its pro¬ gress, so much difficulty in procuring audience and attention, its actual success is more to be wondered at, than that it should not have universally conquered scorn and indifference, fixed the levity of a voluptuous age, or through a cloud of adverse prejudications, opened for itself a passage to the hearts and understandings of the scholars of the age. And the cause which is here assigned for the rejection of Christianity by men of rank and learning among the Heathens, namely, a strong antecedent contempt, accounts also for their silence concerning it. If they had rejected it upon examination, they would have written about it; they would have given their reasons. Whereas what men repudiate upon the strength of some prefixed persuasion, or from a settled contempt of the subject, of the per¬ sons who propose it, or of the manner in which it is proposed, they do not naturally write books about, or notice much in what they write upon other subjects. The letters of the Younger Pliny furnish an example of this silence, and let us, in some measure, into the cause of it. From his celebrated correspondence with Trajan, we know that the Christian religion prevailed in a very considerable degree in the province over which he presided; that it had excited his attention; that he had inquired into the matter, just so much as a Roman magistrate might be expected to inquire, viz. whether the religion contained any opinions dangerous to government; but that of its doctrines, its evidences, or its books, he had not taken the trouble to inform himself with any decree of care or correct- ' * o ness. But although Pliny had viewed Christianity in a nearer position than most of his * Tacit. Hist. lib. v. c. 2. f Sympos. lib. iv. qiuest. 5. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 357 learned countrymen saw it in ; yet lie had regarded the whole with such negligence and dis¬ dain (farther than as it seemed to concern his administration,) that, in more than two hundred and forty letters of his which have come down to us, the subject is never once again men¬ tioned. If, out of this number, the two letters between him and Trajan had been lost; with what confidence would the obscurity of the Christian religion have been argued from Pliny's silence about it, and with how little truth! h The name and character which Tacitus has given to Christianity, u exitiabilis superstitio ” (a pernicious superstition), and by which two words he disposes of the whole question of the merits or demerits of the religion, afford a strong proof how little he knew, or concerned him¬ self to know, about the matter. I apprehend that I shall not be contradicted, when I take upon me to assert, that no unbeliever of the present age would apply this epithet to the Christianity of the New Testament, or not allow that it was entirely unmerited. Read the in¬ structions given, by a great teacher of the religion, to those very Roman converts, of whom Tacitus speaks; and given also a very few years before the time of which ho is speaking; and which are not, let it be observed, a collection of fine sayings brought together from dif¬ ferent parts of a large work, but stand in one entire passage of a public letter, without the intermixture of a single thought which is frivolous or exceptionable :—“ Abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioncd one to another, with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another; not slothful in business ; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord: rejoicing in hope ; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer: distri¬ buting to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality. Bless them which persecute you; bless, and curse not. Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one towards another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits. Recompense to no man evil for evil. Pro¬ vide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as lietli in you, live peaceably with all men. Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath : for it is written, Vengeance is mine ; I will repay, saitli the Lord : therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him : if he thirst, give him drink : for, in so doing, thou slialt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. u Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God : the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resistetli the ordinance of God : and they that resist, shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of tho power ? Do that which is good, and thou slialt have praise of the same : for he is the minis¬ ter of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid ; for he beareth not the sword in vain : for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that cloetli evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. For, for this cause pay ye tribute also : for they are God’s ministers, attending con¬ tinually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues: tribute, to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom ; fear, to whom fear; honour to whom honour. “ Owe no man any thing, but to love one another ; for he that loveth another, hath ful¬ filled the law. For this, Thou slialt not commit adultery, Tliou slialt not kill, Thou slialt not steal, Thou slialt not bear false witness, Thou slialt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, Thou slialt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. “ And that, knowing the time, that now 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 ; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying*.” Read this, and then think of “exitiabilis superstitio !”—Or, if we be not allowed, in con¬ tending with Heathen authorities, to produce our books against theirs, we may at least be permitted to confront theirs with one another. Of this “ pernicious superstition, what could * Romans, xii. 9—xiii. 13. 353 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. Pliny find to blame, when lie was led, by his office, to institute something like an examina¬ tion into the conduct and principles of the sect ? lie discovered nothing, but that they were wont to meet together on a stated day before it was light, and sing among themselves a hymn to Christ as a God, and to bind themselves by an oath, not to the commission of any wickedness, but, not to be guilty of theft, robbery, or adultery; never to falsify their word, nor to deny a pledge committed to them, when called upon to return it. Upon the words of Tacitus we may build the following observations : First; That we are well warranted in calling the view under which the learned men of that age beheld Christianity, an obscure and distant view. Had Tacitus known more of Christianity, of its precepts, duties, constitution, or design, however he had discredited the story, he would have respected the principle. He would have described the religion differ¬ ently, though he had rejected it. It has been very satisfactorily shewn, that the “super- tition ” of the Christians consisted in worshipping a person unknown to the Roman calendar; and that the “ perniciousness ” with which they were reproached was nothing else but their opposition to the established polytheism ; and this view of the matter was just such a one as might be expected to occur to a mind, which held the sect in too much conteihpt to concern itself about the grounds and reasons of their conduct. o Secondly; We may from hence remark, how little reliance can be placed upon the most acute judgments, in subjects which they are pleased to despise : and which, of course, they from the first consider as unworthy to be inquired into. Had not Christianity survived to tell its own story, it must have gone down to posterity as a “ pernicious superstitionand that upon the credit of Tacitus’s account, much, I doubt not, strengthened by the name of the writer, and the reputation of his sagacity. Thirdly; That this contempt, prior to examination, is an intellectual vice, from which the greatest faculties of mind are not free. I know not, indeed, whether men of the greatest faculties of mind are not the most subject to it. Such men feel themselves seated upon an eminence. Looking down from their height upon the follies of mankind, they behold con¬ tending tenets wasting their idle strength upon one another, with the common disdain of the absurdity of them all. This habit of thought, however comfortable to the mind which enter¬ tains it, or however natural to great parts, is extremely dangerous; and more apt, than almost any other disposition, to produce hasty and contemptuous, and, by consequence, erro¬ neous judgments, both of persons and opinions. Fourthly; We need not be surprised at many writers of that age not mentioning Chris¬ tianity at all; when they who did mention it, appear to have entirely misconceived its nature and character; and, in consequence of this misconception, to have regarded it with negligence and contempt. To the knowledge of the greatest part of the learned Heathens, the facts of the Christian history could only come by report. The books, probably, they had never looked into. The settled habit of their minds was, and long had been, an indiscriminate rejection of all reports of the kind. With these sweeping conclusions, truth hath no chance. It depends upon distinction. If they would not inquire, how should they be convinced ? It might be founded in truth, though they, who made no search, might not discover it. u Men of rank and fortune, of wit and abilities, are often found, even in Christian coun¬ tries, to be surprisingly ignorant of religion, and of every thing that relates to it. Such were many of the heathens. Their thoughts were all fixed upon other things; upon reputation and glory, upon wealth and power, upon luxury and pleasure, upon business or learning. They thought, and they had reason to think, that the religion of their country was fable and forgery, a heap of inconsistent lies ; which inclined them to suppose that other religions were no better. Hence it came to pass, that when the apostles preached the Gospel, and wrought miracles in confirmation of a doctrine every way worthy of God, many Gentiles knew little or nothing of it, and would not take the least pains to inform themselves about it. This appears plainly from ancient history I think it by no means unreasonable to suppose that the heathen public, especially that * Jortin’s Disc, on the Christ. Rcl. p. 6G, eil. 4th. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 359 part which is made up of men of rank and education, were divided into two classes ; those who despised Christianity beforehand, and those who received it. In correspondency with which division of character, the writers of that age would also be of two classes ; those who were silent about Christianity, and those who were Christians. “ A good man, who attended sufficiently to the Christian affairs, would become a Christian; after which his testimony ceased to be pagan, and became Christian I must also add, that I think it sufficiently proved, that the notion of magic was resorted to by the heathen adversaries of Christianity, in like manner as that of diabolical agency had before been by the Jews. Justin Martyr alleges this as his reason for arguing from prophecy, rather than from miracles. Origen imputes this evasion to Celsus; Jerome to Porphyry; and Lactantius to the heathen in general. The several passages, which contain these tes¬ timonies, will be produced in the next chapter.—It being difficult however to ascertain in what degree this notion prevailed, especially amongst the superior ranks of the heathen com¬ munities, another, and I think an adequate, cause has been assigned for their infidelity. It is probable that in many cases the two causes would operate together. CHAPTER V. THAT THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES ARE NOT RECITED, OR APPEALED TO, BY EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITERS THEMSELVES, SO FULLY OR FREQUENTLY AS MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPECTED. I shall consider this objection, first, as it applies to the letters of the apostles, preserved in the New Testament; and, secondly, as it applies to the remaining writings of other early Christians. The epistles of the apostles are either hortatory or argumentative. So far as they were occupied in delivering lessons of duty, rules of public order, admonitions against certain pre¬ vailing corruptions, against vice, or any particular species of it, or in fortifying and encourag¬ ing the constancy of the disciples under the trials to which they were exposed, there appears to be no place or occasion for more of these references than we actually find. So far as the epistles are argumentative, the nature of the argument which they handle accounts for the infrequency of these allusions. These epistles were not written to prove the truth of Christianity. The subject under consideration was not that which the miracles decided, the reality of our Lord’s mission; but it was that which the miracles did not decide, the nature of his person or power, the design of his advent, its effects, and of those effects the value, kind, and extent. Still I maintain, that miraculous evidence lies at the bot¬ tom of the argument. For nothing could be so preposterous as for the disciples of Jesus to dispute amongst themselves, or with others, concerning his office or character, unless they believed that he had shewn, by supernatural proofs, that there was something extraordinary in both. Miraculous evidence, therefore, forming not the texture of these arguments, but the ground and substratum, if it be occasionally discerned, if it be incidentally appealed to, it is exactly so much as ought to take place, supposing the history to be true. As a farther answer to the objection, that the apostolic epistles do not contain so frequent, or such direct and circumstantial recitals of miracles as might be expected, I would add, that the apostolic epistles resemble in this respect the apostolic speeches, , which speeches are given by a writer who distinctly records numerous miracles wrought by these apostles themselves, and by the Founder of the institution in their presence : that it is unwarrantable to contend, that the omission, or infrequency, of such recitals in the speeches of the apostles, negatives the existence of the miracles, when the speeches are given in immediate conjunction with the his- * Hartley, Obs. p. 111). SCO EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. tory of those miracles: and that a conclusion which cannot be inferred from the speeches, without contradicting the whole tenor of the book which contains them, cannot be inferred from letters, which, in this respect, are similar only to the speeches. To prove the similitude which we allege, it may be remarked, that although in Saint Luke’s Gospel the apostle Peter is represented to have been present, at many decisive miracles wrought by Christ; and although the second part of the same history ascribes other decisive miracles to Peter himself, particularly the cure of the lame man at the gate of the temple (Acts, iii. 1), the death of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts, v. 1), the cure of iEneas (Acts, ix. 34), the resurrection of Dorcas (Acts, ix. 40) ; yet out of six speeches of Peter, preserved in the Acts, I know but two in which reference is made to the miracles wrought by Christ, and only one in which he refers to miraculous powers possessed by himself. In his speech upon the day of Pentecost, Peter addresses his audience with great solemnity, thus: “Ye men of Israel, hear these words : Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you, by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know * &c. In his speech upon the conversion of Cornelius, he delivers his testimony to the miracles performed by Christ, in these words : “We are witnesses of all things which he did, both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem j\” But in this latter speech, no allusion appears to the miracles wrought by himself, notwithstanding that the miracles above enu¬ merated all preceded the time in which it was delivered. In his speech upon the election of Matthias ;f, no distinct reference is made to any of the miracles of Christ’s history, except his resurrection. The same also may be observed of his speech upon the cure of the lame man at the gate of the temple § ; the same in his speech before the sanhedrim || ; the same in his second apology in the presence of that assembly. Stephen’s long speech contains no reference whatever to miracles, though it be expressly related of him, in the book which preserves the speech, and almost immediately before the speech, “ that he did great wonders and miracles among the people ^[.” Again, although miracles be expressly attributed to St. Paul in the Acts of the Apostles, first generally, as at Iconium (Acts, xiv. 3), during the whole tour through the Upper Asia (xiv. 27- xv. 12), at Ephesus (xix. 11, 12); secondly, in specific instances, as the blindness of Elymas at Paphos # *, the cure of the cripple at Lystra ■jT, of the pythoness at Philippi JJ, the miraculous liberation from prison in the same city §§, the restoration of Eutyclius || ||, the predictions of his shipwreck the viper at Mclita ## *, the cure of Publius’s father ttd ; at all which miracles, except the first two, the historian himself was present: notwithstanding, I say, this positive ascription of miracles to Saint Paul, yet in the speeches delivered by him, and given as delivered by him, in the same book in which the miracles are related, and the miraculous powers asserted, the appeals to his own miracles, or indeed to any miracles at all, are rare and incidental. In his speech at Antioch in Pisidia Jiff, there is no allusion but to the resurrection. In his discourse at Miletus §§§, none to any miracle; none in his speech before Felix || || ||; none in his speech before Eestus ; except to Christs resurrection, and his own conversion. Agreeably hereunto, in thirteen letters ascribed to Saint Paul, we have incessant references to Christ’s resurrection, frequent references to his own conversion, three indubitable references to the miracles which he wrought ; four other references to the same, less direct yet highly probable > hut more copious or circumstantial recitals we have not. The consent, therefore, between Saint Paul’s speeches and letters, is in this respect sufficiently exact: and the reason in both is the same ; namely, that the miraculous history was all along presupposed , and that the question, which occupied the speaker’s and the writer’s thoughts, was this: whether, allowing the history of Jesus to be true, lie was, upon the strength of it, to be received as the promised Messiah; and, if he was, what were the consequences, what was the object and benefit, of his mission ? The general observation which has been made upon the apostolic writings, namely, that the subject of which they treated, did not lead them to any direct recital of the Christian * Acts, ii. 22. XX xvi. 1G. * *** Gal. iii. 5; t x. 39. t i. 15. § iii. 12. j| iv. 8. ^1 vi. 8. ** xiii. 11. 'f't' xiv. 8. §§ xvi. 2G. mi XX. 10. %% xxvii. 1. *** xxviii. G. fff xxviii. 8. XXt Acts > xiii - 1G * §§§ xx * U. mill xxiv. 10. xxv. 8. Rom. xv. 18, 19; 2 Cor. xii. 12. fftt 1 Cor. ii. 4,5 ; Eph. iii. 7 ; Gal. ii. 8; 1 Thcss. i. 5. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. CGI history, belongs also to the writings of the apostolic fathers. The epistle of Barnabas is, in its subject and general composition, much like the Epistle to the Hebrews; an allegorical application of divers passages of the Jewish history, of their law and ritual, to those parts of the Christian dispensation in which the author perceived a resemblance. The epistle of Cle¬ ment was written for the sole purpose of quieting certain dissentions that had arisen amongst the members of the church of Corinth, and of reviving in their minds that temper and spirit of which their predecessors in the Gospel had left them an example. The work of Hernias is a vision: quotes neither the Old Testament nor the New ; and merely falls now and then into the language, and the mode of speech, which the author had read in our Gospels. The epistles of Polycarp and Ignatius had for their principal object the order and discipline of the churches which they addressed. Yet, under all these circumstances of disadvantage, the great points of the Christian history are fully recognised. This hath been shewn in its proper place *. There is, however, another class of writers, to whom the answer above given, viz. the un¬ suitableness of any such appeals or references as the objection demands, to the subjects of which the writings treated, does not apply; and that is, the class of ancient apologists , whose declared design it was to defend Christianity, and to give the reasons of their adherence to it. It is necessary, therefore, to inquire how the matter of the objection stands in these. The most ancient apologist, of whose works we have the smallest knowledge, is Quadra- tus. Quadratus lived about seventy years after the ascension, and presented his apology to the emperor Adrian. From a passage of this work, preserved in Eusebius, it appears that the author did directly and formally appeal to the miracles of Christ, and in terms as express and confident as we could desire. The passage (which has been once already stated) is as follows : u The works of our Saviour were always conspicuous, for they were real; both they that were healed, and they that were raised from the dead, were seen, not only when they were healed or raised, but for a long time afterward : not only whilst he dwelled on this earth, but also after his departure, and for a good while after it; insomuch as that some of them have reached to our times f.” Nothing can be more rational or satisfactory than this. Justin Martyr, the next of the Christian apologists whose work is not lost, and who fol¬ lowed Quadratus at the distance of about thirty years, has touched upon passages of Christ’s history in so many places, that a tolerably complete account of Christ’s life might he collected out of his works. In the following quotation, he asserts the performance of miracles by Christ, in words as strong and positive as the language possesses : “ Christ healed those who from their birth were blind, and deaf, and lame; causing, by his word, one to leap, another to hear, and a third to see : and having raised the dead, and caused them to live, he, by his works, excited attention, and induced the men of that age to know him. Who, however, seeing these things done, said that it was a magical appearance, and dared to call him a magician, and a deceiver of the people j.” In his first apology §, Justin expressly assigns the reason for his having recourse to the argument from prophecy, rather than alleging the miracles of the Christian history : which reason was, that the persons with whom he contended would ascribe these miracles to magic ; “ lest any of our opponents should say, What hinders, but that he who is called Christ by us, being a man sprung from men, performed the miracles which we attribute to him, by magical art ?” The suggestion of this reason meets, as I apprehend, the very point of the present objection; more especially when we find Justin followed in it, by other writers of that age. Ireneeus, who came about forty years after him, notices the same evasion in the adversaries of Christianity, and replies to it by the same argument: “ But, if they shall say, that the Lord performed these things by an illusory appearance (8cos), leading these objectors to the prophecies, we will shew from them, that all things were thus predicted concerning him, and strictly came to pass ||.” Lactantius, who lived a century lower, de¬ livers the same sentiment, upon the same occasion: u He performed miracles;—we might have supposed him to have been a magician, as ye say, and as the Jews then supposed, if all the prophets had not with one spirit foretold that Christ should perform these very things ^[. But to return to the Christian apologists in their order. Tertullian :— u That person whom * See page 228, 299, f Euseb. Hist. 1. iv. c. 3. X Just. Dial. p. 258. ed. Thirlby. § Apolog. prim. p. 48. ib. || Iren. 1. ii. c. 57. Lactant. v. 3. 362 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. the Jews had vainly imagined, from the meanness of his appearance, to be a mere man, they afterward, in consequence of the power he exerted, considered as a magician, when he, with one word, ejected devils out of the bodies of men, gave sight to the blind, cleansed the leprous, strengthened the nerves of those that had the palsy, and lastly, with one command, restored the dead to life: when he, I say, made the very elements obey him, assuaged the storms, walked upon the seas, demonstrating himself to be the Word of God Next in the catalogue of professed apologists we may place Origen, who, it is well known, published a formal defence of Christianity, in answer to Celsus, a heathen, who had written a discourse against it. I know no expressions, by which a plainer or more positive appeal to the Christian miracles can be made, than the expressions used by Origen; 44 Undoubtedly we do think him to be the Christ, and the Son of God, because he healed the lame and the blind; and we are the more confirmed in this persuasion, by what is written in the prophe¬ cies : 4 Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear, and the lame man shall leap as a hart/ But that he also raised the dead, and that it is not a fiction of those who wrote the Gospels, is evident from hence, that, if it had been a fiction there would have been many recorded to be raised up, and such as had been a long time in their graves. But, it not being a fiction, few have been recorded : for instance, the daughter of the ruler of a synagogue, of whom I do not know why he said, She is not dead, but sleepeth, expressing something peculiar to her, not common to all dead persons : and the only son of a widow, on whom he had compassion, and raised him to life, after he had bid the bearers of the corpse to stop; and the third, Lazarus, who had been buried four days.” This is positively to assert the miracles of Christ, and it is also to comment upon them, and that with a con¬ siderable degree of accuracy and candour. In another passage of the same author, we meet with the old solution of magic applied to the miracles of Christ by the adversaries of the religion. 44 Celsus,” saith Origen, 44 well knowing what great works may be alleged to have been done by Jesus, pretends to grant that the things related of him are true; such as healing diseases, raising the dead, feeding multitudes with a few loaves, of which large fragments were left f.” And then Celsus gives, it seems, an answer to these proofs of our Lord’s mission, which as Origen understood it, re¬ solved the phenomena into magic ; for, Origen begins his reply, by observing, 44 You see that Celsus in a manner allows that there is such a thing as magic p” It appears also from the testimony of Saint Jerome, that Porphyry, the most learned and able of the Heathen writers against Christianity, resorted to the same solution : 44 Unless,’’ says he, speaking of Yigilantius, “according to the manner of the Gentiles and the profane, of Porphyry and Eunomius, you pretend that these are the tricks of demons This magic, these demons, this illusory appearance, this comparison with the tricks of jug¬ glers, by which many of that age accounted so easily for the Christian miracles, and which answers the advocates of Christianity often thought it necessary to refute by arguments drawn from other topics, and particularly from prophecy (to which, it seems, these solutions did not apply), we now perceive to be gross subterfuges. That such reasons were ever seriously urged, and seriously received, is only a proof, what a gloss and varnish fashion can give to any opinion. It appears, therefore, that the miracles of Christ, understood, as we understand them, in their literal and historical sense, were positively and precisely asserted and appealed to by the aj)ologists for Christianity; which answers the allegation of the objection. I am ready, however, to admit, that the ancient Christian advocates did not insist upon the miracles in argument, so frequently as I should have done. It was their lot to contend with notions of magical agency, against which the mere production of the facts was not suf¬ ficient for the convincing of their adversaries : I do not know whether they themselves thought it quite decisive of the controversy. But since it is proved, I conceive with cer¬ tainty, that the sparingness with which they appealed to miracles, was owing neither to their ignorance, nor their doubt of the facts, it is, at any rate, an objection, not to the truth of the history, but to the judgment of its defenders. * Tcrtull. Apolog. p. 20 ; ed. Priorii, Par. 1675. f Orig. cont. Cels. lib. ii. sect. 48. + Lardner’s Jewish and Heath. Test. vol. ii. p, 294; ed. 4to. § Jerome cont . Vigil. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 303 CHAPTER VI. WANT OF UNIVERSALITY IN THE KNOWLEDGE AND RECEPTION OF CHRISTIANITY, AND OF GREATER CLEARNESS IN THE EVIDENCE. Of a revelation which really came from God, the proof, it has been said, would in all ages be so public and manifest, that no part of the human species would remain ignorant of it, no understanding could fail of being convinced by it. The advocates of Christianity do not pretend that the evidence of their religion possesses these qualities. They do not deny that we can conceive it to be within the compass of divine power, to have communicated to the world a higher degree of assurance, and to have given to his communication a stronger and more extensive influence. For any thing we are able to discern, God could have so formed men, as to have perceived the truths of religion intuitively; or to have carried on a communication with the other world, whilst they lived in this; or to have seen the individuals of the species, instead of dying, pass to heaven by a sensible translation. He could have presented a separate miracle to each man’s senses. He could have established a standing miracle. He could have caused miracles to be wrought in every different age and country. These, and many more methods, which we may imagine, if we once give loose to our imaginations, are, so far as we can judge, all practicable. The question, therefore, is, not whether Christianity possesses the highest possible degree of evidence, but whether the not having more evidence be a sufficient reason for rejecting that which we have. Now there appears to be no fairer method of judging concerning any dispensation which is alleged to come from God, when a question is made whether such a dispensation should come from God or not, than by comparing it with other things which are acknowledged to pro¬ ceed from the same counsel, and to be produced by the same agency. If the dispensation in question labour under no defects but what apparently belong to other dispensations, these seeming defects do not justify us, in setting aside the proofs which are offered of its authen¬ ticity, if they be otherwise entitled to credit. Throughout that order then of nature, of which God is the author, what we find is a sys¬ tem of beneficence: we are seldom or never able to make out a system of optimism. I mean, that there are few cases in which, if we permit ourselves to range in possibilities, we cannot suppose something more perfect, and more unobjectionable, than what we see. The rain which descends from heaven, is confessedly amongst the contrivances of the Creator, for the sustentation of the animals and vegetables which subsist upon the surface of the earth. Yet how partially and irregularly is it supplied! How much of it falls upon the sea, where it can be of no use ! how often is it wanted where it would be of the greatest! What tracts of continent are rendered deserts by the scarcity of it! Or, not to speak of extreme cases, how much, sometimes, do inhabited countries suffer by its deficiency or delay !—We could imagine, if to imagine were our business, the matter to be otherwise regulated. We could imagine showers to fall, just where and when they would do good; always seasonably, every where sufficient; so distributed as not to. leave a field upon the face of the globe scorched by drought, or even a plant withering for the lack of moisture. Yet, does the difference between the real case and the imagined case, or the seeming inferiority of the one to the other, authorize us to say, that the present disposition of the atmosphere is not amongst the pro¬ ductions or the designs of the Deity ? Does it check the inference which we draw from the confessed beneficence of the provision ? or does it make us cease to admire the contrivance ? • The observation, which we have exemplified in the single instance of the rain of heaven, may be repeated concerning most of the phenomena of nature; and the true conclusion to which it leads is this: that to inquire what the Deity might have done, could have done, or, as we even sometimes presume to speak, ought to have done, or, in hypothetical cases, would have EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 864 done, and to build any propositions upon such inquiries against evidence of facts, is wholly unwarrantable. It is a mode of reasoning which will not do in natural history, which will not do in natural religion, which cannot therefore be applied with safety to revelation. It may have some foundation, in certain speculative a priori ideas of the divine attributes; but it has none in experience, or in analogy. The general character of the works of nature is, on the one hand, goodness both in design and effect; and, on the other hand, a liability to dif¬ ficulty, and to objections, if such objections be allowed, by reason of seeming incompleteness or uncertainty in attaining their end. Christianity participates of this character. The true similitude between nature and revelation consists in this; that they each bear strong marks of their original; that they each also bear appearances of irregularity and defect. A system of strict optimism may, nevertheless, be the real system in both cases. But what I contend is, that the proof is hidden from us ; that we ought not to expect to perceive that in revela¬ tion, which we hardly perceive in any thing; that beneficence, of which we can judge, ought to satisfy us, that optimism, of which we cannot judge, ought not to be sought after. We can judge of beneficence, because it depends upon effects which we experience, and upon the relation between the means which we see acting and the ends which we see produced. We cannot judge of optimism, because it necessarily implies a comparison of that which is tried, with that which is not tried; of consequences which we see, with others which we imagine, and concerning many of which, it is more than probable, we know nothing; concerning some, that we have no notion. If Christianity be compared with the state and progress of natural religion, the argument of the objector w T ill gain nothing by the comparison. I remember hearing an unbeliever say, that, if God had given a revelation, he would have written it in the skies. Are the truths of natural religion written in the skies, or in a language which every one reads ? or is this the case with the most useful arts, or the most necessary sciences of human life ? An Ota- heitean or an Esquimaux knows nothing of Christianity ; does he know 7 more of the principles of deism or morality ? which, notwithstanding his ignorance, are neither untrue, nor unim¬ portant, nor uncertain. The existence of the Deity is left to be collected from observations, which every man does not make, which every man, perhaps, is not capable of making. Can it be argued, that God does not exist, because, if he did, he would let us sec him, or discover himself to mankind by proofs (such as, we may think, the nature of the subject merited), which no inadvertency could miss, no prejudice withstand ? If Christianity be regarded as a providential instrument for the melioration of mankind, its progress and diffusion resembles that of other causes by which human life is improved. The diversity is not greater, nor the advance more slow, in religion, than we find it to be in learning, liberty, government, laws. The Deity hath not touched the order of nature in vain. The Jewish religion produced great and permanent effects ; the Christian religion hath done the same. It hath disposed the world to amendment. It hath put things in a train. It is by no means improbable, that it may become universal: and that the world may continue in that stage so long as that the duration of its reign may bear a vast proportion to the time of its partial influence. When we argue concerning Christianity, that it must necessarily be true, because it is beneficial, we go, perhaps, too far on one side ; and we certainly go too far on the other, when we conclude that it must be false, because it is not so efficacious as w r e could have supposed. The question of its truth is to be tried upon its proper evidence, without defer¬ ring much to this sort of argument, on either side. “ The evidence,” as Bishop Butler hath rightly observed, “ depends upon the judgment we form of human conduct, under given cir¬ cumstances, of which it maybe presumed that we know something; the objection stands upon the supposed conduct of the Deity, under relations with which we are not acquainted.” What would be the real effect of that overpowering evidence which our adversaries require in a revelation, it is difficult to foretell; at least, we must speak of it as of a dispensation of which we have no experience. Some consequences however would, it is probable, attend this economy, which do not seem to befit a revelation that proceeded from God. One is, that irresistible proof would restrain the voluntary powers too much ; would not answer the purpose of trial and probation; would call for no exercise of candour, seriousness, humi¬ lity, inquiry ; no submission of passion, interests, and prejudices, to moral evidence and to EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 3G5 probable truth; no habits of reflection; none of that previous desire to learn and to obey the will of God, which forms perhaps the test of the virtuous principle, and which induces men to attend, with care and reverence, to every credible intimation of that will, and to re¬ sign present advantages and present pleasures to every reasonable expectation of propitiating his favour. “ Men’s moral probation may be, whether they will take due care to inform themselves by impartial consideration; and, afterward, whether they will act as the case requires, upon the evidence which they have. And this, we find by experience, is often our probation in our temporal capacity II. These modes of communication would leave no place for the admission of internal evi¬ dence ; which ought, perhaps, to bear a considerable part in the proof of every revelation, because it is a species of evidence which applies itself to the knowledge, love, and practice of virtue, and which operates in proportion to the degree of those qualities which it finds in the person whom it addresses. Men of good dispositions, amongst Christians, are greatly affected by the impression which the Scriptures themselves make upon their minds. Their conviction is much strengthened by these impressions. And this perhaps was intended to be one effect to be produced by the religion. It is likewise true, to whatever cause we ascribe it (for I am not in this work at liberty to introduce the Christian doctrine of grace or assist¬ ance, or the Christian promise, that, “ if any man will do his will, he shall know of the doc¬ trine, whether it be of God -j-”),—it is true, I say, that they who sincerely act, or sincerely endeavour to act, according to what they believe, that is, according to the just result of the pro¬ babilities, or, if you please, the possibilities, in natural and revealed religion, which they themselves perceive, and according to a rational estimate of consequences, and, above all, according to the just effect of those principles of gratitude and devotion, which even the view of nature generates in a well ordered mind, seldom fail of proceeding farther. This also may have been exactly what was designed. Whereas, may it not be said that irresistible evidence would confound all characters and all dispositions ? would subvert, rather than promote, the true purpose of the divine counsels ; which is, not to produce obedience by a force little short of mechanical constraint (which obe¬ dience would be regularity, not virtue, and would hardly perhaps differ from that which inanimate bodies pay to the laws impressed upon their nature), but to treat moral agents agreeably to what they are; which is done, when light and motives are of such kinds, and are imparted in such measures, that the influence of them depends upon the recipients them¬ selves ? “ It is not meet to govern rational free agents in via by sight and sense. It would be no trial or thanks to the most sensual wretch to forbear sinning, if heaven and hell were open to his sight. That spiritual vision and fruition is our state in patrid” (Baxter’s Reasons, p. 357-) There may be truth in this thought, though roughly expressed. Few things are more improbable than that we (the human species) should be the highest order of beings in the universe: that animated nature should ascend from the lowest reptile to us, and all at once stop there. If there be classes above us of rational intelligences, clearer ma¬ nifestations may belong to them. This may be one of the distinctions. And it may be one, to which we ourselves hereafter shall attain. III. But may it not also be asked, whether the perfect display of a future state of exist¬ ence would be compatible with the activity of civil life, and with the success of human affairs ? I can easily conceive that this impression may be easily overdone; that it may so seize and fill the thoughts, as to leave no place for the cares and offices of men’s several stations, no anxiety for worldly prosperity, or even for a worldly provision, and, by con¬ sequence, no sufficient stimulus to secular industry. Of the first Christians we read, “ that all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their pos¬ sessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need ; and, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart This was extremely natural, and just what might be expected from miraculous evidence coming with full force upon the senses of mankind : but I much doubt whether, if this state of mind had been universal, or long continued, the business of the world could have gone on. The necessary arts of social life would have been little cultivated. The plough and the loom would have stood still. Agriculture, manufac- * Butler’s Analogy, part ii. c. vi. p Jolinvii. 17. f Actsii. 44—46. 3G6 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. tures, trade, and navigation, would not, I think, have flourished, if they could have been exercised at all. Men would have addicted themselves to contemplative and ascetic lives, instead of lives of business and of useful industry. We observe that Saint Paul found it necessary, frequently to recal his converts to the ordinary labours and domestic duties of their condition ; and to give them, in his own example, a lesson of contented application to their worldly employments. By the manner in which the religion is now proposed, a great portion of the human species is enabled, and of these multitudes of every generation are induced, to seek and to effectuate their salvation, through the medium of Christianity, without interruption of the prosperity or of the regular course of human affairs. CHAPTER VII. THE SUPPOSED EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITY. That a religion, which, under every form in which it is taught, holds forth the final re¬ ward of virtue and punishment of vice, and proposes those distinctions of virtue and vice, which the wisest and most cultivated part of mankind confess to be just, should not be believed, is very possible ; but that, so far as it is believed, it should not produce any good, but rather a bad effect upon public happiness, is a proposition which it requires very strong- evidence to render credible. Yet many have been found to contend for this paradox, and very confident appeals have been made to history, and to observation, for the truth of it. In the conclusions, however, which these writers draw from what they call experience, two sources, I think, of mistake may be perceived. One is, that they look for the influence of religion in the wrong place. The other, that they charge Christianity with many consequences, for which it is not responsible. I. The influence of religion is not to be sought for in the councils of princes, in the debates or resolutions of popular assemblies, in the conduct of governments towards their subjects, or of states and sovereigns towards one another; of conquerors at the head of their armies, or of parties intriguing for power at home (topics which alone almost occupy the attention, and fill the pages, of history) ; but must be perceived, if perceived at all, in the silent course of private and domestic life. Nay more ; even there its influence may not be very obvious to observation. If it check, in some degree, personal dissoluteness, if it beget a general pro¬ bity in the transaction of business, if it produce soft and humane manners in the mass of the community, and occasional exertions of laborious or expensive benevolence in a few indivi¬ duals, it is all the effect which can offer itself to external notice. The kingdom of heaven is within us. That which is the substance of the religion, its hopes and consolation, its inter¬ mixture with the thoughts by day and by night, the devotion of the heart, the control of appetite, the steady direction of the will to the commands of God, is necessarily invisible. Yet upon these depend the virtue and the happiness of millions. This cause renders the re¬ presentations of history, with respect to religion, defective and fallacious, in a greater degree than they are upon any other subject. Religion operates most upon those of whom history knows the least; upon fathers and mothers in their families, upon men-servants and maid¬ servants, upon the orderly tradesman, the quiet villager, the manufacturer at his loom, the husbandman in his fields. Amongst such, its influence collectively may be of inestimable value, yet its effects, in the mean time, little upon those who figure upon the stage of the world. They may know nothing of it; they may believe nothing of it; they may be actuated by motives more impetuous than those which religion is able to excite. It cannot, therefore, be thought strange, that this influence should elude the grasp and touch of public history: for, what is public history, but a register of the successes and disappointments, the vices, the follies, and the quarrels, of those who engage in contentions for power ? I will add, that much of this influence may be felt in times of public distress, and little of EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 307 it in times of public wealth and security. This also increases the uncertainty of any opi¬ nions that we draw from historical representations. The influence of Christianity is commensurate with no effects which history states. We do not pretend that it has any such necessary aud irresistible power over the affairs of nations, as to surmount the force of other causes. The Christian religion also acts upon public usages and institutions, by an operation which is only secondary and indirect. Christianity is not a code of civil law. It can only reach public institutions through private character. Now its influence upon private charac¬ ter may be considerable, yet many public usages and institutions repugnant to its principles may remain. To get rid of these, the reigning part of the community must act, and act to¬ gether. But it may be long before the persons who compose this body, be sufficiently touched with the Christian character, to join in the suppression of practices, to which they and the public have been reconciled by causes which will reconcile the human mind to any thing, by habit and interest. Nevertheless, the effects of Christianity, even in this view, have been important. It has mitigated the conduct of war, and the treatment of captives. It has softened the administration of despotic, or of nominally despotic governments. It has abolished polygamy. It has restrained the licentiousness of divorces. It has put an end to the exposure of children, and the immolation of slaves. It has suppressed the com¬ bats of gladiators and the impurities of religious rites. It has banished, if not unnatural vices, at least the toleration of them. It has greatly meliorated the condition of the laborious part, that is to say, of the mass of every community, by procuring for them a day of weekly rest. In all countries, in which it is professed, it has produced numerous estab¬ lishments for the relief of sickness and poverty; and in some, a regular and general provision by law. It has triumphed over the slavery established in the Roman empire : it is contending, and, I trust, will one day prevail, against the worst slavery of the West Indies. A Christian writer f, so early as in the second century, has testified the resistance which Christianity made to wicked and licentious practices, though established by law and by public usage:—“Neither in Partliia, do the Christians, though Parthians, use polygamy; nor in Persia, though Persians, do they marry their own daughters; nor among the Bactri, or Galli, do they violate the sanctity of marriage; nor wherever they are, do they suffer themselves to be overcome by ill-constituted laws and manners.” Socrates did not destroy the idolatry of Athens, or produce the slightest revolution in the manners of his country. But the argument to which I recur, is, that the benefit of religion, being felt chiefly in the obscurity of private stations, necessarily escapes the observation of history. From the first general notification of Christianity to the present day, there have been in every age many millions, whose names were never heard of, made better by it, not only in their con¬ duct, but in their disposition ; and happier, not so much in their external circumstances, as in that which is inter prcecordia , in that which alone deserves the name of happiness, the tranquillity and consolation of their thoughts. It has been, since its commencement, the author of happiness and virtue to millions and millions of the human race. Who is there that would not wish his son to be a Christian ? Christianity also, in every country in which it is professed, hath obtained a sensible, although not a complete influence, upon the public judgment of morals. And this is very important. For without the occasional correction which public opinion receives, by referring to some fixed standard of morality, no man can foretel into what extravagances it might wander. Assassination might become as honourable as duelling: unnatural crimes be accounted as venial as fornication is wont to be accounted. In this way it is possible, that many may be kept in order by Christianity, who are not themselves Christians. They may be guided by the rectitude which it communicates to public opinion. Their consciences may suggest their duty truly, and they may ascribe these suggestions to a moral sense, or to the native capacity of the human intellect, when in fact they are nothing more than the public * Lipsius affirms (Sat. b. i. c. 12), that the gladiatorial shows sometimes cost Europe twenty or thirty thousand lives in a month ; and that not only the men, but even the women of all ranks, were passionately fond of these shows. See Bishop Porteus, Sermon XIII. t Bardesanes, ap. Euseb. Prcep. Evang. vi. 10. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 368 opinion, reflected from their own minds; and opinion, in a considerable degree, modified by the lessons of Christianity. u Certain it is, and this is a great deal to say, that the gene¬ rality, even of the meanest and most vulgar and ignorant people, have truer and worthier notions of God, more just and right apprehensions concerning his attributes and perfections, a deeper sense of the difference of good and evil, a greater regard to moral obligations, and to the plain and most necessary duties of life, and a more firm and universal expectation of a future state of rewards and punishments, than, in any heathen country, any considerable number of men were found to have had After all, the value of Christianity is not to he appreciated by its temporal effects. The object of revelation is to influence human conduct in this life ; but what is gained to happi¬ ness by that influence, can only be estimated by taking in the whole of human existence. Then, as hath already been observed, there may be also great consequences of Christianity, which do not belong to it as a revelation. The effects upon human salvation, of the mission, of the death, of the present, of the future agency of Christ, may be universal, though the religion be not universally known. Secondly, I assert that Christianity is charged with many consequences for which it is not responsible. I believe that religious motives have had no more to do in the formation of nine- tenths of the intolerant and persecuting laws, which in different countries have been established upon the subject of religion, than they have had to do in England with the mak¬ ing of the game laws. These measures, although they have the Christian religion for their subject, are resolvable into a principle which Christianity certainly did not plant (and which Christianity could not universally condemn, because it is not universally wrong), which principle is no other than this, that they who are in possession of power do what they can to keep it. Christianity is answerable for no part of the mischief which has been brought upon the world by persecution, except that which has arisen from conscientious persecutors. Now these perhaps have never been either numerous or powerful. Nor is it to Christianity that even their mistake can be fairly imputed. They have been misled by an error not properly Christian or religious, but by an error in their moral philosophy. They pursued the parti¬ cular, without adverting to the general consequence. Believing certain articles of faith, or a certain mode of worship, to be highly conducive, or perhaps essential, to salvation, they thought themselves bound to bring all they could, by every means, into them. And this they thought, without considering what would be the effect of such a conclusion, when adopted amongst mankind as a general rule of conduct. Had there been in the New Testa¬ ment, what there are in the Koran, precepts authorising coercion in the propagation of the religion, and the use of violence towards unbelievers, the case would have been different. This distinction could not have been taken, nor this defence made. I apologise for no species nor degree of persecution, but I think that even the fact has been exaggerated. The slave-trade destroys more in a year, than the Inquisition does in a hun¬ dred, or perhaps hath done since its foundation. If it be objected, as I apprehend it will be, that Christianity is chargeable with every mis¬ chief, of which it has been the occasion , though not the motive ; I answer, that, if the male¬ volent passions be there, the world will never want occasions. The noxious element will always find a conductor. Any point will produce an explosion. Did the applauded inter¬ community of the Pagan theology preserve the peace of the Roman world ? did it prevent oppressions, proscriptions, massacres, devastations? Was it bigotry that carried Alexander into the East, or brought Cassar into Gaul ? Are the nations of the world, into which Chris¬ tianity hath not found its way, or from which it hath been banished, free from contentions ? Are their contentions less ruinous and sanguinary ? Is it owing to Christianity, or to the want of it, that the finest regions of the East, the countries inter quatuor maria , the peninsula of Greece, together with a great part of the Mediterranean coast, are at this day a desert ? or that the banks of the Nile, whose constantly renewed fertility is not to be impaired by neglect, or destroyed by the ravages of war, serve only for the scene of a ferocious anarchy, or the supply of unceasing hostilities ? Europe itself has known no religious Avars for some centuries, yet has hardly ever been without war. Are the calamities, which at this day afflict it, to be imputed to Christianity ? Hath Poland fallen by a Christian crusade ? * Clarke, Ev. Nat. Rel. p. 20P, cd. v. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 369 Hath the overthrow in France of civil order and security been effected by the votaries of our religion, or by the foes ? Amongst the awful lessons, which the crimes and the miseries of that country afford to mankind, this is one ; that, in order to be a persecutor, it is not necessary to be a bigot: that in rage and cruelty, in mischief and destruction, fanaticism itself can be outdone by infidelity. Finally, If war, as it is now carried on between nations, produce less misery and ruin than formerly, we are indebted perhaps to Christianity for the change, more than to any other cause. Viewed therefore even in its relation to this subject, it appears to have been of ad¬ vantage to the world. It hath humanized the conduct of wars ; it hath ceased to excite them. The differences of opinion, that have in all ages prevailed amongst Christians, fall very much within the alternative which has been stated. If we possessed the disposition which Christianity labours, above all other qualities, to inculcate, these differences would do little harm. If that disposition be wanting, other causes, even were these absent, would continu¬ ally rise up to call forth the malevolent passions into action. Differences of opinion, when accompanied with mutual charity, which Christianity forbids them to violate, are for the most part innocent, and for some purposes useful. They promote inquiry, discussion, and knowledge. They help to keep up an attention to religious subjects, and a concern about them, which might be apt to die away in the calm and silence of universal agreement. I do not know that it is in any degree true, that the influence of religion is the greatest, where there are the fewest dissenters. CHAPTER VIII. THE CONCLUSION. In religion, as in every other subject of human reasoning, much depends upon the order in which we dispose our inquiries. A man who takes up a system of divinity with a previ¬ ous opinion, that either every part must be true, or the whole false, approaches the discussion with great disadvantage. No other system, which is founded upon moral evidence, would bear to be treated in the same manner. Nevertheless, in a certain degree, we are all intro¬ duced to our religious studies under this prejudication. And it cannot be avoided. The weakness of the human judgment in the early part of youth, yet its extreme susceptibility of impression, renders it necessary to furnish it with some opinions, and with some principles or other. Or indeed, without much express care, or much endeavour for this purpose, the tendency of the mind of man to assimilate itself to the habits of thinking and speaking which prevail around him, produces the same effect. That indifferency and suspense, that wait¬ ing and equilibrium of the judgment, which some require in religious matters, and which some would wish to be aimed at in the conduct of education, are impossible to be preserved. They are not given to the condition of human life. It is a consequence of this situation that the doctrines of religion come to us before the proofs ; and come to us with that mixture of explications and inferences from which no public creed is, or can be, free. And the effect which too frequently follows, from Christianity being presented to the understanding in this form, is, that when any articles, which appear as parts of it, contradict the apprehension of the persons to whom it is proposed, men of rash and confident tempers hastily and indiscriminately reject the whole. But is this to do jus¬ tice, either to themselves, or to the religion ? The rational way of treating a subject of such acknowledged importance, is to attend, in the first place, to the general and substantial truth of its principles, and to that alone. When we once feel a foundation ; when we once per¬ ceive a ground of credibility in its history, we shall proceed with safety to inquire into the interpretation of its records, and into the doctrines which have been deduced from them. Nor will it either endanger our faith, or diminish or alter our motives for obedience, if we should discover that these conclusions are formed with very different degrees of probability, and possess very different degrees of importance. This conduct of the understanding, dictated by every rule of right reasoning, will uphold B B 370 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. personal Christianity, even in those countries in which it is established under forms the most liable to difficulty and objection. It will also have the farther effect of guarding us against the prejudices which are wont to arise in our minds to the disadvantage of religion, from observing the numerous controversies which are carried on amongst its professors ; and like¬ wise of inducing a spirit of lenity and moderation in our judgment, as well as in our treatment, of those who stand, in such controversies, upon sides opposite to ours. What is clear in Christianity, we shall find to be sufficient, and to be infinitely valuable ; what is dubious, unnecessary to be decided, or of very subordinate importance; and what is most obscure, will teach us to bear with the opinions which others may have formed upon the same sub¬ ject. We shall say to those who the most widely dissent from us, what Augustin said to the worst heretics of his age : “ Illi in vos sseviant, qui nesciunt, cum quo labore verum inveniatur, et quam difficile caveantur errores ;—qui nesciunt, cum quanta difficultate sanetur oculus interioris liominis;—qui nesciunt, quibus suspiriis et gemitibus fiat ut ex quantula- cunque parte possit intelligi Deus A judgment, moreover, which is once pretty well satisfied of the general truth of the religion, will not only thus discriminate in its doctrines, but will possess sufficient strength to overcome the reluctance of the imagination to admit articles of faith which are attended with difficulty of apprehension, if such articles of faith appear to be truly parts of the reve¬ lation. It was to be expected beforehand, that what related to the economy, and to the persons, of the invisible world, which revelation professes to do, and which, if true, it actually does, should contain some points remote from our analogies, and from the comprehension of a mind which hath acquired all its ideas from sense and from experience. It hath been my care, in the preceding work, to preserve the separation between evidences and doctrines as inviolable as I could; to remove from the primary question all considerations which have been unnecessarily joined with it; and to offer a defence to Christianity, which every Christian might read, without seeing the tenets in which he had been brought up attacked or decried: and it always afforded a satisfaction to my mind to observe that this was prac¬ ticable ; that few or none of our many controversies with one another affect or relate to the proofs of our religion; that the rent never descends to the foundation. The truth of Christianity depends upon its leading facts, and upon them alone. Now of these we have evidence which ought to satisfy us, at least until it appear that mankind have ever been deceived by the same. We have some uncontested and incontestible points, to which the history of the human species hath nothing similar to offer. A Jewish peasant changed the religion of the world, aud that, without force, without power, without support; without one natural source or circumstance of attraction, influence, or success. Such a thing hath not happened in any other instance. The companions of this Person, after he himself had been put to death for his attempt, asserted his supernatural character, founded upon his supernatural operations: and, in testimony of the truth of their assertions, i. e. in conse¬ quence of their own belief of that truth, and in order to communicate the knowledge of it to others, voluntarily entered upon lives of toil and hardship, and, with a full experience of their danger, committed themselves to the last extremities of persecution. This hath not a parallel. More particularly, a very few days after this Person had been publicly executed, and in that very city in which he was buried, these his companions declared with one voice that his body was restored to life : that they had seen him, handled him, ate with him, conversed with him ; and, in pursuance of their persuasion of the truth of what they told, preached his religion, with this strange fact as the foundation of it, in the face of those who had killed him, who were armed with the power of the country, and necessarily and naturally disposed to treat his followers as they had treated himself; and having done this upon the spot where the event took place, carried the intelligence of it abroad, in despite of difficulties and opposition, and where the nature of their errand gave them nothing to expect but derision, insult, and outrage.—This is without example. These three facts, I think, are certain, and would have been nearly so, if the Gospels had never been written. The Christian story, as to these points, hath never varied. No other hath been set up against it. Every letter, every discourse, every controversy, amongst the followers of the religion; every book written by them, from the age of its commencement to the present time, in every part of * -Aug. contra Ep. Fund. cap. ii. n. 2, 3. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 371 tlie world in which it hath been professed, and with every sect into which it hath been divided (and we have letters and discourses written by contemporaries, by witnesses of the transaction, by persons themselves bearing a share in it, and other writings following that age in regular succession), concur in representing these facts in this manner. A religion, which now possesses the greatest part of the civilized world, unquestionably sprang up at Jerusalem at this time. Some account must be given of its origin; some cause assigned for its rise. All the accounts of this origin, all the explications of this cause, whether taken from the writings of the early followers of the religion (in which, and in which perhaps alone, it could be expected that they should be distinctly unfolded), or from occasional notices in other writings of that or the adjoining age, either expressly allege the facts above stated as the means by which the religion was set up, or advert to its commencement in a manner which agrees with the supposition of these facts being true, and which testifies their operation and effects. These propositions alone lay a foundation for our faith; for they prove the existence of a transaction, which cannot even in its most general parts be accounted for, upon any reasonable supposition, except that of the truth of the mission. But the particulars, the detail of the miracles or miraculous pretences (for such there necessarily must have been), upon which this unexampled transaction rested, and for which these men acted and suffered as they did act and suffer, it is undoubtedly of great importance to us to know. We have this detail from the fountain-head, from the persons themselves; in accounts written by eye-witnesses of the scene, by contemporaries and companions of those who were so; not in one book, but four, each containing enough for the verification of the religion, all agreeing in the fundamental parts of the history. We have the authenticity of these books established, by more and stronger proofs than belong to almost any other ancient book whatever, and by proofs which widely distinguish them from any others claiming a similar authority to theirs. If there were any good reason for doubt concerning the names to which these books are ascribed (which there is not, for they were never ascribed to any other, and we have evidence not long after their publication of their bearing the names which they now bear), their antiquity, of which there is no question, their reputation and authority amongst the early disciples of the religion, of which there is as little, form a valid proof that they must, in the main at least, have agreed with what the first teachers of the religion delivered. When we open these ancient volumes, we discover in them marks of truth, whether we consider each in itself, or collate them with one another. The writers certainly knew some¬ thing of what they were writing about, for they manifest an acquaintance with local circum¬ stances, with the history and usages of the times, which could only belong to an inhabitant of that country, living in that age. In every narrative we perceive simplicity and unde¬ signedness ; the air and the language of reality. When we compare the different narratives together, we find them so varying as to repel all suspicion of confederacy; so agreeing under this variety, as to show that the accounts had one real transaction for their common foun¬ dation ; often attributing different actions and discourses, to the Person whose history, or rather memoirs of whose history, they profess to relate, yet actions and discourses so similar, as very much to bespeak the same character; which is a coincidence, that, in such writers as they were, could only be the consequence of their writing from fact, and not from imagination. These four narratives are confined to the history of the Founder of the religion, and end with his ministry. Since, however, it is certain that the affair went on, we cannot help being anxious to know how it proceeded. This intelligence hath come down to us in a work purporting to be written by a person, himself connected with the business during the first stages of its progress, taking up the story where the former histories had left it, carrying on the narrative, oftentimes with great particularity, and throughout with the appearance of good sense *, information, and candour; stating all along the origin, and the only probable origin, of effects, which unquestionably were produced, together with the natural conse¬ quences of situations which unquestionably did exist; and confirmed , in the substance at least of the account, by the strongest possible accession of testimony which a history can receive, original letters , written by the person who is the principal subject of the history, * See Peter’s soeech upon curing the cripple (Acts iii. 18), the council of the apostles (xv.), Paul’s discourse at Athens (xvii. 22), before Agrippa (xxvi.). I notice these passages, both as fraught with good sense, and as free from the smallest tincture of enthusiasm. B B 2 072 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. written upon the business to which the history relates, and during the period, or soon after the period, which the history comprises. No man can say that this all together is not a body of strong historical evidence. When we reflect that some of those from whom the books proceeded, are related to have themselves wrought miracles, to have been the subject of miracles, or of supernatural assistance in propagating the religion, we may perhaps be led to think, that more credit, or a different kind of credit, is due to these accounts, than what can be claimed by merely human testimony. But this is an argument which cannot be addressed to sceptics or unbelievers. A man must be a Christian before he can receive it. The inspiration of the historical Scriptures, the nature, degree, and extent of that inspiration, are questions undoubtedly of serious discussion; but they are questions amongst Christians themselves, and not between them and others. The doctrine itself is by no means necessary to the belief of Christianity, which must, in the first instance at least, depend upon the ordinary maxims of historical credibility *. In viewing the detail of miracles recorded in these books, we find every supposition negatived, by which they can be resolved into fraud or delusion. They were not secret, nor momentary, nor tentative, nor ambiguous ; nor performed under the sanction of authority, with the spectators on their side, or in affirmance of tenets and practices already established. We find also the evidence alleged for them, and which evidence was by great numbers received, different from that upon which other miraculous accounts rest. It was contem¬ porary, it was published upon the spot, it continued; it involved interests and questions of the greatest magnitude: it contradicted the most fixed persuasions and prejudices of the persons to whom it was addressed; it required from those who accepted it, not a simple, indolent assent, but a change, from thenceforward, of principles and conduct, a submission to consequences the most serious and the most deterring, to loss and danger, to insult, outrage, and persecution. IIow such a story should be false, or, if false, how under such circumstances it should make its way, I think impossible to be explained ; yet such the Christian story was, such were the circumstances under which it came forth, and in oppo¬ sition to such difficulties did it prevail. An event so connected with the religion, and with the fortunes, of the Jewish people, as one of their race, one born amongst them, establishing his authority and his law throughout a great portion of the civilized world, it was perhaps to be expected, should be noticed in the prophetic writings of that nation ; especially when this Person, together with his own mission, caused also to be acknowledged the divine original of their institution, and by those who before had altogether rejected it. Accordingly, we perceive in these writings, various intimations concurring in the person and history of Jesus, in a manner, and in a degree, in which passages taken from these books could not be made to concur in any person arbitrarily assumed, or in any person except him who has been the author of great changes in the affairs and opinions of mankind. Of some of these predictions the weight depends a good deal upon the concurrence. Others possess great separate strength : one in particular does this in an eminent degree. It is an entire description, manifestly directed to one character and to one scene of things : it is extant in a writing, or collection of writings, declaredly prophetic; and it applies to Christ’s character, and to the circumstances of his life and death, with considerable precision, and in a way which no diversity of interpretation hath, in my opinion, been able to confound. That the advent of Christ, and the consequences of it, should not have been more distinctly revealed in the Jewish sacred books, is, I think, in some measure accounted for by the consideration, that for the Jew T s to have foreseen the fall of their institution, and that it was to merge at length into a more perfect and comprehensive dispen¬ sation, would have cooled too much, and relaxed, their zeal for it, and their adherence to it, upon which zeal and adherence the preservation in the world of any remains, for many ages, of religious truth might in a great measure depend. Of what a revelation discloses to mankind, one, and only one, question can be properly asked; Was it of importance to mankind to know, or to be better assured of? In this question, when we turn our thoughts to the great Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, and of a future judgment, no doubt can possibly be entertained. He who gives * See Powell’s Discourse?, disc. xv. p. 245. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIAN IT V. 373 me riches or honours, does nothing; he who even gives me health, does little, in comparison with that which lays before me just grounds for expecting a restoration to life, and a day of account and retribution : which thing Christianity hath done for millions. Other articles of the Christian faith, although of infinite importance when placed beside any other topic of human inquiry, are only the adjuncts and circumstances of this. They are, however, such as appear worthy of the original to which we ascribe them. The morality of the religion, whether taken from the precepts or the example of its Founder, or from the lessons of its primitive teachers, derived, as it should seem, from what had been inculcated by their Master, is, in all its parts, wise and pure; neither adapted to vulgar prejudices, nor flattering popular notions, nor excusing established practices, but calculated, in the matter of its instruction, truly to promote human happiness, and in the form in which it was conveyed, to produce impression and effect; a morality, which, let it have proceeded from any person whatever, would have been satisfactory evidence of his good sense and integrity, of the soundness of his understanding and the probity of his designs ; a morality, in every view of it, much more perfect than could have been expected from the natural circumstances and character of the person who delivered it; a morality, in a word, which is, and hath been, most beneficial to mankind. Upon the greatest, therefore, of all possible occasions, and for a purpose of inestimable value, it pleased the Deity to vouchsafe a miraculous attestation. Having done this for the institution, when this alone could fix its authority, or give to it a beginning, he committed its future progress to the natural means of human communication, and to the influence of those causes by which human conduct and human affairs are governed. The seed, being- sown, was left to vegetate; the leaven, being inserted, was left to ferment; and both according to the laws of nature : laws, nevertheless, disposed and controlled by that Provi¬ dence which conducts the affairs of the universe, though by an influence inscrutable and generally undistinguisliable by us. And in this, Christianity is analogous to most other provisions for happiness. The provision is made ; and, being made, is left to act according to laws, which, forming a part of a more general system, regulate this particular subject, in common with many others. Let the constant recurrence to our observation of contrivance, design, and wisdom, in the works of nature, once fix upon our minds the belief of a God, and after that all is easy. In the counsels of a being possessed of the power and disposition which the Creator of the universe must possess, it is not improbable that there should be a future state; it is not improbable that we should be acquainted with it. A future state rectifies every thing ; because, if moral agents be made, in the last event, happy or miserable, according to their conduct in the station, and under the circumstances, in which they are placed, it seems not very material by the operation of what causes, according to what rules, or even, if you please to call it so, by what chance or caprice, these stations are assigned, or these circum¬ stances determined. This hypothesis, therefore, solves all that objection to the divine care and goodness, which the promiscuous distribution of good and evil (I do not mean in the doubtful advantages of riches and grandeur, but in the unquestionably important distinctions of health and sickness, strength and infirmity, bodily ease and pain, mental alacrity and depression) is apt on so many occasions to create. This one truth changes the nature of things; gives order to confusion; makes the moral world of a piece with the natural. Nevertheless, a higher degree of assurance than that to which it is possible to advance this, or any argument drawn from the light of nature, was necessary, especially to overcome the shock which the imagination imd the senses receive from the effects and the appearances of death, and the obstruction which thence arises to the expectation of either a continued or a future existence. This difficulty, although of a nature, no doubt, to act very forcibly, will be found, I think, upon reflection, to reside more in our habits of apprehension, than in the subject; and that the giving way to it, when we have any reasonable grounds for the contrary, is rather an indulging of the imagination, than any thing else. Abstractedly considered, that is, considered without relation to the difference which habit, and merely habit, produces in our faculties and modes of apprehension, I do not see any thing more in the resurrection of a dead man, than in the conception of a child; except it be this, that the one comes into his world with a system of prior consciousness about him, which the 374 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. oilier does not: and no person will say, that he knows enough of either subject to perceive, that this circumstance makes such a difference in the two cases, that the one should be easy, and the other impossible; the one natural, the other not so. To the first man, the succession of the species would be as incomprehensible, as the resurrection of the dead is to us. Thought is different from motion, perception from impact: the individuality of a mind is hardly consistent with the divisibility of an extended substance ; or its volition, that is, its power of originating motion, with the inertness which cleaves to every portion of matter which our observation or our experiments can reach. These distinctions lead us to an immaterial principle : at least, they do this ; they so negative the mechanical properties of matter, in the constitution of a sentient, still more of a rational, being, that no argument drawn from these properties, can be of any great weight in opposition to other reasons, when the question respects the changes of which such a nature is capable, or the manner in which these changes are effected. Whatever thought be, or whatever it depend upon, the regular experience of sleep makes one thing concerning it certain, that it can be completely suspended, and completely restored. If any one find it too great a strain upon his thoughts, to admit the notion of a substance strictly immaterial, that is, from which extension and solidity are excluded, he can find no difficulty in allowing, that a particle as small as a particle of light, minuter than all con¬ ceivable dimensions, may just as easily be the depositary, the organ, and the vehicle of consciousness, as the congeries of animal substance which forms a human body, or the human brain; that, being so, it may transfer a proper identity to whatever shall hereafter be united to it; may be safe amidst the destruction of its integuments; may connect the natural with the spiritual, the corruptible with the glorified body. If it be said, that the mode and means of all this is imperceptible by our senses, it is only what is true of the most important agencies and operations. The great powers of nature are all invisible. Gravitation, electricity, magnetism, though constantly present, and constantly exerting their influence; though within us, near us, and about us ; though diffused throughout all space, overspreading the surface, or penetrating the contexture, of all bodies with which we are acquainted, depend, upon substances and actions which are totally concealed from our senses. The Supreme Intelligence is so himself. But whether these or any other attempts to satisfy the imagination, bear any resemblance to the truth, or whether the imagination, which, as I have said before, is the mere slave of habit, can be satisfied or not; when a future state, and the revelation of a future state, is not only perfectly consistent with the attributes of the Being who governs the universe ; but when it is more; when it alone removes the appearances of contrariety which attend the operations of his will towards creatures capable of comparative merit and demerit, of reward and punishment; when a strong body of historical evidence, confirmed by many internal tokens of truth and authenticity, gives us just reason to believe that such a revelation hath actually been made ; we ought to set our minds at rest with the assurance, that in the resources of creative wisdom, expedients cannot be wanted to carry into effect what the Deity hath proposed : that either a new and mighty influence will descend upon the human world to resuscitate extinguished consciousness ; or, that, amidst the other wonderful con¬ trivances with which the universe abounds, and by some of which we see animal life, in many instances, assuming improved forms of existence, acquiring new organs, new perceptions, and new sources of enjoyment, provision is also made, though by methods secret to us (as all the great processes of nature are), for conducting the objects of God’s moral government, through the necessary changes of their frame, to those final distinctions of happiness and misery, which he hath declared to be reserved for obedience and transgression, for virtue and vice, for the use and the neglect, the right and the wrong employment, of the faculties and opportunities with which he hath been pleased, severally, to intrust, and to try us. END OF EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. H OR! PAULINiE: OR, THE TRUTH OF THE SCRIPTURE HISTORY OF ST. PAUL EVINCED. TO THE RIGHT REVEREND > JOHN LAW, D. D., LORD BISHOP OF KILLALA AND ACHONRY, AS A TESTIMONY OF ESTEEM FOR HIS VIRTUES AND LEARNING, AND OF GRATITUDE FOR THE LONG AND FAITHFUL FRIENDSHIP WITH WHICH THE AUTHOR HAS BEEN HONOURED BY HIM, THIS ATTEMPT TO CONFIRM THE EVIDENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN HISTORY IS INSCRIBED, BY HIS AFFECTIONATE AND MOST OBLIGED SERVANT, ) W. PALEY. * Dr. John Law, to whom Paley thus dedicated this volume, was his early friend and fellow tutor at Cam¬ bridge : he was possessed of considerable talents, and has been sometimes supposed to have assisted Paley in the authorship of his Moral and Political Philosophy ; thus the chapter “ on reverencing the Deity” has been often ascribed to Dr. Law. He was born at Greystoke, in 1745, became bishop of Clonfert in 1782, was translated to Killala in 1787, and to Elphin in 1795. He died March 19, 1810. He was a man of great liberality of feeling : thus when he was made bishop of Killala, finding that his diocese was principally tenanted by Catholics, he printed for their use an edition of the works of Gother, a Catholic author, and had it distributed amongst the poor of his diocese. He came of a talented and fortunate family ; his brother became, in 1812, bishop of Chester, and another brother, the celebra¬ ted Lord Ellenborough, was long chief justice of the court of King’s Bench. Gent. Mag. 1810, p. 380. THE TRUTH OF ' THE SCRIPTURE HISTORY OF ST. PAUL EVINCED. CHAPTER I. EXPOSITION OF THE ARGUMENT. The volume of Christian Scriptures contains thirteen letters purporting to be written by St Paul; it contains also a book, which, amongst other things, professes to deliver the history, or rather memoirs of the history, of this same person. By assuming the genuineness of the letters, we may prove the substantial truth of the history ; or, by assuming the truth of the history, we may argue strongly in support of the genuineness of the letters. But I assume neither one nor the other. The reader is at liberty to suppose these writings to have been lately discovered in the library of the Escurial, and to come to our hands destitute of any extrinsic or collateral evidence whatever ; and the argument I am about to offer is calculated to shew, that a comparison of the different writings would, even under these circumstances, afford good reason to believe the persons and transactions to have been real, the letters authen¬ tic, and the narration in the main to be true. Agreement or conformity between letters hearing the name of an ancient author, and a received history of that author’s life, does not necessarily establish the credit of either: because, 1. The history may, like Middleton’s life of Cicero, or Jortin’s Life of Erasmus, have been wholly, or in part, compiled from the letters : in which case it is manifest that the history ztdds nothing to the evidence already afforded by the letters ; or, 2. The letters may have been fabricated out of the history: a species of imposture which is certainly practicable ; and which, without any accession of proof or authority, would neces¬ sarily produce the appearance of consistency or agreement; or, 3. The history and letters may have been founded upon some authority common to both ; as upon reports and traditions which prevailed in the age in which they were composed, or upon some ancient record now lost, which both writers consulted ; in which case also the letters, without being genuine, may exhibit marks of conformity with the history ; and the history, without being true, may agree with the letters. Agreement therefore, or conformity, is only to be relied upon so far as we can exclude these several suppositions. Now the point to be noticed is, that in the three cases above enumerated, conformity must be the effect of design. Where the history is compiled from the letters, which is the first case, the design and composition of the work are in general so confessed, or made so evident by comparison, as to leave us in no danger of confounding the production with original history, or of mistaking it for an independent authority. The agree¬ ment, it is possible, will be close and uniform, and will easily be perceived to result from the 378 HOIUE PAULINA. intention of the author, and from the plan and conduct of his work.—Where the letters are fabricated from the history, which is the second case, it is always for the purpose of imposing a forgery upon the public; and in order to give colour and probability to the fraud, names, places, and circumstances, found in the history, may be studiously introduced into the letters, as well as a general consistency be endeavoured to be maintained. But here it is manifest that whatever congruity appears, is the consequence of meditation, artifice, and design.— The third case is that wherein the history and the letters, without any direct privity or com¬ munication with each other, derive their materials from the same source; and, by reason of their common original, furnish instances of accordance and correspondency. This is a situa¬ tion in which we must allow it to be possible for ancient writings to be placed; and it is a situation in which it is more difficult to distinguish spurious from genuine writings, than in either of the cases described in the preceding suppositions; inasmuch as the congruities ob¬ servable are so far accidental, as that they are not produced by the immediate transplanting of names and circumstances out of one writing into the other. But although, with respect to each other, the agreement in these writings be mediate and secondary, yet it is not pro¬ perly or absolutely undesigned: because, with respect to the common original from which the information of the writers proceeds, it is studied and factitious. The case of which we treat must, as to the letters, be a case of forgery : and when the writer who is personating another, sits down to his composition—whether he have the history with which we now compare the letters, or some other record before him ; or whether he have only loose tradi¬ tion and reports to go by—he must adapt his imposture, as well as he can, to what he finds in these accounts; and his adaptations will be the result of counsel, scheme, and industry; art must be employed; and vestiges will appear of management and design. Add to this, that, in most of the following examples, the circumstances in which the coincidence is re¬ marked are of too particular and domestic a nature to have floated down upon the stream of general tradition. Of the three cases which we have stated, the difference between the first and the two others is, that in the first the design may be fair and honest, in the others it must be accom¬ panied with the consciousness of fraud ; but in all there is design. In examining, therefore, the agreement between ancient writings, the character of truth and originality is undesign¬ edness : and this test applies to every supposition ; for, whether we suppose the history to be true, but the letters spurious; or the letters to be genuine, but the history false : or, lastly, falsehood to belong to both—the history to be a fable, and the letters to be fictitious : the same inference will result —that either there will be no agreement between them, or the agreement will be the effect of design. Nor will it elude the principle of this rule, to sup¬ pose the same person to have been the author of all the letters, or even the author both of the letters and the history; for no less design is necessary to produce coincidence between different parts of a man’s own writings, especially when they are made to take the different forms of a history and of original letters, than to adjust them to the circumstances found in any other writing. With respect to those writings of the New Testament which are to be the subject of our present consideration, I think that, as to the authenticity of the epistles, this argument, where it is sufficiently sustained by instances, is nearly conclusive; for I cannot assign a supposition of forgery, in which coincidences of the kind we inquire after are likely to appear. As to the history, it extends to these points:—It proves the general reality of the circumstances : it proves the historian’s knowledge of these circumstances. In the present instance it confirms his pretensions of having been a contemporary, and in the latter part of his history, a companion, of St. Paul. In a word, it establishes the substantial truth of the narration; and substantial truth is that which, in every historical inquiry, ought to be the first thing sought after and ascertained : it must be the groundwork of every other observation. The reader then will please to remember this word undesignedness , as denoting that upon which the construction and validity of our argument chiefly depend. As to the proofs of undcsignedness, I shall in this place say little ; for I had rather the reader's persuasion should arise from the instances themselves, and the separate remarks with HOIUE PAULINA. 379 which they may he accompanied, than from any previous formulary or description of the argu¬ ment. In a great plurality of examples, I trust he will be perfectly convinced that no design or contrivance whatever has been exercised : and if some of the coincidences alleged o o appear to be minute, circuitous, or oblique, let him reflect that this very indirectness and subtilty is that which gives force and propriety to the example. Broad, obvious, and ex¬ plicit agreements, prove little ; because it may be suggested that the insertion of such is the ordinary expedient of every forgery : and though they may occur, and probably will occur, in genuine writings, yet it cannot be proved that they are peculiar to these. Thus what St. Paul declares in chap. xi. of 1 Cor. concerning the institution of the eucharist—“ For I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread; and when he had given thanks he brake it, and said, Take, eat; this is my body, which is broken for you ; this do in remembrance of me”—though it be in close and verbal conformity with the account of the same transaction preserved by St. Luke, is yet a conformity of which no use can be made in our argument; for if it should be objected that this was a mere recital from the Gospel, borrowed by the author of the Epistle, for the purpose of setting off his composition by an appearance of agree¬ ment with the received account of the Lord’s supper, I should not know how to repel the insinuation. In like manner, the description which St. Paul gives of himself in his Epistle to the Philippians (iii. 5.)—“ Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church ; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless”—is made up of particulars so plainly delivered concerning him, in the Acts of the Apostles, the Epis¬ tle to the Romans, and the Epistle to the Galatians, that I cannot deny but that it would be easy for an impostor, who was fabricating a letter in the name of St. Paul, to collect these articles into one view. This, therefore, is a conformity which we do not adduce. But when I read in the Acts of the Apostles, that when “ Paul came to Derbe and Lystra, behold a certain disciple was there, named Timotheus, the son of a certain woman which was a Jewess and when, in an epistle addressed to Timothy, I find him reminded of his “having known the Holy Scriptures from a childf which implies that he must, on the one side or both, have been brought up by Jewish parents: I conceive that I remark a coincidence which shews, by its very obliquity , that scheme was not employed in its formation. In like manner if a coincidence depend upon a comparison of dates, or rather of circumstances from which the dates are gathered—the more intricate that comparison shall be; the more numer¬ ous the intermediate steps through which the conclusion is deduced; in a word, the more circuitous the investigation is, the better, because the agreement which finally results is thereby farther removed from the suspicion of contrivance, affectation, or design. And it should be remembered, concerning these coincidences, that it is one thing to be minute, and another to be precarious; one thing to be unobserved, and another to be obscure ; one thing to be circuitous or oblique, and another to be forced, dubious, or fanciful. And this distinc¬ tion ought always to be retained in our thoughts. The very particularity of St. Paul’s epistles ; the perpetual recurrence of names of persons and places: the frequent allusions to the incidents of his private life, and the circumstances of his con¬ dition and history ; and the connexion and parallelism of these with the same circumstances in the Acts of the Apostles, so as to enable us, for the most part, to confront them one with another ; as well as the relation which subsists between the circumstances, as mentioned or referred to in the different epistles—afford no inconsiderable proof of the genuineness of the writings, and the reality of the transactions. For as no advertency is sufficient to guard against slips and con¬ tradictions, when circumstances are multiplied, and when they are liable to be detected by contemporary accounts equally circumstantial, an impostor, I should expect, would either have avoided particulars entirely, contenting himself with doctrinal discussions, moral pre¬ cepts, and general reflections # ; or if, for the sake of imitating St. Paul’s style he should * This, however must not be misunderstood. A person one, to refer to passages found in his history. A person writing to his friends, and upon a subject in which the addressing an epistle to the public at large, or under the transactions of his own life were concerned, would probably form of an epistle delivering a discourse upon some specu- be led in the course of his letter, especially if it was along lative argument, would not, it is probable, meet with an 380 IIOILF PAULIN M. have thought it necessary to intersperse his composition with names and circumstances, he would have placed them out of the reach of comparison with the history. And I am con¬ firmed in this opinion by the inspection of two attempts to counterfeit St. Paul s epistles, which have come down to us; and the only attempts of which we have any knowledge, that are at all deserving of regard. One of these is an epistle to the Laodiceans, extant in Latin, and preserved by Fabricius in his collection of apocryphal scriptures. The other purports to be an epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, in answer to an epistle from the Corinthians to him. This was translated by Scroclerus from a copy in the Armenian language which had been sent to W. Whiston, and was afterward, from a more perfect copy, procured at Aleppo, published by his sons, as an appendix to their edition of Moses Chorenensis. No Greek copy exists of either: they are not only not supported by ancient testimony, but they are negatived and excluded; as they have never found admission into any catalogue of aposto¬ lical writings, acknowledged by, or known to, the early ages of Christianity. In the first of these I found, as I expected, a total evitation of circumstances. It is simply a collection of sentences from the canonical epistles, strung together with very little skill. The second, which is a more versute and specious forgery, is introduced with a list of names of persons who wrote to St. Paul from Corinth; and is preceded by an account sufficiently particular of the manner in which the epistle was sent from Corinth to St. Paul, and the answer re¬ turned. But they are names which no one ever heard of: and the account it is impossible to combine with any thing found in the Acts, or in the other epistles. It is not necessary for me to point out the internal marks of spuriousness and imposture which these compositions betray ; but it was necessary to observe, that they do not afford those coincidences which we propose as proofs of authenticity in the epistles which we defend. Having explained the general scheme and formation of the argument, I may be permitted to subjoin a brief account of the manner of conducting it. I have disposed the several instances of agreement under separate numbers; as well to mark more sensibly the divisions of the subject, as for another purpose, viz. that the reader may thereby be reminded that the instances arc independent of one another. I have advanced nothing which I do not think probable; but the degree of probability by which different instances are supported, is undoubtedly very different. If the reader, therefore, meets with a number which contains an instance that appears to him unsatisfactory, or founded in mis¬ take, he will dismiss that number from the argument, but without prejudice to any other. lie will have occasion also to observe, that the coincidences discoverable in some epistles are much fewer and weaker than what are supplied by others. But he will add to his observation this important circumstance—that whatever ascertains the original of one epistle, in some measure establishes the authority of the rest. For, whether these epistles be genuine or spu¬ rious, every thing about them indicates that they come from the same hand. The diction, which it is extremely difficult to imitate, preserves its resemblance and peculiarity through¬ out all the epistles. Numerous expressions and singularities of style, found in no other part of the New Testament, are repeated in different epistles ; and occur in their respective places, without the smallest appearance of force or art. An involved argumentation, frequent ob¬ scurities, especially in the order and transition of thought, piety, vehemence, affection, bursts of rapture, and of unparalleled sublimity, are properties, all, or most of them, discernible in every letter of the collection. But although these epistles bear strong marks of proceeding from the same hand, I think it is still more certain that they were originally separate publi¬ cations. They form no continued story ; they compose no regular correspondence; they comprise not the transactions of any particular period; they carry on no connexion of argu¬ ment ; they depend not upon one another; except in one or two instances, they refer not to one another. I will farther undertake to say, that no study or care has been employed to produce or preserve an appearance of consistency amongst them. All which observations shew that they were not intended by the person, whoever he was, that wrote them, to come occasion of alluding to the circumstances of his life at all: agreements be a valuable accession to the arguments by he might, or he might not; the chauce on either side is which the authenticity of a letter is maintained, yet the nearly equal. This is the situation of the catholic epistle, want of them certainly forms no positive objection. Although, therefore, the presence of these allusions and HORJE PAULINA. 381 for tli or be read together: that they appeared at first separately, and have been collected since. The proper purpose of the following work is to bring together, from the Acts of the Apos¬ tles, and from the different epistles, such passages as furnish examples of undesigned coinci¬ dence ; but I have so far enlarged upon this plan, as to take into it some circumstances found in the epistles, which contributed strength to the conclusion, though not strictly objects of comparison. It appeared also a part of the same plan, to examine the difficulties which presented them¬ selves in the course of our inquiry. I do not know that the subject has been proposed or considered in this view before. Ludovicus, Capellus, Bishop Pearson, Dr. Benson, and Dr. Lardner, have each given a con¬ tinued history of St. Paul’s life, made up from the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles joined together. But this, it is manifest, is a different undertaking from the present, and directed to a different purpose. If what is here offered shall add one thread to that complication of probabilities by which the Christian history is attested, the reader’s attention will be repaid by the supreme import¬ ance of the subject ; and my design will be fully answered. CHAPTER II. THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. No. I.— The first passage I shall produce from this epistle, and upon which a good deal of observation will be founded, is the following : “ But now I go unto Jerusalem, to minister unto the saints; for it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jeru¬ salem.” Rom. xv. 25, 26. In this quotation three distinct circumstances are stated—a contribution in Macedonia for the relief of the Christians of Jerusalem, a contribution in Achaia for the same purpose, and an intended journey of St. Paul to Jerusalem. These circumstances are stated as taking- place at the same time, and that to be the time when the epistle was written. Now let us inquire whether we can find these circumstances elsewhere ; and whether, if we do find them, they meet together in respect of date. Turn to the Acts of the Apostles, chap. xx. ver. 2, 3, and you read the following account: u When he had gone over those parts (viz. Macedonia), and had given them much exhortation, he came into Greece, and there abode three months ; and when the Jews laid wait for him, as he was about to sail into Syria , he proposed to return through Macedonia.” From this passage, compared with the account of St. Paul’s travels, given before, and from the sequel of the chapter, it appears that upon St. Paul’s second visit to the peninsula of Greece, his intention was, when he should leave the country, to proceed from Achaia directly by sea to Syria; but that to avoid the Jews, who were lying in wait to intercept him in his route, he so far changed his purpose as to go back through Macedonia, embark at Philippi, and pursue his voyage from thence towards Jerusalem. Here therefore is a journey to Jerusalem; but not a syllable of any contribution. And as St. Paul had taken several journeys to Jerusalem before, and one also immediately after, his first visit into the peninsula of Greece (Acts, xviii. 21.), it cannot from hence be collected in which of these visits the epistle was written, or, with certainty, that it was written in either. The silence of the historian, who professes to have been with St. Paul at the time (c. xx. v. 6.) concerning any contribution, might lead us to look out for some different journey, or might induce us perhaps to question the consistency of the two records, did not a very accidental reference, in another part of the same history, afford us sufficient ground to believe that this silence was omission. When St. Paul made his reply before Felix, to the accusations of 382 H01UE PAULINiE. Tertullus; lie alleged, as was natural, that neither the errand which brought him to Jeru¬ salem, nor his conduct whilst he remained there, merited the calumnies with which the Jews had aspersed him. 44 Now after many years (i. e. of absence) I came to bring alms to mg nation and offerings; whereupon certain Jews from Asia found me purified in the temple, neither with multitude nor with tumult, who ought to have been here before thee, and object, if they had ought against me.” Acts, xxiv. 17—19. This mention of alms and offerings certainly brings the narrative in the Acts nearer to an accordancy with the epistle; yet no one, I am persuaded, will suspect that this clause was put into St. Paul's defence, either to supply the omission in the preceding narrative, or with any view to such accordancy. After all, nothing is yet said or hinted concerning the place of the contribution; nothing concerning Macedonia and Achaia. Turn therefore to the First Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. xvi. ver. 1—4, and you have St. Paul delivering the following directions : 44 Concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given orders to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye; upon the first day of the week let every one of you layby him in store as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come. And when I come, whomsoever you shall approve by your letters, them will I send to bring your liberality unto Jerusalem ; and if it be meet that I go also, they shall go with me.” In this passage we find a contribution carrying on at Corinth, the capital of Achaia, for the Christians of Jerusalem ; we find also a hint given of the possibility of St. Paul going up to Jerusalem himself, after he had paid his visit into Achaia: but this is spoken of rather as a possibility than as any settled intention ; for his first thought was, 44 Whomsoever you shall approve by your letters, them will I send to bring your liberality to Jerusalem :” and in the sixth verse he adds, 44 That ye may bring me on my journey whithersoever I go.” This epistle purports to be written after St. Paul had been at Corinth; for it refers throughout to what he had done and said amongst them whilst he was there. The expression, therefore, 44 when I come,” must relate to a second visit; against which visit the contribution spoken of was desired to be in readiness. But though the contribution in Achaia be expressly mentioned, nothing is here said con¬ cerning any contribution in Macedonia. Turn therefore, in the third place, to the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. viii. ver. 1—4, and you will discover the particular which remains to be sought for: 44 Moreover, brethren, we do you to wit of the grace of God be¬ stowed on the churches of Macedonia ; how that, in a great trial of affliction, the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality; for to their power, I bear record, yea and beyond their power, they were willing of themselves ; praying us, with much entreaty, that we would receive the gift, and take upon us the fellowship of the ministering to the saints.” To which add, chap. ix. ver. 2 : 44 I know the forwardness of your mind, for which I boast of you to them of Macedonia, that Achaia was ready a year ago.” In this epistle we find St. Paul advanced as far as Macedonia, upon that second visit to Corinth which he promised in his former epistle : we find also, in the passages now quoted from it, that a contribution was going on in Macedonia at the same time with, or soon how¬ ever following, the contribution which was made in Achaia; but for whom the contribution was made does not appear in this epistle at all: that information must be supplied from the first epistle. Here therefore, at length, but fetched from three different writings, we have obtained the several circumstances we inquired after, and which the Epistle to the Romans brings together, viz. a contribution in Achaia for the Christians of Jerusalem : a contribution in Macedonia for the same; and an approaching journey of St. Paul to Jerusalem. We have these circum¬ stances—each by some hint in the passage in which it is mentioned, or by the date of the writing in which the passage occurs—fixed to a particular time; and we have that time turning out, upon examination, to be in all the same: namely, towards the close of St. Paul’s second visit to the peninsula of Greece. This is an instance of conformity beyond the pos¬ sibility, I will venture to say, of random writing to produce. I also assert, that it is in the highest degree improbable that it should have been the effect of contrivance and design. The imputation of design amounts to this: that the forger of the Epistle to the Romans inserted in it the passage upon which our observations are founded, for the purpose of giving colour to his forgery by the appearance of conformity with other writings which were then extant. HORiE PAULINA. 383 I reply, in the first place, that if he did this to countenance his forgery, lie did it for the purpose of an argument which would not strike one reader in ten thousand. Coincidences so circuitous as this answer not the ends of forgery; are seldom, I believe, attempted by it. In the second place I observe, that he must have had the Acts of the Apostles, and the two epistles to the Corinthians, before him at the time. In the Acts of the Apostles (I mean that part of the Acts which relates to this period), he would have found the journey to Jerusalem; but nothing about the contribution. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians he would have found a contribution going on in Achaia for the Christians of Jerusalem, and a distant hint of the possibility of the journey; but nothing concerning a contribution in Macedonia. In the Second Epistle to the Corinthians he would have found a contribution in Macedonia accompanying that in Achaia; but no intimation for whom either was intended, and not a word about the journey. It was only by a close and attentive collation of the three writings, that he could have picked out the circumstances which he has united in his epistle ; and by a still more nice examination, that he could have determined them to be¬ long to the same period. In the third place, I remark, what diminishes very much the sus¬ picion of fraud, how aptly and connectedly the mention of the circumstances in question, viz. the journey to Jerusalem, and of the occasion of that journey, arises from the context, 44 Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you; for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you, if first I be somewhat filled with your company. But now I go unto Jerusalem , to minister unto the saints ; for it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem. It hath pleased them verily, and their debtors they are ; for, if the Gen¬ tiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister unto them in carnal things. When therefore I have performed this, and have sealed them to this fruit, I will come by you into Spain.” Is the passage in Italics like a passage foisted in for an extraneous purpose ? Does it not arise from what goes before, by a junction as easy as any example of writing upon real business can furnish ? Could any thing be more natural than that St. Paul, in writing to the Romans, should speak of the time when he hoped to visit them; should mention the business which then detained him ; and that he proposed to set forwards upon his journey to them, when that business was completed? No. II.—By means of the quotation which formed the subject of the preceding number, we collect, that the Epistle to the Romans was written at the conclusion of St. Paul’s second visit to the peninsula of Greece ; but this we collect, not from the epistle itself, nor from any thing declared concerning the time and place in any part of the epistle, but from a comparison of circumstances referred to in the epistle, with the order of the events recorded in the Acts, and with references to the same circumstances, though for quite different purposes, in the two epistles to the Corinthians. Now, would the author of a forgery, who sought to gain credit to a spurious letter by congruities, depending upon the time and place in which the letter was supposed to be written, have left that time and place to be made out, in a manner so obscure and indirect as this is ? If therefore coincidences of circumstances can be pointed out in this epistle, depending upon its date, or the place where it was written, whilst that date and place are only ascertained by other circumstances, such coincidences may fairly be stated as undesigned. Under this head I adduce Chap. xvi. 21—23. 44 Timotheus, my workfellow, and Lucius, and Jason, and Sosipater, my kinsmen, salute you. I, Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord. Gains, mine host, and of the whole church, saluteth you; and Quartus, a brother.” With this passage I compare, Acts xx. 4. 44 And there accompanied him into Asia, Sopater of Berea; and, of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus; and Gaius of Derbe, and Timotheus ; and, of Asia, Tychicus, and Trophimus.” The Epistle to the Romans, we have seen, was written just before St. Paul’s departure from Greece, after his second visit to that peninsula : the persons mentioned in the quotation from the Acts are those who accompanied him in that departure. Of seven whose names are joined in the salutation of the church of Rome, three, viz. Sosipater, Gaius, and Timothy, are proved, by this passage in the Acts, to have been with St. Paul at the time. And this is perhaps as much coincidence as could be expected from reality, though less, I am apt to think, than would have been produced by ,384 HORJE PAULINA. design. Four are mentioned in the Acts who are not joined in the salutation ; and it is in the nature of the case probable that there should be many attending St. Paul in Greece who knew nothing of the converts at Rome, nor were known by them. In like manner, several are joined in the salutation who are not mentioned in the passage referred to in the Acts. This also was to be expected. The occasion of mentioning them in the Acts was their pro¬ ceeding with St. Paul upon his journey. But we may be sure that there were many emi¬ nent Christians with St. Paul in Greece, besides those who accompanied him into Asia # . But if any one shall still contend that a forger of the epistle, with the Acts of the Apostles before him, and having settled this scheme of writing a letter as from St. Paul upon his second visit into Greece, would easily think of the expedient of putting in the names of those persons who appeared to be with St. Paul at the time as an obvious recommendation of the im¬ posture : I then repeat my observations; first, that he would have made the catalogue more complete ; and secondly, that with this contrivance in his thoughts, it was certainly his business, in order to avail himself of the artifice, to have stated in the body of the epistle, that Paul was in Greece when he wrote it, and that he was there upon his second visit. Neither of which he has done, either directly, or even so as to be discoverable by any circum¬ stance found in the narrative delivered in the Acts. Under the same head, viz. of coincidences depending upon date, I cite from the epistle the following salutation: “ Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my helpers in Jesus Christ, who have for my life laid down their own necks; unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles.” Chap. xvi. 3.—It appears, from the Acts of the Apostles, that Priscilla and Aquila had originally been inhabitants of Rome ; for we read, Acts, xviii. 2, that “ Paul found a certain Jew, named Aquila, lately come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome.” They were connected, therefore, with the place to which the salutations are sent. That is one coincidence; another is the following : St. Paul became acquainted with these persons at Corinth during his first visit into Greece. They accompanied him upon his return into Asia; were settled for some time at Ephesus, Acts, xviii. 19 — 26, and appear to have been with St. Paul when he wrote from that place his First Epistle to the Corinthians, 1 Cor. xvi. 19. Not long after the writing of which epistle, St. Paul went from Ephesus into Macedonia, and, u after he had gone over those parts,” proceeded from thence upon his second visit into Greece; during which visit, or rather at the conclusion of it, the Epistle to the Romans, as hath been shewn, was written. We have therefore the time of St. Paul’s residence at Ephesus after he had written to the Corinthians, the time taken up by his progress through Macedonia (which is indefinite, and was probably considerable), and his three months’ abode in Greece; we have the sum of those three periods allowed for Aquila and Priscilla going back to Rome, so as to be there when the epistle before us was written. Now what this quotation leads us to observe is, the danger of scattering names and circumstances in writings like the present, how implicated they often are with dates and places, and that nothing but truth can preserve consistency. Had the notes of time in the Epistle to the Romans fixed the writing of it to any date prior to St. Paul’s first residence at Corinth, the salutation of Aquila and Priscilla would have contra¬ dicted the history, because it would have been prior to his acquaintance with these persons. If the notes of time had fixed it to any period during that residence at Corinth, during his journey to Jerusalem when he first turned out of Greece, during his stay at Antioch, whither he went down to Jerusalem, or during his second progress through the Lesser Asia upon * Cf these Jason is one, whose presence upon this occa¬ sion is very naturally accounted for. Jason was an in¬ habitant of Thessalonica in Macedonia, and entertained St. Paul in his house upon his first visit to that country. Acts, xvii. 7. — St. Paul, upon this his second visit, passed through Macedonia on his way to Greece, and, from the situation of Thessalonica, most likely through that city. It appears, from various instances in the Acts, to have been the practice of many converts to attend St. Paul from place to place. It is therefore highly probable, I mean that it is highly consistent with the account in the history, that Jason, according to that account a zealous disciple, the inhabitant of a city at no great distance from Greece, and through which, as it should seem, St. Paul had lately passed, should have accompanied St. Paul into Greece, and have been with him there at this time. Lucius is another name in the epistle. A very slight alteration would convert Kovkios into A ol/kk;, Lucius into Luke, which would produce an additional coincidence: for, if Luke was the author of the history, he was with St. Paul at the time; inasmuch as, describing the voyage which took place soon after the writing of this epistle, the historian uses the first person—“ We sailed away from Philippi.” Acts, xx 6. HOlliE PAULINA. 385 wliich lie proceeded from Antioch, an equal contradiction would have been incurred ; because from Acts, xviii. 2—18, 19—26, it appears that during all this time Aquila and Priscilla were either along with St. Paul, or were abiding at Ephesus. Lastly, had the notes of time in this epistle, wliich we have seen to be perfectly incidental, compared with the notes of time in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, which are equally incidental, fixed this epistle to be either contemporary with that, or prior to it, a similar contradiction would have ensued ; because, first, when the Epistle to the Corinthians was written, Aquila and Priscilla were along with St. Paul, as they are joined in the salutation of that church, 1 Cor. xvi. 19 ; and because, secondly, the history does not allow us to suppose, that between the time of their becoming acquainted with St. Paul and the time of St. Pauls writing to the Corinthians, Aquila and Priscilla could have gone to Rome, so as to have been saluted in an epistle to that city; and then come back to St. Paul at Ephesus, so as to be joined with him in saluting the church of Corinth. As it is, all things are consistent. The Epistle to the Romans is posterior even to the Second Epistle to the Corinthians; because it speaks of a contribution in Achaia being completed, which the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. viii. is only soliciting. It is sufficiently therefore posterior to the First Epistle to the Corinthians to allow time in the interval for Aquila and Priscilla’s return from Ephesus to Rome. Before we dismiss these two persons, we may take notice of the terms of commendation in which St. Paul describes them, and of the agreement of that encomium with the history. u My helpers in Christ Jesus, who have for my life laid down their necks; unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles.” In the eighteenth chapter of the Acts, we are informed that Aquila and Priscilla were Jews; that St. Paul first met with them at Corinth ; that for some time he abode in the same house with them ; that St. Paul’s contention at Corinth was with the unbelieving Jews, who at first “ opposed and blasphemed, and afterward with one accord raised an insurrection against him that Aquila and Priscilla adhered, we may conclude, to St. Paul throughout the whole contest; for, when he left the city, they went with him, Acts, xviii. 18. Under these circumstances, it is highly probable that they should be involved in the dangers and persecutions which St. Paul underwent from the Jews, being themselves Jews; and, by adhering to St. Paul in this dispute, deserters, as they would be accounted, of the Jewish cause. Farther, as they, though Jews, were assist¬ ing St. Paul in preaching to the Gentiles at Corinth, they had taken a decided part in the great controversy of that day, the admission of the Gentiles to a parity of religious situation with the Jews. For this conduct alone, if there was no other reason, they may seem to have been entitled to “ thanks from the churches of the Gentiles.” They were Jews taking part with Gentiles. Yet is all this so indirectly intimated, or rather so much of it left to inference, in the account given in the Acts, that I do not think it probable that a forger either could or would have drawn his representation from thence; and still less probable do I think it, that, without having seen the Acts, he could, by mere accident, and without truth for his guide, have delivered a representation so conformable to the circumstances there recorded. The two congruities last adduced depended upon the time, the two following regard the place, of the epistle. 1. Chap. xvi. 23. “ Erastus the chamberlain of the city, saluteth you”—of what city ? We have seen, that is, we have inferred, from circumstances found in the epistle, compared with circumstances found in the Acts of the Apostles, and in the two epistles to the Corin¬ thians, that our epistle was written during St. Paul’s second visit to the peninsula of Greece. Again, as St. Paul, in his epistle to the church of Corinth, 1 Cor. xvi. 3, speaks of a collec¬ tion going on in that city, and of his desire that it might be ready against he came thither; and as in this epistle he speaks of that collection being ready, it follows that the epistle was written either whilst he was at Corinth, or after he had been there. Thirdly, since St. Paul speaks in this epistle of his journey to Jerusalem, as about instantly to take place; and as we learn, Acts, xx. 3, that his design and attempt was to sail upon that journey immediately from Greece, properly so called, i. e. as distinguished from Macedonia; it is probable that he was in this country when he wrote the epistle, in which he speaks of himself as upon the eve of setting out. If in Greece, he was most likely at Corinth ; for the two Epistles to the Corinthians shew that the principal end of his coming into Greece was to visit that city, c c 38G 1I0ILE PAULINAS. where he had founded a church. Certainly we know no place in Greece in which his presence was so probable : at least, the placing of him at Corinth satisfies every circumstance. Now that Erastus was an inhabitant of Corinth, or had some connexion with Corinth, is rendered a fair subject of presumption, by that which is accidentally said of him in the Second Epistle to Timothy, chap. iii. 20, “ Erastus abode at Corinth .” St. Paul complains of his solitude, and is telling Timothy what was become of his companions : “ Erastus abode at Corinth; but Trophimus have I left at Miletum, sick/’ Erastus was one of those who had attended St. Paul in his travels, Acts, xix. 22; and when those travels had, upon some occasion, brought our apostle and his train to Corinth, Erastus stayed there, for no reason so probable as that it was his home. I allow that this coincidence is not so precise as some others, yet I think it too clear to be produced by accident; for, of the many places which this same epistle has assigned to different persons, and the innumerable others which it might have mentioned, how came it to fix upon Corinth for Erastus ? And, as far as it is a coinci¬ dence, it is certainly undesigned on the part of the author of the Epistle to the Romans : be¬ cause he has not told us of what city Erastus was the chamberlain; or, which is the same thing, from what city the epistle was written, the setting forth of which was absolutely necessary to the display of the coincidence, if any such display had been thonght of: nor could the author of the Epistle to Timothy leave Erastus at Corinth, from any thing he might have read in the Epistle to the Romans, because Corinth is no where in that epistle mentioned either by name or description. 2. Chap. xvi. 1—3. “ I commend unto you Phoebe, our sister, which is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea, that ye receive her in the Lord, as becometh saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever business she hath need of you; for she hath been a succourer of many, and of myself also.” Cenchrea adjoined to Corinth ; St. Paul, therefore, at the time of writing the letter, was in the neighbourhood of the woman whom he thus recommends. But, farther, that St. Paul had before this been at Cenchrea itself, appears from the eighteenth chapter of the Acts; and appears by a circumstance as incidental, and as unlike design, as any that can be imagined. “ Paul after this tarried there (viz. at Corinth) yet a good while, and then took his leave of his brethren, and sailed thence into Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila, having shorn his head in Cenchrea , for he had a vow.” xviii. J8. The shaving of the head denoted the expiration of the Nazaritic vow. The historian, therefore, by the mention of this circumstance, virtually tells us that St. Paul’s vow was expired before he set forward upon his voyage, having deferred probably his departure until he should be released from the restrictions under which his vow laid him. Shall we say that the author of the Acts of the Apostles feigned this anecdote of St. Paul at Cenchrea, because he had read in the Epistle to the Romans that “ Phoebe, a servant of the church of Cenchrea, had been a succourer of many, and of him also ?” or shall we say that the author of the Epistle to the Romans, out of his own imagination, created Phoebe “ a servant of the church at Cenchreaf because he read in the Acts of the Apostles that Paul had “ shorn his head ” in that place ? No. III.—Chap. i. 13. “Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you , but was let hitherto, that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles.” Again, xv. 23, 24, “ But now having no more place in these parts, and having a great desire these many years ( 7 roAA«, oftentimes) to come unto you, whensoever I take my journey into Spain I will come to you: for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you : but now I go up unto Jerusalem, to minister to the saints. When therefore I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain.” With these passages compare Acts xix. 21. “After these things were ended (viz, at Ephesus), Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem; saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome.” Let it be observed that our epistle purports to have been written at the conclusion of St. Paul’s second journey into Greece : that the quotation from the Acts contains words said to have been spoken by St. Paul at Ephesus, some time before he set forwards upon that journey. Now I contend that it is impossible that two independent fictions should have attributed to St. Paul the same purpose, especially a purpose so specific and particular as HORiE PAULINA. 38v this, which was not merely a general design of visiting Rome after he had passed through Macedonia and Acliaia, and after he had performed a voyage from these countries to Jeru¬ salem. The conformity between the history and the epistle is perfect. In the first quota¬ tion from the epistle, we find that a design of visiting Rome had long dwelt in the apostle’s mind : in the quotation from the Acts, we find that design expressed a considerable time before the epistle was written. In the history, we find that the plan which St. Paul had formed was, to pass through Macedonia and Achaia ; after that, to go to Jerusalem ; and, when he had finished his visit there, to sail for Rome. When the epistle was written, he had executed so much of his plan, as to have passed through Macedonia and Achaia; and was preparing to pursue the remainder of it, by speedily setting out towards Jerusalem : and in this point of his travels he tells his friends at Rome, that, when he had completed the business which carried him to Jerusalem, he would come to them. Secondly, I say that the very insjiection of the passages will satisfy us that they were not made up from one another. “ Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you; for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you; but now I go up to Jerusalem, to minister to the saints. When, therefore, I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain.^—This from the epistle. “ Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia, and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem: saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome.”—This from the Acts. If the passage in the epistle was taken from that in the Acts, why was Spain put in ? If the passage in the Acts was taken from that in the epistle, why was Spain left out ? If the two passages were unknown to each other, nothing can account for their conformity but truth. Whether we suppose the history and the epistle to be alike fictitious, or the history to be true but the letter spurious, or the letter to be genuine but the history a fable, the meeting with this circumstance in both, if neither borrowed it from the other, is, upon all these suppositions, equally inexplicable. No. IV.—The following quotation I offer for the purpose of pointing out a geographical coincidence, of so much importance, that Dr. Lardner considered it as a confirmation of the whole history of St. Paul’s travels. Chap. xv. 19. “ So that from Jerusalem, and round about into Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ,” I do not think that these words necessarily import that St. Paul had penetrated into Illyricum, or preached the gospel in that province; but rather that he had come to the confines of Illyricum rot) I WvpiKov), and that these confines were the external boundary of his travels. St. Paul considers Jerusalem as the centre, and is here viewing the circum¬ ference to which his travels extended. The form of expression in the original conveys this idea —ano 'I epovcraXpp Kai kvkXco rod IXA vpiKov. Illyricum was the part of this circle which he mentions in an epistle to the Romans, because it lay in a direction from Jerusalem towards that city, and pointed out to the Roman readers the nearest place to them, to which his travels from Jerusalem had brought him. The name of Illyricum no where occurs in the Acts of the Apostles; no suspicion, therefore, can be received that the mention of it was borrowed from thence. Yet I think it appears, from these same Acts, that St. Paul, before the time when he wrote his Epistle to the Romans, had reached the confines of Illyricum ; or, however, that he might have done so, in perfect consistency with the account there delivered. Illyricum joins upon Macedonia; measuring from Jerusalem towards Rome, it lies close behind it. If, therefore, St. Paul traversed the whole country of Macedonia, the route would necessarily bring him to the confines of Illyricum, and these confines would be described as the extremity of his journey. Now the account of St. Paul’s second visit to the peninsula of Greece, is contained in these words : u He departed for to go into Macedonia; and when he had gone over these parts, and had given them much exhortation, he came into Greece.” Acts, xx. 2. This account allows, or rather leads us to suppose, that St. Paul, in going over Macedonia (dieXdoov ra pepp e/ceiva), had passed so far to the west, as to come into those parts of the country which were contiguous to Illyricum itself. r Ihe history, nr >8 HORJE PAULINA. therefore, and the epistle so far agree, and tlie agreement is much strengthened by a coinci¬ dence of time. At the time the epistle was written, St. Paul might say, in conformity with the history, that he had “ come into Illyricum much before that time, he could not have said so ; for, upon his former journey to Macedonia, his route is laid down from the time of his landing at Philippi to liis sailing from Corinth. We trace him from Philippi to Amplii- polis and Apollonia; from thence to Thessalonica; from Thessalonica to Berea; from Berea to Athens ; and from Athens to Corinth : which track confines him to the eastern side of the peninsula, and therefore keeps him all the while at a considerable distance from Illyricum. Upon his second visit to Macedonia, the history, we have seen, leaves him at liberty. It must have been, therefore, upon that second visit, if at all, that he approached Illyricum ; and this visit, we know, almost immediately preceded the writing of the epistle. It was natural that the apostle should refer to a journey which was fresh in his thoughts. No. V.—Chap. xv. 30. “ Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me, that I may be delivered from them that do not believe, in Judea.”—With this compare Acts, xx. 22, 23 : “ And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befal me there, save that the Iloly Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me.” Let it be remarked, that it is the same journey to Jerusalem which is spoken of in these two passages; that the epistle was written immediately before St. Paul set forwards upon this journey from Achaia; that the words in the Acts were uttered by him when he had proceeded in that journey as far as Miletus, in Lesser Asia. This being remembered, I observe that the two passages, without any resemblance between them that could induce us to suspect that they were borrowed from one another, represent the state of St. Paul’s mind, with respect to the event of the journey, in terms of substantial agreement. They both express his sense of danger in the approaching visit to Jerusalem : they both express the doubt which dwelt upon his thoughts concerning what might there befal him. When, in his epistle, he entreats the Roman Christians, “ for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for the love of the Spirit, to strive together with him in their prayers to God for him, that he might be delivered from them which do not believe, in Judea,” he sufficiently confesses his fears. In the Acts of the Apostles we see in him the same apprehensions, and the same uncertainty : “ I go bound in the spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befal me there.” The only difference is, that in the history his thoughts are more inclined to despondency than in the epistle. In the epistle he retains his hope “ that he should come unto them with joy by the will of God in the history, his mind yields to the reflection, “that the Lloly Ghost witnesseth in every city that bonds and afflictions awaited him.” Now that his fears should be greater, and his hopes less, in this stage of his journey than when he wrote his epistle, that is, when he first set out upon it, is no other alteration than might well be expected ; since those prophetic intimations to which he refers, when he says, “ the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city,” had probably been received by him in the course of his journey, and were probably similar to what we know he received in the remaining part of it at Tyre, xxi. 4; and afterward from Agabus at Caesarea, xxi. 11. No. VI—There is another strong remark arisingfrom the same passage in the epistle; to make which understood, it will be necessary to state the passage over again, and somewhat more at length. “ I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me, that I may be delivered from them that do not believe, in Judaea—that I may come unto you with joy by the will of God, and may with you be refreshed.” I desire the reader will call to mind that part of St. Paul’s history which took place after his arrival at Jerusalem, and which employs the seven last chapters of the Acts ; and I build upon it this observation—that supposing the Epistle to the Romans to have been a forgery, and the author of the forgery to have had the Acts of the Apostles before him, and to have there seen that St. Paul, in fact, “ was not delivered from the unbelieving Jews,” but on the HOlliE PAULINAS. 389 contrary, that lie was taken into custody at Jerusalem, and brought to Rome a prisoner— it is next to impossible that he should have made St. Paul express expectations so contrary to what he saw had been the event; and utter prayers, with apparent hopes of success, which he must have known were frustrated in the issue. This single consideration convinces me, that no concert or confederacy whatever subsisted between the Epistle and the Acts of the Apostles; and that whatever coincidences have been or can be pointed out between them, are unsophisticated, and are the result of truth and reality. It also convinces me that the epistle was written not only in St. Paul’s lifetime, but before he arrived at Jerusalem; for the important events relating to him which took place after his arrival at that city, must have been known to the Christian community soon after they happened : they form the most public part of his history. But had they been known to the author of the epistle—in other words, had they then taken place—the passage which we have quoted from the epistle would not have been found there. No. VII.—I now proceed to state the conformity which exists between the argument of this epistle and the history of its reputed author. It is enough for this purpose to observe, that the object of the epistle, that is, of the argumentative part of it, was to place tlie Gentile convert upon a parity of situation with the Jewish, in respect of his religious condition, and his rank in the divine favour. The epistle supports this point by a variety of arguments; such as, that no man of either description was justified by the works of the law—for this plain reason, that no man had performed them; that it became therefore necessary to appoint another medium or condition of justification, in which new medium the Jewish peculiarity was merged and lost; that Abraham’s own justification was anterior to the law, and independent of it; that the Jewish converts were to consider the law as now dead, and themselves as married to another; that what the law in truth could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God had done by sending his Son ; that God had rejected the unbelieving Jews, and had substituted in their place a society of believers in Christ, collected indifferently from Jews and Gentiles. Soon after the writing of this epistle, St. Paul, agreeably to the intention intimated in the epistle itself, took his journey to Jerusalem. The day after he arrived there, he was introduced to the church. What passed at this interview is thus related, Acts, xxi. 19 : u When he had saluted them, he declared particularly what things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry: and, when they heard it, they glorified the Lord : and said unto him. Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law ; and they are informed of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs.” St. Paul disclaimed the charge; but there must have been something to have led to it. Now it is only to suppose that St. Paul openly professed the principles which the epistle contains; that, in the course of his ministry, he had uttered the sentiments which he is made to write; and the matter is accounted for. Concerning the accusation which public rumour had brought against him to Jerusalem, I will not say that it was just; but I will say, that if he was the author of the epistle before us, and if his preaching was consistent with his writing, it was extremely natural: for though it be not a necessary, surely it is an easy inference, that if the Gentile convert, who did not observe the law of Moses, held as advantageous a situation in his religious interests as the Jewish convert who did, there could be no strong reason for observing that law at all. The remonstrance therefore of the church of Jerusalem, and the report which occasioned it, were founded in no very violent miscon¬ struction of the apostle’s doctrine. His reception at Jerusalem was exactly what I should have expected the author of this epistle to have met with. I am entitled therefore to argue, that a separate narrative of effects experienced by St. Paul, similar to what a person might be expected to experience who held the doctrines advanced in this epistle, forms a proof that he did hold these doctrines; and that the epistle bearing his name, in which such doctrines are laid down, actually proceeded from him. No. VIII.—This number is supplemental to the former. I propose to point out in it two particulars in the conduct of the argument, perfectly adapted to the historical circumstances 390 HOR/E PAULINA. under which the epistle was written; which yet are free from all appearance of contrivance, and which it would not, J think, have entered into the mind of a sophist to contrive. 1. The Epistle to the Galatians relates to the same general question as the Epistle to the Romans. St. Paul had founded the church of Galatia; at Rome he had never been. Observe now a difference in his manner of treating the same subject, corresponding with this difference in his situation. In the Epistle to the Galatians he puts the point in a great measure upon authority ; “ I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, unto another gospel."’*’ Gal. i. 6. “ 1 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.” Ch. i. 11, 12. “I am afraid, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.” iv. 11, 12. “ I desire to be present with you now, for I stand in doubt of you.” iv. 20. “ Behold, I, Paul, say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.” v. 2. “ This persuasion cometh not of him that called you.” v. 8 This is the style in which he accosts the Galatians. In the epistle to the converts of Rome, where his authority was not established, nor his person known, he puts the same points entirely upon argument. The perusal of the epistle will prove this to the satisfaction of every reader ; and, as the observation relates to the whole contents of the epistle, I forbear adducing separate extracts. I repeat therefore, that we have pointed out a distinction in the two epistles, suited to the relation in which the author stood to his different correspondents. Another adaptation, and somewhat of the same kind, is the following : 2. The Jews, we know, were very numerous at Rome, and probably formed a principal part amongst the new converts; so much so, that the Christians seem to have been known at Rome rather as a denomination of Jews, than as any thing else. In an epistle conse¬ quently to the Roman believers, the point to be endeavoured after by St. Paul was to reconcile the Jeicish converts to the opinion, that the Gentiles were admitted by God to a parity of religious situation with themselves, and that without their being bound by the law of Moses. The Gentile converts would probably accede to this opinion very readily. In this epistle, therefore, though directed to the Roman church in general, it is in truth a Jew writing to Jews. Accordingly you w T ill take notice, that as often as his argument leads him to say any thing derogatory from the Jewish institution, he constantly follows it by a softening clause. Having (ii. 28, 29.) pronounced, not much perhaps to the satisfaction of the native Jews, a that he is not a Jew which is one outwardly, neither that circumcision which is outward in the flesh ” he adds immediately, “ What advantage then hath the Jew, or what profit is there in circumcision ? Much every way.” Having in the third chapter, ver. 28, brought his argument to this formal conclusion, “ that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law,” he presently subjoins, ver. 31, “Do we then make void the law through faith ? God forbid ! Yea, we establish the law. In the seventh chapter, when in the sixth verse he had advanced the bold assertion, “ that now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we w r ere heldin the very next verse he comes in with this healing question, “ What shall we say then ? Is the law sin ? God forbid ! Nay, I had not known sin but by the law.” Having in the following w T ords insinuated, or rather more than insinuated, the inefficacy of the Jewish law, viii. 3. “ for what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh;” after a digression indeed, but that sort of a digression which he could never resist, a rapturous contemplation of his Christian hope, and which occupies the latter part of this chapter; we find him in the next, as if sensible that he had said something which would give offence, returning to his Jewish brethren in terms of the warmest affection and respect. “ I say the truth in Christ Jesus; I lie not; my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart : for I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ, for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises ; whose are the fathers; and of ivhom, as concerning the flesh, Christ camel When, in the thirty-first and thirty-second verses of this ninth chapter, he represented to the Jews the HORiE PAULINiE. 391 error of even the best of their nation, by telling them that “ Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, had not attained to the law of righteousness, because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law, for they stumbled at that stumbling- stone,” he takes care to annex to this delaration these conciliating expressions: “ Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved : for I bear them record that they have a zeal of God , but not according to knowledge.” Lastly, having ch. x. 20, 21, by the application of a passage in Isaiah, insinuated the most ungrateful of all propositions to a Jewish ear, the rejection of the Jewish nation, as God’s peculiar people ; he hastens, as it were, to qualify the intelligence of their fall by this interesting expostulation : “ I say, then, hath God cast away his people (i. e. wholly and entirely)? God forbid! for I also am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God hath not castaway his people which he foreknew and follows this thought, throughout the whole of the eleventh chapter, in a series of reflections calculated to soothe the Jewish converts, as well as to procure from their Gentile brethren respect to the Jewish institution. Now all this is perfectly natural. In a real St. Paul writing to real converts, it is what anxiety to bring them over to his persuasion would naturally produce; but there is an earnestness and a personality, if I may so call it, in the manner, which a cold forgery, I apprehend, would neither have conceived nor supported. CHAPTER III. THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. No. I. — Before we proceed to compare this epistle with the history, or with any other epistle, we will employ one number in stating certain remarks applicable to our argument, which arise from a perusal of the epistle itself. By an expression in the first verse of the seventh chapter, “ now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me,” it appears, that this letter to the Corinthians was written by St. Paul in answer to one which he had received from them ; and that the seventh, and some of the following chapters, are taken up in resolving certain doubts, and regulating certain points of order, concerning which the Corinthians had in their letter consulted him. This alone is a circumstance considerably in favour of the authenticity of the epistle ; for it must have been a far-fetched contrivance in a forgery, first to have feigned the receipt of a letter from the church of Corinth, which letter does not appear; and then to have drawn up a fictitious answer to it, relative to a great variety of doubts and inquiries, purely economical and domestic; and which, though likely enough to have occurred to an infant society, in a situation and under an institution so novel as that of a Christian church then was, it must have very much exercised the author’s invention, and could have answered no imaginable purpose of forgery, to introduce the mention of at all. Particulars of the kind we refer to, are such as the following: the rule of duty and prudence relative to entering into marriage, as applicable to virgins, to widows; the case of husbands married to unconverted wives, of wives having unconverted husbands; that case where the unconverted party chooses to separate, where he chooses to continue the union; the effect which their conversion produced upon their prior state, of circumcision, of slavery; the eating of things offered to idols, as it was in itself, as others were affected by it; the joining in idolatrous sacrifices ; the decorum to be observed in their religious assemblies, the order of speaking, the silence of women, the covering or uncovering of the head, as it became men, as it became women. These subjects, with their several subdivisions, are so particular, minute, and numerous, that, though they be exactly agreeable to the circumstances of the persons to whom the letter was written, nothing, I believe, but the existence and reality of those circumstances could have suggested them to the writer’s thoughts. But this is not the only nor the principal observation upon the correspondence between the 302 IlORiE PAULINiE. cliureh of Corinth and their apostle, which I wish to point out. It appears, I think, in this correspondence, that although the Corinthians had written to St. Paul, requesting his answer anu his directions in the several points above enumerated, yet that they had not said one syllable about the enormities and disorders which had crept in amongst them, and in the blame of which they all shared; but that St. Paul’s information concerning the irregularities then prevailing at Corinth had come round to him from other quarters. The quarrels and disputes excited by their contentious adherence to their different teachers, and by their placing of them in competition with one another, were not mentioned in their letter , but communicated to St. Paul by more private intelligence : 44 It hath been declared unto me, my brethren by them which are of the house of Chloe , that there are contentions among you. Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ.” (i. 11, 12.) The incestuous marriage 44 of a man with his fathers wife, which St. Paul reprehends with so much severity in the fifth chapter of our epistle, and was not the crime of an individual only, but a crime in which the whole church, by tolerating and conniving at it, had rendered themselves partakers, did not come to St. Paul s knowledge by the letter , but by a rumour which had reached his ears: 44 It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his fathers’s wife ; and ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from amongst you. (v. 1, 2.) Their going to law before the judicature of the country, rather than arbitrate and adjust their disputes among themselves, which St. Paul animadverts upon with his usual plainness, was not intimated to him in the letter , because he tells them his opinion of tliis conduct before he comes to the contents of the letter. Their litigiousness is censured b\ St. Paul in the sixth chapter of his epistle, and it is only at the beginning of the seventh chapter that he proceeds upon the articles which he found in their letter; and he proceeds upon them with this preface: 44 Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me,” (\ii. 1) ; which introduction he would not have used if he had been already discussing any or the subjects concerning which they had written. Their irregularities in celebrating the Lords supper, and the utter perversion of the institution which ensued, were not in the letter, as is evident from the terms in which St. Paul mentions the notice he had received of it : Now in this that I declare unto you, I praise you not, that ye come together not for the better, but for the worse ; for first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you, and I partly believe it!’ Now that the Corinthians should, m their own letter, exhibit the fair side of their conduct to the apostle, and conceal from him the faults of their behaviour, was extremely natural, and extremely probable: but it was a distinction which would not, I think, have easily occurred to the author of a forgery; and much less likely is it, that it should have entered into his thoughts to make the dis¬ tinction appear in the way in which it does appear, viz. not by the original letter, not by an express observation upon it in the answer, but distantly by marks perceivable in the manner, oi in the order, in which St. Paul takes notice of their faults. ^ No. II. Our epistle purports to have been written after St Paul had already been at Corinth : 4 I, brethren, when I came unto you, came not with excellency of speech or of Wisdom (ii. 1); and in many other places to the same effect. It purports also to have been written upon the eve of another visit to that church ; 44 I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will (iv. 19); and again, 44 1 will come to you when I shall pass through Mace¬ donia. (xvi. 5.) Now the history relates that St. Paul did in fact visit Corinth twice .* once as recorded at length in the eighteenth, and a second time as mentioned briefly in the twentieth chapter of the Acts. The same history also informs us, (Acts, xx. 1) that it was from Ephesus St. Paul proceeded upon his second journey into Greece. Therefore, as the epistle purports to have been written a short time preceding that journey; and as St. Paul, the history tells us, had resided more than two years at Ephesus, before he set out upon it, it follows that it must have been from Ephesus, to be consistent with the history, that the epistle was written ; and every note of place in the epistle agrees with this supposition. 44 If, after the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus , what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not ? (xv. .12.) I allow that the apostle might say this, wherever he was; HORiE PAULINJE. 393 but it was more natural and more to the purpose to say it, if he was at Ephesus at the time, and in the midst of those conflicts to which the expression relates. 44 The churches of Asia salute you.” (xvi. 19.) Asia, throughout the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles of St. Paul, does not mean the whole of Asia Minor, or Anatolia, nor even the whole of the pro¬ consular Asia, but a district in the anterior part of that country called Lydian Asia, divided from the rest, much as Portugal is from Spain, and of which district Ephesus was the capi¬ tal. a Aquila and Priscilla salute you.” (xvi. 19.) Aquila and Priscilla were at Ephesus during the period within which this epistle was written. (Acts, xviii. 18. 26.) 44 I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost.” (xvi. 8.) This, I apprehend, is in terms almost asserting that he was at Ephesus at the time of writing the epistle.— 44 A great and effectual door is opened unto me.” (xvi. 9.) How well this declaration corresponded with the state of things at Ephesus, and the progress of the gospel in these parts, we learn from the reflection with which the historian concludes the account of certain transactions which passed there : 44 So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed” (Acts, xix. 20) ; as well as from the com¬ plaint of Demetrius, 44 that not only at Ephesus, but also throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded, and turned away much people.” (xix. 26.) — 44 And there are many adversaries, 11 says the epistle, (xvi. 9.) Look into the history of this period : 44 When divers were hardened and believed not, but spake evil of that way before the multitude, he departed from them, and separated the disciples. 11 The conformity therefore upon this head of comparison, is circumstantial and perfect. If any one think that this is a conformity so obvious, that any forger of tolerable caution and sagacity would have taken care to preserve it, I must desire such a one to read the epistle for himself; and when he has done so, to declare whether he has discovered one mark of art or design ; whether the notes of time and place appear to him to be inserted with any reference to each other, with any view of their being compared with each other, or for the purpose of establishing a visible agreement with the history, in respect of them. No. III.—Chap. iv. ] r J —19. 44 For this cause I have sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach every where in every church. Now some are puffed up, as though I would not come unto you ; but I will come unto you shortly, if the Lord will.” With this I compare Acts, xix. 21, 22 : 44 After these things were ended, Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia , to go to Jerusalem; saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome ; so he sent unto Macedonia two of them that ministered unto him, Timotheus and Erastus.” Though it be not said, it appears I think with sufficient certainty, I mean from the his¬ tory, independently of the epistle, that Timothy was sent upon this occasion into Achaia , of which Corinth was the capital city, as well as into Macedonia : for the sending of Timothy and Erastus is, in the passage where it is mentioned, plainly connected with St. Paul's own journey : he sent them before him. As he therefore purposed to go into Achaia himself, it is highly probable that they were to go thither also. Nevertheless, they are said only to have been sent into Macedonia, because Macedonia was in truth the country to which they went immediately from Ephesus ; being directed, as we suppose, to proceed afterward from thence into Achaia. If this be so, the narrative agrees with the epistle; and the agreement is attended with very little appearance of design. One thing at least concerning it is certain : that if this passage of St. Paul’s, history had been taken from his letter, it would have sent Timothy to Corinth by name, or expressly however into Achaia. But there is another circumstance in these two passages much less obvious, in which an agreement holds without any room for suspicion that it was produced by design. M e have observed that the sending of Timothy into the peninsula of Greece was connected in the narrative with St. Paul’s own journey thither; it is stated as the effect of the same resolu¬ tion. Paul purposed to go into Macedonia ; 44 so he sent two of them that ministered unto him, Timotheus and Erastus.” Now in the epistle also you remark that, when the apostle mentions his having sent Timothy unto them, in the very next sentence he speaks of his own visit: 44 for this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son, &c. Now 394 HORiE PAULINA. some are puffed up, as though I would not come to you; but I will come to you shortly, if God will.” Timothy’s journey, we see, is mentioned in the history and in the epistle, in close connexion with St. Paul’s own. Here is the same order of thought and intention ; yet conveyed under such diversity of circumstance and expression, and the mention of them in the epistle so allied to the occasion which introduces it, viz. the insinuation of his adversaries that he would come to Corinth no more, that I am persuaded no attentive reader will believe, that these passages were written in concert with one another, or will doubt but that the agreement is unsought and uncontrived. But, in the Acts, Erastus accompanied Timothy in this journey, of whom no mention is made in the epistle. From what has been said in our observations upon the Epistle to the Romans, it appears probable that Erastus was a Corinthian. If so, though he accompanied Timothy to Corinth, he was only returning home, and Timothy was the messenger charged with St. Paul’s orders.—At any rate this discrepancy shows that the passages were not taken from one another. No. IV.—Chap. xvi. 10, 11.—“ Now, if Timotheus come, see that he may be with you without fear; for he worketh the work of the Lord, as I also do : let no man therefore despise him, but conduct him forth in peace, that he may come unto me, for I look for him with the brethren.” From the passage considered in the preceding number, it appears that Timothy was sent to Corinth, either with the epistle, or before it: “ for this cause have I sent unto you Timo¬ theus.” From the passage now quoted, we infer that Timothy was not sent with the epistle ; for had he been the bearer of the letter, or accompanied it, would St. Paul in that letter have said, “ If Timothy come ?” Nor is the sequel consistent with the supposition of his carrying the letter ; for if Timothy was witli the apostle when he wrote the letter, could he say, as he does, u I look for him with the brethren ?” I conclude therefore, that Timothy had left St. Paul to proceed upon his journey before the letter was written. Farther, the passage before us seems to imply, that Timothy was i ot expected by St. Paul to arrive at Corinth, till after they had received the letter. He gives them directions in the letter how to treat him when he should arrive : “If he come,” act towards him so and so. Lastly, the whole form of ex¬ pression is most naturally applicable to the supposition of Timothy’s coming to Corinth, not directly from St. Paul, but from some other quarter ; and that his instructions had been, when he should reach Corinth, to return. Now, how stands this matter in the history ? Turn to the nineteenth chapter and twenty-first verse of the Acts, and you will find that Timothy did not, when sent from Ephesus, where he left St. Paul, and where the present epistle was written, proceed by a straight course to Corinth, but that he went round through Macedonia. This clears up every thing ; for, although Timothy was sent forth upon his journey before the letter was written, yet he might not reach Corinth till after the letter arrived there ; and he would come to Corinth, when he did come, not directly from St. Paul at Ephesus, but from some part of Macedonia. Here, therefore, is a circumstantial and cri¬ tical agreement, and unquestionably without design ; for neither of the two passages in the epistle mentions Timothy’s journey into Macedonia at all, though nothing but a circuit of that kind can explain and reconcile the expressions which the writer uses. No. V.—Chap. i. 12. “ Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ.” Also, iii. 6. “ I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.” This expression, “ I have planted, Apollos watered,” imports two things; first, that Paul had been at Corinth before Apollos; secondly, that Apollos had been at Corinth after Paul, but before the writing of this epistle. This implied account of the several events, and of the order in which they took place, corresponds exactly with the history. St. Paul, after his first visit into Greece, returned from Corinth into Syria by way of Ephesus ; and dropping his companions Aquila and Priscilla at Ephesus, he proceeded forwards to Jerusalem ; from Jerusalem he descended to Antioch ; and from thence made a progress through some of the upper or northern provinces of the Lesser Asia, Acts, xviii. 19. 23 : during which progress, and consequently in the interval between St. Paul’s first and second visit to Corinth, and consequently also before the writing of this epistle, which was at Ephesus two years at least HORAE PAULINA. 395 after the apostle’s return from his progress, we hear of Apollos, and we hear of him at Corinth. Whilst St. Paul was engaged, as hath been said, in Phrygia and Galatia, Apollos came down to Ephesus; and being, in St. Paul’s absence, instructed by Aquila and Priscilla, and hav¬ ing obtained letters of recommendation from the church at Ephesus, he passed over to Acliaia ; and when he was there, we read that he “ helped them much which had believed through grace, or he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publicly.” Acts, xviii. 27, 28. To have brought Apollos into Acliaia, of which Corinth was the capital city, as well as the principal Christian Church ; and to have shewn that he preached the gospel in that country, would have been sufficient for our purpose. But the history happens also to mention Corinth by name, as the place, in which Apollos, after his arrival in Acliaia, fixed his residence : for, proceeding with the account of St. Paul’s travels, it tells us, that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul, having passed through the upper coasts, came down to Ephesus, xix. 1. What is said therefore of Apollos in the epistle, coincides exactly, and especially in the point of chronology, with what is delivered concerning him in the history. The only question now is, whether the allusions were made with a regard to this coincidence. Now, the occasions and purposes for which the name of Apollos is introduced in the Acts and in the Epistles, are so independent and so remote, that it is impossible to discover the smallest reference from one to the other. Apollos is mentioned in the Acts, in immediate connexion with the history of Aquila and Priscilla, and for the very singular circumstance of his “ knowing only the baptism of John.” In the epistle, where none of these circumstances are taken notice of, his name first occurs, for the purpose of reproving the contentious spirit of the Corinthians ; and it occurs only in conjunction with that of some others : “ Every one of you saith, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ.” The second passage in which Apollos appears, “ I have planted, Apollos watered,” fixes, as we have observed, the order of time amongst three distinct events : hut it fixes this, I will venture to pronounce, with¬ out the writer perceiving that he was doing any such thing. The sentence fixes this order in exact conformity with the history; but it is itself introduced solely for the sake of the reflection which follows : — “ Neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase.” No. YI.— Chap. iv. 11, 12. “Even unto this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and labour, working with our own hands.” We are expressly told in the history, that at Corinth St. Paul laboured with his own hands; “ He found Aquila and Priscilla ; and, because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought; for by their occupation they were tent-makers.” But, in the text before us, he is made to say, that “ he laboured even unto the present hour” that is, to the time of writing the epistle at Ephesus. Now, in the narration of St. Paul’s transactions at Ephesus, delivered in the nineteenth chapter of the Acts, nothing is said of his working with his own hands; but in the twentieth chapter we read, that upon his return from Greece, he sent for the elders of the church of Ephesus to meet him at Miletus; and in the discourse which he there addressed to them, amidst some other reflections which he calls to their remembrance, we find the following: “ I have coveted no man’s silver, or gold, or apparel; yea, you yourselves also know, that these hands have ministered unto my necessi¬ ties, and to them that were with me.” The reader will not forget to remark, that though St. Paul be now at Miletus, it is to the elders of the church of Ephesus he is speaking, when he says, “Ye yourselves know that these hands have ministered to my necessitiesand that the whole discourse relates to his conduct during his last preceding residence at Ephesus. That manual labour, therefore, which he had exercised at Corinth, he continued at Ephesus; and not only so, but continued it during that particular residence at Ephesus, near the con¬ clusion of which this epistle was written; so that he might with the strictest truth say at the time of writing the epistle, “ Even unto this present hour we labour, working with our own hands.” The correspondency is sufficient, then, as to the undesignedness of it. It is manifest to my judgment, that if the history in this article, had been taken from the epistle, this circumstance, if it appeared at all, would have appeared in its place , that is, in the direct account of St. Paul’s transactions at Ephesus. The correspondency would not have been 3J6 HORiE PAULINiE. effected, as it is, by a kind of reflected stroke, that is, by a reference in a subsequent speech, to what in the narrative was omitted. Nor is it likely, on the other hand, that a circum¬ stance which is not extant in the history of St. Paul at Ephesus, should have been made the subject of a factitious allusion, in an epistle purporting to be written by him from that place; not to mention that the allusion itself, especially as to time, is too oblique and general to answer any purpose of forgery whatever. No. VII.—Chap. ix. 20. “ And unto the Jews, I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews ; to them that are under the law, as under the law.” We have the disposition here described, exemplified in two instances which the history records; one, Acts, xvi. 3 : u Him (Timothy) would Paul have to go forth with him, and took and circumcised him, because of the Jeics in those quarters ; for they knew all that his father was a Greek.” This was before the writing of the epistle. The other, Acts, xxi. 23. 26, and after the writing of the epistle: u Do this that we say to thee ; we have four men which have a vow on them : them take, and purify thyself with them, that they may shave their heads ; and all may know that those things, whereof they were informed con¬ cerning thee, are nothing: but that thou thyself also walkest orderly, and keepest the law. —Then Paul took the men, and the next day, purifying himself with them , entered into the temple .” Nor does this concurrence between the character and the instances look like the result of contrivance. St. Paul, in the epistle, describes, or is made to describe, his own accommodating conduct towards Jews and towards Gentiles, towards the weak and over- scrupulous, towards men indeed of every variety of character ; “ to them that are without law as without law, being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ, that I might gain them that are without law ; to the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak ; I am made all things to all men, that I might gain some.” This is the sequel of the text which stands at the head of the present number. Taking therefore the whole passage together, the apostle’s condescension to the Jews is mentioned only as a part of his general disposition towards all. It is not probable that this character should have been made up from the instance in the Acts, which relates solely to his dealings with the Jews. It is not probable that a sophist should take his hint from those instances, and then extend it so much beyond them : and it is still more incredible that the two instances, in the Acts, circumstantially related and interwoven with the history, should have been fabricated in order to suit the character which St. Paul gives of himself in the epistle. No. VIII.—Chap. 14—17- a I thank God that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius, lest any should say that I baptized in my own name ; and I baptized also the house¬ hold of Stephanas : besides I know not whether I baptized any other; for Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel.” It may be expected, that those whom the apostle baptized with his own hands, were converts distinguished from the rest by some circumstance, either of eminence, or of connex¬ ion with him. Accordingly, of the three names here mentioned, Crispus, we find from Acts, xviii. 8, was a “ chief ruler of the Jewish synagogue at Corinth, who believed in the Lord, with all his house.” Gaius, it appears from Romans, xvi. 23, was St. Paul’s host at Corinth, and the host, he tells us, “ of the whole church.” The household of Stephanas, we read in the sixteenth chapter of this epistle, “ were the first fruits of Acliaia.” Here there¬ fore is the propriety we expected : and it is a proof of reality not to be contemned ; for their names appearing in the several places in which they occur, with a mark of distinction be¬ longing to each, could hardly be the effect of chance, without any truth to direct it: and on the other hand, to suppose that they were picked out from these passages, and brought together in the text before us, in order to display a conformity of names, is both improbable in itself, and is rendered more so by the purpose for which they are introduced. They come in to assist St. Paul’s exculpation of himself, against the possible charge of having assumed the character of the founder of a separate religion, and with no other visible, or, as I think, imaginable design *. O n * Chap. i. 1. ‘‘ Paxil, called to be an apostle of Jesus The only account we have of any person who bore the Ch rist, through the will of God, and Sosthenes, our name of Sosthenes, is found in the eighteenth chapter of brother, unto the church of God, which is at Corinth.” the Acts. When the Jews at Corinth had brought Paul HORyE paulinje. 397 No. IN.—Chap. xvi. 10, 11. “ Now, if Timotheus come, let no man despise him.”—Why despise him ? This charge is not given concerning any other messenger whom St. Paul sent; and, in the different epistles, many such messengers are mentioned. Turn to 1 Timothy, chap. iv. 12, and you will find that Timothy was a young man, younger probably than those who were usually employed in the Christian mission ; and that St. Paul, apprehending lest he should, on that account, be exposed to contempt, urges upon him the caution which is there inserted, “ Let no man despise thy youth.’ 7 No. X.—Chap. xvi. 1. “ Now, concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye.” The churches of Galatia and Phrygia were the last churches which St. Paul had visited before the writing of this epistle. lie was now at Ephesus, and he came thither immedi¬ ately from visiting these churches : “ He went over all the country of Galatia and Phrygia, in order, strengthening all the disciples. And it came to pass that Paul having passed through the upper coasts” (viz. the above-named countries, called the upper coasts, as being the northern part of Asia Minor), “came to Ephesus.” Acts, xviii. 23; xix. 1. These therefore, probably, were the last churches at which he left directions for their conduct during his absence. Although two years intervened between his journey to Ephesus and his writing this epistle, yet it does not appear that during that time he visited any other church. That he had not been silent when he was in Galatia, upon this subject of contribution for the poor, is farther made out from a hint which he lets fall in his epistle to that church : “ Only they (viz. the other apostles) would that we should remember the poor, the same also which I was forward to do.” No. NI.—Chap iv. 18. “ Now, some are puffed up, as though I would not come unto you.” Why should they suppose that he would not come ? Turn to the first chapter of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, and you will find that he had already disappointed them : “ I was minded to come unto you before, that you might have a second benefit; and to pass by you into Macedonia, and to come again out of Macedonia unto you, and of you to be brought on my way towards Judea. When I, therefore, was thus minded, did I use light¬ ness ? Or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be yea, yea, and nay, nay ? But as God is true, our word towards you was not yea and nay.” It appears from this quotation, that he had not only intended, but that he had promised them a visit before ; for otherwise, why should he apologize for the change of his purpose, or express so much anxiety lest this change should be imputed to any culpable fickleness in his temper ; and lest he should thereby seem to them, as one whose word was not, in any sort, to be depended upon ? Besides which, the terms made use of, plainly refer to a promise, “ Our word towards you was not yea and nay.” St. Paul therefore had signified an intention which he had not been able to execute; and before Gallio, and Gallio bad dismissed their complaint as unworthy of his interference, and had driven them from the judgment-seat, te then all the Greeks,” says the historian, “ took Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the syna¬ gogue, and beat him before the judgment-seat.” The Sosthenes here spoken of was a Corinthian ; and, if he was a Christian, and with St. Paul when he wrote this epistle, was likely enough to be joined with him in the salutation of the Corinthian church. But here occurs a difficulty. If Sosthenes was a Christian at the time of this uproar, why should the Greeks beat him ? The as¬ sault upon the Christians was made by th e Jews. It was the Jews who had brought Paul before the magistrate. If it had been the Jews also who had beaten Sosthenes, I should not have doubted but that he had been a favourer of St. Paul, and the same person who is joined with him in the epistle. Let us see therefore whether there be not some error in our present text. The Alexandrian manu¬ script gives alone, without and is fol¬ lowed in this reading by the Coptic version, by the Arabian version, published by Erpenius, by the Vulgate, and by Bede’s Latin version. Three Greek manuscripts again, as well as Chrysostom, give el , loo}a7oi, in the place of el"EXXwvis. A great plurality of manuscripts authorize the reading which is retained in our copies. In this va¬ riety it appears to me extremely probable that the historian originally WTote erd.vrs$ alone, and that ol"EX\rivi$ and el ’I ovbaTioi have been respectively added as explanatory of what the word as describing an insurrection at Paris, I might say all the Jews, all the Protestants, or all the English acted so and so; but I should scarcely say all the French, when the whole mass of the community were of that description. As what is here offered is founded upon a various reading, and that in opposition to the greater part of the manu¬ scripts that are extant, I have not given it a place in the text. 398 HORiE PAULINA. this seeming breach of his word, and the delay of his visit, had, with some who were evil affected towards him, given birth to a suggestion that he would come no more to Corinth. No. XII. — Chap. v. 7, 8. “ For even Christ, our passover, is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” Dr. Benson tells us, that from this passage, compared with chapter xvi. 8, it has been con¬ jectured that this epistle was written about the time of the Jewish passover; and to me the conjecture appears to be very well founded. The passage to which Dr. Benson refers us is this : “I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost.” With this passage he ought to have joined another in the same context : “ And it may be that I will abide, yea, and winter with you for from the two passages laid together, it follows that the epistle was written before Pente¬ cost, yet after winter ; which necessarily determines the date to the part of the year within which the passover falls. It was written before Pentecost, because he says, “ I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost.” It was written after winter, because he tells them, “ It may be that I may abide, yea, and winter with you.” The winter which the apostle purposed to pass at Corinth, was undoubtedly the winter next ensuing to the date of the epistle ; yet it was a winter subsequent to the ensuing Pentecost, because he did not intend to set forwards upon his journey until after that feast. The words “ let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity ♦and truth,” look very like words suggested by the season ; at least they have, upon that sup¬ position, a force and significancy which do not belong to them upon any other; and it is not a little remarkable, that the hints casually dropped in the epistle concerning particular parts of the year, should coincide with this supposition. CHAPTER IV. TIIE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. No. I.—I will not say that it is impossible, having seen the First Epistle to the Corinthians, to construct a second with ostensible allusions to the first; or that it is impossi¬ ble that both should be fabricated, so as to carry on an order and continuation of story, by successive references to the same events. But I say, that this, in either case, must be the effect of craft and design. Whereas, whoever examines the allusions to the former epistle which he finds in this, whilst he will acknowledge them to be such as would rise spontane¬ ously to the hand of the writer, from the very subject of the correspondence, and the situation of the corresponding parties, supposing these to be real, will see no particle of reason to sus¬ pect, either that the clauses containing these allusions were insertions for the purpose, or that the several transactions of the Corinthian church were feigned, in order to form a train of narrative, or to support the appearance of connexion between the two epistles. 1. In the First Epistle, St. Paul announces his intention of passing through Macedonia, in his way to Corinth : “ I will come to you when I shall pass through Macedonia.” In the Second Epistle, we find him arrived in Macedonia, and about to pursue his journey to Corinth. But observe the manner in which this is made to appear : “ I know the forward¬ ness of your mind, for which I boast of you to them of Macedonia, that Achaia was ready a year ago, and your zeal hath provoked very many: yet have I sent the brethren, lest our boasting of you should be in vain in this behalf; that, as I said, ye may be ready ; lest, haply, if they of Macedonia come with me, and find you unprepared, we (that we say not you) be ashamed in this same confident boasting.” (Chap. ix. 2—4.) St. Paul's being in Macedonia at the time of writing the epistle, is, in this passage, inferred only from his say¬ ing that he had boasted to the Macedonians of the alacrity of his Acliaian converts; and the fear which he expresses, lest, if any of the Macedonian Christians should come with him HORiE PAULINiE. 399 unto Achaia, they should find his boasting unwarranted by the eycnt. The business of the contribution is the sole cause of mentioning Macedonia at all. Will it be insinuated that this passage was framed merely to state that St. Paul was now in Macedonia; and, by that statement, to produce an apparent agreement with the purpose of visiting Macedonia, notified in the first Epistle ? Or will it be thought probable that, if a sophist had meant to place St. Paul in Macedonia, for the sake of giving countenance to his forgery, he would have done it in so oblique a manner as through the medium of a contribution ? The same thing may be observed of another text in the epistle, in which the name of Macedonia occurs : 44 Further¬ more, when I came to Troas to preach the gospel, and a door was opened unto me of the Lord, I had no rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus, my brother ; but taking my leave of them, I went from thence into Macedonia.” I mean, that it may be observed of this passage also, that there is a reason for mentioning Macedonia, entirely distinct from the purpose of shewing St. Paul to be there. Indeed, if the passage before us shew that point at all, it shews it so obscurely, that Grotius, though he did not doubt that Paul was now in Macedonia, refers this text to a different journey. Is this the hand of a forger, meditating to establish a false conformity 1 The text, however, in which it is most strongly implied that St. Paul wrote the present epistle from Macedonia, is found in the fourth, fifth, and sixth verses of the seventh chapter : 44 1 am filled with comfort, I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation ; for, when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest; without were fightings, within were fears ; nevertheless, God, that comfortetli those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus.” Yet even here, I think, no one will contend, that St. Paul’s coming to Macedonia, or being in Macedonia, was the principal thing intended to be told : or that the telling of it, indeed, was any part of the intention with which the text was written ; or that the mention even of the name of Macedonia was not purely incidental, in the description of those tumultuous sorrows with which the writers mind had been lately agitated, and from which he was relieved by the coming of Titus. The first five verses of the eighth chapter, which commend the liberality of the Macedonian churches, do not, in my opinion, by themselves, prove St. Paul to have been at Macedonia at the time of writing the epistle. 2. In the first Epistle, St. Paul denounces a severe censure against an incestuous marriage, which had taken place among the Corinthian converts, with the connivance, not to say with the approbation, of the church ; and enjoins the church to purge itself of this scandal, by expelling the offender from its society: 44 It is reported commonly, that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife ; and ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you : for I, verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath done this deed; in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered to¬ gether, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such a one onto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.” (Chap. v. 1—5.) In the Second Epistle, we find this sentence executed, and the offender to be so affected with the punishment, that St. Paul now intercedes for his restoration; 44 Sufficient to such a man is this punishment, which was inflicted of many; so that, con¬ trariwise, ye ought rather to forgive him and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with over-much sorrow ; wherefore, I beseech you, that ye would confirm your love towards him.” (2 Cor. chap. ii. 7? 8.) Is this whole business feigned for the sake of carrying on a continuation of story through the two epistles ? The church also, no less than the offender, was brought by St. Paul’s reproof to a deep sense of the impropriety of their conduct. Their penitence, and their respect to his authority, were, as might be ex¬ pected, exceeding grateful to St. Paul: 44 We were comforted not by Tituss coming only, but by the consolation wherewith he was comforted in you, when he told us your earnest desire, your mourning, your fervent mind towards me, so that I rejoiced the more; for, though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent, though I did repent: for I perceive that the same epistle made you sorry, though it were but for a season. Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance : for ye were made sorry after 400 HORiE PAULINA. a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing.” (Chap. vii. 7—9.) That this passage is to be referred to the incestuous marriage, is proved by the twelfth verse of the same chapter : 44 Though I wrote unto you, I did it not for his cause that had done the wrong, nor for his cause that suffered wrong ; but that our care for you, in the sight of God, might appear unto you.” There were, it is true, various topics of blame noticed in the First Epistle; but there was none, except this of the incestuous marriage, which could be called a transaction between private parties, or of which it could be said that one particular person had 44 done the wrong,” and another particular person 44 had suffered it.” Could all this be without foundation ? or could it be put into the Second Epistle, merely to furnish an obscure sequel to what had been said about an incestuous marriage in the first ? 3. In the sixteenth chapter of the First Epistle, a collection for the saints is recommended to be set forwards at Corinth: 44 Now, concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, so do ye.” (Chap, xvi, 1.) In the ninth chapter of the Second Epistle, such a collection is spoken of, as in readiness to be received : 44 As touching the ministering to the saints, it is superfluous for me to write to you, for I know the forwardness of your mind, for which I boast of you to them of Macedonia, that Achaia was ready a year ago, and your zeal hath provoked very many.” (Chap. ix. 1, 2.) This is such a continuation of the transaction as might be expected; or, possibly it will be said, as might easily be counterfeited ; but there is a circumstance of nicety in the agreement between the two epistles, which, I am convinced, the author of a forgery would not have hit upon, or which, if he had hit upon it, he would have set forth with more clearness. The Second Epistle speaks of the Corinthians as having begun this eleemosynary business a year before: 44 This is expedient for you, who have begun before, not only to do, but also to be forward a year ago.” (Chap. viii. 10.) 44 1 boast of you to them of Macedonia, that Achaia was ready a year ago.” (Chap. ix. 2.) From these texts it is evident, that some¬ thing had been done in the business a year before. It appears, however, from other texts in the epistle, that the contribution was not yet collected or paid ; for brethren were sent from St. Paul to Corinth, 44 to make up their bounty.” (Chap. ix. 5.) They are urged to 44 perform the doing of it.” (Chap. viii. 11.) And every man was exhorted to give as he purposed in his heart. (Chap. ix. 7 *) The contribution, therefore, as represented in our present epistle, was in readiness, yet not received from the contributors ; was begun, was forwarded long before, yet not hitherto collected. Now this representation agrees with one, and only with one, supposition, namely, that every man had laid by in store, had already provided the fund, from which he was afterward to contribute—the very case which the First Epistle authorizes us to suppose to have existed ; for in that epistle St. Paul had charged the Corinthians, 44 upon the first day of the week, every one of them, to lay by in store as God had prospered him*.” (1 Cor. chap. xvi. 2.) No. II.—In comparing the Second Epistle to the Corinthians with the Acts of the * The following observations will satisfy us concerning the purity of our apostle's conduct in the suspicious busi¬ ness of a pecuniary contribution. 1. He disclaims the having received any inspired au¬ thority for the directions which he is giving : “ I speak not by commandment, but by occasion of the forwardness of others, and to prove the sincerity of your love.” (2 Cor. chap. viii. 8.) Who, that had a sinister purpose to answer by the recommending of subscriptions, would thus distinguish, and thus lower the credit of his own recommendation. 2. Although he asserts the general right of Christian ministers to a maintenance from their ministry, yet he protests against the making use of this light in his own person : “ Even so hath the Lord ordained, that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel ; but I have used none of these tilings, neither have I written these things that it should be so done unto me; for it were better for me to die than that any man should make my glorying, i. e. my professions of disinterestedness, void.” (1 Cor. chap. ix. 14, 15.) 3. He repeatedly proposes that there should be asso¬ ciates with himself in the management of the public bounty; not colleagues of his own appointment, but persons elected for that purpose by the contributors themselves. ‘‘ And when I come, whomsoever ye shall approve by your let¬ ters, them will 1 send to bring your liberality unto Jeru¬ salem ; and if it be meet that I go also, they shall go with me.” (1 Cor. chap. xvi. 3, 4.) And in the Second Epistle, what is here proposed, we find actually done, and done for the very purpose of guarding his character against any imputation that might be brought upon it, in the discharge of a pecuniary trust: ” And we have sent with him the brother, whose praise is in the Gospel throughout all the churches; and not that only, but who was also chosen of the churches to travel with us with this grace (gift) which is administered bv us to the glory of the same Lord, and the declaration of your ready mind : avoiding this, that no man should blame us in this abundance which is administered by us ; providing for things honest, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men i. e. not resting in the consciousness of our own integrity, but, in such a subject, careful also to approve our integrity to the public judgment. (2 Cor. chap. viii. 18—21.) HOR.E PAULINiE. 401 Apostles, we are soon brought to observe, not only that there exists no vestige either of the epistle having been taken from history, or the history from the epistle ; but also that there appears in the contents of the epistle positive evidence, that neither was borrowed from the other. Titus, who bears a conspicuous part in the epistle, is not mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles at all. St. Paul’s sufferings enumerated, chap. xi. 24, “ of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one; thrice I was beaten with rods ; once was I stoned; thrice I suffered shipwreck; a night and a day I have been in the deep,” cannot be made out from his history as delivered in the Acts ; nor would this account have been given by a writer, who either drew his knowledge of St. Paul from that history, or who was careful to preserve a conformity with it. The account in the epistle of St. Paul’s escape from Damascus, though agreeing in the main fact with the account of the same transaction in the Acts, is related with such difference of circumstance, as renders it utterly improbable that one should be derived from the other. The two accounts, placed by the side of each other, stand as follows: 2 Cor. chap. xi. 32, 33. In Damascus, the governor Acts, chap. ix. 23—25. And after many days were under Aretas the king kept the city of the Damascenes fulfilled, the Jew3 took counsel to kill him ; but their with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me ; and through laying in wait was known of Saul, and they watched the a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and gates day arid night to kill him : then the disciples took escaped his hands. him by night, and let him down by the wall in a basket. Now if we be satisfied in general concerning these two ancient writings, that the one was not known to the writer of the other, or not consulted by him ; then the accordances which may be pointed out between them, will admit of no solution so probable, as the attributing of them to truth and reality, as to their common foundation. No. III.—The opening of this epistle exhibits a connexion with the history, which alone would satisfy my mind that the epistle was written by St. Paul, and by St. Paul in the situation in which the history places him. Let it be remembered, that in the nineteenth chapter of the Acts, St. Paul is represented as driven away from Ephesus, or as leaving however Ephesus, in consequence of an uproar in that city, excited by some interested adversaries of the new religion. The account of the tumult is as follows : “ When they heard these sayings,” viz. Demetrius’s complaint of the danger to be apprehended from St. Paul’s ministry to the established worship of the Ephesian goddess, u they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. And the whole city was filled with confusion ; and having caught Gains and Aristarchus, Paul’s companions in travel, they rushed with one accord into the theatre; and when Paul would have entered in unto the people, the disciples suffered him not: and certain of the chief of Asia, which were his friends, sent unto him desiring that he would not adventure himself into the theatre. Some, therefore, cried one thing, and some another: for the assembly was confused, and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together. And they drew Alexander out of the multitude, the Jews putting him forward ; and Alexander beckoned with his hand, and would have made his defence unto the people: but, when they knew that he was a Jew, all with one voice, about the space of two hours, cried out, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.— And after the uproar was ceased, Paul called unto him the disciples, and embraced them, and departed for to go into Macedonia.” When he was arrived in Macedonia, he wrote the Second Epistle to the Corinthians which is now before us; and he begins his epistle in this wise: “ Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are com¬ forted of God. For, as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundetli by Christ; and whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings, which we also suffer: or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation : and our hope of you is steadfast, knowing that, as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation. For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia , that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life ; but we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God, D D 402 HOIUE PAULINAS. wliich raiseth the dead, who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver; in whom we trust that lie will yet deliver us. 11 Nothing could be more expressive of the circumstances in which the history describes St. Paul to have been, at the time when the epistle purports to be written; or rather, nothing could be more expressive of the sensations arising from these circum¬ stances, than this passage. It is the calm recollection of a mind emerged from the confusion of instant danger. It is that devotion and solemnity of thought, which follows a recent deliver¬ ance. There is just enough of particularity in the passage to show that it is to be referred to the tumult at Ephesus: “We would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia.” And there is nothing more; no mention of Demetrius, of the seizure of St. Paul’s friends, of the interference of the town-clerk, of the occasion or nature of the danger which St. Paul had escaped, or even of the city where it happened; in a word, no recital from which a suspicion could be conceived, either that the author of the epistle had made use of the narrative in the Acts ; or, on the other hand, that he had sketched the outline, which the narrative in the Acts only filled up. That the forger of an epistle, under the name of St. Paul, should borrow circumstances from a history of St. Paul then extant; or, that the author of a history of St. Paul should gather materials from letters bearing St. Paul’s name, may be credited; but I cannot believe that any forger whatever should fall upon an expedient so refined, as to exhibit sentiments adapted to a situation, and to leave his readers to seek out that situation from the history; still less that the author of a history should go about to frame facts and circumstances, fitted to supply the sentiments which he found in the letter. It may be said, perhaps, that it does not appear from the history, that any danger threatened St. Paul’s life in the uproar at Ephesus, so imminent as that from which in the epistle he represents himself to have been delivered. This matter, it is true, is not stated by the historian in form; but the personal danger of the apostle, we cannot doubt, must have been extreme, when the “ whole city was filled with confusion when the populace had “ seized his companionswhen, in the distraction of his mind, he insisted upon “ coming forth amongst them when the Christians who were about him “ would not suffer him when “ his friends, certain of the chief of Asia, sent to him, desiring that he would not adventure himself in the tumultwhen, lastly, he was obliged to quit, immediately, the place and the country, “ and when the tumult was ceased, to depart into Macedonia.” All which particulars are found in the narration, and justify St. PauPs own account, “ that he was pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that he despaired even of life; that he had the sentence of death in himself; i. e. that he looked upon himself as a man condemned to die. No. IV.—It has already been remarked, that St. Paul's original intention was to have visited Corinth in his way to Macedonia: “ I was minded to come unto you before, and to pass by you into Macedonia. ^ 2 Cor. chap. i. 15, 16. It has also been remarked that he changed his intention, and ultimately resolved upon going through Macedonia first. Now upon this head there exists a circumstance of correspondency between our epistle and the history, which is not very obvious to the reader's observation; but which, when observed, will be found, I think, close and exact. Which circumstance is this : that though the change of St. Paul’s intention be expressly mentioned only in the second epistle, yet it appears, both from the history and from this second epistle, that the change had taken place before the writing of the first epistle ; that it appears however from neither, otherwise than by an inference, unnoticed perhaps by almost every one who does not sit down professedly to the examination. First, then, how docs this point appear from the history ? In the nineteenth chapter of the Acts, and the twenty-first verse, we arc told, that “ Paul purposed in the spirit when he had passed through Macedonia and Acliaia, to go to Jerusalem. So he sent into Mace¬ donia two of them that ministered unto him, Timotheus and Erastus; but he himself stayed in Asia for a season.” A short time after this, and evidently in pursuance of the same intention, we find (chap. xx. 1, 2), that “Paul departed from Ephesus for to go into Macedonia : and that, when he had gone over those parts, he came into Greece.” The resolution there¬ fore of passing through Macedonia, and from thence into Greece, was formed by St. Paul previously to the sending away of Timothy. The order in which the tw r o countries are HORiE PAULINiE. 403 mentioned shows the direction of his intended route, “ when he had passed through Mace¬ donia and Acliaia.” Timothy and Erastus, who were to precede him in his progress, were sent by him from Ephesus into Macedonia. Ho himself a short time afterward, and, as hath been observed, evidently in continuation and pursuance of the same design, “ departed for to go into Macedonia.’’" If he had ever, therefore, entertained a different plan of his journey, which is not hinted in the history, he must have changed that plan before this time. But, from the 17th verse of the fourth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, we discover, that Timothy had been sent away from Ephesus before that Epistle was written: “ For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son."" The change therefore of St. Paul’s resolution which was prior to the sending away of Timothy, was necessarily prior to the writing of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Thus stands the order of dates, as collected from the history, compared with the First Epistle. Now let us inquire, secondly, how this matter is represented in the epistle before us. In the sixteenth verse of the first chapter of this epistle, St. Paul speaks of the intention which he had once entertained of visiting Acliaia, in his way to Macedonia : “ In this con¬ fidence I was minded to come unto you before, that ye might have a second benefit: and to pass by you into Macedonia.” After protesting, in the seventeenth verse, against any evil construction that might be put upon his laying aside of this intention, in the twenty-third verse he discloses the cause of it: “ Moreover I call God for a record upon my soul, that, to spare you, I came not as yet unto Corinth.” And then he proceeds as follows : “ But I determined this with myself, that I would not come again to you in heaviness : for, if I make you sorry, who is he then that maketh me glad, but the same which is made sorry by me ? And I wrote this same unto you , lest when I came I should have sorrow from them of whom I ought to rejoice ; having confidence in you all, that my joy is the joy of you all; for, out of much affliction and anguish of heart, I wrote unto you with many tears: not that ye should be grieved, but that ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you; but if any have caused grief, he hath not grieved me but in part, that I may not overcharge you all. Sufficient to such a man is this punishment, which was inflicted of many.” In this quotation, let the reader first direct his attention to the clause marked by Italics, “ and I wrote this same unto you,” and let him consider, whether, from the context, and from the structure of the whole passage, it be not evident that this writing was after St. Paul had “ determined with himself, that he would not come again to them in heaviness?” whether, indeed, it wns not in consequence of this determination, or at least with this determination upon his mind ? And, in the next place, let him consider, whether the sen¬ tence, “ I determined this with myself, that I would not come again to you in heaviness,” do not plainly refer to that postponing of his visit, to which he had alluded in the verse but one before, when he said, u I call God for a record upon my soul, that, to spare you, I came not as yet unto Corinth and whether this be not the visit of which he speaks in the six¬ teenth verse, wherein he informs the Corinthians, u that lie had been minded to pass by them into Macedonia ;” but that, for reasons which argued no levity or fickleness in his disposition, he had been compelled to change his purpose. If this be so, then it follows that the writing here mentioned was posterior to the change of his intention. The only question, therefore, that remains, will be, whether this writing relate to the letter which we now have under the title of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, or to some other letter not extant ? And upon this question, I think Mr. Locke’s observation decisive ; namely, that the second clause marked in the quotation by Italics, “ I wrote unto you with many tears,” and the first clause so marked, “ I wrote this same unto you,"" belong to one writing, whatever that was; and that the second clause goes on to advert to a circumstance which is found in our present First Epistle to the Corinthians; namely, the case and punishment of the incestuous person. Upon the whole, then, we see, that it is capable of being inferred from St. Paul s own words, in the long extract which we have quoted, that the First Epistle to the Corinthians was written after St. Paul had determined to postpone his journey to Corinth ; in other words, that the change of his purpose with respect to the course of his journey, though expressly mentioned only in the Second Epistle, had taken place before the writing of the First: the point which we made out to be implied in the history, by the order of the events there D D 2 404 ITOR7E PAULINA. recorded, and the allusions to those events in the First Epistle. Now this is a species of congruity of all others the most to he relied upon. It is not an agreement between two accounts of the same transaction, or between different statements of the same fact, for the fact is not stated ; nothing that can be called an account is given ; hut it is the junction of two conclusions, deduced from independent sources, and deducible only by investigation and comparison. This point, viz. the change of the route, being prior to the writing of the First Epistle, also falls in with, and accounts for, the manner in which he speaks in that epistle of his journey. His first intention had been, as he here declares, to “pass by them into Mace¬ donia that intention having been previously given up, he writes, in his First Epistle, 44 that he would not see them now by the way,” i. e. as he must have done upon his first plan; hut that he trusted to tarry awhile with them, and possibly to abide, yea and winter with them,” 1 Cor. chap. xvi. 5, 6. It also accounts for a singularity in the text referred to, which must strike every reader: 44 1 will come to you when I pass through Macedonia ; for I do pass through Macedonia.” The supplemental sentence, 44 for I do pass through Mace¬ donia,” imports that there had been some previous communication upon the subject of the journey; and also that there had been some vacillation and indecisiveness in the apostle’s plan: both which we now perceive to have been the case. The sentence is as much as to say, 44 This is what I at last resolve upon.” The expression 44 6Vu v MaKeSotw 8u\6a:” is ambiguous; it may denote either 44 when I pass, or when I shall have passed, through Macedonia;” the considerations offered above fix it to the latter sense. Lastly, the point we have endeavoured to make out, confirms, or rather, indeed, is necessary to the support of, a conjecture, which forms the subject of a number in our observations upon the First Epistle, that the insinuation of certain of the church of Corinth, that lie would come no more amongst them, was founded on some previous disappointment of their expectations. No. Y.—But if St. Paul had changed his purpose before the writing of the First Epistle, why did he defer explaining himself to the Corinthians, concerning the reason of that change, until he wrote the Second ? This is a very fair question ; and we are able, I think, to return to it a satisfactory answer. The real cause, and the cause at length assigned by St. Paul for postponing liis visit to Corinth, and not travelling by the route which he had at first designed, was the disorderly state of the Corinthian church at the time, and the painful severities which he should have found himself obliged to exercise, if he had come amongst them during the existence of these irregularities. He was willing therefore to try, before he came in person, what a letter of authoritative objurgation would do amongst them, and to leave time for the operation of the experiment. That was his scheme in writing the First Epistle. But it was not for him to acquaint them with the scheme. After the epistle had produced its effect (and to the utmost extent, as it should seem, of the apostle’s hopes) ; wlien he had wrought in them a deep sense of their fault, and an almost passionate solici¬ tude to restore themselves to the approbation of their teacher; when Titus (chap. vii. 6, 7* 11.) had brought him intelligence 44 of their earnest desire, their mourning, their fervent mind towards him, of their sorrow and their penitence ; what carefulness, what clearing of themselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what revenge,” his letter, and the general concern occasioned by it, had excited amongst them ; he then opens himself fully upon the subject. The affectionate mind of the apostle is touched by this return of zeal and duty. He tells them that he did not visit them at the time proposed, lest their meeting should have been attended with mutual grief; and with grief to him imljittered by the reflection, that he was giving pain to those, from whom alone he could receive comfort: 44 I determined this with myself, that I would not come again to you in heaviness; for, if I make you sorry, who is he that maketli me glad hut the same which is made sorry by me ?” (chap. ii. 1, 2) : that he had written his former epistle to warn them beforehand of their fault, 44 lest when he came he should have sorrow of them of whom he ought to rejoice(chap. ii. 3) : that he had the farther view, though perhaps unperceived by them, of making an experiment of their fidelity, 44 to know the proof of them, whether they are obedient in all things,” (chap. ii. 9). This full discovery of his motive came very naturally from the apostle, after he had seen the success of his measures, but would not have HGRiE PAULINiE. 405 been a seasonable communication before. The whole composes a train of sentiment and of conduct resulting from real situation, and from real circumstance, and as remote as possible from fiction or imposture. No. YI.—Chap. xi. 9. “ When I was present with you, and wanted, I was chargeable to no man : for that which was lacking to me, the brethren which came from Macedonia supplied.” The principal fact set forth in this passage, the arrival at Corinth of brethren from Macedonia during St. Paul’s first residence in that city, is explicitly recorded, Acts, chap, xviii. 1.5. “ After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth. And when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia, Paul was pressed in spirit, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ.’ 1 No. YII.—The above quotation from the Acts proves that Silas and Timotheus were assisting to St. Paul in preaching the gospel at Corinth. With which correspond the words of the epistle (chap. i. 19) : “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea.” I do admit that the correspondency, considered by itself, is too direct and obvious : and that an impostor with the history before him might, and probably would, produce agreements of the same kind. But let it be remembered, that this reference is fjund in a writing, which from many discrepancies, and especially from those noted No. II., we may conclude, was not composed by any one who had consulted, and who pursued the history. Some observation also arises upon the variation of the name. We read Silas in the Acts, Silvanus in the epistle. The similitude of these two names, if they were the names of different persons, is greater than could easily have proceeded from accident; I mean that it is not probable, that two persons placed in situations so much alike, should bear names so nearly resembling each other *. On the other hand, the difference of the name in the two passages negatives the supposition of the passage's, or the account contained in them, being transcribed either from the other. No. YIII.—Chap. ii. 12, 13. “When I came to Troas to preach Christ’s gospel, and a door was opened unto me of the Lord, I had no rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus my brother; but taking my leave of them, I went from thence into Macedonia.” To establish a conformity between this passage and the history, nothing more is necessary to be presumed, than that St. Paul proceeded from Ephesus to Macedonia, upon the same course by which he came back from Macedonia to Ephesus, or rather to Miletus in the neigh¬ bourhood of Ephesus ; in other words, that in his journey to the peninsula of Greece, he went and returned the same way. St. Paul is now in Macedonia, where he had lately arrived from Ephesus. Our quotation imports that in his journey he had stopped at Troas. Of this, the history says nothing, leaving us only the short account, that “ Paul departed from Ephesus, for to go into Macedonia.” But the history says, that in his return from Macedonia to Ephesus, “ Paul sailed from Philippi to Troas ; and that, when the disciples came together on the first day of the week to break bread, Paul preached unto them all night, that from Troas he went by land to Assos; from Assos, taking ship and coasting along the front of Asia Minor, he came by Mitylene to Miletus.” Which account proves, first, that Troas lay in the way by which St. Paul passed between Ephesus and Macedonia; secondly, that he had disciples there. In one journey between these two places, the epistle, and in another journey between the same places, the history, makes him stop at this city. Of the first journey he is made to say, “ that a door was in that city opened unto me of the Lord in the second we find disciples there collected around him, and the apostle exercising his ministry, with, what was even in him, more than ordinary zeal and labour. The epistle, therefore, is in this instance confirmed, if not by the terms, at least by the probability of the history; a species of confirmation by no means to be despised, because, as far as it reaches it is evidently uncontrived. Grotius, I know, refers the arrival at Troas, to which the epistle alludes, to a different period, but I think very improbably ; for nothing appears to me more certain, than that the meeting with Titus, which St. Paul expected at Troas, was the same meeting which * That they were the same person is farther confirmed by 1 Thess. chap. i. 1, compared with Acts, chap. xvii. 10. 400 HORiE PAULINiE. took place in Macedonia, viz. upon Titus’s coming out of Greece. In the quotation before us, he tells the Corinthians, 44 When I came to Troas, I had no rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus my brother; but, taking my leave of them, I went from thence into Mace¬ donia.” Then in the seventh chapter he writes, 44 When we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side ; without were fightings, within were fears; nevertheless God, that comforteth them that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus.” These two passages plainly relate to the same journey of Titus, in meeting with whom St. Paul had been disappointed at Troas, and rejoiced in Macedonia. And amongst other reasons which fix the former passage to the coming of Titus out of Greece, is the consideration, that it was nothing to the Corinthians that St. Paul did not meet with Titus at Troas, were it not that he was to bring intelligence from Corinth. The mention of the disappointment in this place, upon any other supposition, is irrelative. No. IX.—Chap. xi. 24, 25. 44 Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one ; thrice was I beaten with rods; once was I stoned ; thrice I suffered shipwreck ; a night and a day I have been in the deep.” These particulars cannot be extracted out of the Acts of the Apostles; which proves, as hath been already observed, that the epistle was not framed from the history; yet they are consistent with it, which, considering how numerically circumstantial the account is, is more than could happen to arbitrary and independent fictions. When I say these particulars are consistent with the history, I mean, first, that there is no article, in the enumeration, which is contradicted by the history : secondly, that the history, though silent with respect to many of the facts here enumerated, has left space for the existence of these facts, consistent with the fidelity of its own narration. First, no contradiction is discoverable between the epistle and the history. When St. Paul says, thrice was I beaten with rods, although the history record only one beating with rods, viz. at Philippi, Acts, xvi. 22, yet is there no contradiction. It is only the omission in one book of what is related in another. But had the history contained accounts of four beatings with rods, at the time of writing this epistle, in which St. Paul says that he had only suffered three, there would have been a contradiction properly so called. The same observation applies generally to the other parts of the enumeration, concerning which the history is silent: but there is one clause in the quotation particularly deserving of remark ; because, when confronted with the history, it furnishes the nearest approach to a contradiction, without a contradiction being actually incurred, of any I remember to have met with. 44 Once,” saith St. Paul, 44 was I stoned.” Does the history relate that St. Paul, prior to the writing of this epistle, had been stoned more than once ? The history mentions distinctly one occasion upon which St. Paul was stoned, viz. at Lystra in Lycaonia. 44 Then came thither certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who persuaded the people; and, having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead.” (Chap. xiv. 19.) And it mentions also another occasion in which 44 an assault was made both of the Gentiles, and also of the Jews with their rulers, to use them despitefully and to stone them ; but they were aware of it,” the history proceeds to tell us, 44 and fled into Lystra and DerbeA This happened at Iconium, prior to the date of the epistle. Now had the assault been completed; had the history related that a stone was thrown, as it relates that preparations were made both by Jews and Gentiles to stone Paul and his companions ; or even had the account of this transaction stopped, without going on to inform us that Paul and his companions were 44 aware of their danger and fled,” a contradiction between the history and the epistle would have ensued. Truth is necessarily consistent; but it is scarcely possible that independent accounts, not having truth to guide them, should thus advance to the very brink of contra¬ diction without falling into it. Secondly, I say, that if the Acts of the Apostles be silent concerning many of the instances enumerated in the epistle, this silence may be accounted for, from the plan and fabric of the history. The date of the epistle synchronizes with the beginning of the twentieth chapter of the Acts. The part, therefore, of the history, which precedes the twentieth chapter, is the only part in which can be found any notice of the persecutions to which St. Paul refers. Now it does not appear that the author of the history was with HORAE PAULIN2E. 407 St. Paul until his departure from Troas, on his way to Macedonia, as related chap. xvi. 10; or rather indeed the contrary appears. It is in this point of the history that the language changes. In the seventh and eighth verses of this chapter the third person is used. “ After they were come to My si a, they assayed to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered them not; and they passing by Mysia came to Troas and the third person is in like manner constantly used throughout the foregoing part of the history. In the tenth verse of this chapter, the first person comes in: “ After Paul had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia; assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel unto them.” Now, from this time to the writing of the epistle, the history occupies four chapters ; yet it is in these, if in any, that a regular or continued account of the apostle’s life is to be’expected ; for how succinctly his history is delivered in the preceding part of the book, that is to say, from the time of his conversion to the time when the historian joined him at Troas, except the particulars of his conversion itself, which are related circumstantially, may be understood from the following observations :— The history of a period of sixteen years is comprised in less than three chapters ; and of these, a material part is taken up with discourses. After his conversion, he continued in the neighbourhood of Damascus, according to the history, for a considerable, though indefinite, length of time, according to his own words (Gal. i. 18), for three years; of which no other account is given than this short one, that “ straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God; that all that heard him were amazed, and said, Is not this he that destroyed them which called on this name in Jerusalem ? that he increased the more in strength, and confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus ; and that, after many days were fulfilled, the Jews took counsel to kill him.” From Damascus he proceeded to Jeru¬ salem : and of his residence there nothing more particular is recorded, than that “ he was with the apostles, coming in and going out; that he spake boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Grecians, who went about to kill him.” From Jerusalem, the history sends him to his native city of Tarsus # . It seems probable, from the order and disposition of the history, that St. Paul’s stay at Tarsus was of some continuance ; for we hear nothing of him, until, after along apparent interval, and much interjacent narrative, Barnabas, desirous of Paul’s assistance upon the enlargement of the Christian mission, u went to Tarsus for to seek him f.” We cannot doubt but that the new apostle had been busied in his ministry ; yet of what he did, or what he suffered, during this period, which may in¬ clude three or four years, the history professes not to deliver any information. As Tarsus was situated upon the sea-coast, and as, though Tarsus was his home, yet it is probable he visited from thence many other places, for the purpose of preaching the gospel, it is not un¬ likely, that in the course of three or four years, he might undertake many short voyages to neighbouring countries, in the navigating of which we may be allowed to suppose that some of those disasters and shipwrecks befel him, to which he refers in the quotation before us, “ thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep.” This last clause I am inclined to interpret of his being obliged to take to an open boat, upon the loss of the ship, and his continuing out at sea in that dangerous situation, a night and a day. St. Paul is here recounting his sufferings, not relating miracles. From Tarsus, Barnabas brought Paul to Antioch, and there he remained a year : but of the transactions of that year no other description is given than what is contained in the last four verses of the eleventh chapter. After a more solemn dedication to the ministry, Barnabas and Paul proceeded from Antioch to Cilicia, and from thence they sailed to Cyprus, of which voyage no particulars are men¬ tioned. Upon their return from Cyprus, they made a progress together through the Lesser Asia; and though two remarkable speeches be preserved, and a few incidents in the course of their travels circumstantially related, yet is the account of this progress, upon the whole, given professedly with conciseness ; for instance, at Iconium it is said that they abode a long time J ; yet of this long abode, except concerning the manner in which they were driven away, no memoir is inserted in the history. The whole is wrapped up in one short sum¬ mary, u They spake boldly in the Lord, which gave testimony unto the word of his grace, and granted signs and wonders to be done by their hands.” Having completed their pro- * Acts, chap. ix. 30. f Chap. xi. 25. \ Chap. xiv. 3. 408 HORiE PAULINA. gress, the two apostles returned to Antioch, a and there they abode long time with the disciples.” Here we have another large portion of time passed over in silence. To this succeeded a journey to Jerusalem, upon a dispute which then much agitated the Christian church, concerning the obligation of the law of Moses. When the object of that journey was completed, Paul proposed to Barnabas to go again and visit their brethren in every city where they had preached the word of the Lord. The execution of this plan carried our apostle through Syria, Cilicia, and many provinces of the Lesser Asia; yet is the account of the whole journey dispatched in four verses of the sixteenth chapter. If the Acts of the Apostles had undertaken to exhibit regular annals of St. Paul’s ministry, or even any continued account of his life, from his conversion at Damascus to his imprison¬ ment at Rome, I should have thought the omission of the circumstances referred to in our epistle, a matter of reasonable objection. But when it appears, from the history itself, that large portions of St. Paul’s life were either passed over in silence, or only slightly touched upon, and that nothing more than certain detached incidents and discourses is related ; when we observe also, that the author of the history did not join our apostle’s society till a few years before the writing of the epistle, at least that there is no proof in the history that he did so; in comparing the history with the epistle, we shall not be surprised by the discovery of omissions; we shall ascribe it to truth that there is no contradiction. No. X.—Chap. iii. 1. “ Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you ?” “As some others.” Turn to Acts, xviii. 27, find you will find that, a short time before the writing of this epistle, Apollos had gone to Corinth with letters of commendation from the Ephesian Christians; “ and when Apollos was disposed to pass into Achaia, the brethren w T rote, exhorting the disciples to receive him.” Here the words of the epistle bear the appearance of alluding to some specific instance, and the history supplies that instance ; it supplies at least an instance as apposite as possible to the terms which the apostle uses, and to the date and direction of the epistle in which they are found. The letter which Apollos carried from Ephesus, was precisely the letter of commendation which St. Paul meant; and it was to Achaia, of which Corinth was the capital, and indeed to Corinth itself, (Acts, chap. xix. 1) that Apollos carried it; and it was about two years before the writing of this epistle. If St. Paul’s words be rather thought to refer to some general usage which then obtained among Christian churches, the case of Apollos exemplifies that usage; and affords that species of confirmation to the epistle, which arises from seeing the manners of the age, in which it purports to be written, faithfully preserved. No. XI.—Chap. xiii. 1. “This is the third time I am coming to you:” rplrov tovto epxopcu. Do not these words import that the writer had been at Corinth twice before ? Yet, if they import this, they overset every congruity we have been endeavouring to establish. The Acts of the Apostles record only two journeys of St. Paul to Corinth. We have all along supposed, what every mark of time except this expression indicates, that the epistle was written between the first and second of these journeys. If St. Paul had been already twice at Corinth, this supposition must be given up : and every argument or observation which depends upon it falls to the ground. Again, the Acts of the Apostles not only accord no more than two journeys of St. Paul to Corinth, but do not allow us to suppose that more than two such journeys could be made or intended by him within the period which the his¬ tory comprises; for from his first journey into Greece to his first imprisonment at Rome, with which the history concludes, the apostle’s time is accounted for. If therefore the epistle was written after the second journey to Corinth, and upon the view and expectation of a third, it must have been written after his first imjjrisonment at Rome, i. e. after the time to which the history extends. When I first read over this epistle with the particular view of comparing it with the history, which I chose to do without consulting any commentary whatever, I own that I felt myself confounded by this text. It appeared to contradict the opinion, which I had been led by a great variety of circumstances to form, concerning the date and occasion of the epistle. At length, however, it occurred to my thoughts to inquire, whether the passage did necessarily imply that St. Paul had been at Corinth twice ; or, HOIliE PAULINiE. 409 whether, when he says, 44 This is the third time I am coming to you,” he might mean only that this was the third time that he was ready, that he was prepared, that he intended to set out upon his journey to Corinth. I recollected that he had once before this purposed to visit Corinth, and had been disappointed in this purpose ; which disappointment forms the subject of much apology and protestation, in the first and second chapters of the epistle. Now, if the journey in which he had been disappointed was reckoned by him one of the times in which 44 he was coming to them,” then the present would be the third time, i. e. of his being ready and prepared to come; although he had been actually at Corinth only once before. This conjecture being taken up, a farther examination of the passage and the epistle, produced proofs which placed it beyond doubt. 44 This is the third time I am coming to you f' in the verse following these words he adds, 44 1 told you before, and foretel you, as if I were present the second time ; and being absent, now I write to them which hereto¬ fore have sinned, and to all other, that, if I come again, I will not spare.” In this verse, the apostle is declaring beforehand what he would do in his intended visit : his expression there¬ fore, 44 as if I were present the second time,” relates to that visit. But, if his future visit would only make him present among them a second time, it follows that he had been already there but once.—Again, in the fifteenth verse of the first chapter, he tells them, 44 In this confidence, I was minded to come unto you before, that ye might have a second benefit Why a second, and not a third benefit ? why Sverepa z/, and not rpirrjv ^ apt if the rpirov epxopcu^ in the fifteenth chapter, meant a third visit ? for, though the visit in the first chapter be that visit in which he was disappointed, yet, as it is evident from the epistle that he had never been at Corinth from the time of the disappointment to the time of writing the epistle, it follows, that if it was only a second visit in which he was disappointed then, it could only be a second visit which he proposed now. But the text which I think is decisive of the question, if any question remain upon the subject, is the fourteenth verse of the twelfth chapter : 44 Behold, the third time I am ready to come to you :” ’iSou, rpirov eroipws e'xco eXdeiv. It is very clear that the rpirov eroipcos e^co £X8eiv of the twelfth chapter, and the rpirov rovro epxopcu of the thirteenth chapter, are equivalent expressions, were intended to convey the same meaning, and to relate to the same journey. The comparison of these phrases gives us St. Paul 1 s own explanation which we are contending for, viz. that rpirov rovro epxopai does not mean that he was coming a third time, but that he was in readiness to come, rpirov iroipas e'xcov. I do not apprehend, that after this it can be necessary to call to our aid the reading of the Alexandrian manuscript, which gives iroipcos eX6elv in the thirteenth chapter as well as in the twelfth ; or of the Syriac and Coptic versions, which follow that reading ; because I allow that this reading, besides not being sufficiently supported by ancient copies, is pro¬ bably paraplirastical, and lias been inserted for the purpose of expressing more unequivocally the sense, which the shorter expression rpirov rovro epxopai was supposed to carry. Upon the whole the matter is sufficiently certain : nor do I propose it as a new interpretation of the text which contains the difficulty, for the same was given by Grotius long ago : but I thought it the clearest way of explaining the subject, to describe the manner in which the difficulty, the solution, and the proofs of that solution, successively presented themselves to my inquiries. Now, in historical researches, a reconciled inconsistency becomes a positive argument. First, because an impostor generally guards against the appearance of inconsis¬ tency ; and secondly, because, when apparent inconsistencies are found, it is seldom that any thing but truth renders them capable of reconciliation. The existence of the difficulty proves the want or absence of that caution, which usually accompanies the consciousness of fraud; and the solution proves, that it is not the collusion of fortuitous propositions which we have to deal with, but that a thread of truth winds through the whole, which preserves every cir¬ cumstance in its place. No. XII.—Chap. x. 14 — 16. 44 We are come as far as to you also, preaching the gospel of Christ; not boasting of things without our measure, that is, of other men s labours ; but having hope, when your faith is increased, that we shall be enlarged by you, according to our rule, abundantly to preach the gospel in the regions beyond you. This quotation affords an indirect, and therefore unsuspicious, but at the same time a dis¬ tinct and indubitable, recognition of the truth and exactness of the history. 1 consider it to ' © 410 HORJE PAULINA. be implied by the words of the quotation, that Corinth was the extremity of St. Paul’s travels hitherto. He expresses to the Corinthians his hope, that in some future visit he might u preach the gospel to the regions beyond them which imports that he had not hitherto proceeded u beyond them, 11 but that Corinth was as yet the farthest point or bound¬ ary of his travels.—Now, how is St. Paul’s first journey into Europe, which was the only one he had taken before the writing of the epistle, traced out in the history ? Sailing from Asia, he landed at Philippi : from Philippi, traversing the eastern coasts of the peninsula, he passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia to Thessalonica; from thence through Berea to Athens, and from Athens to Corinth, 'where he stopped; and from whence, after a resi¬ dence of a year and a half, he sailed back into Syria. So that Corinth was the last place which lie visited in the peninsula ; was the place from which he returned into Asia ; and was, as such, the boundary and limit of his progress. He could not have said the same thing, viz. “ I hope hereafter to visit the regions beyond you,” in an epistle to the Pliilip- pians, or in an epistle to the Thessalonians, inasmuch as he must be deemed to have already visited the regions beyond them, having proceeded from those cities to other parts of Greece. But from Corinth he returned home : every part therefore beyond that city, might properly be said, as it is said in the passage before us, to be unvisited. Yet is this propriety the spontaneous effect of truth, and produced without meditation or design. CHAPTER V. THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. No. I.— Tiie argument of this epistle in some measure proves its antiquity. It will hardly be doubted, but that it was written whilst the dispute concerning the circumcision of Gentile converts was fresh in men’s minds: for, even supposing it to have been a forgery, the only credible motive that can be assigned for the forgery, was to bring the name and authority of the apostle into this controversy. No design could be so insipid, or so unlikely to enter into the thoughts of any man, as to produce an epistle written earnestly and point¬ edly upon one side of a controversy, when the controversy itself was dead, and the question no longer interesting to any description of readers whatever. Now the controversy concern¬ ing the circumcision of the Gentile Christians was of such a nature, that, if it arose at all, it must have arisen in the beginning of Christianity. As Judea was the scene of the Christian history; as the Author and preachers of Christianity were Jew’s ; as the religion itself ac¬ knowledged and was founded upon the Jewish religion, in contradistinction to every other religion then professed amongst mankind ; it w 7 as not to be wondered at, that some of its teachers should carry it out in the w’orld rather as a sect and modification of Judaism, than as a separate original revelation ; or that they should invite their proselytes to those observ¬ ances in which they lived themselves. This was likely to happen : but if it did not happen at first; if, whilst the religion was in the hands of Jewish teachers, no such claim was advanced, no such condition was attempted to be imposed, it is not probable that the doc¬ trine would be started, much less that it should prevail, in any future period. I likewise think, that those pretensions of Judaism were much more likely to be insisted upon, whilst the Jews continued a nation, than after their fall and dispersion ; whilst Jerusalem and the temple stood, than after the destruction brought upon them by the Roman arms, the fatal cessation of the sacrifice and the priesthood, the humiliating loss of their country, and with it, of the great rites and symbols of their institution. It should seem therefore, from the nature of the subject, and the situation of the parties, that this controversy w T as carried on in the interval between the preaching of Christianity to the Gentiles, and the invasion of Titus ; and that our present epistle, which was undoubtedly intended to bear a part in this contro¬ versy, must be referred to the same period. IIOll/E PAULINiE. 411 But again, the epistle supposes that certain designing adherents of the Jewish law had crept into the churches of Galatia; and had been endeavouring, and but too successfully, to persuade the Galatic converts, that they had been taught the new religion imperfectly and at second hand ; that the founder of their church himself possessed only an inferior and de¬ puted commission, the seat of truth and authority being in the apostles and elders of Jerusa¬ lem ; moreover, that whatever he might profess amongst them, he had himself at other times, and in other places, given way to the doctrine of circumcision. The epistle is unin¬ telligible without supposing all this. Referring therefore to this, as to what had actually passed, we find St. Paul treating so unjust an attempt to undermine his credit, and to intro¬ duce amongst his converts a doctrine which he had uniformly reprobated, in terms of great asperity and indignation. And in order to refute the suspicions which had been raised concerning the fidelity of his teaching, as well as to assert the independency and divine ori¬ ginal of his mission, we find him appealing to the history of his conversion, to his conduct under it, to the manner in which he had conferred with the apostles when he met with them at Jerusalem : alleging, that so far was his doctrine from being derived from them, or they from exercising any superiority over him, that they had simply assented to what he had already preached amongst the Gentiles, and which preaching was communicated not by them to him, but by himself to them; that he had maintained the liberty of the Gentile church, by opposing, upon one occasion, an apostle to the face, when the timidity of his behaviour seemed to endanger it ; that from the first, that all along, that to that hour, he had con¬ stantly resisted the claims of Judaism ; and that the persecutions which he daily underwent, at the hands or by the instigation of the Jews, and of which he bore in his person the marks and scars, might have been avoided by him, if he had consented to employ his labours in bringing, through the medium of Christianity, converts over to the Jewish institution, for then “ would the offence of the cross have ceased.” Now an impostor who had forged the epistle for the purpose of producing St. PauFs authority in the dispute, which, as hath been observed, is the only credible motive that can be assigned for the forgery, might have made the apostle deliver his opinion upon the subject, in strong and decisive terms, or might have put his name to a train of reasoning and argumentation upon that side of the question which the imposture was intended to recommend. I can allow the possibility of such a scheme as that. But for a writer, with this purpose in view, to feign a series of transactions supposed to have passed amongst the Christians of Galatia, and then to counterfeit expressions of anger and resentment excited by these transactions; to make the apostle travel back into his own history, and into a recital of various passages of his life, some indeed directly, but others obliquely, and others even obscurely bearing upon the point in question ; in a word, to substitute narrative for argument, expostulation and complaint for dogmatic positions and con¬ troversial reasoning, in a writing properly controversial, and of which the aim and design was to support one side of a much agitated question — is a method so intricate, and so unlike the methods pursued by all other impostors, as to require very flagrant proofs of imposition to induce us to believe it to be one. No. II.—In this number I shall endeavour to prove, 1. That the Epistle to the Galatians, and the Acts of the Apostles, were written without any communication with each other. 2. That the Epistle, though written without any communication with the history, by recital, implication, or reference, bears testimony to many of the facts contained in it. 1. The Epistle and the Acts of the Apostles were written without any communication with each other. To judge of this point, we must examine those passages in each, which describe the same transaction; for, if the author of either writing derived his information from the account which he had seen in the other, when he came to speak of the same transaction, he would follow that account. The history of St. Paul, at Damascus, as read in the Acts, and as re¬ ferred to by the Epistle, forms an instance of this sort. According to the Acts, Paul (after his conversion) was certain days with the “ disciples which were at Damascus. And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God. But all that heard him were amazed, and said, Is not this he which destroyed them which called on his name in Jerusalem, and came hither for that intent, that lie might bring them bound unto 412 HOIUE PAULINA. the chief priests ? But Saul increased the more in strength, confounding the Jews which were at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ. And after that many days were ful¬ filled, the Jews took counsel to kill him. But their laying in wait was known to Saul; and they watched the gates day and night to kill him. Then the disciples took him by night, and let him down by the wall in a basket. And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples.” Acts, chap. ix. 19—26. According to the Epistle, “ 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, neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me ; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus : then, after three years, I went up to Jerusalem.” Beside the difference observable in the terms and general complexion of these two accounts, “ the journey into Arabia,” mentioned in the epistle, and omitted in the history, affords full proof that there existed no correspondence between these writers. If the narra¬ tive in the Acts had been made up from the Epistle, it is impossible that this journey should have been passed over in silence ; if the Epistle had been composed out of what the author had read of St. Paul’s history in the Acts, it is unaccountable that it should have been inserted The journey to Jerusalem related in the second chapter of the Epistle (“then, fourteen years after, I went up again to Jerusalem”) supplies another example of the same kind. Either this was the journey described in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts, when Paul and Barnabas were sent from Antioch to Jerusalem, to consult the apostles and elders upon the question of the Gentile converts : or it was some journey of which the history does not take notice. If the first opinion be followed, the discrepancy in the two accounts is so consider¬ able, that it is not without difficulty they can be adapted to the same transaction: so that upon this supposition, there is no place for suspecting that the writers were guided or assisted by each other. If the latter opinion be preferred, we have then a journey to Jerusalem, and a conference with the principal members of the church there, circumstantially related in the Epistle, and entirely omitted in the Acts; and we are at liberty to repeat the observation, which we before made, that the omission of so material a fact in the history is inexplicable, if the historian had read the Epistle ; and that the insertion of it in the Epistle, if the writer derived his information from the history, is not less so. St. Peter’s visit to Antioch, during which the dispute arose between him and St. Paul, is not mentioned in the Acts. If we connect, with these instances, the general observation, that no scrutiny can discover the smallest trace of transcription or imitation either in things or words, we shall be fully satisfied in this part of our case ; namely, that the two records, be the facts contained in them true or false, come to our hands from independent sources. Secondly, I say that the epistle, thus proved to have been written without any com¬ munication with the history, bears testimony to a great variety of particulars contained in the history. 1. St. Paul in the early part of his life had addicted himself to the study of the Jewish religion, and was distinguished by his zeal for the institution and for the traditions which had been incorporated with it. Upon this part of his character the history makes St. Paul speak thus: “ I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city of Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers; and was zealous towards God, as ye all are this day.” Acts, chap. xxii. 3. The epistle is as follows : “ I profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.” Chap. i. 14. 2. St. Paul, before his conversion, had been a fierce persecutor of the new sect. “ As for Saul, he made havoc of the church ; entering into every house, and, haling men and women, committed them to prison.” Acts, chap. viii. 3. This is the history of St. Paul, as delivered in the Acts; in the recital of his own history * N.B ^The Acts of the Apostles simply inform us he will find a complete instance of the same phrase used with that St. Paul left Damascus in order to go to Jerusalem, the same latitude in the First Book of Kings, chap. xi. 33, “after many days were fulfilled.” If any one doubt 39. “And Shitnei dwelt at Jerusalem many days: whether the words “many days” could be intended to and it came to pass at the end of three years, that two of express a period which included a term of three years, the servants of Shimei ran away.” HORAE PAULINA, 413 in the epistle, 44 Ye have heard,” says he, 44 of my conversation in times past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God.” Chap. i. 13. 3. St. Paul was miraculously converted on his way to Damascus. 44 And as he journeyed he came near to Damascus : and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven ; and he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ? And he said, Who art thou, Lord ? And the Lord said, I am Jesus, whom thou per¬ secutest ; it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he, trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ?” Acts, chap. ix. 3—6. With these compare the epistle, chap. i. 15—17: “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, neither went I up to Jeru¬ salem, to them that were apostles before ; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus.” In this quotation from the epistle, I desire it to be remarked how incidentally it appears, that the affair passed at Damascus. In what may be called the direct part of the account, no mention is made of the place of his conversion at all : a casual expression at the end, and an expression brought in for a different purpose, alone fixes it to have been at Damascus; 44 I returned again to Damascus.” Nothing can be more like simplicity and undesignedness than this is. It also draws the agreement between the two quotations somewhat closer, to observe that they both state St. Paul to have preached the gospel immediately upon his call: 44 And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God.” Acts, chap. ix. 20. 44 When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen : immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.” Gal. chap. i. 15. 4. The course of the apostle’s travels after his conversion was this : He went from Damascus to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem, into Syria and Cilicia. 44 At Damascus the disciples took him by night, and let him down by the wall in a basket; and when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples.” Acts, chap. ix. 25. Afterward, 44 when the brethren knew the conspiracy formed against him at Jerusalem, they brought him down to Ca?sarea, and sent him forth to Tarsus, a city in Cilicia.” Chap. ix. 33. In the epistle, St. Paul gives the following brief account of his proceedings within the same period : 44 After three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days ; afterward I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia.” The history had told us that Paul passed from Caesarea to Tarsus : if he took this journey by land, it would carry him through Syria into Cilicia; and he would come, after his visit at Jerusalem, 44 into the regions of Syria and Cilicia,” in the very order in which he mentions them in the epistle. This supposition of his going from Caesarea to Tarsus, by land , clears up also another point. It accounts for what St. Paul says in the same place concerning the churches of Judea: 44 Afterward I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and was unknown by face unto the churches of Judea, which were in Christ: but they had heard only that he which persecuted us in times past, now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed ; and they glorified God in me.” Upon which passage I observe, first, that what is here said of the churches of Judea, is spoken in connexion with his journey into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. Secondly, that the passage itself has little significancy, and that the connexion is inexplicable, unless St. Paul went through Judea # (though probably by a hasty journey) at the time that he came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. Suppose him to have passed by land from Caesarea to Tarsus, all this, as hath been observed, would be precisely true. 5. Barnabas was with St. Paul at Antioch. 44 Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul; and when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church.” Acts, chap. xi. 25, 26. Again, and upon another occasion, 44 they (Paul and Barnabas) sailed to Antioch : and there they continued a long time with the disciples.” Chap. xiv. 26. * Dr. Doddridge thought that the Caesarea here men- to Tarsus than the other. The objection to this, Dr. tioned was not the celebrated city of that name upon the Benson remarks, is, that Caesarea, without any addition, Mediterranean sea, but Caesarea Philippi, near the borders of usually denotes Caesareae Palestinae. Syria, which lies in a much more direct line from Jerusalem 414 IIORiE PAULINA. Now what says the epistle? “ When Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed ; and the other Jews dissembled likewise with him ; inso¬ much that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation.” Chap. ii. 11. 13. 6. The stated residence of the apostles was at Jerusalem. a At that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.” Acts, chap. viii. 1. “ They (the Christians at Antioch) determined that Paul and Barnabas should go up to Jerusalem, unto the apostles and elders about this question.” Acts, chap. xv. 2.—With these accounts agrees the declaration in the epistle: “Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me,” chap. i. 17 : for this declaration implies, or rather assumes it to be known, that Jerusalem was the place where the apostles were to be met with. 7- There were at Jerusalem two apostles, or at the least two eminent members of the church, of the name of James. This is directly inferred from the Acts of the Apostles, which in the second verse of the twelfth chapter relates the death of James, the brother of John; and yet in the fifteenth chapter, and in a subsequent part of the history, records a speech delivered by James in the assembly of the apostles and elders. It is also strongly implied by the form of expression used in the epistle : “ Other apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother i. e. to distinguish him from James the brother of John. To us who have been long conversant in the Christian history, as contained in the Acts of the Apostles, these points are obvious and familiar ; nor do we readily apprehend any greater difficulty in making them appear in a letter purporting to have been written by St. Paul, than there is in introducing them into a modern sermon. But, to judge correctly of the argument before us, we must discharge this knowledge from our thoughts. We must propose to our¬ selves the situation of an author who sat down to the writing of the epistle without having seen the history; and then the concurrences we have deduced will be deemed of importance. They will at least be taken for separate confirmations of the several facts, and not only of these particular facts, but of the general truth of the history. For, what is the rule with respect to corroborative testimony which prevails in courts of justice, and which prevails only because experience has proved that it is a useful guide to truth ? A principal witness in a cause delivers his account : his narrative, in certain parts of it, is confirmed by witnesses who are called afterward. The credit derived from their testi¬ mony belongs not only to the particular circumstances in which the auxiliary witnesses agree with the principal witness, but in some measure to the whole of his evidence; because it is improbable that accident or fiction should draw a line which touched upon truth in so many points. In like manner, if two records be produced, manifestly independent, that is, manifestly written without any participation of intelligence, an agreement between them, even in few and slight circumstances (especially if from the different nature and design of the writings, few points only of agreement, and those incidental, could be expected to occur), would add a sensible weight to the authority of both, in every part of their contents. The same rule is applicable to history, with at least as much reason as any other species of evidence. No. III.—But although the references to various particulars in the epistle, compared with the direct account of the same particulars in the history, afford a considerable proof of the truth not only of these particulars but of the narrative which contains them : yet they do not shew, it will be said, that the epistle was written by St. Paul : for admitting (what seems to have been proved) that the writer, whoever he was, had no recourse to the Acts of the Apostles, yet many of the facts referred to, such as St. Paul’s miraculous conversion, his change from a virulent persecutor to an indefatigable preacher, his labours amongst the Gen¬ tiles, and his zeal for the liberties of the Gentile Church, were so notorious as to occur readily to the mind of any Christian, who should choose to personate his character and coun¬ terfeit his name ; it was only to write what every body knew. Now I think that this supposition — viz. that the epistle was composed upon general information, and the general publicity of the facts alluded to, and that the author did no more than weave into his work what the common fame of the Christian church had reported to his ears—is repelled by the particularity of the recitals and references. This particularity is observable in the following HORjE PAULINA. 415 instances; in perusing which, I desire the reader to reflect, whether they exhibit the lan¬ guage of a man wdio had nothing but general reputation to proceed upon, or of a man actually speaking of himself and of his own history, and consequently of things concerning which he possessed a clear, intimate, and circumstantial knowledge. 1. The'history, in giving an account of St. Paul after his conversion, relates, “ that, after many days,” effecting, by the assistance of the disciples, his escape from Damascus, “ he proceeded to Jerusalem.” Acts, chap. ix. 25. The epistle, speaking of the same period, makes St. Paul say that “ he went into Arabia,” that he returned again to Damascus, that after three years he went up to Jerusalem. Chap. i. 17, 18. 2. The history relates, that, when Saul was come from Damascus, “ he was with the dis¬ ciples coming in and going out.” Acts, chap. ix. 28. The epistle, describing the same journey, tells us, “ that he went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days.” Chap. i. i8. 3. The history relates, that when Paul was come to Jerusalem, “ Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles.” Acts, chap. ix. 27* The epistle, “that he saw Peter; but other of the apostles saw he none, save James, the Lord's brother.” Chap. i. 19. Now this is as it should be. The historian delivers his account in general terms, as of facts to which he was not present. The person who is the subject of that account, when he comes to speak of these facts himself, particularizes time, names, and circumstances. 4. The like notation of places, persons, and dates is met with in the account of St. Paul’s journey to Jerusalem, given in the second chapter of the epistle. It was fourteen years after his conversion ; it was in company with Barnabas and Titus ; it was then that he met with James, Cephas, and John ; it was then also that it was agreed amongst them, that they should go to the circumcision, and he unto the Gentiles. 5. The dispute with Peter, which occupies the sequel of the second chapter, is marked with the same particularity. It was at Antioch ; it was after certain came from James ; it was whilst Barnabas was there, who was carried away by their dissimulation. These exam¬ ples negative the insinuation, that the epistle presents nothing but indefinite allusions to public facts. No. IV.—Chap. iv. 11—16. “ I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain. Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am, for I am as ye are. Ye have not injured me at all. Ye know how, through infirmity of the flesh, I preached the gospel unto you at the first; and my temptation , which was in the flesh, ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. Where is then the blessedness you spoke of? for I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them unto me. Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth ?” With this passage compare 2 Cor. chap. xii. 1—9 : “ It is not expedient for me, doubt¬ less, to glory ; I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the body I cannot tell, or whether out of the body I cannot tell; God knoweth) ; such a one was caught up to the third heaven; and I knew such a man (whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell, God knoweth), how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Of such a one will I glory, yet of myself will I not glory, but in mine infir¬ mities : for, though I would desire to glory, I shall not be a fool; for I will say the truth. But now I forbear, lest any man should think of me above that which he seetli me to be, or that he heareth of me. And lest I should be exalted above measure, through the abun¬ dance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh , the messenger of Satan to buffet me , lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee ; for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. There can be no doubt but that u the temptation which was in the flesh,’” mentioned in the Epistle to the Galatians, and “ the thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him,” mentioned in the Epistle to the Corinthians, were intended to denote the same thing. 416 IIORiE PAULIN/E. Either therefore it was, what we pretend it to have been, the same person in both, alluding, as the occasion led him, to some bodily infirmity under which he laboured : that is, we are reading the real letters of a real apostle ; or, it was that a sophist, who had seen the circum¬ stance in one epistle, contrived, for the sake of correspondency, to bring it into another; or, lastly, it was a circumstance in St. Paul’s personal condition, supposed to be well known to those into whose hands the epistle was likely to fall; and, for that reason, introduced into a writing designed to bear his name. I have extracted the quotations at length, in order to enable the reader to judge accurately of the manner in which the mention of this particular comes in, in each ; because that judgment, I think, will acquit the author of the epistle of the charge of having studiously inserted it, either with a view of producing an apparent agreement between them, or for any other purpose whatever. The context, by which the circumstance before us is introduced, is in the two places totally different, and without any mark of imitation ; yet in both places does the circumstance rise aptly and naturally out of the context, and that context from the train of thought carried on in the epistle. The Epistle to the Galatians, from the beginning to the end, runs in a strain of angry complaint of their defection from the apostle, and from the principles which he had taught them. It was very natural to contrast with this conduct, the zeal with which they had once received him ; and it was not less so to mention, as a proof of their former disposition towards him, the indulgence which, whilst he was amongst them, they had shewn to his infirmity: “My temptation which was in the flesh ye despised not, nor rejected, but re¬ ceived me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. Where is then the blessedness you spake of” i. e. the benedictions which you bestowed upon me ? “for I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me.” In the two epistles to the Corinthians, especially in the second, we have the apostle con¬ tending with certain teachers in Corinth, who had formed a party in that church against him. To vindicate his personal authority, as well as the dignity and credit of his ministry amongst them, he takes occasion (but not without apologizing repeatedly for the folly, that is, for the indecorum of pronouncing his own panegyric *) to meet his adversaries in their boastings: “ Whereinsoever any is bold (I speak foolishly) I am bold also. Are they Hebrews ? so am I. Are they Israelites ? so am I. Are they the seed of Abraham ? so am I. Are they the ministers of Christ ? (I speak as a fool) I am more ; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft.” Being led to the subject, he goes on, as was natural, to recount his trials and dangers, his incessant cares and labours in the Christian mission. From the proofs which he had given of his zeal and activity in the service of Christ, he passes (and that with the same view of establishing his claim to be considered as “ not a whit behind the very chiefest of the apostles”) to the visions and revelations which from time to time had been vouchsafed to him. And then, by a close and easy connexion, comes in the mention of his infirmity : “ Lest I should be exalted,” says he, “ above measure, through the abundance of revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me.” Thus then, in both epistles, the notice of his infirmity is suited to the place in which it is found. In the Epistle to the Corinthians, the train of thought draws up to the circumstance by a regular approximation. In this epistle, it is suggested by the subject and occasion of the epistle itself. Which observation we offer as an argument to prove that it is not, in either epistle, a circumstance industriously brought forward for the sake of procuring credit to an imposture. A reader will be taught to perceive the force of this argument, who shall attempt to introduce a given circumstance into the body of a writing. To do this without abruptness, or without betraying marks of design in the transition, requires, he will find, more art than he expected to be necessary, certainly more than any one can believe to have been exercised in the composition of these epistles. * “ VVould to God you would bear with mo a little in my folly, and indeed bear with me !” chap, xi. 1. “ That which I speak, I speak it not after the Lord, but as it were foolishly, in this confidence of boasting,” chap. xi. 17. “ I am become a fool in glorying; je have compelled me,” xi. 11. IIOIUE PAULIN7F. 417 No. V.—Chap. iv. 29. a But as then he that was born after the'flesh persecuted him that was bom after the spirit, even so it is now.” Chap. v. 11. “ And I brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer perse¬ cution ? Then is the offence of the cross ceased.” Chap. vi. 17- “ From henceforth, let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” From these several texts, it is apparent that the persecutions which our apostle had under¬ gone, were from the hands or by the instigation of the Jews; that it was not for preaching Christianity in opposition to heathenism, but it was for preaching it as distinct from Judaism, that he had brought upon himself the sufferings which had attended his ministry. And this representation perfectly coincides with that which results from the detail of St. Paul’s history, as delivered in the Acts. At Antioch, in Pisidia, the “word of the Lord was published throughout all the region; but the Jews stirred up the devout and honourable women and the chief men of the city, and raised persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them out of their coasts.”—(Acts, chap. xiii. 50.) Not long after, at Iconium, “a great multitude of the Jews and also of the Greeks believed ; but the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles, and made their minds evil affected against the brethren.” (Chap. xvi. 1, 2.) “ At Lystrathere came certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who persuaded the people; and, having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead.” (Chap, xiv. 19.) The same enmity, and from the same quarter, our apostle experienced in Greece : “ At Thessalonica, some of them (the Jews) believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas : and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few : but the Jews which believed not , moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city in an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.” (Acts, chap. xvii. 4, 5.) Their per¬ secutors follow them to Berea: “ When the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of God was preached of Paul at Berea, they came thither also, and stirred up the people.” Chap. xvii. 13.) And lastly at Corinth, when Gallio was deputy of Acliaia, “ the Jews made insurrection with one accord against Paul, and brought him to the judgment-seat.” I think it does not appear that our apostle was ever set upon by the Gentiles, unless they were first stirred up by the Jews, except in two instances ; in both which the persons who began the assault were immediately interested in his expulsion from the place. Once this happened at Philippi, after the cure of the Pythoness : “ When the masters saw the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas, and drew them into the market-place unto the rulers.” (Chap. xvi. 19.) And a second time at Ephesus, at the instance of Demetrius, a silversmith which made silver shrines for Diana, “ who called together work¬ men of like occupation, and said, Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth ; moreover ye see and hear that not only at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded away much people, saying, that they be no gods which arc made with hands; so that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth.” No. YI.—I observe an agreement in a somewhat peculiar rule of Christian conduct, as laid down in this epistle, and as exemplified in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. It is not the repetition of the same general precept, which would have been a coincidence of little value; but it is the general precept in one place, and the application of that precept to an actual occurrence in the other. In the sixth chapter and first verse of this epistle, our apostle gives the following direction: “ Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye, which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness.” In 2 Cor. chap. ii. 13—8, he writes thus : “ Sufficient to such a man ” (the incestuous person mentioned in the First Epistle) “ is this punishment, which was inflicted of many : so that, contrariwise, ye ought rather to forgive him and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should ye swallowed up with over-much sorrow: wherefore I beseech you that ye would confirm your love towards him.” I have little doubt but that it was the same mind which dictated these two passages. No. VII.—Our epistle goes farther than any of St. Paul’s epistles; for it avows in direct E E 418 IIOIUE PAULINA. terms the supersession of the Jewish law as an instrument of salvation, even to the Jews themselves. Not only were the Gentiles exempt from its authority, but even the Jews were no longer either to place any dependency upon it, or consider themselves as subject to it on a religious account. “ Before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterward be revealed; wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith ; but, after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster? (Ch. iii. 23—25.) This was undoubtedly spoken of Jews and to Jews. In like manner, chap. iv. 1—5 ; “Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, differctli nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father: even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world; but when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law , that we might receive the adoption of sons.” These passages are nothing short of a declaration, that the obligation of the Jewish law, considered as a religious dispensation, the effects of which were to take place in another life, had ceased, with respect even to the Jews themselves. What then should be the conduct of a Jew (for such St. Paul was) who preached this doctrine ? To be consistent with himself, either he would no longer comply, in his own person, with the directions of the law; or, if he did comply, it would be for some other reason than any confidence which he placed in its efficacy, as a religious insti¬ tution. Now so it happens, that whenever St. Paul’s compliance with the Jewish law is mentioned in the history, it is mentioned in connexion with circumstances which point out the motive from which it proceeded ; and this motive appears to have been always exoteric, namely, a love of order and tranquillity, or an unwillingness to give unnecessary offence. Thus, Acts, chap. xvi. 3 : “ Him (Timothy) would Paul have to go forth with him, and took and circumcised him, because of the Jews which were in those quarters. Again, Acts, chap, xxi. 26, when Paul consented to exhibit an example of public compliance with a Jewish rite by purifying Jiimself in the temple, it is plainly intimated that he did this to satisfy “ many thousands of Jews who believed, and who were all zealous of the law.” So far the instances related in one book, correspond with the doctrine delivered in another. No. VIII.—Chap. i. 18. “ Then, after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days.” The shortness of St. Paul’s stay at Jerusalem is what I desire the reader to remark. The direct account of the same journey in the Acts, chap. ix. 28, determines nothing concerning the time of his continuance there: “ And he was with them (the apostles) coming in, and going out, at Jerusalem ; and he spake boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Grecians: but they went about to slay him ; which when the brethren knew, they brought him down to Caesarea.” Or rather this account, taken by itself, would lead a reader to suppose that Paul’s abode at Jerusalem had been longer than fifteen days. But turn to the twenty-second chapter of the Acts, and you will find a reference to this visit to Jerusalem, which plainly indicates that St. Paul’s continuance in that city had been of short duration: “ And it came to pass, that when I was come again to Jerusalem, even while I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance, and saw him saying unto me, Make haste, get thee quickly out of Jerusalem, for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me.” Here we have the general terms of one text so explained by a distant text in the same book, as to bring an indeterminate expression into a close conformity with a specification delivered in another book : a species of consistency not, I think, usually found in fabulous relations. No. IX.—Chap. vi. 11. “ Y e see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand.” N T1 lese words imply that lie did not always write with his own hand; which is consonant to what we find intimated in some other of the epistles. The Epistle to the Romans was written by Tertius : “ I, Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord.” (Chap, xvi. 22.) The First Epistle to the Corinthians, the Epistle to the Colossians, and the Second to the Thessalonians, have all, near the conclusion, this clause, “ The salutation of me, Paul, with mine own handwhich must be understood, and is universally understood to import, that the rest of the epistle was written by another hand. I do not think it improbable that IIOIUE PAULINJE 410 an impostor, who had remarked the subscription in some other epistle, should invent the same in a forgery; hut that is not done here. The author of this epistle docs not imitate the manner of giving St. Paul’s signature; ho only bids the Galatians observe how large a letter he had written to them with his own hand. lie does not say this was different from his ordinary usage; this is left to implication. Now to suppose that this was an artifice to procure credit to an imposture, is to suppose that the author of the forgery, because he knew that others of St. Paul's were not written by himself, therefore made the apostle say that this was : which seems an odd turn to give to the circumstance, and to be given for a purpose which would more naturally and more directly have been answered, by subjoining the salu¬ tation or signature in the form in which it is found in other epistles # . No. X.—An exact conformity appears in the manner in which a certain apostle or eminent Christian, whose name was James, is spoken of in the epistle and in the history. Both writings refer to a situation of his at Jerusalem, somewhat different from that of the other apostles; a kind of eminence or presidency in the church there, or at least a more fixed and stationary residence. Chap. ii. 12. “ When Peter was at Antioch, before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles." This text plainly attributes a kind of pre- eminency to James; and as we hear of him twice in the same epistle dwelling at Jerusalem, chap. i. 19, and ii. 9, we must apply it to the situation which he held in that church. In the Acts of the Apostles divers intimations occur, conveying the same idea of James’s situation. When Peter was miraculously delivered from prison, and had surprised his friends by his appearance among them, after declaring unto them how the Lord had brought him out of prison, “ Go show,” says he, “ these things unto James, and to the brethren." (Acts, chap, xii. 17 .) Here James is manifestly spoken of in terms of distinction. He appears again with like distinction in the twenty-first chapter and the seventeenth and eighteenth verses: “ And when we (Paul and his company) were come to Jerusalem, the day following, Paul went in with us unto James, and all the elders were present." In the debate which took place upon the business of the Gentile converts, in the council of Jerusalem, this same person seems to have taken the lead. It was he who closed the debate, and proposed the resolution in which the council ultimately concurred: “ Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them which from among the Gentiles are turned to God." Upon the whole, that there exists a conformity in the expressions used concerning James throughout the history, and in the epistle, is unquestionable. But admitting this conformity, and admitting also the undesignedness of it, what does it prove ? It proves that the circum¬ stance itself is founded in truth ; that is, that James was a real person, who held a situation of eminence in a real society of Christians at Jerusalem. It confirms also those parts of the narrative which are connected with this circumstance. Suppose, for instance, the truth of the account of Peter’s escape from prison was to be tried upon the testimony of a witness who, among other things, made Peter, after his deliverance, say, “ Go show these things to James and to his brethrenwould it not be material, in such a trial, to make out by other independent proofs, or by a comparison of proofs, drawn from independent sources, that there was actually at that time, living at Jerusalem, such a person as James: that this person held such a situation in the society amongst whom these things were transacted, as to render the words which Peter is said to have used concerning him, proper and natural for him to have used ? If this would be pertinent in the discussion of oral testimony, it is still more so in appreciating the credit of remote history. It must not be dissembled that the comparison of our epistle with the history presents some difficulties, or, to say the least, some questions of considerable magnitude. It may be doubted, in the first place, to what journey the words which open the second chapter of the epistle, u then, fourteen years afterward, I went unto Jerusalem,” relate. That which best corresponds with the date, and that to which most interpreters apply the passage, is the * The words -rn^Uoig may probably be meant Galatians the great concern which he felt for them, the to describe the character in which he wrote, and not the words, whatever they signify, belong to the whole of the length of the letter. But this will not alter the truth of epistle ; and not, as Grotius, after St. Jerome, interprets our observation. I think, however, that, as St. Paul by it, to the few verses which follow, the mention of his own hand designed to express to the 420 IIORiE PAULINAS. journey of Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem, when they went thither from Antioch, upon the business of the Gentile converts; and which journey produced the famous council and decree recorded in the fifteenth chapter of Acts. To me this opinion appears to be encum¬ bered with strong objections. In the epistle Paul tells us that “lie went up by revelation.” (Chap. ii. 2.)—In the Acts, we read that he was sent by the church of Antioch : “ After no small dissension and disputation, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to the apostles and elders about this question.” (Acts, chap, xv. 2.) This is not very reconcilable. In the epistle St. Paul writes that, when he came to Jerusalem, “ he communicated that gospel which he preached among the Gentiles, but privately to them which were of reputation.” (Chap. ii. 2.) If by “that gospel” he meant the immunity of the Gentile Christians from the Jewish law (and I know not what else it can mean), it is not easy to conceive how he should communicate that privately, which was the object of his public message. But a greater difficulty remains, viz. that in the account which the epistle gives of what passed upon this visit at Jerusalem, no notice is taken of the deliberation and decree which are recorded in the Acts, and which, according to that history, formed the business for the sake of which the journey was undertaken. The mention of the council and of its determination, whilst the apostle was relating his proceed¬ ings at Jerusalem, could hardly have been avoided, if in truth the narrative belong to the same journey. To me it appears more probable that Paul and Barnabas had taken some journey to Jerusalem, the mention of which is omitted in the Acts. Prior to the apostolic decree we read that “ Paul and Barnabas abode at Antioch a long time with the disciples.” (Acts, chap. xiv. 28.) Is it unlikely that, during this long abode, they might go up to Jerusalem and return to Antioch? Or would the omission of such a journey be unsuitable to the general brevity with which these memoirs are written, especially of those parts of St. Paul’s history which took place before the historian joined his society ? But, again, the first account wo find in the Acts of the Apostles of St. Paul’s visiting Galatia, is in the sixteenth chapter and the sixth verse : “ Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they assayed to go into Bithynia.” The progress here recorded was subsequent to the apostolic decree; therefore that decree must have been extant when our epistle was written. Now, as the professed design of the epistle was to establish the exemption of the Gentile converts from the law of Moses, and as the decree pronounced and confirmed that exemption, it may seem extraordinary that no notice whatever is taken of that determination, nor any appeal made to its authority. Much however of the weight of this objection, which applies also to some other of St. Paul’s epistles, is removed by the following reflections. 1. It was not St. Paul’s manner, nor agreeable to it, to resort or defer much to the authority of the other apostles, especially whilst he was insisting, as he does strenuously throughout this epistle insist, upon his own original inspiration. He who could speak of the very chiefest of the apostles in such terms as the following—“ of those who seemed to be somewhat (whatsoever they were it maketh no matter to me, God accepteth no man’s person), for they who seemed to be somewhat in conference added nothing to me ”—he, I say, was not likely to support himself by their decision. 2. The epistle argues the point upon principle : and it is not perhaps more to be wondered at, that in such an argument St. Paul should not cite the apostolic decree, than it would be that, in a discourse designed to prove the moral and religious duty of observing the sabbath, the writer should not quote the thirteenth canon. 3. The decree did not go the length of the position maintained in the epistle; the decree only declares that the apostles and elders at Jerusalem did not impose the observance of the Mosaic law upon the Gentile converts, as a condition of their being admitted into the Christian church. Our epistle argues that the Mosaic institution itself was at an end, as to all effects upon a future state, even with respect to the Jews themselves. 4. They whose error St. Paul combated, were not persons who submitted to the Jewish law, because it was imposed by the authority, or because it was made part of the law of the Christian church ; but they were persons who, having already become Christians, after¬ ward voluntarily took upon themselves the observance of the Mosaic code, under a notion HORiE PAULINiE 421 of attaining thereby to a greater perfection. This, I think, is precisely the opinion which St. Paul opposes in this epistle. Many of his expressions apply exactly to it : 44 Are ye so foolish ? having begun in the spirit, are ye now made perfect in the flesh ?” (Chap. iii. 3.) 44 Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law ?” (Chap. iv. 21.) a How turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage V (Chap. iv. 9.) It cannot be thought extraordinary that St. Paul should resist this opinion with earnestness; for it both changed the character of the Christian dispensation, and derogated expressly from the completeness of that redemption which Jesus Christ had wrought for them that believed in him. But it was to no purpose to allege to such persons the decision at Jerusalem ; for that only showed that they were not bound to these observances by any law of the Christian church : they did not pretend to be so bound ; nevertheless they imagined that there was an efficacy in these observances, a merit, a recom¬ mendation to favour, and a ground of acceptance with God for those who complied with them. This was a situation of thought to which the tenor of the decree did not apply. Accordingly, St. Paul’s address to the Galatians, which is throughout adapted to this situation, runs in a strain widely different from the language of the decree ; 44 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law(chap. v. 4.) i. e. whosoever places his dependance upon any merit he may apprehend there to be in legal observances. The decree had said nothing like this; therefore it would have been useless to have produced the decree in an argument of which this was the burden. In like manner as in contending with an anchorite, who should insist upon the superior holiness of a recluse, ascetic life, and the value of such mortifications in the sight of God, it would be to no purpose to prove that the laws of the church did not require these vows, or even to prove that the laws of the church expressly left every Christian to his liberty. This would avail little towards abating his estimation of their merit, or towards settling the point in controversy Another difficulty arises from the account of Peters conduct towards the Gentile converts at Antioch, as given in the epistle in the latter part of the second chapter ; which conduct, it is said, is consistent neither with the revelation communicated to him, upon the conversion of Cornelius, nor with the part he took in the debate at Jerusalem. But, in order to under¬ stand either the difficulty or the solution, it will be necessary to state and explain the passage itself. 44 When Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to * Mr. Locke’s solution of this difficulty is by no means satisfactory. “ St. Paul,” he says, “ did not remind the Galatians of the apostolic decree, because they already had it.” In the first place, it does not appear with cer¬ tainty that they had it; in the second place, if they had it, this was rather a reason, than otherwise, for referring them to it. The passage in the Acts, from which Mr. Locke concludes that the Galatic churches were in pos¬ session of the decree, is the fourth verse in the sixteenth chapter; “And as they” (Paul and Timothy) “went through the cities, they delivered them the decrees for to keep, that were ordained of the apostles and elders which were at Jerusalem.” In my opinion, this delivery of the decree was confined to the churches to which St. Paul came, in pursuance of the plan upon which he set out, “of visiting the brethren in every city where he had preached the word of the Lordthe history of which progress, and of all that pertained to it, is closed in the fifth verse, when the history informs that, “ so were the churches established in the faith, and increased in number daily.” Then the history proceeds upon a new section of the narrative, by telling us, that “when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they as¬ sayed to go into Bithynia.” The decree itself is directed to “ the brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia ; that is, to churches already founded, and in which this question had been stirred. And I think the observation of the noble author of the Miscellanea Sacra, is not only ingenious but highly probable, viz. that there is, in this place, a dislocation of the text, and that the fourth and fifth verses of the sixteenth chapter ought to follow the last verse of the fifteenth, so as to make the entire passage run thus : “ And they went through Syria and Cilicia” (to the Christians of which country the de¬ cree was addressed) “ confirming the churches ; and as they went through the cities, they delivered them the decrees for to keep, that were ordained of the apostles and elders which w T ereat Jerusalem ; and so were the churches established in the faith, and increased in number daily.” And then the sixteenth chapter takes up a new and un¬ broken paragraph : “ Then came he to Derbe and Lystra, &c.” When St. Paul came, as he did into Galatia, to preach the gospel, for the first time, in a new place, it is not probable that he would make mention of the decree, or rather letter, of the church of Jerusalem, which pre¬ supposed Christianity to be known, and which related to certain doubts that had arisen in some established Christian communities. The second reason which Mr. Locke assigns for the omission of the decree, viz. “ that St. Paul’s sole object in the epistle was to acquit himself of the imputation that had been charged upon him of actually preaching circum¬ cision,” does not appear to me to be strictly true. It was not the sole object. The epistle is written in general oppo¬ sition to the Judaizing inclinations which he found to pre¬ vail among his converts. The avowal of his own doctrine, and of his steadfast adherence to that doctrine, formed a necessary part of the design of his letter, but was not the whole of it. 422 IIORiE PAULIN2E. bo blamed; for, before that certain came from James, be did eat with the Gentiles; but when they were come he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision; and the other Jews dissembled likewise with him, insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation; but when I saw they walked not uprightly, according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter, before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews ?” Now the question that produced the dispute to which these words relate, was not whether the Gentiles were capable of being admitted into the Christian covenant; that had been fully settled : nor was it whether it should be accounted essential to the profession of Christianity that they should conform themselves to the law of Moses; that was the question at Jerusalem : but it was, whether, upon the Gentiles becoming Christians, the Jews might henceforth eat and drink with them, as with their own brethren. Upon this point St. Peter betrayed some inconsistency; and so he might, agreeably enough to his history. He might consider the vision at Joppa as a direction for the occasion, rather than as universally abolishing the distinction between Jew and Gentile; I do not mean with respect to final acceptance with God, but as to the manner of their living together in society: at least he might not have comprehended this point with such clearness and certainty, as to stand out upon it against the fear of bringing upon himself the censure and complaint of his brethren in the church of Jerusalem, who still adhered to their ancient prejudices. But Peter, it is said, compelled the Gentiles ’lovdat&iv — “ Why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews V IIow did he do that ? The only way in which Peter appears to have compelled the Gentiles to comply with the Jewish institution, was by withdrawing himself from their society. By which he may be understood to have made this declaration: “ We do not deny your right to be considered as Christians; we do not deny your title in the promises of the gospel, even without compliance with our law : but if you would have U3 Jews live with you as we do with one another, that is, if you would in all respects be treated by us as Jews, you must live as such yourselves.” This, I think, was the com¬ pulsion which St. Peters conduct imposed upon the Gentiles, and for which St. Paul reproved him. As to the part which the historian ascribes to St. Peter in the debate at Jerusalem, be fide that it was a different question which was there agitated from that which produced the dispute at Antioch, there is nothing to hinder us from supposing that the dispute at Antioch was prior to the consultation at Jerusalem ; or that Peter, in consequence of this rebuke, might have afterward maintained firmer sentiments. O CHAPTER VI. THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHE3IANS. No. I.—1ms epistle, and the Epistle to the Colossians, appear to have been transmitted to their respective churches by the same messenger: “ But that ye also may know my affairs, and ho.w I do, Tycliicus, a beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, shall make known to you all things; whom I have sent unto you for the same purpose, that ye might know our affairs, and that he might comfort your hearts.” Ephes. chap. vi. 21, 22. This text, if it do not expressly declare, clearly I think intimates, that the letter was sent by Tycliicus. The words made use of him in the Epistle to the Colossians are very similar to these, and afford the same implication that Tycliicus, in conjunction with Onesimus, was the bearer of the letter to that church; “ All my state shall Tycliicus declare unto you, who is a beloved brother, and a faithful minister, and fellow-servant in the Lord ; whom I have sent unto you for the same purpose, that he might know your estate, and comfort HORJE PAULIN7E. 423 your hearts; with Onesimus, a faithful aud beloved brother, who is one of you. They shall make known unto you all things which are done here.” Colos. chap. iv. 7—9. Both epistles represent the writer as under imprisonment for the gospel; and both treat of the same general subject. The Epistle therefore to the Ephesians, and the Epistle to the Colos- sians, import to be two letters written by the same person, at, or nearly at, the same time, and upon the same subject, and to have been sent by the same messenger. Now, every thing in the sentiments, order, and diction, of the two writings, corresponds with what might be expected from this circumstance of identity or cognation in their original. The leading doctrine of both epistles is the union of Jews and Gentiles under the Christian dispensation; nnd that doctrine in both is established by the same arguments, or, more properly speaking, illustrated by the same similitudes*: “one head,” “one body,” “one new man,” “one temple,” arc in both epistles the figures under which the society of believers in Christ, and their com¬ mon relation to him as such, is represented f. The ancient, and, as had been thought, the indelible distinction between Jew and Gentile, in both epistles, is declared to be “now abolished by his cross.” Beside this consent in the general tenor of the two epistles, and in the run also and warmth of thought with which they are composed, we may naturally expect, in letters produced under the circumstances in which these appear to have been written, a closer resemblance of style and diction than between other letters of the same person, but of distant dates, or between letters adapted to different occasions. In particular we may look for many of the same expressions, and sometimes for wdiole sentences being alike; since such expressions and sentences would be repeated in the second letter (whichever that was) as yet fresh in the authors mind from the writing of the first. This repetition occurs in the <( a following examples \: Ephes. ch. i. 7* “ In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins §.” Colos. ch. i. 14. “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins ||.” Besides the sameness of the words, it is farther remarkable that the sentence is, in both places, preceded by the same introductory idea. In the Epistle to the Ephesians it is the beloved ” {j]yaTrr]^v(o); in that to the Colossians it is “ his dear Son ” ( vlov rrjs ayanrjs avroi i), in whom we have redemption.” The sentence appears to have been suggested to the mind of the w r riter by the idea which had accompanied it before. Ephes. ch. i. 10. “All things both which are in heaven and which are in earth, even in him^ff.” Colos. ch. i. 20. “ All things by him, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven This quotation is the more observable, because the connecting of things in earth with things in heaven is a very singular sentiment, and found no where else but in these two epistles. The words also are introduced and followed by a train of thought nearly alike. They are introduced by describing the union which Christ had effected, and they are followed by telling the Gentile churches that they were incorporated into it. * St. Paul, I am apt to believe, has been sometimes accused of inconclusive reasoning, by our mistaking that for reasoning which was only intended for illustration. He is not to be read as a man, whose own persuasion of the truth of what he taught always or solely depended upon the views under which he represents it in his writings. Taking for granted the certainty of his doctrine, as resting upon the revelation that had been imparted to him, he exhibits it frequently to the conception of his readers under images and allegories, in which if an analogy may be perceived, or even sometimes a poetic resemblance be found, it is all perhaps that is required. % When verbal comparisons are relied upon, it becomes necessary to state the original; but that the English reader may be interrupted as little as may be, I shall in general do this in the notes. § Ephes. ch. i. 7. ’Ev to B^OfjOZV 7VV tZ'ToA.V7pMO'/V SlX 70V xlf/.X70S U.V70V , 77]V (ityifflV 7toV < XX^X < 77tof/.X7UV. || Colos. ch. i. 14. ’Ev <2 ‘ip^o/z.zv rbv a.^oXvr^wtriv 70V x'lfAXTOS CIV70V, 7WV d(pi(nv 7toV X[XX()7LMV . —However, it must be observed, that in this latter tekt many copies have not 'S/x 70 Z x'lf*x7og xv7ov. 5[ Ephes. cn. i. 10. T x 7Z tv ro7g ov%xvo7s xx) 7x rijf ywg, tv xv7(p. ** Colos. ch. i. 20. A/’ av7ov, U7t 7x rrn y/jg, U7& 7x tv 7o7g ovgxvo7g . ( Ephes. i. 22A t Compared iv. 15, } V ii. 15J CColos. i. 18. with< ii. 19. b hi. 10, 11. Also C Ephes. I ii. 14, 15, ii. 16, ii. 20, Colos. ii. 14. i. 18—21. ii. 7. 424 HORJE PAULINiE. Eplics. ch. iii. 2. 44 Tlic dispensation of the grace of God, which is given me to you ward*/’ Colos. ch. i. 25. 44 The dispensation of God, which is given to me for you t/’ Of these sentences it may likewise he observed that the accompanying ideas are similar. In both places they arc immediately preceded by the mention of his present sufferings; in both places they are ‘immediately followed by the mention of the mystery which was the great subject of his preaching. Eplies. ch. v. 19. 44 In psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord* * * § .” Colos. ch. iii. 1(3. 44 In psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord §/’ Ephes. cli. vi. 22. 44 Whom I have sent unto you for the same purpose, that he might know our affairs, and that he might comfort your hearts ||.” Colos. ch. iv. 8. 44 Whom I have sent unto you for the same purpose, that he might know your estate, and comfort your hearts If.” In these examples, we do not perceive a cento of phrases gathered from one composition, and strung together in the other, but the occasional occurrence of the same expression to a mind a second time revolving the same ideas. 2. Whoever writes two letters, or two discourses, nearly upon the same subject, and at no great distance of time, but without any express recollection of what he had written before, will find himself repeating some sentences, in the very order of the words in which he had already used them ; but he will more frequently find himself employing some principal terms, with the order inadvertently changed, or with the order disturbed by the intermixture of other words and phrases expressive of ideas rising up at the time; or in many instances re¬ peating not single words, nor yet whole sentences, but parts and fragments of sentences. Of all these varieties the examination of our two epistles will furnish plain examples : and I should rely upon this class of instances more than upon the last; because, although an impostor might transcribe into a forgery entire sentences and phrases, yet the dislocation of words, the partial recollection of phrases and sentences, the intermixture of new terms and new ideas with terms and ideas before used, which will appear in the examples that follow, and which are the natural properties of writings produced under the circumstances in which these epistles are represented to have been composed—would not, I think, have occurred to the invention of a forger; nor, if they had occurred, would they have been so easily executed. This studied variation was a refinement in forgery which I believe did not exist; or, if we can suppose it to have been practised in the instances adduced below, why, it may be asked, was not the same art exercised upon those which we have collected in the preceding class ? Ephes. ch. i. 19. chap. ii. 5. 44 Towards us who believe according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead (and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, a^d dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but in that which is to come. And hath put all things under his feet: and gave him to be the head over all things, to the church, which is his body, the fulness of all things, that filleth all in all) ; and you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins (wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of .the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience ; among whom also we had all our conversation, in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fufilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewithal he loved us), even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ **.” * Ephes. ch. iii. 2. T bv oixovo/xixv tUs ro ^ 0£oD, t?i; 'bo6i'iv. ** Ephes. ch. i. 19, 20; ii. 1. 5. T ovg Trurrsuovrxs xxrx ryjv lvsgysixv rov x^xrovg v to did ndaijs d(fir)s : av£ei ttjv av^rjaiv to noieiTcii ttjv av^rjcnv : and yet the sentences are considerably diversified in other parts. Ephes. ch. iv. 32. “ And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake, hath forgiven you **.” Colos. ch. iii. 13. “ Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any; even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye .” ivcb^y'/jxtv iv rx> X.oio'rTj, tyti^xg xvrov ix rcuv vzxquiv’ xx) \xx6nrtv Iv 'bt\ix xvrov Iv ro7g iorovgxvloi; — xx) vpxg, ovrxg vtx^ovg ro7g ’Xxoaorrupan xa) rx7g xpx^rtxig — xx) ovrxg ripxg vtx^ovg ro7g 7exoa.‘7rrupxog xx) o X^urrog i^x^lcrxro vp7v., ovroo xx) Ipug’ ior) orxt ti rovroig rtjv xyxer'/jv, r.ng itrr) crvv'bicriiog rvg rtXubrrirog' xx) h ti/vwvvi rov &tov [7>(>x(otvirw tv rxig xotpdixig vpuv, tig v{v xx) ixXr^nn iv tv) ffbbpxn. || Ephes. ch. iv. 16. ’E| ov txv ro rZpx crvvx^poXo- yovptvov xx) trvpfiifix^bpsvov "Six orxirng x$ng rng tTiyjogwy'ixg xxr tvtgysixv iv ptr^oo ivos txxrTov ptgovg mv xv't^crtv rov crupxrog rotttrxi. f Colos. ch. ii. 19. ’E£ ov px , hx rwv xtpbov xx) (Tvvhtcrpoov imy^o^nvbvptvov xx) ervpfiifbx^optvov, xv^u t > j v xv^ffiv rov Qtov. ** Eph. ch. iv. 32. T'ivttrdt ht tig xXXviXovg x^nxro), tvxorXxy^voi g^x^bptvoi iavro7g, xxQwg xx) o ®tog iv Xgiara! i^x^ttrxro Iptv. ft- Colos. ch. iii. 13. 'Avt%bptvei xXXriXuv, xx) %xgi- Zybptvoi \xvro7g , ixv ng orgbg nvx %%’/! p,op(prir nx6ug xx) b Xoicrrog ty^x^'nTxro vp7v , ovrev xx) vpng. 42G HORiE PAULIN7E. Here wo have 44 forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake (Jv Xpiarco)^ hath forgiven yon,” in the first quotation, substantially repeated in the second. But in the second the sentence is broken by the interposition of a new clause, 44 if any man have a quarrel against any ;” and the latter part is a little varied ; instead of 44 God in Christ,” it is 44 Christ hath forgiven you.” Eplies. eh. iv. 22—24. 44 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind ; and that ye put on the new man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness Colos. cli. iii. 9, 10. 44 Seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge, after the image of him that created him f.” In these quotations, 44 putting off the old man and putting on the new,” appears in both. The idea is farther explained by calling it a renewal; in the one, 44 renewed in the spirit of your mind in the other, 44 renewed in knowledge.” In both, the new man is said to be formed according to the same model; in the one, lie is, 44 after God created in righteousness and true holiness in the other, 44 he is renewed after the image of him that created him.” In a word, it is the same person writing upon a kindred subject, with the terms and ideas which he had before employed still floating in his memory Eplies. chap. v. 6—8. 44 Because of these things cometh the icrath of God upon tlie children of disobedience : be not ye therefore partakers with them ; for ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord; walk as children of light §.” Colos. cli. iii. 6—8. 44 For which thing's sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: in the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them. But now ye also put off all these ||.” These verses afford a specimen of that partial resemblance which is only to be met with when no imitation is designed, when no studied recollection is employed, but when the mind, exercised upon the same subject, is left to the spontaneous return of such terms and phrases, as, having been used before, may happen to present themselves again. The sentiment of both passages is throughout alike : half of that sentiment, the denunciation of God’s wrath, is expressed in identical words ; the other half, viz. the admonition to quit their former con¬ versation, in words entirely different. Eplies. cli. v. 15, 16. 44 See then that ye walk circumspectly; not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time Colos. ch. iv. 5. 44 Walk in wisdom towards them that are without, redeeming the time ## .” . There is another example of that mixture which we remarked of sameness and variety in the language of one writer. 44 Redeeming the time” (e^ayopa(6pevot t'ov Kmpbv ), is a literal re¬ petition. 44 Walk not as fools, but as wise” (nepuraTe'iTe prj bos aacxficu, aXX’ wy ao(po t), answers exactly in sense, and nearly in terms, to 44 walk in wisdom” (ev o-ocjola TrepinarelTe). nqit7rarare aKptfiu)s is a very different phrase, but is intended to convey precisely the same idea as ncpinaTeire npos rovs e£co. ’A/cgi/Scos is not well rendered 44 circumspectly.” It means what in modern speech we should call 44 correctlyand when we advise a person to behave 44 cor¬ rectly,” our advice is always given with reference 44 to the opinion of others,” npog tous e£oo. * Eplies. ch. iv. 22—24. ’A TodtcrSai vyag Kara ryv T^on^av avaar^oCphv, rov TaMubv av6^uTov rov Tort ffKorog , vvv lit (pug Iv Kvfico’ ug rtKva (flurog Tt^iTarurt. || Colos. ch. iii. 6—8. Ad oi t^irai h o^yri rov Gtov tor) rovg viovg ribs aTtiCtiag' tv oig Ka) vyzig TtpitTarruran Ton , on YC^rt iv avrolg. Ni/vl aToStait Ka) vyug ra Tavra. Eplies. ch. v. 15, 16. B ktTtrt ovv Tug azoipus Tt^iTarurt' yrt ug airoipoi , akk' ug o'otyo), 't^ayo/Ja^oytvoi rov Kaigbv. ** Colos. cli. iv. 5. ’Ey ffo ro7s idiots oovb^oocriv v'7CotoozdlZ l ZT& || TOO TZXVOO VpuV. Ephes. O i bovXoi, uoruxouzrz TOig xv(Aoig xootoo tranxoo pZTOo (pofiou xooi T^opov, iv aorXoTviTi Trig xocgoioog vpuv, ug tm X^itTTu' pcr\ koot' otySocXpoobouXiloov, ug oov^MTroo^ztrxoi, uXX' US 'bouXot TOU X^ltTTOV, TOIOVVTZS TO 0lXnp.CC. TOV ©SOU iX, •v^v^ng' pZT iuvoiocs 'bouXzuovTtg ug tu Kugiu, xcoi ovx, ccv6(fiTotg' itbbrzg oti o ioov ti ixoccrrog croincrn ocyocdov, tovto XO[/.h7tOU Ttoo^bo tov K vpov, z!tz SouXos, itrz iXzutfzgog. Colos. Oi 'bovXoi, VTOOXOViTt XOOTOO XOOVTOC To 7 s xcotco < 700 ^x 00 xvfoig, pn iv o(pQu,Xpo 7 >ovXua.ig , us a.vff^uorcc.^io'xoi, aXX' iv ocxXoTriTi xocfi'iag, Qofioupivoi tov ©ioV xott oroov b, ti ibov ToinTZ, ix "t'vg^ng z^yu^zo’ 0 z, ug tu K ugiu, xcti ovx ocv 0 (>utToig' zi^oTeg oti oooi'd K volou ocvroXn'^'ttTQi tyiv ccvToo-TobotU'i Trig xXn^ovopioos' tu yocg K v^iu X^ittu £ ovXzvzts . sraoo^yi^zTZ lectio non spernenda ; Giuesbach. 428 HORiE PAULINJE. cording to the flesh: not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God; and whatever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not unto men, knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance : for ye serve the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong shall recei ve for the wrong which he hath done; and there is no respect of persons. Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal, knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven.” The passages marked by Italics in the quotations from the Ephesians, bear a strict resem¬ blance, not only in signification but in terms, to the quotation from the Colossians. Both the words and the order of the words are in many clauses a duplicate of one another. In the Epistle to the Colossians, these passages are laid together; in that to the Ephesians, they are divided by intermediate matter, especially by a long digressive allusion to the mysterious union between Christ and his church; which possessing, as Mr. Locke hath well observed, the mind of the apostle, from being an incidental thought, grows up into the principal sub¬ ject. The affinity between these two passages in signification, in terms, and in the order of the words, is closer than can be pointed out between any parts of any two epistles in the volume. If the reader would see how the same subject is treated by a different hand, and how dis¬ tinguishable it is from the production of the same pen, let him turn to the second and third chapters of the First Epistle of St. Peter. The duties of servants, of wives, and of husbands, are enlarged upon in that epistle, as they are in the Epistle to the Ephesians; but the sub¬ jects both occur in a different order, and the train of sentiment subjoined to each is totally unlike. 3. In two letters issuing from the same person, nearly at the same time, and upon the same general occasion, we may expect to trace the influence of association in the order in which the topics follow one another. Certain ideas universally or usually suggest others. Here the order is what we call natural, and from such an order nothing can be concluded. But when the order is arbitrary, yet alike, the concurrence indicates the effect of that princi¬ ple, by which ideas, which have been once joined, commonly revisit the thoughts together. The epistles under consideration furnish the two following remarkable instances of this species of agreement. © Ephes. ch. iv. 24. c< And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness; wherefore putting away lying, speak e very man truth with his neighbour, for we are members one of another Colos. ch. iii. 9. 44 Lie not to one another; seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge-f.” The vice of 44 lying, 1 '* or a correction of that vice, does not seem to bear any nearer relation to the 44 putting on the new man,” than a reformation in any other article of morals. Yet these two ideas, we see, stand in both epistles in immediate connexion. Ephes. ch. v. 20—22. 44 Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; submitting yourselves one to another, in the fear of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord J." Colos. ch. iii. 17- 44 Whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord §.” In both these passages, submission follows giving of thanks, without any similitude in the ideas which should account for the transition. It is not necessary to pursue the comparison between the two epistles farther. The argu¬ ment which results from it stands thus : No two other epistles contain a circumstance which * Ephes. ch. iv. 24, 25. Ka) si ibvxxtT^x/ tov xx/vbv xvfywrov, tov xoltx ©so v xT/i0V) rov ocvaxccivouftivov ug itfiyvootri)/. X Ephes. ch. v. 20—22. Ev%x(>/trrovvTig itxvtot s U9r\g txvtuv, ev ovbyxT/ rou Kt ig/eu ri/xuv 'irproZ X^/ttoZ, tu ©eZ xou txt^), U7rorcuro‘by,ivoi xXXriXo/g iv rives, orvo-Turuddv enicrroXuv npos Vfias, r] e£ vpcbv avo'TariKMV ; 17 eTncrroXr] rjpcov vpeis eerre, iyyeypcippevrj iv rats KapSlais r/pedv, yiveoerKopevt] kcli dvayiveoerKopevq vno ndvrouv uvOpconoov' (ficivepcwpevoi on eerre emcrroXfi Xpurrov buiKovrjOelira v(f) rjpcov, iyyeypappivrj oi 1 peXavi, dXXci nvcvpan Qeou £covros ’ ovk iv nXa^i XiOivais, uXX’ iv ttXu^I Kapdlas crapKivais. Again, 2 Cor. ch. iii. 12, &c. at the word vail: “ Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech : and not as Moses, which put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished. But their minds were blinded ; for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken aw~ay in the reading of the Old Testament, which vail is done away in Christ; but even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart: nevertheless, when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away (now the Lord is that Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty). But we all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not.” Who sees not that this whole allegory of the vail arises entirely out of the occurrence of the word, in telling us that “ Moses put a vail over his face,” and that it drew the apostle away from the proper subject of his discourse, the dignity of the office in which he was engaged ? which subject he fetches up again almost in the words with which he had left it: “ there¬ fore, seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not.” The sentence which he had before been going on with, and in which he had been interrupted by the vail, was, “ Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech.” In the Epistle to the Ephesians, the reader will remark two instances in which the same habit of composition obtains; he will recognise the same pen. One he will find, chap. iv. 8—11, at the word ascended: u Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that he ascended , what is it but that he also de¬ scended first unto the lower parts of the earth ? He that descended is the same also that as¬ cended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.) And lie gave some apostles,” &c. The other appears, chap. v. 12—15, at the word light: “ For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret: but all things that are reproved, are made manifest by the light; (for whatsoever doth make manifest, is light; wherefore he saith, Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light .-) see then that ye walk circumspectly.” No. IV.—Although it does not appear to have ever been disputed that the epistle before us was written by St. Paul, yet it is well known that a doubt has long been entertained concern¬ ing the persons to whom it was addressed. The question is founded partly in some ambiguity in the external evidence. Marcion, a heretic of the second century, as quoted by Tertullian, a father in the beginning of the third, calls it the Epistle to the Laodiceans. From what we know of Marcion, his judgment is little to be relied upon; nor is it perfectly clear that Marcion was rightly understood by Tertullian. If, however, Marcion be brought to prove that some copies in his time gave iv Aaohueiia in the superscription, his testimony, if it be truly interpreted, is not diminished by his heresy; for, as Grotius observes, “ cur med re mentiretur nihil erat causae." The name iv ’Ecfieercp in the first verse, upon which word singly depends the proof that the epistle was written to the Ephesians, is not read in all the manuscripts now extant. I admit, however, that the external evidence preponderates with a manifest excess on the side of the received reading. The objection therefore principally arises from the contents of the epistle itself, which, in many respects, militate with the sup¬ position that it was written to the church at Ephesus. According to the history, St. Paul bad passed two whole years at Ephesus, Acts, chap. xix. 10. And in this point, viz. of St. Paul having preached for a-considerable length of time at Ephesus, the history is confirmed by the two Epistles to the Corinthians, and by the two Epistles to Timothy. “ I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost,” 1 Cor. ch. xvi. ver. 8. “ We would not have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia ” 2 Cor. ch. i. 8. “ As I besought thee to abide still HORjE PAULINiE. 431 at Ephesus , when I went into Macedonia,” 1 Tim. eh. i. 3. “ And in how many things he ministered to me at Ephesus thou knowest well, 11 2 Tim. eh. i. 18. I adduce these testimonies, because, had it been a competition of credit between the history and the epistle, I should have thought myself bound to have preferred the epistle. Now, every epistle which St. Paul wrote to churches which he himself had founded, or which he had visited, abounds with references, and appeals to what had passed during the time that he was present amongst them ; whereas there is not a text in the Epistle to the Ephesians, from which we can collect that he had ever been at Ephesus at all. The two Epistles to the Corinthians, the Epistle to the Galatians, the Epistle to the Pliilippians, and the two Epistles to the Thcssalonians, are of this class; and they are full of allusions to the apostle’s history, his reception, and his conduct whilst amongst them : the total want of which, in the epistle before us, is very difficult to account for, if it was in truth written to the church of Ephesus, in which city he had resided for so long a time. This is the first and strongest objection. But farther, the Epistle to the Colossians was addressed to a church in which St. Paul had never been. This we infer from the first verse of the second chapter : “For I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.” There could be no propriety in thus joining the Colossians and Laodiceans with those “who had not seen his face in the flesh,” if they did not also belong to the same description *. Now, his address to the Colossians, whom he had not visited, is precisely the same as his address to the Christians, to whom he wrote in the epistle which we are now considering : “We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have to all the saints,” Col. ch. i. 3. Thus, he speaks to the Colossians, in the epistle before us, as follows : “ Wherefore, I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you in my prayers,” chap. i. 15. The terms of this address are observable. The words “ having heard of your faith and love,” are the very words, we see, which he uses towards strangers ; and it is not probable that he should employ the same in accosting a church in which he had long exercised his ministry, and whose “ faith and love” he must have personally known T- The Epistle to the Romans was written before St. Paul had been at Rome; and his address to them runs in the same strain with that just now quoted: “ I thank my God, through Jesus Christ, for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world:” Rom. ch. i. 8. Let us now see wffiat was the form in which our apostle was accustomed to introduce his epistles, when he wrote to those with whom he was already acquainted. To the Corinthians it was this : “ I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Christ Jesus,” 1 Cor. ch. i. 4. To the Pliilippians : “ I thank my God upon every remem¬ brance of you, 11 Phil. ch. i. 3. To the Thessalonians : “We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labour of love,” 1 Tlicss. ch. i. 3. To Timothy: “ I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day,” 2 Tim. ch. i. 3. In these quotations, it is usually his remem¬ brance , and never his hearing of them, which he makes the subject of his thankfulness to God. As great difficulties stand in the way supposing the epistle before us to have been written to the church of Ephesus, so I think it probable that it is actually the Epistle to the Laodi¬ ceans referred to in the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians. The text which contains that reference is this: “ When this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans, and that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea,’ ch. iv. 16. The “epistle from Laodicea” was an epistle sent by St. Paul to that church, * Dr. Lardner contends against the validity of this the Mosaic institution. But this irterpretation seems to me conclusion ; but, I think, without success. Lardnek, extremely hard ; for, in the manner in which faith is here vol. xiv. p. 473, edit. 1757. joined with love, in the expression, “ your faith and love,’ - 4 Mr. Locke endeavours to avoid this difficulty, by it could not he meant to denote any particular tenet which explaining “ their faith, of which St. Paul had heard,” distinguished one set of Christians from others; forasmucl to mean the steadfastness of their persuasion that they as the expression describes the general virtues of the were called into the kingdom ofGcd, without subjection to Christian profession. Vide Locke in loc. HORAE PAULINA. and by them transmitted to Colosse. The two churches were mutually to communicate the epistles they had received. This is the way in which the direction is explained by the greater part of commentators, and is the most probable sense that can be given to it. It is also probable that the epistle alluded to was an epistle which had been received by the church of Laodicea lately . It appears then, with a considerable degree of evidence, that there existed an epistle of St. Paul’s nearly of the same date with the Epistle to the Colossians, and an epistle directed to a church (for such the church of Laodicea was) in which St. Paul had never been. What has been observed concerning the epistle before us shews that it answers perfectly to that character. Nor does the mistake seem very difficult to account for. Whoever inspects the map of Asia Minor will see, that a person proceeding from Rome to Laodicea would probably land at Ephesus, as the nearest frequented sea-port in that direction. Might not Tychicus then, in passing through Ephesus, communicate to the Christians of that place the letter with which he was charged ? And might not copies of that letter be multiplied and pre¬ served at Ephesus ? Might not some of the copies drop the words of designation ev rrj Aa.odiK.etq which it was of no consequence to an Ephesian to retain ? Might not copies of the letter come out into the Christian church at large from Ephesus ; and might not this give occasion to a belief that the letter was written to that church ? And lastly, might not this belief produce the error which we suppose to have crept into the inscription ? No. Y.—As our epistle purports to have been written during St. Paul’s imprisonment at Rome, which lies beyond the period to which the Acts of the Apostles brings up his his¬ tory ; and as we have seen and acknowledged that the epistle contains no reference to any transaction at Ephesus during the apostle’s residence in that city, we cannot expect that it should supply many marks of agreement with the narrative. One coincidence however occurs, and a coincidence of minute and less obvious kind, which, as hath been repeatedly observed, is of all others the most to be relied upon. Chap. vi. 19, 20, we read “praying for me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in bonds.” “ In bonds” ev aXvaei , in a chain. In the twenty-eighth chapter of the Acts we are informed, that Paid, after his arrival at Rome, was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him. Dr. Lardner has shewn that this mode of custody was in use amongst the Romans, and that whenever it was adopted, the prisoner was bound to the soldier by a single chain : in reference to which St. Paul, in the twentieth verse of this chapter, tells the Jews, whom he had assembled, u For this cause therefore have I called for you to see you, and to speak with you, because that for the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain” rrjv ahvaiv ravrqv nepUeipaL. It is in exact conformity therefore with the truth of St. Paul's situation at the time, that he declares of himself in the epistle, npeo-fievG) ev cthvaei. And the exactness is the more remarkable, as aXvo-is (a chain) is no where used in the sin¬ gular number to express any other kind of custody. When the prisoner’s hands or feet were bound together, the word was deapo'i (bonds), as in the twenty-sixth chapter of the Acts, where Paul replies to Agrippa, “ 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” napeKTos tcov deerpeov tovtcov. When the prisoner was confined between two soldiers, as in the case of Peter, Acts, chap. xii. 6, two chains were employed ; and it is said upon his mi¬ raculous deliverance, that the “ chains' 1 ( dkvcreis , in the plural) “ fell from his hands. 11 A eapos the noun, and dedep.at the verb, being general terms, were applicable to this in * And it is remarkable that there seem to have been some ancient copies without the words of designation, either the words in Ephesus, or the words in Laodicea. St. Basil, a writer of the fourth century, speaking of the present epistle, has this very singular passage : “ And writing to the Ephesians, as truly united to him who is through knowledge, he (Paul) calleth them in a peculiar sense such who are ; saying to the saints who are and (or even) the faithful in Christ Jesus ; for so those before us have transmitted it, and we have found it in ancient copies.” Dr. Mill interprets (and, notwithstand¬ ing some objections that have been made to him, in my opinion rightly interprets) these words of Basil, as declar¬ ing that his father had seen certain copies of the epistle in which the words “ in Ephesus” were wanting. And the passage, I think, must be considered as Basil’s fanciful way of explaining what was really a corrupt and defective reading; for I do not believe it possible that the author of the epistle could have originally written ayicig rot', olffcjy without any name of place to follow it. HOIUE PAULINJE. 43 3 common with any other species of personal coercion ; hut uXvcri r, in tlie singular num¬ ber, to none but this. If it can be suspected that the writer of the present epistle, who in no other particular appears to have availed himself of the information concerning St. Paul, delivered in the Acts, had, in this verse, borrowed the word which he read in that book, and had adapted his expression to what he found there recorded of St. Paul’s treatment at Rome ; in short, that the coincidence here noted was effected by craft and design ; I think it a strong reply to remark, that, in the parallel passage of the Epistle to the Colossians, the same allusion is not preserved; the words there are, “ praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds,” 81 o sai bebeficu. After what has been shewn in a preceding num¬ ber, there can be little doubt but that these two epistles were written by the same person. If the writer, therefore, sought for, and fraudulently inserted, the correspondency into one epistle, why did he not do it in the other ? A real prisoner might use either general words which comprehended this amongst many other modes of custody; or might use appropriate words which specified this, and distinguished it from any other mode. It would be accidental which form of expression he fell upon. But an impostor, who had the art, in one place, to employ the appropriate term for the purpose of fraud, would have used it in both places. CHAPTER VII. THE EPISTLE TO THE PIIILIPPIANS. No. I.—When a transaction is referred to in such a manner, as that the reference is easily and immediately understood by those who are beforehand, or from other quarters, acquainted with the fact, but is obscure, or imperfect, or requires investigation, or a com¬ parison of different parts, in order to be made clear to other readers, the transaction so referred to is probably real; because, had it been fictitious, the writer would have set forth his story more fully and plainly, not merely as conscious of the fiction, but as con¬ scious that his readers could have no other knowledge of the subject of his allusion than from the information of which he put him in possession. The account of Epaphroditus, in the Epistle to the Philippians, of his journey to Rome, and of the business which brought him thither, is the article to which I mean to apply this observation. There are three passages in the epistle which relate to this subject. The first, chap. i. 7? “ Even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as, both in my bonds and in the defence and confirmation of the gos¬ pel, ye all are avyuoLvcovovs pov rrjs x a P lT °s, joint contributors to the gift which I have re¬ ceived Nothing more is said in this place. In the latter part of the second chapter, and at the distance of half the epistle from the last quotation, the subject appears again: “ Yet I supposed it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and companion in labour, and fellow-soldier, but your messenger, and he that ministered to my wants : for he longed after you all, and was full of heaviness, because that ye had heard that he had been sick : for indeed he was sick nigh unto death ; but God had mercy on him, and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I sent him therefore the more carefully, that when ye see him again ye may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful. Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness; and hold such in repu- * Pearce, I believe, was tlie first commentator, who gave this sense to the expression ; and I believe also, that his exposition is now generally assented to. He interprets m the same sense the phrase in the fifth verse, which our translation renders “ your fellowship in the gospelhut which in the original is not koivuvioo tou iha.yyiXiov, or Koivuviet Ivtm ilayyi’kiM) but xoivoovlci tif/,wv its to iuooyy'iXiov. F F 434 110 ILL PAULINA. tation: because for the work of Christ lie was nigh unto death, not regarding his lifo to supply your lack of service towards me,” Chap. ii. 25—30. The matter is here dropped, and no farther mention made of it till it is taken up near the conclusion of the epistle as fol¬ lows : “ But I rejoice in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again, wherein ye were also careful, hut ye lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in respect of want; for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am therewith to he content. I know both how to he abased, and I know how to abound ; every where and in all things, I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me. Notwithstanding, ye have well done that ye did communicate with my affliction. Now, ye Pliilippians, know also, that in tlio beginning of tlio gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me, as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only. For even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity. Not because I desire a gift: but I desire fruit that may abound to your account. But I have all and abound : I am full, having received of Epa- phroditus the things which were sent from you.” Chap. iv. 10—18. To the Philippian reader, who knew that contributions were wont to be made in that church for the apostle’s subsistence and relief, that the supply which they were accustomed to send to him had been delayed by the want of opportunity, that Epaphroditus had undertaken the charge of con¬ veying their liberality to the hands of the apostle, that he had acquitted himself of this com>- mission at the peril of his life, by hastening to Rome under the oppression of a grievous sickness; to a reader who knew all this beforehand, every line in the above quotations would be plain and clear. But how is it with a stranger? The knowledge of these several parti¬ culars is necessary to the perception and explanation of the references ; yet that knowledge must be gathered from a comparison of passages lying at a great distance from one another. Texts must be interpreted by texts long subsequent to them, which necessarily produces embarrassment and suspense. The passage quoted from the beginning of the epistle contains an acknowledgment, on the part of the apostle, of the liberality which the Pliilippians had exercised towards him ; but the allusion is so general and indeterminate, that, had nothing more been said in the sequel of the epistle, it would hardly have been applied to this occasion at all. In the second quotation, Epaphroditus is declared to have “ ministered to the apos ¬ tle’s wants,” and to have supplied their lack of service towards him but how , that is, at whose expense, or from what fund he “ ministered,” or what was “ the lack of service” which he supplied, are left very much unexplained, till we arrive at the third quotation, where we find that Epaphroditus “ ministered to St. Paul’s wants,” only by conveying to his hands the contributions of the Pliilippians : “ I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from youand that “the lack of service which he supplied” was a delay or interruption of their accustomed bounty, occasioned by the want of opportunity: “ I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again ; wherein ye were also careful, but ye lacked opportunity.*’ The affair at length comes out clear; but it comes out by piecemeal. The clearness is the result of the reciprocal illustra¬ tion of divided texts. Should any one choose therefore to insinuate, that this whole story of Epaphroditus, or his journey, his errand, his sickness, or even his existence, might, for what we know, have no other foundation than in the invention of the forger of the epistle ; I answer, that a forger would have set forth his story connectedly, and also more fully and more conspicuously. If the epistle be authentic, and the transaction real, then every thing which is said concerning Epaphroditus and his commission, would be clear to those into whose hands the epistle was expected to come. Considering the Pliilippians as his readers, a person might naturally write upon the subject, as the author of the epistle has written ; but there is no supposition of forgery with which it will suit. No. II.—The history of Epaphroditus supplies another observation, “Indeed he was sick, nigh unto death ; but God had mercy on him, and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.” In this passage, no intimation is given that Epaphroditus’s re¬ covery was miraculous. It is plainly, I think, spoken of as a natural event. This instance, together witli one in the Second Epistle to Timothy (“ Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick”), affords a proof that the power of performing cures, and, by a parity of reason, of HORJE PAULINA, 435 working other miracles, was a power which only visited the apostles occasionally, and did not at all depend upon their own will. Paul undoubtedly would have healed Epapliroditus if he could. Nor, if the power of working cures had awaited his disposal, would he have left his fellow-traveller at Miletum sick. r ihis, I think, is a fair observation upon the in¬ stances adduced ; but it is not the observation I am concerned to make. It is more for the purpose of my argument to remark, that forgery, upon such an occasion, would not have spared a miracle; much less would it have introduced St. Paul professing the utmost anxiety for the safety of his friend, yet acknowledging himself unable to help him ; which he does, almost expressly, in the case of Trophimus, for he 44 left him sick and virtually in the passage before us, in which he felicitates himself upon the recovery of Epapliroditus, in terms which almost exclude the supposition of any supernatural means being employed to effect it. This is a reserve which nothing but truth would have imposed. No. III.—Chap. iv. 15, 16. 44 Now, ye Philippians, know also, that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me, as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only. For even inThessalonica, ye sent once and again unto my necessity. 11 It will be necessary to state the Greek of this passage, because our translation does not, I think, give the sense of it accurately. OiSure 8e kcu vpeis, ^iXinnijcnoi, on iv dpXII r °v evayyeXlov, ore i^rjXdov duo M aKedovlas, ovdepia poi eKKXrjcrla eKoivcovijcrev els A dyov docrecos Kal Xr/\J/ecos, el prj vpels povoi' on Kal iv QeacraXovLKrj ko! ana£ kcu 8ls els rr/v ypetay poi inip^are. The reader will please to direct his attention to the corresponding particulars on and on Kap which connect the words ev dtpxfj tov evayyeXlov, ore i£r)Xdov ano M aKedovlas, with the words iv Qeo-o-aXovLKr], and denote, as I interpret the passage, two distinct donations, or rather donations at two distinct periods, one at Thessalonica, dna£ kcu 8'ls, the other after his departure from Macedonia, ore e^rjXQov and MaKedovlas *. I would render the passage, so as to mark these dif¬ ferent periods, thus: 44 Now ye Philippians, know also, that in the beginning of the gospel, when I was departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me, as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only. And that also in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity.” Now with this exposition of the passage compare 2 Cor. chap. xi. 8, 9 : 44 1 robbed other churches, taking wages of them to do you service. And when I was present with you and wanted, I was chargeable to no man; for that which was lacking to me, the brethren which came from Macedonia supplied.” It appears from St. Paul's history, as related in the Acts of the Apostles, that upon leav¬ ing Macedonia he passed, after a very short stay at Athens, into Achaia. It appears, secondly, from the quotation out of the Epistle to the Corinthians, that in Achaia he ac¬ cepted no pecuniary assistance from the converts of that country ; but that he drew a supply for his wants from the Macedonian Christians. Agreeably whereunto it appears, in the third place, from the text which is the subject of the present number, that the brethren in Philippi, a city of Macedonia, had followed him with their munificence, ore e£rjX6ov and MaKedovlas , when lie was departed from Macedonia, that is, when he wais come into Achaia. The passage under consideration affords another circumstance of agreement deserving of our notice. The gift alluded to in the Epistle to the Philippians is stated to have been made 44 in the beginning of the gospel. 11 This phrase is most naturally explained to signify the first preaching of the gospel in these parts ; viz. on that side of the iEgean sea. The suc¬ cours referred to in the Epistle to the Corinthians, as received from Macedonia, are stated to have been received by him upon his first visit to the peninsula of Greece. The dates there¬ fore assigned to the donation in the two epistles agree ; yet is the date in one ascertained very incidentally, namely, by the considerations which fix the date of the epistle itself; and in the other, by an expression ( 44 the beginning of the gospel”) much too general to have been used if the text had been penned with any view to the correspondency we are remarking. Luke, ch. ii. 15. K«) zyivzro, ug oonriXiov an oovtojv f*f rov ougxvov oi a.yyi’koi , “ as the angels were gone away,” i. e. after their departure, ol noipivzg o’mov orgog ooXXriXovg' Matt. ch. xii. 43. "Orocv Ss to u.ko,6oo^tov nviupoo 12s X0ri u-to tov avtiguTou, “ when the unclean spirit is gone,” i. e. after his departure, ^/e^iTea. John, ch. xiii. 31, "On XffXh (’I ovhotg) “when he was gone,” i. e. after his de¬ parture, Xzyzt o 'lycrovg. Acts, ch. X. 7 , ug ot-zr'/iX&zv o oiyyzXog o XooXuv oevrof (Kogv'/iXiy) “and when the angel which spake unto him was departed,” i. e. after his de¬ parture, (peov'/ttroeg Ivo ruv o’iuztuv, &c. F F 2 436 HORiE PAULINA. Farther, the phrase, “ in the beginning of the gospel,” raises an idea in the reader’s mind that the gospel had been preached there more than once. The writer would hardly have called the visit to which he refers the “ beginning of the gospel,” if he had not also visited them in some other stage of it. The fact corresponds with this idea. If we consult the sixteenth and twentieth chapters of the Acts, we shall find, that St. Paul, before his im¬ prisonment at Rome, during which this epistle purports to have been written, had been twice in Macedonia, and each time at Philippi. No. IY.—That Timothy had been long with St. Paul at Philippi is a fact which seems to be implied in this epistle twice. First, he joins in the salutation with which the epistle opens : “ Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi.” Secondly, and more directly, the point is inferred from what is said con¬ cerning him, chap. ii. 19: “But I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timotheus shortly unto you, that I may also be of good comfort when I know your state; for I have no man like minded, who will naturally care for your state ; for all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s ; but ye know the proof of him, that as a son with the father, he hath served with me in the gospel/’ Had Timothy’s presence with St. Paul at Philippi, when he preached the gospel there, been expressly remarked in the Acts of the Apostles, this quo- tation might be thought to contain a contrived adaptation to the history; although even in that case, the averment, or rather the allusion in the epistle, is too oblique to afford much room for such suspicion. But the truth is, that in the history of St. Paul’s transactions at Philippi, which occupies the greatest part of the sixteenth chapter of the Acts, no mention is made of Timothy at all. What appears concerning Timothy in the history, so far as relates to the present subject, is this: “ When Paul came to Derbe and Lystra, behold a certain disciple was there named Timotheus, whom Paul would have to go forth with him.” The narrative then proceeds with the account of St. Paul’s progress through various provinces of the Lesser Asia, till it brings him down to Troas. At Troas lie was warned in a vision to pass over into Macedonia. In obedience to which he crossed the Aegean sea to Samo- thracia, the next day to Ncapolis, and from thence to Philippi. His preaching, miracles, and persecutions at Philippi, follow next; after which Paul and his company, when they had passed through Ampliipolis and Apollonia, came to Thessalonica, and from Thessalonica to Berea. From Berea the brethren sent away Paul; a but Silas and Timotheus abode there still.” The itinerary, of which the above is an abstract, is undoubtedly sufficient to support an inference that Timothy was along with St. Paul at Philippi. We find them setting out together upon his progress from Derbe, in Lycaonia ; we find them together near the conclu¬ sion of it, at Berea, in Macedonia. It is highly probable, therefore, that they came together to Philippi, through which their route between these two places lay. If this be thought probable, it is sufficient. For what I wish to be observed is, that in comparing, upon this subject, the epistle with the history, we do not find a recital in one place of what is related in another; but that we find, what is much more to be relied upon, an oblique allusion to an implied fact. No. Y.—Our epistle purports to have been written near the conclusion of St. Paul’s im¬ prisonment at Rome, and after a residence in that city of considerable duration. These circumstances are made out by different intimations, and the intimations upon the subject preserve among themselves a just consistency, and a consistency certainly unmeditated. First, the apostle had already been a prisoner at Rome so long, as that the reputation of his bonds, and of his constancy under them, had contributed to advance the success of the gospel : “ But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel; so that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace, and in all other places; and many of the brethren in the Lord waxing con¬ fident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.” Secondly, the account given of Epapliroditus imports, that St. Paul, when he wrote the epistle, had been in Rome a considerable time : “ He longed after you all, and was full of heaviness, because that ye heard that he had been sick.” Epapliroditus was with St. Paul at Rome. He had been sick. The Philippians had heard of his sickness, and he again had received an account how much they had been affected by the intelligence. The passing and repassing of these HORiE PAULINiE. 437 advices must necessarily have occupied a large portion of time, and must have all taken place during St. Paul’s residence at Rome. Thirdly, after a residence at Rome, thus proved to have been of considerable duration, he now regards the decision of his fate as nigh at hand. He contemplates either alternative, that of his deliverance, cli. ii. 23, “Him therefore (Timothy) I hope to send presently , so soon as I shall see how it will go with me; but I trust in the Lord that I also myself shall come shortly that of his condemnation, ver. 17, “ Yea, and if I be offered* upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all.” This consistency is material, if the consideration of it be confined to the epistle. It is farther material, as it agrees with respect to the duration of St. Paul’s first imprisonment at Rome, with the account delivered in the Acts, which having brought the apostle to Rome, closes the history by telling us “ that he dwelt there two whole years in his own hired house.” No. YI.—Chap. i. 23. “ For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better.” With this compare 2 Cor. chap. v. 8: “We are confident and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” The sameness of sentiment in these two quotations is obvious. I rely however not so much upon that, as upon the similitude in the train of thought which in each epistle leads up to this sentiment, and upon the suitableness of that train of thought to the circumstances under which the epistles purport to have been written. This, I conceive, bespeaks the pro¬ duction of the same mind, and of a mind operating upon real circumstances. The sentiment is in both places preceded by the contemplation of imminent personal danger. To the Phi- lippians he writes, in the twentieth verse of this chapter, “ According to my earnest expec¬ tation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also , Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death.” To the Corinthians, “ Troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair ; persecuted, but not forsaken ; cast down, but not destroyed ; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.” This train of reflection is continued to the place from whence the words which we compare are taken. The two epistles, though written at different times, from different places, and to different churches, were both written under cir¬ cumstances which would naturally recal to the author's mind the precarious condition of his life, and the perils which constantly awaited him. When the Epistle to the Philippians was written, the author was a prisoner at Rome, expecting his trial. When the Second Epistle to the Corinthians was written, he had lately escaped a danger in which he had given him¬ self over for lost. The epistle opens with a recollection of this subject, and the impression accompanied the writer’s thoughts throughout. I know that nothing is easier than to transplant into a forged epistle a sentiment or ex¬ pression which is found in a true one; or supposing both epistles to be forged by the same hand, to insert the same sentiment or expression in both. But the difficulty is to introduce it in just and close connexion with a train of thought going before, and with a train of thought apparently generated by the circumstances under which the epistle is written. In two epis¬ tles, purporting to be written on different occasions, and in different periods of the author's history, this propriety would not easily be managed. No. VII.—Chap. i. 29, 30; ii. 1, 2. “For unto you is given, in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake; having the same conflict which ye saw in me , and now hear to be in me. If there be, therefore, any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies ; fulfil ye my joy, that ye be like minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.” With this compare Acts, xvi. 22 : “ And the multitude (at Philippi) rose up against them (Paul and Silas) ; and the magistrates rent off their clothes, and commanded to beat them ; and when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the * ' A.W' ii kou uv. %l Tt ■zccga.ftuthov il rig xoivcovloc, ‘Tviuparcg. 439 HORJE PAULINAS. captain, Paul had. been rescued out of the hands of the populace, and was permitted to address the multitude who had followed him to the stairs of the castle, lie delivered a brief account of his birth, of the early course of his life, of his miraculous .conversion ; and is pro¬ ceeding in this narrative, until he comes to describe a vision which was presented to him, as he was praying in the temple; and which bid him depart out of Jerusalem, “ for I will send thee hence unto the Gentiles.” Acts, xxii. 21. “ They gave him audience,” says the histo¬ rian, “ unto this word ; and then lift up their voices, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth !” Nothing can shew more strongly than this account does, what was the offence which drew down upon St. Paul the vengeance of his countrymen. ITis mission to the Gentiles, and his open avowal of that mission, was the intolerable part of the apostle’s crime. But although the real motive of the prosecution appears to have been the apostle's conduct towards the Gentiles ; yet, when his accusers came before a Roman magistrate, a charge was to be framed of a more legal form. The profanation of the temple was the article they chose to rely upon. This, therefore, became the immediate subject of Tertullus’s ora¬ tion before Felix, and of Paul’s defence. But that he all along considered his ministry amongst the Gentiles as the actual source of the enmity that had been exercised against him, and in particular as the cause of the insurrection in which liis person had been seized, is ap¬ parent from the conclusion of his discourse before Agrippa ; u I have appeared unto thee,” says he, describing what passed upon his journey to Damascus, “ for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness, both of these 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 now I 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 inher¬ itance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me. Whereupon, 0 king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision; but shewed first unto them of Damascus and of Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judea, and then 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.” The seizing, there¬ fore, of St. Paul’s person, from which he was never discharged till his final liberation at Rome ; and of which, therefore, his imprisonment at Rome was the continuation and effect, was not in consequence of any general persecution set on foot against Christianity; nor did it befal him simply as professing or teaching Christ’s religion, which James and the elders at Jerusalem did as well as he (and yet, for any thing that appears, remained at that time un¬ molested) ; but it was distinctly and specifically brought upon him by his activity in preaching to the Gentiles, and by his boldly placing them upon a level with the once-favoured and still-flattered posterity of Abraham. How well St. Paul’s letters, purporting to be written during this imprisonment, agree with this account of its cause and origin, we have already seen. No. II.—Chap. iv. 10. “Aristarchus my fellow prisoner saluteth you, and Marcus, sister’s son to Barnabas (touching whom ye received commandments: If he come unto you, receive him) ; and Jesus, which is called Justus, who are of the circumcision.” We find Aristarchus as a companion of our apostle in the nineteenth chapter of the Acts, and the twenty-ninth verse : “ And the whole city of Ephesus was filled with confusion ; and having caught Gaius and Aristarchus , men of Macedonia, Paul’s companions in travel , they rushed with one accord into the theatre.” And we find him upon his journey with St. Paul to Rome, in the twenty-seventh chapter, and the second verse : “ And when it was determined that we should sail into Italy, they delivered Paul and certain other prisoners unto one named Julius, a centurion of Augustus’s band : and, entering into a ship of Adra- myttium, we launched, meaning to sail by the coast of Asia ; one Aristarchus , a Macedonian of Thessalonica , being with us.” But might not the author of the epistle have consulted the history; and, observing that the historian had brought Aristarchus along with Paul to Rome, might he not for that reason, and without any other foundation, have put down his name amongst the salutations of an epistle purporting to be written by the apostle from that place ? I allow so much of possibility to this objection, that I should not have nrono^d 440 IIORiE PAULINiE. this in the niunber of coincidences clearly undesigned, had Aristarchus stood alone. The ob¬ servation that strikes me in reading the passage is, that together with Aristarchus, whose journey to Rome we trace in the history, are joined Marcus and Justus, of whose coming to Rome the history says nothing. Aristarchus alone appears in the history, and Aristarchus alone would have appeared in the epistle, if the author had regulated himself by that confor¬ mity. Or if you take it the other way ; if you suppose the history to have been made out of the epistle, why the journey of Aristarchus to Rome should be recorded, and not that of Marcus and Justus, if the ground-work of the narrative was the appearance of Aristarchus’s name in the epistle, seems to be unaccountable. “ Marcus, sisters son to Barnabas.” Does not this hint account for Barnabas’s adherence to Mark in the contest that arose with our apostle concerning him ? “ And some days after, Paul said unto Barnabas, Let us go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord, and see how they do ; and Barnabas determined to take with them John , whose surname was Mark ; but Paul thought not good to take him with them, who departed from Pampliylia, and went not with them to the work ; and the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder one from the other : and so Barnabas took Mark and sailed unto Cyprus.” The history which records the dispute has not pre¬ served the circumstance of Mark’s relationship to Barnabas. It is no where noticed but in the text before us. As far, therefore, as it applies, the application is certainly undesigned. “ Sister s son to Barnabas.'" This woman, the mother of Mark, and the sister of Barna¬ bas, was, as might be expected, a person of some eminence amongst the Christians of Jeru¬ salem. It so happens that we hear of her in the history. “ When Peter was delivered from prison, he came to the house of Mary the mother of John , whose surname teas Mark , where many were gathered together praying.” Acts, xii. 12. There is somewhat of coincidence in this : somewhat bespeaking real transactions amongst real persons. No. III.—The following coincidence, though it bear the appearance of great nicety and refinement, ought not perhaps to be deemed imaginary. In the salutations with which this, like most of St. Paul’s epistles, concludes, “we have Aristarchus and Marcus, and Jesus, which is called Justus, who are of the circumcision ,” iv. 10, 11. Then follow also, “ Epaph- ras, Luke the beloved physician, and Demas.” Now as this description, “ who are of the circumcision,” is added after the first three names, it is inferred, not without great appearance of probability, that the rest, amongst whom is Luke, were not of the circumcision. Now can we discover any expression in the Acts of the Apostles, which ascertains whether the author of the book was a Jew or not ? If we can discover that he was not a Jew, we fix a circumstance in his character, which coincides with what is here, indirectly indeed, but not very uncertainly, intimated concerning Luke : and we so far confirm both the testimony of the primitive church, that the Acts of the Apostles was written by St. Luke, and the general reality of the persons and circumstances brought together in this epistle. The text in the Acts, which has been construed to shew that the writer was not a Jew, is the nineteenth verse of the first chapter, where, in describing the field which had been purchased with the reward of Judas’s iniquity, it is said, “that it was known to all the dwellers at Jerusalem ; insomuch as that field is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood.” These words are by most commentators taken to be the words and observation of the historian, and not a part of St. Peter’s speech, in the midst of which they are found. If this be admitted, then it is argued that the expression, “ in their proper tongue,” would not have been used by a Jew, but is suitable to the pen of a Gentile writing concerning Jews # . The reader will judge of the probability of this conclusion, and we urge the coincidence no farther than that probability extends. The coincidence, if it be one, is so remote from all possibility of design, that nothing need be added to satisfy the reader upon that part of the argument. No. IV.—Chap. iv. 9. “With Onesimus, a faithful and beloved brother, who is one °f you.” * Vide Benson’s Dissertation, vol. i. p. 318, of his works, cd. 175G. IlORvE PAULINiE. 441 Observe how it may be made out that Onesimus was a Colossian. Turn to the Epistle to Philemon, and you will find that Onesimus was the servant or slave of Philemon. The question therefore will be, to what city Philemon belonged. In the epistle addressed to him this is not declared. It appears only that he was of the same place, whatever that place was, with an eminent Christian named Archippus. “Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and Timothy our brother, unto Philemon our dearly beloved and fellow-labourer; and to our beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellow-soldier, and to the church in thy house.” Now turn back to the Epistle to the Colossians, and you will find Archippus saluted by name amongst the Christians of that church. “ Say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it,” (iv. 17-) The necessary result is, that Onesimus also was of the same city, agreeably to what is said of him, “ he is one of you.” And this result is the effect either of truth which produces consistency without the writer’s thought or care, or of,a contexture of forgeries confirming and falling in with one another by a species of fortuity of which I know no example. The supposition of design, I think, is excluded, not only because the purpose to which the design must have been directed, viz. the verification of the passage in our epistle, in which it is said concerning Onesimus, “ he is one of you,” is a purpose, which would be lost upon ninety-nine readers out of a hundred ; but because the means made use of are too circuitous to have been the sub¬ ject of affectation and contrivance. Would a forger, who had this purpose in view, have left his readers to hunt it out, by going forward and backward from one epistle to another, in order to connect Onesimus with Philemon, Philemon with Archippus, and Archippus with Colosse ? all which he must do before he arrives at his discovery, that it was truly said of Onesimus, “ he is one of you.” CHAPTER IX. THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. No. I.— It is known to every reader of Scripture, that the First Epistle to the Thessalo- nians speaks of the coming of Christ in terms which indicate an expectation of his speedy appearance : 41 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that 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 first: we which are alive and remain , shall be caught up together with them in the clouds—But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.” (Chap. iv. 15—17* ch. v. 4.) Whatever other construction these texts may bear, the idea they leave upon the mind of an ordinary reader, is that of the author of the epistle looking for the day of judgment to take place in his own time, or near to it. Now the use which I make of this circumstance, is to deduce from it a proof that the epistle itself was not the production of a subsequent age. Would an impostor have given this expectation to St. Paul, after experience had proved it to be erroneous ? or would he have put into the apostle's mouth, or, which is the same thing, into writings purporting to come from his hand, expressions, if not necessarily convey¬ ing, at least easily interpreted to convey, an opinion which was then known to be founded in a mistake ? I state this as an argument to shew that the epistle was contemporary with St. Paul, which is little less than to shew that it actually proceeded from his pen. For I question whether any ancient forgeries were executed in the lifetime of the per¬ son whose name they bear; nor was the primitive situation of the church likely to give birth to such an attempt. No. II.—Our epistle concludes with a direction that it should be publicly read in the church to which it was addressed: “ I charge you by the Lord, that this epistle be read 442 IlORiE PAULINAS. unto all the lioly brethren. 5 ’ The existence of this clause in the body of the epistle is an evidence of its authenticity ; because to produce a letter purporting to have been pub¬ licly read in the church of Thessalonica, when no such letter in truth had been read or heard of in that church, would be to produce an imposture destructive of itself. At least, it seems unlikely that the author of an imposture would voluntarily, and even officiously, afford a handle to so plain an objection.—Either the epistle was publicly read in the church of Thessalonica during St. Paul's lifetime, or it was not. If it was, no publi¬ cation could be more authentic, no species of notoriety more unquestionable, no method of preserving the integrity of the copy more secure. If it was not, the clause we pro¬ duce would remain a standing condemnation of the forgery, and, one would suppose, an invincible impediment to its success. If we connect this article with the preceding, we shall perceive that they combine into one strong proof of the genuineness of the epistle. The preceding article carries up the date of the epistle to the time of St. Paul; the present article fixes the publication of it to the church of Thessalonica. Either therefore the church of Thessalonica was imposed upon by a false epistle, which in St. Paul’s lifetime they received and read publicly as his, carrying on a communication with him all the while, and the epistle referring to the continuation of that communication ; or other Christian churches, in the same lifetime of the apostle, received an epistle purporting to have been publicly read in the church of Thessalo¬ nica, which nevertheless had not been heard of in that church; or, lastly, the conclusion remains, that the epistle now in our hands is genuine. . No. III.—Between our epistle and the history the accordancy in many points is circum¬ stantial and complete. The history relates, that, after Paul and Silas had been beaten with many stripes at Philippi, shut up in the inner prison, and their feet made fast in the stocks, as soon as they were discharged from their confinement they departed from thence, and, when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, came to Thessalonica, where Paul opened and alleged that Jesus was the Christ, Acts, xvi. 23, &c. The epistle written in the name of Paul and Sylvanus (Silas), and of Timotheus, who also appears to have been along with them at Philippi, (vide Phil. No. iv.) speaks to the church of Thessalonica thus : 44 Even after that we had suffered before, and were shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much conten¬ tion.” (ii. 2.) The history relates, that after they had been some time at Thessalonica, 44 the Jews who believed not, set all the city in an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason where Paul and Silas were, and sought to bring them out to the people.” Acts, xvii. 5. The epistle declares, “ when we were with you, we told you before that we should suffer tribulation ; even as it came to pass, and ye know.” (iii. 4.) The history brings Paul and Silas and Timothy together at Corinth, soon after the preach¬ ing of the gospel at Thessalonica:—“And when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia (to Corinth), Paul was pressed in spirit.” Acts, xviii. 5. The epistle is written in the name of these three persons, who consequently must have been together at the time, and speaks throughout of their ministry at Thessalonica as a recent transaction: “We, brethren, being taken from you for a short tune , in presence, not in heart, endeavoured the more abundantly to see your face, with great desire.” (ii. 17-) The harmony is indubitable ; but the points of history in which it consists, are so expressly set forth in the narrative, and so directly referred to in the epistle, that it becomes necessary for us to shew that the facts in one writing were not copied from the other. Now amidst some minuter discrepancies, which will be noticed below, there is one circumstance which mixes itself with all the allusions in the epistle, but does not appear in the history any where ; and that is of a visit which St. Paul had intended to pay to the Thessalonians during the time of his residing at Corinth : 44 Wherefore we would have come unto you (even I Paul) once and again ; but Satan hindered us.” (ii. 18.) 44 Night and day praying exceedingly that we might see your face, and might perfect that which is lacking in your faith. Now God him¬ self and our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way unto you.” (iii. 10, 11.) Concerning a design which was not executed, although the person hiinsJf, who was con- 443 HOR/E PAULINA. scions of liis own purpose, should make mention in his letters, nothing is more probable than that his historian should be silent, if not ignorant. The author of the epistle could not, how¬ ever, have learnt this circumstance from the history, for it is not there to be met with ; nor, if the historian had drawn his materials from the epistle, is it likely that he would have passed over a circumstance, which is amongst the most obvious and prominent of the facts to bo collected from that source of information. No. IV.—Chap, iii- 1— 7 * “ Wherefore when we could no longer forbear, we thought it good to be left at Athens alone , and sent Timotheus, our brother and minister of God, to estab¬ lish you, and to comfort you concerning your faith ;—but now when Timotheus came from you unto us, and brought us good tidings of your faith and charity, we were comforted over you in all our affliction and distress by your faith.” The history relates, that when Paul came out of Macedonia to Athens, Silas and Timothy stayed behind at Berea : “The brethren sent away Paul to go as it were to the sea; but Silas and Timotheus abode there still; and they that conducted Paul brought him to Athens/’ Acts, ch. xvii. 14, 15. The history farther relates, that after Paul had tarried some time at Athens, and had proceeded from thence to Corinth, whilst he was exercising his ministry in that city, Silas and Timotheus came to him from Macedonia. Acts, ch. xviii. 5. But to reconcile the history with the clause in the epistle, which makes St. Paul say, “ I thought it good to be left at Athens alone, and to send Timothy unto you,” it is necessary to suppose that Timothy had come up with St. Paul at Athens : a circumstance which the history does not mention. I remark, therefore, that, although the history do not expressly notice this arrival, yet it contains intimations which render it extremely probable that the fact took place. First, as soon as Paul had reached Athens, he sent a message back to Silas and Timothy “ for to come to him with all speed.” Acts, ch. xvii. 15. Secondly, his stay at Athens was on purpose that they might join him there : “ Now whilst Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him.” Acts, ch. xvii. 16. Thirdly, his departure from Athens does not appear to have been in any sort hastened or abrupt. It is said, “ after these things,” viz. his disputation with the Jews, his conferences with the philosophers, his discourse at Areopagus, and the gaining of some converts, “ he departed from Athens and came to Corinth.” It is not hinted that he quitted Athens before the time that he had intended to leave it; it is not suggested that he was driven from thence, as he was from many cities, by tumults, or persecutions, or because his life was no longer safe. Observe then the particulars which the history does notice—that Paul had ordered Timothy to follow him without delay, that he waited at Athens on purpose that Timothy might come up with him, that he stayed there as long as his own choice led him to continue. Laying these cir¬ cumstances which the history docs disclose together, it is highly probable that Timothy came to the apostle at Athens, a fact which the epistle, we have seen, virtually asserts when it makes Paul send Timothy back from Athens to Thessalonica. The sending back of Timothy into Macedonia accounts also for his not coming to Corinth till after Paul had been fixed in that city for some considerable time. Paul had found out Aquila and Priscilla, abode with them and wrought, being of the same craft; and reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath- day, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks. Acts, ch. xviii. 1—5. All this passed at Corinth before Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia. Acts, ch. xviii. 5. If this was the first time of their coming up with him after their separation at Berea, there is no¬ thing to account for a delay so contrary to what appears from the history itself to have been St. Paul's plan and expectation. This is a conformity of a peculiar species. The epistle discloses a fact which is not preserved in the history; but which makes what is said in the history more significant, probable, and consistent. The history bears marks of an omission; the epistle by reference furnishes a circumstance which supplies that omission. No. V.—Chap. ii. 14. “For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen , even as they have of the Jews.” To a reader of the Acts of the Apostles, it might seem, at first sight, that the persecutions which the preachers and converts of Christianity underwent, were suffered at the hands of their old adversaries the Jews. But if we attend carefully to the accounts there delivered, 444 HORiE PAULIN M. we shall observe, that, though the opposition made to the gospel usually originated from the enmity of the Jews, in almost all places the Jews went about to accomplish their purpose, by stirring up the Gentile inhabitants against their converted countrymen. Out of Judea they had not power to do much mischief in any other way. This was the case at Thessalo- nica in particular: “ The Jews which believed not, moved with envy, set all the city in an uproar.” Acts, ch. xvii. ver. 5. It was the same a short time afterward at Berea : “ When the Jews at Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of God was preached of Paul at Berea, they came thither also, and stirred up the people.” Acts, ch. xvii. 13. And before this our apostle had met with a like species of persecution, in his progress through the Lesser Asia: in every city “ the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles, and made their minds evil-affected against the brethren.” Acts, ch. xiv. 2. The epistle therefore represents the case accurately as the history states it. It was the Jews always who set on foot the perse¬ cutions against the apostles and their followers. He speaks truly therefore of them, when he says in this epistle, “ they both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us —forbidding us to speak unto the Gentiles.” (ii. 15, 16.) But out of Judea it was at the hands of the Gentiles, it was “ of their own countrymen,” that the injuries they underwent were immediately sustained: “ Ye have suffered like things of your own country¬ men, even as they have of the Jews.” No. YI.—The apparent discrepancies between our epistle and the history, though of magnitude sufficient to repel the imputation of confederacy or transcription (in which view they form a part of our argument), are neither numerous, nor very difficult to reconcile. One of these may be observed in the ninth and tenth verses of the second chapter : “For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail; for labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God. Ye are witnesses, and God also, how liolily, and justly, and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe.” A person who reads this passage is naturally led by it to suppose, that the writer had dwelt at Thessalonica for some considerable time; yet of St. Paul’s ministry in that city, the history gives no other account than the following : that “ he came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews : that, as his manner was, he went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures: that some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas.” The history then proceeds to tell us, that the Jews which believed not, set the city in an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, where Paul and his companions lodged ; that the consequence of this outrage was, that “the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea.” Acts, ch. xvii. 1—10. From the mention of his preaching three sabbath days in the Jewish synagogue, and from the want of any farther specification of his ministry, it has usually been taken for granted that Paul did not continue at Thessalonica more than three weeks. This, however, is in¬ ferred without necessity. It appears to have been St. Paul’s practice, in almost every place that he came to, upon his first arrival to repair to the synagogue. lie thought himself bound to propose the gospel to the Jews first, agreeably to what he declared at Antioch, in Pisidia; “ it was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you.” Acts, ch. xiii. 46. If the Jews rejected his ministry, he quitted the synagogue, and betook himself to a Gentile audience. At Corinth, upon his first coming thither, he reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath ; “ but when the Jews opposed themselves, and blasphemed, he departed thence,” expressly telling them, “ From henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles ; and lie remained in that city a year and six months.” Acts, ch. xviii. 6—11. At Ephesus, in like manner, for the space of three months he went into the synagogue; but “ when divers were hardened and believed not, but spake evil of that way, he departed from them, and sepa¬ rated the disciples, disputing daily in the school of one Tyrannus ; and this continued by the space of two years.” Acts, ch. xix. 9, 10. LTpon inspecting the history, I. see nothing in it which negatives the supposition, that St. Paul pursued the same plan at Thessalonica which he adopted in other places; and that, though he resorted to the synagogue only three sab¬ bath days, yet he remained in the city, and in the exercise of his ministry amongst the Gentile citizens, much longer ; and until the success of his preaching had provoked the Jews to excite the tumult and insurrection by which he was driven away. HORiE PAULINA. 445 Another seeming discrepancy is found in tlie ninth verse of the first chapter of the epistle : “ For they themselves shew of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.” This text contains an asser¬ tion, that, by means of St. Paul’s ministry at Thessalonica, many idolatrous Gentiles had been brought over to Christianity. Yet the history, in describing the effects of that ministry, only says, that “ some of the Jews believed, and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few,'” (ch. xvii. 4.) The devout Greeks were those who already worshipped the one true God; and therefore could not be said, by embracing Christianity, “ to be turned to God from idols.” This is the difficulty. The answer may be assisted by the following observations : The Alexandrian and Cambridge manuscripts read (for rwv cre/3 ogevaiv ‘EWijvcov no\v 7 rXrjOos') twv o’e(3ofxev(oi' udi ( E\\r]vcov 7 ro\v 7 r\rj 8 os' in which reading they are also confirmed by the Vulgate Latin. And this reading is, in my opinion, strongly supported by the considerations, first, that ol (refiofxevoL alone, i. e. without ''EXkrjves, is used in this sense in the same chapter—Paul being come to Athens, SteXe-yero yev ovv iu TT] awaycii-yr] rots ’I ovdaiois Kal rots aePoyevois : Secondly, that o-efiojievoi and ^EWrjves no where come together. The expression is redundant. The oi aeSoyevoi must be 'EWrjves. Thirdly, that the kcu is much more likely to have been left out incurid rnanus than to have been put in. Or, after all, if we be not allowed to change the present reading, which is undoubtedly retained by a great plurality of copies, may not the passage in the history be considered as describing only the effects of St. Paul’s discourses during the three sabbath days in which he preached in the synagogue ? and may it not be true, as we have remarked above, that his application to the Gentiles at large, and his suc¬ cess among them, was posterior to this ? CHAPTER X. THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. No. I. —It may seem odd to allege obscurity itself as an argument, or to draw a proof in favour of a writing from that which is naturally considered as the principal defect in its composition. The present epistle, however, furnishes a passage, hitherto unexplained, and probably inexplicable by us, the existence of which, under the darkness and difficulties that attend it, can be accounted for only by the supposition of the epistle being genuine; and upon that supposition is accounted for with great ease. The passage which I allude to is found in the second chapter : “ That day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exaltcth him¬ self above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God, sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not that when I was yet with you I told you these things ? And noiv ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time ; for the mystery of iniquity doth already work, only he that now letteth icill let , until he be taken out of the way ; and then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.” It were superfluous to prove, because it is in vain to deny, that this passage is involved in great obscurity, more especially the clauses distinguished by Italics. Now the observation I have to offer is founded upon this, that the passage expressly refers to a con¬ versation which the author had previously liolden with the Thessalonians upon the same subject: “ Remember ye not, that when I was yet with you I told you these things ? And now ye know what withholdeth.” If such conversation actually passed; if, whilst “ he was yet with them, he told them those things, - ” then it follows that the epistle is authentic. And of the reality of this conversation it appears to be a proof, that what is said in the epistle might be understood by those who had been present to such conversation, and yet be 448 HORiE PAULINAS. incapable of being explained by any others. No man writes unintelligibly on purpose. But, it may easily happen, that a part of a letter which relates to a subject, upon which the parties had conversed together before, which refers to what had been before said, which is in truth a portion or continuation of a former discourse, may be utterly without meaning to a stranger who should pick up the letter upon the road, and yet be perfectly clear to the person to whom it is directed, and with whom the previous communication had passed. And if, in a letter which thus accidentally fell into my hands, I found a passage expressly referring to a former conversation, I should consider this very difficulty as a proof that the conversation had actually passed, and consequently that the letter contained the real correspondence of real persons. No. II.—Chap. iii. 8. “ Neither did we eat any man’s bread for nought, but wrought with labour night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you : not because we have no power, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow.” In a letter, purporting to have been written to another of the Macedonian churches, we find the following declaration : “Now, ye Philippians, know also, that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving , but ye only” The conformity between these two passages is strong and plain. They confine the trans¬ action to the same period. The Epistle to the Philippians refers to what passed “ in the beginning of the gospel,” that is to say, during the first preaching of the gospel on that side of the iEgean sea. The epistle to the Thessalonians speaks of the apostle’s conduct in that city upon “ his first entrance in unto them,” which the history informs us was in the course of his first visit to the peninsula of Greece. As St. Paul tells the Philippians, “ that no church communicated with him, as concern¬ ing giving and receiving, but they only,” lie could not, consistently with the truth of this decla¬ ration, have received any thing from the neighbouring church of Thessalonica. What thus appears by general implication in an epistle to another church, when he writes to the Thessa¬ lonians themselves, is noticed expressly and particularly; “ neither did we eat any man’s bread for nought, but wrought night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you.” The texts here cited farther also exhibit a mark of conformity with what St. Paul is made to say of himself in the Acts of the Apostles. The apostle not only reminds the Thessalo¬ nians that he had not been chargeable to any of them, but he states likewise the motive which dictated this reserve : “ not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us.” (ch. iii. 9.) This conduct, and, what is much more precise, the end which he had in view by it, was the very same as that which the history attributes to St. Paul in a discourse, which it represents him to have addressed to the elders of the church of Ephesus : “ Yea, ye yourselves also know that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and them that were with me. I have shewed you all things, how, that so labour¬ ing ye ought to support the weak.” Acts, ch. xx. 34. The sentiment in the epistle and in the speech is in both parts of it so much alike, and yet the words which convey it shew so little of imitation or even of resemblance, that the agreement cannot be well explained without supposing the speech and the letter to have really proceeded from the same person. No. III.—Our reader remembers the passage in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, in which St. Paul spoke of the coming of Christ: “ This we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that w'e 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, and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, and so shall we be ever with the Lord.—But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.” 1 Thess. iv. 15—17, and ch. v. 4. It should seem that the Thessalonians, or some however amongst them, had from this passage conceived an opinion (and that not very unnaturally), that the coming of Christ was to take place instantly, on ivicrTrjKev, * and that this persuasion had produced, as it well * "Or/ Ivitrryixiv, nempe hoc anno, says Grotius, Ivso'ryjxiv hie dicitur de re prsesenti, ut Rom. viii. 38. 1 Cor. iii. 22. Gal. i. 4. Heb. ix. V. . . . IfORJE PAULINiE. 447 might, much agitation in the church. The apostle therefore now writes, amongst other purposes, to quiet this alarm, and to rectify the misconstruction that had been put upon his words : “ Now 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 Christ is at hand.” If the allusion which we contend for be admitted, namely, if it be admitted that the passage in the second epistle relates to the passage in the first, it amounts to a con¬ siderable proof of the genuineness of both epistles. I have no conception, because I know no example, of such a device in a forgery, as first to frame an ambiguous passage in a letter, then to represent the persons to whom the letter is addressed as mistaking the meaning of the passage, and lastly, to write a second letter in order to correct this mistake. I have said that this argument arises out of the text, if the allusion be admitted ; for I am not ignorant that many expositors understand the passage in the second epistle, as referring to some forged letters, which had been produced in St. Paul’s name, and in which the apostle had been made to say that the coming of Christ was then at hand. In defence, however, of the explanation which we propose, the reader is desired to observe, 1. The strong fact, that there exists a passage in the first epistle, to which that in the second is capable of being referred, i. e. which accounts for the error the writer is solicitous to remove. Had no other epistle than the second been extant, and had it under these cir¬ cumstances come to be considered, whether the text before us related to a forged epistle or to some misconstruction of a true one, many conjectures and many probabilities might have been admitted in the inquiry which can have little weight when an epistle is pro¬ duced containing the very sort of passage we were seeking, that is, a passage liable to the misinterpretation which the apostle protests against. 2. That the clause which introduces the passage in the second epistle bears a particular affinity to what is found in the passage cited from the first epistle. The clause is this : “ We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gather¬ ing together unto him” Now in the first epistle the description of the coming of Christ is accompanied with the mention of this very circumstance of his saints being collected round him. “ 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 first; then we, which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.” 1 Thess. chap. iv. 16, 17- This I suppose to be the “gather¬ ing together unto him” intended in the second epistle : and that the author, when he used these words, retained in his thoughts what he had written on the subject before. 3 . The second epistle is written in the joint name of Paul, Silvanus, and Timotheus, and it cautions the Thessalonians against being misled “ by letter as from us (ok hi rjpobv).” Do not these words, hi rjpcbv, appropriate the reference to some writing which bore the name of these three teachers ? Now this circumstance, which is a very close one, belongs to the epistle at present in our hands; for the epistle which we call the First Epistle to the Thes¬ salonians contains these names in its superscription. 4. The words in the original, as far as they are material to be stated, are these: els to prj rayeo)v craXeydr/vai vpds dno rov voos, pp T€ Opoeiadai prjre hia 7ruevparos , prjTe hiii Aoyov, p.i]re hi enKTToXrjs h>s hi iyjicbv, g>9 oti evearrjKev rj ppepa rov Xpiarov. Under the Weight of the preceding observations may not the words ppre hui \6yov, pb Te bi emo-ToXris cos hi bptbv, be con¬ strued to signify quasi nos quid tale, aut dixerimus aut scripserimus *, intimating that their words had been mistaken, and that they had in truth said or written no such thing ? * Should a contrary interpretation be preferred, I do not think that it implies the conclusion that a false epistle had then been published in the apostle’s name. It will completely satisfy the allusion in the text to allow, that some one or other at Thessalonica had pretended to have been told by St. Paul and his companions, or to have seen a letter from them, in which they had said, that the day of Christ was at hand. In like manner as, Acts xv. 1. 24, it is recorded that some had pretended to have received instructions from the church at Jerusalem, which had been received “ to whom they gave no such commandment.” And thus Dr. Benson interpreted the passage, pnn 'btk d-goiTtrdcz/, prirz hia. <7rvzupa.rog, p'/)Ti 'kioz Xoyou, priTZ zTitrroX sjf, us h' wpuv, “ nor be dismayed by any revelation, or discourse, or epistle, which any one shall pretend to have heard or received from us.” 448 IIOIDE PAULINxE. CHAPTER XI. THE FIRST EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. From the third verse of the first chapter, 44 as I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus when I went into Macedonia,” it is evident that this epistle was written soon after St. Paul had gone to Macedonia from Ephesus. Dr. Benson fixes its date to the time of St. Paul’s journey recorded in the beginning of the twentieth chapter of the Acts : 44 And after the up¬ roar (excited by Demetrius at Ephesus) was ceased, Paul called unto him the disciples, and embraced them, and departed for to go into Macedonia.” And in this opinion Dr. Benson is followed by Michaelis, as he was preceded by the greater part of the commenta¬ tors who have considered the question. There is, however, one objection to the hypothesis, which these learned men appear to me to have overlooked; and it is no other than this, that the superscription of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians seems to prove, that at the time St. Paul is supposed by them to have written this epistle to Timothy, Timothy in truth was with St. Paul in Macedonia. Paul, as it is related in the Acts, left Ephesus 44 for to go into Macedonia.” When he had got into Macedonia, he wrote his Second Epistle to the Corinthians. Concerning this point, there exists little variety of opinion. It is plainly in¬ dicated by the contents of the epistle. It is also strongly implied that the epistle was written soon after the apostle’s arrival in Macedonia ; for he begins his letter by a train of reflection, referring to his persecutions in Asia as to recent transactions, as to dangers from which he had lately been delivered. But in the salutation with which the epistle opens, Timothy was joined with St. Paid , and consequently could not at that time be 44 left behind at Ephesus.” And as to the only solution of the difficulty which can be thought of, viz. that Timothy, though he was left behind at Ephesus upon St. Paul’s departure from Asia, yet might follow him so soon after, as to come up with the apostle in Macedonia, before he wrote his Epistle to the Corinthians ; that supposition is inconsistent with the terms and tenor of the epistle throughout. For the writer speaks uniformly of his intention to return to Timothy at Ephesus, and not of expecting Timothy to come to him in Macedonia : 44 These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly ; but if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself.” Ch. iii. 14, 15. 44 Till I come , give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.” Ch. iv. 13. Since, therefore, the leaving of Timothy behind at Ephesus, when Paul went into Mace¬ donia, suits not with any journey into Macedonia, recorded in the Acts, I concur with Bishop Pearson in placing the date of this epistle, and the journey referred to in it, at a period sub¬ sequent to the era up to which the Acts of the Apostles brings his history. The only diffi¬ culty which attends our opinion is, that St. Paul must, according to us, have come to Ephesus after his liberation at Rome, contrary as it should seem to what he foretold to the Ephesian elders, 44 that they should see his face no more.” And it is to save the infalli¬ bility of this prediction, and for no other reason of weight, that an earlier date is assigned to this epistle. The prediction itself, however, when considered in connexion with the cir ¬ cumstances under which it was delivered, does not seem to demand so much anxiety. The words in question are found in the twenty-fifth verse of the twentieth chapter of the Acts : 44 And now, behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more.” In the twenty-second and twenty-third verses of the same chapter, i. e. two verses before, the apostle makes this declaration : 44 And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befal me there : save that the Holy Ghost witnessetli in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me.” This 44 witnessing ” of the Holy Ghost was undoubtedly prophetic and supernatural. But it went no farther than to foretel that bonds and afflictions awaited him. And I can HORiE PAULINA. s 449 - very well conceive, that this might be all which was communicated to the apostle by extra¬ ordinary revelation, and that the rest was the conclusion of his own mind, the desponding inference which he drew from strong and repeated intimations of approaching danger. And the expression “I know,” which St. Paul here uses, does not, perhaps, when applied to fu¬ ture events affecting himself, convey an assertion so positive and absolute as we may at first sight apprehend. In the first chapter of the epistle to the Philippians and the twenty- fifth verse, 44 I know,” says he, u that I shall abide and continue with you all, for your fur¬ therance and joy of faith.” Notwithstanding this strong declaration in the second chapter and twenty-third verse of this same epistle, and speaking also of the very same event, he is content to use a language of some doubt and uncertainty : 44 Him therefore I hope to send presently, so soon as I shall see how it will go with me.” But I trust in the Lord that I also myself shall come shortly.” And a few verses preceding these, he not only seems to doubt of his safety, but almost to despair; to contemplate the possibility at least of his condemna¬ tion and martyrdom : 44 Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all.” No. I.—But can we shew that St. Paul visited Ephesus after his liberation at Rome ? or rather, can we collect any hints from his other letters which make it probable that he did ? If we can, then we have a coincidence. If we cannot, we have only an unauthorized suppo¬ sition, to which the exigency of the case compels us to resort. Now, for this purpose, let us examine the Epistle to the Philippians and the Epistle to Philemon. These two epistles purport to be written whilst St. Paul was yet a prisoner at Rome. To the Philippians he writes as follows : 44 1 trust in the Lord that I also myself shall come shortly.” To Phile¬ mon, who was a Colossian, he gives this direction : 44 But withal, prepare me also a lodging, for I trust that through your prayers I shall be given unto you.” And the inspection of the map will shew us that Colosse was a city of the Lesser Asia, lying eastward, and at no great distance from Ephesus. Philippi was on the other, i. e. the western side of the Aegean sea. If the apostle executed his purpose ; if, in pursuance of the intention expressed in his letter to Philemon, he came to Colosse soon after he was set at liberty at Rome, it is very impro¬ bable that he would omit to visit at Ephesus, which lay so near to it, and where he had spent three years of his ministry. As he was also under a promise to the church of Philippi to see them 44 shortly if he passed from Colosse to Philippi, or from Philippi to Colosse, he could hardly avoid taking Ephesus in his way. No. II.—Chap. v. 9. 44 Let not a widow be taken into the number under threescore years old.” This accords with the account delivered in the sixth chapter of the Acts. 44 And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Gre¬ cians against the Hebrews, because their widows icere neglected in the daily ministration.” It appears that from the first formation of the Christian church, provision was made out of the public funds of the society for the indigent widows who belonged to it. The history, we have seen, distinctly records the existence of such an institution at Jerusalem, a few years after our Lord’s asce’nsion; and is led to the mention of it very incidentally, viz. by a dispute, ot *which it was the occasion, and which produced important consequences to the Christian com¬ munity. The epistle, without being suspected of borrowing from the history, refers, briefly ' indeed, but decisively to a similar establishment, subsisting some years afterward at Ephesus. This agreement indicates that both writings were founded upon real circumstances. But, in this article, the material thing to be noticed is the mode of expression: 44 Let not a widow be taken into the number.”—No previous account or explanation is given, to which these words, 44 into the number,” can refer; but the direction comes concisely and unprepar¬ edly. 44 Let not a widow be taken into the number.” Now this is the way in which a man writes, who is conscious that he is writing to persons already acquainted with the subject of his letter; and who, he knows, will readily apprehend and apply what he says by virtue of their being so acquainted: but it is not the way in which a man writes upon any other occasion ; and least of all, in which a man would draw up a feigned letter, or introduce a supposititious fact *. * It is not altogether unconnected with our general purpose to remark, in the passage before us, the selection and G G 450 IIOIIJE PAULINA. No. III.—Chap. iii. 2, 3. “ A bishop then must he blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre ; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous ; one that riileth well his own house.” “ No striker That is the article which I single out from the collection as evincing the antiquity at least, if not the genuineness, of the epistle ; because it is an article which no man would have made the subject of caution who lived in an advanced era of the church. It agreed with the infancy of the society, and with no other state of it. After the govern¬ ment of the church had acquired the dignified form which it soon and naturally assumed, this injunction could have no place. Would a person who lived under a hierarchy, such as the Christian hierarchy became when it had settled into a regular establishment, have thought it necessary to prescribe concerning the qualification of a bishop, “ that he should be no striker ?” And this injunction would be equally alien from the imagination of the writer, whether he wrote in his own character, or personated that of an apostle. No. IV.—Chap. v. 23. “ Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.” Imagine an impostor sitting down to forge an epistle in the name of St. Paul. Is it cre¬ dible that it should come into his head to give such a direction as this ; so remote from every thing of doctrine or discipline, every thing of public concern to the religion or the church, or to any sect, order, or party in it, and from every purpose with which such an epistle could be written ? It seems to me that nothing but reality, that is, the real valetu¬ dinary situation of a real person, could have suggested a thought of so domestic a nature. But if the peculiarity of the advice be observable, the place in which it stands is more so. The context is this : “ Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins : keep thyself pure. Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities. Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after.” The direction to Timothy about his diet stands between two sentences, as wide from the subject as possible. The train of thought seems to be broken to let it in. Now when does this happen ? It happens when a man writes as he remembers ; when he puts down an article that occurs the moment it occurs, lest he should afterward forget it. Of this the passage before us bears strongly the appearance. In actual letters, in the negligence of real correspondence, examples of this kind frequently take place : seldom, I believe, in any other production. For the moment a man regards what he writes as a composition , which the author of a forgery would, of all others, be the first to do, notions of order, in the arrangement and succession of his thoughts, present themselves to his judgment, and guide his pen. No. V.—Chap. i. 15, Ifi. “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, 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 shew forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe in him to life everlasting.” What was the mercy which St. Paul here commemorates, and what was the crime of which he accuses himself, is apparent from the verses immediately preceding : “ I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me reserve which St. Paul recommends to the governors of that it may relieve them that are widows indeed. 'And to the church of Ephesus in the bestowing relief upon the the same effect, or rather more to our present purpose, the poor, because it refutes a calumny which has been insinu- apostle writes in the Second Epistle to the Thessaionians : ated, that the liberality of the first Christians was an “ Even when we were with you, this we commanded you, artifice to catch converts; or one of the temptations, how- that if any would not work, neither should he eat,” i. e. ever, by which the idle and mendicant were drawn into at the public expense. “For we hear that there are some this society : “ Let not a widow be taken into the number , which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, under threescore years old, having been the wife of one but are busy-bodies. Now them that are such, we corn- man, well reported of for good works ; if she have brought mand and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have quietness they work, and eat their own bread.” Could a washed the saints’ feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, designing or dissolute poor take advantage of bounty if she have diligently followed every good work. But the regulated with so much caution ; or could the mind which younger widows refuse.” (v. 9.—11.) And in another dictated those sober and prudent directions be influenced place, “ If any man or woman that believeth have widows, in his recommendations of public charity by any other let them relieve them, and let not the church be charged ; than the properest motives of beneficence ? 451 HORiE PAULINA. into the ministry ; who was before a blasphemer , and a persecutor , and injurious : but I ob¬ tained mercy , because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.’' (ch. i. 12, 13.) The whole quotation plainly refers to St. Paul’s original enmity to the Christian name, the interposition of Provi¬ dence in his conversion, and his subsequent designation to the ministry of the gospel; and by this reference affirms indeed the substance of the apostle’s history delivered in the Acts. But what in the passage strikes my mind most powerfully, is the observation that is raised out of the fact. 44 For this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.” It is a just and solemn reflection, springing from the circumstances of the author’s conversion, or rather from the impression which that great event had left upon his memory. It will be said, perhaps, that an impostor acquainted with St. Paul’s history, may have put such a sentiment into his mouth; or, what is the same thing, into a letter drawn up in his name. But where, we may ask, is such an impostor to be found ? The piety, the truth, the benevolence, of the thought, ought to protect it from this imputation. For, though we should allow that one of the great masters of the ancient tragedy could have given to his scene a sentiment as virtuous and as elevated as this is, and at the same time as appropriate, and as well suited to the particular situation of the person who delivers it; yet whoever is conversant in these inquiries will acknowledge, that to do this in a fictitious pro¬ duction is beyond the reach of the understandings which have been employed upon any fabrications thatffiave come down to us under Christian names. CHAPTER XII. THE SECOND EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. No. I. — It was the uniform tradition of the primitive church, that St. Paul visited Rome twice, and twice there suffered imprisonment; and that he was put to death at Rome at the conclusion of his second imprisonment. This opinion concerning St. Paul’s two journeys to Rome, is confirmed by a great variety of hints and allusions in the epistle before us, compared with what fell from the apostle’s pen in other letters purporting to have been written from Rome. That our present epistle was written whilst St. Paul was a prisoner , is distinctly intimated by the eighth verse of the first chapter : 44 Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner.” And whilst he was a prisoner at Rome , by the sixteenth and seventeenth verses of the same chapter : 44 The Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus; for he oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain ; but when he was in Rome he sought me out very diligently and found me.” Since it appears from the former quotation that St. Paul wrote this epistle in confinement, it will hardly admit of doubt that the word chain , in the latter quotation, refers to that confinement; the chain by which he was then bound, the custody in which he was then kept. And if the word “ chain” designate the author’s confinement at the time of writing the epistle, the next words deter¬ mine it to have been written from Rome : 44 He was not ashamed of my chain ; but when he was in Rome he sought me out very diligently.” Now that it was not written during the apostle’s first imprisonment, in which the Epistles to the Ephesians, the Colossians, the Philippians, and Philemon, were written, may be gathered, with considerable evidence, from a comparison of these several epistles with the present. I- In the former epistles the author confidently looked forward to his liberation from con¬ finement, and his speedy departure from Rome. He tells the Philippians (ch. ii. 24.) 44 1 trust in the Lord that I also myself shall come shortly.” Philemon he bids to prepare for him a lodging ; 44 for I trust,” says he, 44 that through your prayers I shall be given unto you.” (ver. 22.) In the epistle before us lie holds a language extremely different: 44 1 am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good g g 2 HORiE PAULINA. 4.52 fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith : henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day.” (ch. iv. 6—8.) II. When the former epistles were written from Rome, Timothy was with St. Paul; and is joined with him in writing to the Colossians, the Philippians, and to Philemon. The present epistle implies that he was absent. III. In the former epistles, Demas was with St. Paul at Rome : 44 Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas greet you.” In the epistle now before us: 44 Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is gone to Thessalonica.” IV. In the former epistles Mark was with St. Paul, and joins in saluting the Colossians. In the present epistle, Timothy is ordered to bring him with him, 44 for he is profitable to me for the ministry.” (ch. iv. 11.) The case of Timothy and of Mark might be very well accounted for, by supposing the present epistle to have been written before the others : so that Timothy, who is here exhorted “to come shortly to him,” (ch. iv. 9) might have arrived, and that Mark, 44 whom he was to bring with him,” (ch. iv. 11) might have also reached Rome in sufficient time to have been with St. Paul when the four epistles were written ; but then such a supposition is in¬ consistent with what is said of Demas, by which the posteriority of this to the other epistles is strongly indicated : for in the other epistles, Demas was with St. Paul, in the present, he hath “ forsaken him, and is gone to Thessalonica.” The opposition also of sentiment, with respect to the event of the persecution, is hardly reconcilable to the same im¬ prisonment. The two following considerations, which were first suggested upon this question by Ludo- vicus Capelins, are still more conclusive. 1. In the twentieth verse of the fourth chapter, St. Paul informs Timothy, 44 that Erastus abode at Corinth,” "e paaros efxeivcv iv K oplvdcp. The form of expression implies, that Eras¬ tus had stayed behind at Corinth, when St. Paul left it. But this could not be meant of any journey from Corinth which St. Paul took prior to his first imprisonment at Rome ; for when Paul departed from Corinth, as related in the twentieth chapter of the Acts, Timothy was with him : and this was the last time the apostle left Corinth before his coming to Rome ; because he left it to proceed on his way to Jerusalem ; soon after his arrival at which place he was taken into custody, and continued in that custody till he was carried to Caesar’s tribunal. There could be no need therefore to inform Timothy that 44 Erastus stayed behind at Corinth” upon this occasion, because if the fact was so, it must have been known to Timothy, who was present, as well as to St. Paul. 2. In the same verse our epistle also states the following article : 44 Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick.” When St. Paul passed through Miletum on his way to Jerusalem, as re¬ lated Acts xx., Trophimus was not left behind, but accompanied him to that city. He was indeed the occasion of the uproar at Jerusalem, in consequence of which St. Paul was appre¬ hended ; for 44 they had seen,” says the historian, 44 before with him in the city, Trophimus an Ephesian, whom they supposed that Paul had brought into the temple.” This was evi¬ dently the last time of Pauls being at Miletus before his first imprisonment; for, as hath been said, after his apprehension at Jerusalem, he remained in custody till he was sent to Rome. In these two articles we have a journey referred to, which must have taken place subse¬ quent to the conclusion of St. Luke’s history, and of course after St. Pauls liberation from his first imprisonment. The epistle, therefore, which contains this reference, since it appears from other parts of it to have been written while St. Paul was a prisoner at Rome, proves that he had returned to that city again, and undergone there a second imprisonment. I do not produce these particulars for the sake of the support which they lend to the testi¬ mony of the fathers concerning St. Paul’s second imprisonment, but to remark their consis¬ tency and agreement with one another. They are all resolvable into one supposition ; and although the supposition itself be in some sort only negative, viz. that the epistle was not written during St. Paul’s first residence at Rome, but in some future imprisonment in that city ; yet is the consistency not less worthy of observation : for the epistle touches upon HORiE PAULlNiE. 453 sanies and circumstances connected with the date and with the history of the first imprison¬ ment, and mentioned in letters written during that imprisonment, and so touches upon them, as to leave what is said of one consistent with what is said of others, and consistent also with what is said of them in different epistles. Had one of these circumstances been so de¬ scribed as to have fixed the date of the epistle to the first imprisonment, it would have involved the rest in contradiction. And when the number and particularity of the articles which have been brought together under this head are considered ; and when it is considered also, that the comparisons we have formed amongst them, were in all probability neither provided for, nor thought of, by the writer of the epistle, it will be deemed something very like the effect of truth, that no invincible repugnancy is perceived between them. No. II.—In the Acts of the Apostles, in the sixteenth chapter, and at the first verse, we are told that Paul 44 came to Derbe and Lystra, and behold a certain disciple was there named Timotheus, the son of a certain woman which was a Jewess, and believed ; but his father was a Greek.” In the epistle before us, in the first chapter and at the fourth verse, St. Paul writes to Timothy thus : 44 Greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled Avith joy, when I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice ; and I am persuaded that in thee also.” Here we have a fair unforced example of coincidence. In the history Timothy was the 44 son of a Jewess that believed in the epistle, St. Paul applauds 44 the faith” which dwelt in his mother Eunice ; in the history it is said of the mother, 44 that she was a Jewess, and believed of the father, 44 that he was a Greek.” Now when it is said of the mother alone 44 that she believed,” the father being- nevertheless mentioned in the same sen- tence, we are led to suppose of the father that he did not believe, i. e. either that he was dead, or that he remained unconverted. Agreeably hereunto, whilst praise is bestowed in the epistle upon one parent, and upon her sincerity in the faith, no notice is taken of the other. The mention of the grandmother is the addition of a circumstance not found in the history ; but it is a circumstance which, as well as the names of the parties, might naturally be expected to be known to the apostle, though overlooked by his historian. No. III.—Chap. iii. 15. 44 And that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, Avhich are able to make thee wise unto salvation.” This verse discloses a circumstance which agrees exactly with \\ T hat is intimated in the in the quotation from the Acts, adduced in the last number. In that quotation it is recorded of Timothy’s mother, 44 that she was a Jewess.” This description is virtually, though, I am satisfied, undesignedly, recognised in the epistle, when Timothy is reminded in it, 44 that from a child he had known the Holy Scriptures.” 44 The Holy Scriptures” undoubtedly meant the Scriptures of the Old Testament. The expression bears that sense in every place in which it occurs. Those of the New had not yet acquired the name ; not to mention, that in Timothy’s childhood, probably, none of them existed. In what manner then could Timothy have known 44 from a child” the Jewish Scriptures, had he not been born, on one side or on both, of Jewish parentage ? Perhaps he was not less likely to be carefully instructed in them, for that his mother alone professed that religion. No. IY.—Chap. ii. 22. 44 Flee also youthful lusts; but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” 44 Flee also youthful lusts!’ The suitableness of this precept to the age of the person to whom it is addressed, is gathered from 1 Tim. chap. iv. 12 : 44 Let no man despise thy youth.” Nor do I deem the less of this coincidence, because the propriety resides in a single epithet; or because this one precept is joined with, and followed by, a train of others, not more applicable to Timothy than to any ordinary convert. It is in these transient and cur ¬ sory allusions that the argument is best founded. When a writer dwells and rests upon a point in which some coincidence is discerned, it may be doubted whether he himself had not fabricated the conformity, and was endeavouring to display and set it off. But when the reference is contained in a single word, unobserved, perhaps, byjnost readers, the writer passing on to other subjects, as unconscious that he had hit upon a correspondency, or unso- licitous whether it were remarked or not, we may be pretty well assured that no fraud was exercised, no imposition intended. 454 HORiE PAUL INAL No. V.— Cliap. iii. 10, 11. “ But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, long-suffering, charity, patience, persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch , at Iconium , at Lystra ; what persecutions I endured; but out of them all the Lord delivered me.” The Antioch here mentioned was not Antioch the capital of Syria, where Paul and Bar¬ nabas resided u a long timebut Antioch in Pisidia, to which place Paul and Barnabas came in their first apostolic progress, and where Paul delivered a memorable discourse, which is preserved in the thirteenth chapter of the Acts. At this Antioch the history relates, that the “ Jews stirred up the devout and honourable women, and the chief men of the city, and raised persecution against Paul and Barnabas , and expelled them out of their coasts. But they shook off the dust of their feet against them, and came into Iconium .... And it came to pass in Iconium, that they went both together into the synagogue of the Jews, and so spake, that a great multitude both of the Jews and also of the Greeks believed; but the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles, and made their minds evil-affected against the brethren. Long time therefore abode they speaking boldly in the Lord, which gave tes¬ timony unto the word of his grace, and granted signs and wonders to be done by their hands. But the multitude of the city was divided ; and part held with the Jews, and part with the apostles. And when there was an assault made both of the Gentiles and also of the Jews, with their rulers, to use them despitefiillg and to stone them , they were aware of it, and fled unto Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and unto the region that lieth round about, and there they preached the gospel.... And there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who persuaded the people, and having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, sup¬ posing he had been dead. Howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him, lie rose up and came into the city: and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe : and when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and to Antioch.” This account comprises the period to which the allusion in the epistle is to be referred. We have so far therefore a conformity between the history and the epistle, that St. Paul is asserted in the history to have suffered persecutions in the three cities, his persecutions at which are appealed to in the epistle ; and not only so, but to have suffered these persecutions both in immediate succession, and in the order in which the cities are mentioned in the epistle. The conformity also extends to another circumstance. In the apostolic history Lystra and Derbe are commonly mentioned together : in the quotation from the epistle Lystra is mentioned and not Derbe. And the distinc¬ tion will appear on this occasion to be accurate; for St. Paul is here enumerating his persecutions : and although he underwent grievous persecutions in each of the three cities through which he passed to Derbe, at Derbe itself he met with none : “ The next day lie departed,” says the historian, “ to Derbe ; and when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra.” The epistle, there¬ fore, in the names of the cities, in the order in which they are enumerated, and in the place at which the enumeration stops, corresponds exactly with the history. But a second question remains, namely, how these persecutions were “ known” to Timothy, or why the apostle should recal these in particular to his remembrance, rather than many other persecutions with which his ministry had been attended. When some time, probably three years, afterward ( vide Pearson’s Annales Paulinas), St. Paul made a second journey through the same country, “ in order to go again and visit the brethren in every city where he had preached the word of the Lord,” we read, Acts, chap. xvi. 1, that, u when he came to Derbe and Lystra, behold a certain disciple was there named Timotlieus.” One or other, therefore, of these cities was the place of Timothy’s abode. We read moreover that he was well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium; so that he must have been well acquainted with these places. Also again, when Paul came to Derbe and Lystra, Timotlieus was already a disciple : u Behold, a certain disciple was there named Timotlieus.” He must therefore have been converted before. But since it is expressly stated in the epis¬ tle, that Timothy was converted by St. Paul himself, that he was “ his own son in the faith ;” it follows that he must have been converted by him upon his former journey into those parts: which was the very time when the apostle underwent the persecutions referred HORAE PAULINAE, 45 to in tlie epistle. Upon the whole, then, persecutions at the several cities named in the epistle are expressly recorded in the Acts : and Timothy’s knowledge of this part of St. Paul’s history, which knowledge is appealed to in the epistle, is fairly deduced from the place of his abode, and the time of his conversion. It may farther be observed, that it is probable from this account, that St. Paul was in the midst of those persecutions when Timothy be¬ came known to him. No wonder then that the apostle, though in a letter written long afterward, should remind his favourite convert of those scenes of affliction and distress under which they first met. Although this coincidence, as to the names of the cities, be more specific and direct than many which we have pointed out, yet I apprehend there is no just reason for thinking it to be artificial: for had the writer of the epistle sought a coincidence with the history upon this head, and searched the Acts of the Apostles for the purpose, I conceive he would have sent us at once to Philippi and Thessalonica, where Paul suffered persecution, and where, from what is stated, it may easily be gathered that Timothy accompanied him, rather than have appealed to persecutions as known to Timothy, in the account of which persecutions Timothy’s presence is not mentioned; it not being till after one entire chapter, and in the history of a journey three years future to this, that Timothy’s name occurs in the Acts of the Apostles for the first time. CHAPTER XIII. THE EPISTLE TO TITUS. No. I.—A very characteristic circumstance in this epistle, is the quotation from Epime- nides, chap. i. 12: “ One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretans are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.” K gtjng cu) ^/suirrcci, jtooxk yatrrigig a^you. I call this quotation characteristic, because no writer in the New Testament, except St. Paul, appealed to heathen testimony; and because St. Paul repeatedly did so. In his cele¬ brated speech at Athens, preserved in the seventeenth chapter of the Acts, he tells his audience, that “in God we live, and move, and have our being ; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.” —Tod yag kou yivo; lo'/u.tv. The reader will perceive much similarity of manner in these two passages. The reference in the speech is to a heathen poet; it is the same in the epistle. In the speech the apostle urges his hearers with the authority of a poet of their own ; in the epistle he avails himself of the same advantage. Yet there is a variation, which shews that the hint of inserting a quotation in the epistle was not, as it may be suspected, borrowed from seeing the like prac¬ tice attributed to St. Paul in the history ; and it is this, that in the epistle the author cited is called a prophet , “ one of themselves, even & prophet of their own.” Whatever might be the reason for calling Epimenides a prophet: whether the names of poet and prophet were occasionally convertible ; whether Epimenides in particular had obtained that title, as Gro- tius seems to have proved; or whether the appellation was given to him, in this instance, as having delivered a description of the Cretan character, which the future state of morals among them verified : whatever was the reason (and any of these reasons will account for the variation, supposing St. Paul to have been the author), one point is plain, namely v if the epistle had been forged, and the author had inserted a quotation in it merely from having seen an example of the same kind in a speech ascribed to St. Paul, he would so far have imitated his original, as to have introduced his quotation in the same manner; that is, he would have given to Epimenides the title which he saw there given to Aratus. The Other side of the alternative is, that the history took the hint from the epistle. But 456 HORiE PAULINiE. that the author of the Acts of the Apostles had not the Epistle to Titus before him, at least that he did not use it as one of the documents or materials of his narrative, is rendered nearly certain by the observation that the name of Titus does not once occur in his book. It is well known, and was remarked by St. Jerome, that the apophthegm in the fif¬ teenth chapter of the Corinthians, 44 Evil communications corrupt good manners,” is an iambic of Menander's: i'h'i^oua'iv y,6y\ of/iXiai xeixett. Here we have another unaffected instance of the same turn and habit of composition. Probably there are some hitherto unnoticed ; and more, which the loss of the original authors renders impossible to be now ascertained. No. II.—There exists a visible affinity between the Epistle to Titus and the First Epis¬ tle to Timothy. Both letters were addressed to persons left by the writer to preside in their respective churches during his absence. Both letters are principally occupied in describing the qualifications to be sought for, in those whom they should appoint to offices in the church; and the ingredients of this description are in both letters nearly the same. Timothy and Titus are likewise cautioned against the same prevailing corruptions, and in particular, against the same misdirection of their cares and studies. This affinity obtains, not only in the subject of the letters, which, from the similarity of situation in the persons to whom they were addressed, might be expected to be somewhat alike, but extends, in a great variety of instances, to the phrases and expressions. The writer accosts his two friends with the same salutation, and passes on to the business of his letter by the same transition. 44 Unto T imothy, my own son in the faith; Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia,” &c. 1 Tim. chap. i. 2, 3. To Titus, mine own son after the common faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour. For this cause left I thee in Crete.” Tit. chap. i. 4, 5. If Timothy was not to 44 give heed to fables and endless genealogies , which minister questions’’ (1 Tim. chap. i. 4); Titus also was to 44 avoid foolish questions , and genealogies, and conten¬ tions,” (chap. iii. 9); and was to 44 rebuke them sharply, not giving heed to Jewish fables.” (chap. i. 14.) If Timothy was to be a pattern (run-os), (1 Tim. chap. iv. 12) ; so was Titus, (chap. ii. 7-) If Timothy was to 44 let no man despise his youth,” (1 Tim. chap. iv. 12) ; Titus was also to 44 let no man despise him,” (chap. ii. 15.) This verbal consent is also observable in some very peculiar expressions, which have no relation to the particular char¬ acter of Timothy or Titus. The phrase, 44 it is a faithful saying” (mo-ros 6 Xoyos), made use of to preface some sentence upon which the writer lays a more than ordinary stress, occurs three times in the First Epistle to Timothy, once in the second, and once in the epistle before us, and in no other part of St. Paul’s writings ; and it is remarkable that these three epistles were probably all written towards the conclusion of his life; and that they are the only epistles which were written after his first imprisonment at Rome. The same observation belongs to another singularity of expression, and that is in the epi¬ thet * 4 sound” (vyuiivtov), as applied to words or doctrine. It is thus used, twice in the First Epistle to Timothy, twice in the Second, and three times in the Epistle to Titus, beside two cognate expressions, vyiaivovras rrj nlareL and \6yov uyirj. And it is found, in the same sense, in no other part of the New Testament. The phrase 44 God our Saviour,” stands in nearly the same predicament. It is repeated three times in the First Epistle to Timothy, as many in the Epistle to Titus, and in no other book of the New Testament occurs at all, except once in the Epistle of Jude. Similar terms, intermixed indeed with others, are employed in the two epistles, in enu¬ merating the qualifications required in those who should be advanced to stations of authority in the church. 44 A bishop must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach, not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre ; but HORiE PAULINA. 457 patient, not a brawler, not covetous; one that ruletli well his own house, having his chil¬ dren in subjection with all gravity 1 Tim. chap. iii. 2—4. “ If any be blameless , the husband of one wife , having faithful children, not accused of riot, or unruly. For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God ; not self-willed, not soon angry, not given to wine , no striker , not given to filthy lucre ; but a lover of hospitality , a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate j-.” Titus, chap. i. 6—8. The most natural account which can be given of these resemblances, is to suppose that the two epistles were written nearly at the same time, and whilst the same ideas and phrases dwelt in the writers mind. Let us inquire, therefore, whether the notes of time, extant in the two epistles, in any manner favour this supposition. We have seen that it was necessary to refer the First Epistle to Timothy to a date subse¬ quent to St. Paul’s first imprisonment at Rome, because there was no journey into Macedonia prior to that event, which accorded with the circumstance of leaving a Timothy behind at Ephesus.” The journey of St. Paul from Crete, alluded to in the epistle before us, and in which Titus “ w T as left in Crete to set in order the things that were wanting,” must, in like manner, be carried to the period which intervened between his first and second imprisonment. For the history, which reaches, we know, to the time of St. Paul's first imprisonment, con¬ tains no account of his going to Crete, except upon his voyage as a prisoner to Rome; and that this could not be the occasion referred to in our epistle is evident from hence, that when St. Paul wrote this epistle, he appears to have been at liberty ; whereas after that voyage, he continued for two years at least in confinement. Again, it is agreed that St. Paul wrote his First Epistle to Timothy from Macedonia: “ As I besought thee to abide still at Ephe¬ sus, when I went (or came) into Macedonia.” And that he was in these parts, i. e. in this peninsula, when he wrote the Epistle to Titus, is rendered probable by his directing Titus, to come to him to Nicopolis: u When I shall send Artemas unto thee, or Tycliicus, be dili¬ gent (make haste) to come unto me to Nicopolis: for I have determined there to winter.” The most noted city of that name was in Epirus, near to Actium. And I think the form of speaking, as well as the nature of the case, renders it probable that the writer was at Nico¬ polis, or in the neighbourhood thereof, when he dictated this direction to Titus. Upon the whole, if we may be allowed to suppose that St. Paul, after his liberation at Rome, sailed into Asia, taking Crete in his way; that from Asia and from Ephesus, the capital of that country, he proceeded into Macedonia, and crossing the peninsula in his pro¬ gress, came into the neighbourhood of Nicopolis ; we have a route which falls in with every thing. It executes the intention expressed by the apostle of visiting Colosse and Philippi as soon as he should be set at liberty at Rome. It allows him to leave “ Titus at Crete,” and “ Timothy at Ephesus, as he went into Macedoniaand to write to both not long after from the peninsula of Greece, and probably the neighbourhood of Nicopolis: thus bringing together the dates of these two letters, and thereby accounting for that affinity between them, both in subject and language, which our remarks have pointed out. I confess that the journey which we have thus traced out for St. Paul, is, in a great measure, hypothetic : but it should be observed, that it is a species of consistency which seldom belongs to false¬ hood, to admit of an hypothesis, which includes a great number of independent circumstances without contradiction. * “ A u oZv 'rovivr'ia’xo'rav xvt'riXyvrov tt vxi, /xix; yuvxixo; ctv'bgx, vntyxXiov, trcotpgovx, xtx/xiov, QiXoi'tvov, ^iljxxrixov' /xb ‘Toi.(>oivov, fxb 'rXrixrYiv' y/b xlx^^oxtfyi' xXX' ti'iuxb, a.yx%ov, xQiXapyupov -too idiou oixou xxXu; 'Tpoixrxyivov, rtxvx i^ovru gv V'Tortxyyj fAira, 'rcco’y]; (Tifcvornrog* "t “ E” ti; hrriv xvtyxXvro;, yix; yvvouxo; xvrr'txvx t%otv rfiirru, fy\ tv KX'TYiyoQtx xtrurixg, y xvuTorxxrx. A u yocg rov Itio’xotTov otviyxXvirov that, u; v dwdpeis) among you, doth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith V Gal. ch. iii. 5. “ For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath not wrought by me *, to make the Gentiles obedient, by word and deed, through mighty signs and wonders * i. e. “ I will speak of nothing but what Christ hath wrought by me or as Grotius interprets it, “ Christ hath wrought so great things by me, that I will not dare to say what he hath not wrought.” 470 IIOR/E PAULINA. (eV dvpdgei aijpelcov Ka\ re/jarcov), by the power of the Spirit of God : so that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.” Rom. ch. xv. 18 , 19 . 44 Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs and wonders and mighty deeds.” (et* o-^/xaoi? kcu repaai kul Sum/xei.) # 2 Cor. ch. xii. 12 . These words, signs, wonders, and mighty deeds (o-^eia, kcu repara , kcu 8vi mpeis), are the specific appropriate terms throughout the New Testament, employed when public sensible miracles are intended to be expressed. This will appear by consulting, amongst other places, the texts referred to in the note f; and it cannot be known that they are ever employed to express any thing else. Secondly, these words not only denote miracles as opposed to natural effects, but they denote visible, and what may be called external, miracles, as distinguished, First, from inspiration. If St. Paul had meant to refer only to secret illuminations of his understanding, or secret influences upon his will or affections, he could not, with truth, have represented them as 44 signs and wonders -wrought by him,” or a signs and wonders and mighty deeds wrought amongst them.” Secondly, from visions. These would not, by any means, satisfy the force of the terms, 44 signs, wonders, and mighty deedsstill less could they be said to be 44 wrought by him,” or 44 wrought amongst themnor are these terms and expressions any where applied to visions. When our author alludes to the supernatural communications which he had received, either by vision or otherwise, he uses expressions suited to the nature of the subject, but very different from the words which we have quoted. lie calls them revelations, but never signs, wonders, or mighty deeds. 44 1 will come,” says he, 44 to visions and revelations of the Lord and then proceeds to describe a particular instance, and afterward adds, 44 lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given me a thorn in the flesh.” Upon the whole, the matter admits of no softening qualification or ambiguity whatever. If St. Paul did not work actual, sensible, public miracles, he has knowingly, in these letters, borne his testimony to a falsehood. I need not add, that, in two also of the quotations, he has advanced his assertion in the face of those persons amongst whom he declares the miracles to have been wrought. Let it be remembered that the Acts of the Apostles described various particular miracles wrought by St. Paul, which in their nature answer to the terms and expressions which we have seen to be used by St. Paul himself. Here, then, we have a man of liberal attainments, and in other points of sound judgment, who had addicted his life to the service of the gospel. We see him, in the prosecution of his purpose, travelling from country to country, enduring every species of hardship, encoun¬ tering every extremity of danger, assaulted by the populace, punished by the magistrates, scourged, beat, stoned, left for dead; expecting, wherever he came, a renewal of the same treatment, and the same dangers, yet, when driven from one city, preaching in the next; spending his whole time in the employment, sacrificing to it his pleasures, his ease, his safety; * To these may he added the following indirect allu¬ sions, which, though if they had stood alone, i. e. without plainer texts in the same writings, they might have been accounted dubious ; yet, when considered in conjunction with the passages already cited, can hardly receive any other interpretation than that which we give them. “ My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, hut in demonstration of the Spirit, and of power : that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” 1 Cor. ch. ii. 4—6. “ The gospel, whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power.” Eplies. ch. iii. 7. “ For he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apo3- tleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me towards the Gentiles.” Gal. ch. ii. 8. “ For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assur¬ ance.’’ 1 Thess. ch. i. 5. 7 Mark xvi. 20. Luke xxiii. 1. John ii. 11. 23; iii. 2 ; iv. 48. 54 ; xi. 49. Acts ii. 22; iv. 3 ; v. 12 ; vi. 8 viii. 16; xiv. 3; xv. 12. Heh. ii. 4. HORiE PAULINiE. 471 persisting in this course to old age, unaltered by the experience of perverseness, ingratitude, prejudice, desertion; unsubdued by anxiety, want, labour, persecutions; unwearied by long- confinement, undismayed by the prospect of death. Such was St. Paul. We have his letters in our hands ; we have also a history purporting to be written by one of his fellow- travellers, and appearing, by a comparison with these letters, certainly to have been written by some person well acquainted with the transactions of his life. From the letters, as well as from the history, we gather not only the account which we have stated of him , but that he was one out of many who acted and suffered in the same manner ; and that of those who did so, several had been the companions of Christ’s ministry, the ocular witnesses, or pre¬ tending to be such, of his miracles, and of his resurrection. We moreover find this same person referring in his letters to his supernatural conversion, the particulars and accompanying circumstances of which are related in the history, and which accompanying circumstances, if all or any of them be true, render it impossible to have been a delusion. We also find him positively, and in appropriated terms, asserting that he himself worked miracles, strictly and properly so called, in support of the mission which he executed; the history meanwhile recording various passages of his ministry, which come up to the extent of this assertion. The question is, whether falsehood was ever attested by evidence like this. Falsehoods, we know, have found their way into reports, into tradition, into books; but is an example to be met with, of a man voluntarily undertaking a life of want and pain, of incessant fatigue, of continual j^eril; submitting to the loss of his home and country, to stripes and stoning, to tedious imprisonment, and the constant expectation of a violent death, for the sake of carrying about a story of what was false, and of what, if false, he must have known to be so ? END OF IIORA: PAULINA:. THE PRINCIPLES OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. TO THE RIGHT REVEREND EDMUND LAW, D. D. LORD BISHOP OF CARLISLE*. My Lord, Had the obligations which I owe to your Lordship’s kindness been much less, or much fewer, than they are; had personal gratitude left any place in my mind for deliberation or for inquiry; in selecting a name which every reader might confess to be prefixed with propriety to a work that, in many of its parts, bears no obscure relation to the general principles of natural and revealed religion, I should have found myself directed by many considerations to that of the Bishop of Carlisle. A long life spent in the most interesting of all human pursuits, the investigation of moral and religious truth, in constant and unwearied endeavours to advance the discovery, communication, and success, of both; a life so occupied, and arrived at that period which renders every life venerable, commands respect by a title which no virtuous mind will dispute, which no mind sensible of the importance of these studies to the supreme concernments of mankind will not rejoice to see acknowledged. Whatever difference, or whatever opposition, some who peruse your Lordship’s writings may perceive between your conclusions and their own, the good and wise of all persuasions will revere that industry, which has for its object the illustration or defence of our common Christianity. Your Lordship’s researches have never lost sight of one purpose, namely, to recover the simplicity of the Gospel from beneath that load of unauthorized additions, which the ignorance of some ages, and the learning of others, the superstition of weak, and the craft of designing men, have (unhappily for its interest) heaped upon it. And this purpose, I am convinced, was dictated by the purest motive; by a firm, and I think, a just opinion, that whatever renders religion more rational, renders it more credible; that he who, by a diligent and faithful examination of the original records, dismisses from the system one article which contradicts the apprehension, the experience, or the reasoning, of mankind, does more towards recommending the belief, and with the belief the influence of Christianity, to the understandings and consciences of serious inquirers, and through them to universal reception and authority, than can be effected by a thousand contenders for creeds and ordinances of human establishment. * Of Dr. Law, whose patronage so early and so mate¬ rially befriended the author of this volume, it is needless to add any particulars beyond those given in the sketch of his life, written by Paley. He was an excellent and liberal-minded prelate, who, in some of his opinions, was supposed to have been far from orthodox; to this Paley alludes, when he says, “ there was nothing in his elevation to his bishopric, which he spoke of with more pleasure, than its being a proof that decent freedom of inquiry was not discouraged and when Hone was tried for some parodies on the Litanj and the Creed, before Dr. Law’s son, the late Lord Ellen- borough, who betrayed on the occasion very considerable emotion, he pointedly alluded to the circumstance. He died in 1787, and left three sons, all of whom attained to eminence in their professions. John died in 1810 bishop of Elphin; George became in 1812 bishop of Chester; and Edward, the late Lord Ellcnborough, long presided as chief justice of the court of King’s Bench. —Ed. 476 DEDICATION. When the doctrine of transubstantiation had taken possession of the Christian world, it was not without the industry of learned men that it came at length to be discovered, that no such doctrine was contained in the New Testament. But had those excellent persons done nothing more by their discovery, than abolished an innocent superstition, or changed some directions in the ceremonial of public worship, they had merited little of that veneration, with which the gratitude of Protestant churches remembers their services. What they did for mankind was this : they exonerated Christianity of a weight which sunk it. If indolence or timidity had checked these exertions, or suppressed the fruit and publication of these inquiries, is it too much to affirm, that infidelity would at this day have been universal ? I do not mean, my Lord, by the mention of this example, to insinuate that any popular opinion which your Lordship may have encountered, ought to be compared with Transub¬ stantiation, or that the assurance with which we reject that extravagant absurdity, is attain¬ able in the controversies in which your Lordship has been engaged; but I mean, by calling to mind those great reformers of the public faith, to observe, or rather to express my own persuasion, that to restore the purity, is most effectually to promote the progress, of Christi¬ anity ; and that the same virtuous motive which has sanctified their labours, suggested yours. At a time when some men appear not to perceive any good, and others to suspect an evil tendency, in that spirit of examination and research which is gone forth in Christian countries, this testimony is become due, not only to the probity of your Lordship’s views, but to the general cause of intellectual and religious liberty. That your Lordship’s life may be prolonged in health and honour ; that it may continue to afford an instructive proof, how serene and easy old age can be made by the memory of important and well-intended labours, by the possession of public and deserved esteem, by the presence of many grateful relatives; above all, by the resources of religion, by an un¬ shaken confidence in the designs of a “ faithful Creator,” and a settled trust in the truth and in the promises of Christianity ; is the fervent prayer of, My Lord, Carlisle, Feb. 10, 1785. Your Lordship’s dutiful, Most obliged, And most devoted servant, WILLIAM PALEY. PREFACE* In the treatises I have met with upon the subject of morals , I appear to myself to have remarked the following imperfections;—either that the principle was erroneous, or that it was indistinctly explained, or that the rules deduced from it were not sufficiently adapted to real life and to actual situations. The writings of Grotius, and the larger work of Puffen- dorff, are of too forensic a cast, too much mixed up with civil law and with the. jurisprudence of Germany, to answer precisely the design of a system of ethics—the direction of private consciences in the general conduct of human life. Perhaps, indeed, they are not to be regarded as institutes of morality calculated to instruct an individual in his duty, so much as a species of law-books and law-authorities, suited to the practice of those courts of justice, whose decisions are regulated by general principles of natural equity, in conjunction with the maxims of the Roman code ; of which kind, I understand, there are many upon the Continent j\ To which may be added, concerning both these authors, that they are more occupied in describing the rights and usages of independent communities, than is necessary in a work which professes not to adjust the correspondence of nations, but to delineate the offices of domestic life. The profusion also of classical quotations with which many of their pages abound, seems to me a fault from which it will not be easy to excuse them. If these extracts be intended as decorations of style, the composition is overloaded with ornaments of one kind. To any thing more than ornament they can make no claim. To propose them as serious arguments, gravely to attempt to establish or fortify a moral duty by the testimony of a Greek or Roman poet, is to trifle with the attention of the reader, or rather to take it off from all just principles of reasoning in morals. Of our own writers in this branch of philosophy, I find none that I think perfectly free from the three objections which I have stated. There is likewise a fourth property observable in almost all of them, namely, that they divide too much the law of Nature from the * The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, was the first published of Paley’s larger works. It appeared in 1785, in one quarto volume, under the title of Ct Prin¬ ciples of Morality and Politics,” and, as we have noticed in his Life, p. 12, was immediately very popular, although no bookseller at first would undertake the publication ; and Paley was long too poor to run any risk himself. The correctness of some of Paley’s foundations for his theory of morals have been often, and in some few instances successfully, attacked; certain blemishes have been by very careful research detected ; but they are not of any great importance, nor would they be likely to he readily found without the reader set out on a voyage of discovery for that especial purpose : we shall not therefore detail them, since, if we did, we must enter, in his defence, into by far too long an argument for a moderate annotation. Persons who may be anxious for such an investigation, will find all these objections contained in professor Dugald Stewart’s “ Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind,” vol. 2. c. iv. s. 6, and his “ Philosophy of the active and moral Powers of Man,” vol. 1. p. 152; Gis¬ borne’s “Principles of Moral Philosophy,” p. 90—102 ; Dr. Pearson’s “ Theory of Morals,” and Dr. Brown’s ‘‘Lec¬ tures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind,” vol. 4, p. 91. ' A vindication of Paley against his objectors has also been published by, the Rev. Latham Wainwright. f There are some English courts which adopt, and are governed by the rules of the civil law; such are the Admi¬ ralty and Ecclesiastical courts, in which Doctors of civil law always practise as advocates. 478 PREFACE. precepts of Revelation; some authors industriously declining the mention of Scripture authorities, as belonging to a different province; and others reserving them for a separate volume : which appears to me much the same defect, as if a commentator on the laws of England should content himself with stating upon each head the common law of the land, without taking any notice of acts of parliament; or should choose to give his readers the common law in one book, and the statute law in another. u When the obligations of morality are taught,” says a pious and celebrated writer, “ let the sanctions of Christianity never be forgotten; by which it will be shown that they give strength and lustre to each other: religion will appear to be the voice of reason, and morality will be the will of God.*” The manner also in which modern writers have treated of subjects of morality, is in my judgment liable to much exception. It has become of late a fashion to deliver moral institutes in strings or series of detached propositions, without subjoining a continued argument or regular dissertation to any of them. This sententious apophthegmatising style, by crowding propositions and paragraphs too fast upon the mind, and by carrying the eye of the reader from subject to subject in too quick a succession, gains not a sufficient hold upon the attention, to leave either the memory furnished or the understanding satisfied. However useful a syllabus of topics or a series of propositions may be in the hands of a lecturer, or as a guide to a student, who is supposed to consult other books, or to institute upon each subject researches of his own, the method is by no means convenient for ordinary readers; because few readers are such thinkers as to want only a hint to set their thoughts at work upon; or such as will pause and tarry at every proposition, till they have traced out its dependency, proof, relation, and consequences, before they permit themselves to step on to another. A respectable writer of this class j' has comprised his doctrine of slavery in the three following propositions :— “ No one is born a slave ; because every one is born with all his original rights.” u No one can become a slave ; because no one from being a person can, in the language of the Roman law, become a thing, or subject of property.” “ The supposed property of the master in the slave, therefore, is matter of usurpation, not of right.” It may be possible to deduce from these few adages, such a theory of the primitive rights of human nature, as will evince the illegality of slavery: but surely an author requires too much of his reader, when he expects him to make these deductions for himself; or to supply, perhaps from some remote chapter of the same treatise, the several proofs and explanations which are necessary to render the meaning and truth of these assertions intelligible. There is a fault, the opposite of this, which some moralists who have adopted a different, and I think a better, plan of composition, have not always been careful to avoid; namely, the dwelling upon verbal and elementary distinctions, with a labour and prolixity pro¬ portioned much more to the subtlety of the question, than to its value and importance in the prosecution of the subject. A writer upon the law of nature whose explications in every part of philosophy, though always diffuse, are often very successful, has employed three long sections in endeavouring to prove that “ permissions are not laws. 1 ’ The discussion of this controversy, however essential it might be to dialectic precision, was certainly not necessary to the progress of a work designed to describe the duties and obligations of civil life. The reader becomes impatient when he is detained by disquisitions which have no other object Preface U Die Preceptor,” by Dr. Johnson f Dr. Ferguson, author of Institutes of Moral Philoso¬ phy; 1767. + Dr. Rutherford, author of “ Institutes of Natural Law.” PREFACE. 479 than the settling of terms and phrases; and, what is worse, they for whose nse such books are chiefly intended, will not be persuaded to read them at all. I am led to propose these strictures not by any propensity to depreciate the labours of my predecessors, much less to invite a comparison between the merits of their performances and my own; but solely by the consideration, that when a writer offers a book to the public, upon a subject on which the public are already in possession of many others, he is bound by a kind of literary justice to inform his readers, distinctly and specifically, what it is he professes to supply, and what he expects to improve. The imperfections above enumerated, are those which I have endeavoured to avoid or remedy. Of the execution, the reader must judge : but this was the design. Concerning the principle of morals it would be premature to speak: but concerning the manner of unfolding and explaining that principle, I have somewhat which I wish to be remarked. An experience of nine years in the office of a public tutor in one of the universities, and in that department of education to which these chapters relate, afforded me frequent occasions to observe, that in discoursing to young minds upon topics of morality, it required much more pains to make them perceive the difficulty, than to understand the solution ; that unless the subject was so drawn up to a point, as to exhibit the full force of an objection, or the exact place of a doubt, before any explanation was entered upon,—in other words, unless some curiosity was excited before it was attempted to be satisfied,—the labour of the teacher was lost. When information was not desired, it was seldom, I found, retained. I have made this observation my guide in the following work: that is, upon each occasion I have endeavoured, before I suffered myself to proceed in the disquisition, to put the reader in complete possession of the question; and to do it in the way that I thought most likely to stir up his own doubts and solicitude about it. In pursuing the principle of morals through the detail of cases to which it is applicable, I have had in view to accommodate both the choice of the subjects and the manner of handling them, to the situations which arise in the life of an inhabitant of this country in these times. This is the thing that I think to be principally wanting in former treatises ; and perhaps the chief advantage which will be found in mine. I have examined no doubts, I have discussed no obscurities, I have encountered no errors, I have adverted to no controversies, but what I have seen actually to exist. If some of the questions treated of, appear to a more instructed reader, minute or puerile, I desire such reader to be assured that I have found them occa¬ sions of difficulty to young minds ; and what I have observed in young minds, I should expect to meet with in all who approach these subjects for the first time. Upon each article of human duty, I have combined with the conclusion of reason the declarations of Scripture, when they are to be had, as of co-ordinate authority, and as both terminating in the same sanctions. In the manner of the work, I have endeavoured so to attemper the opposite plans above animadverted upon, as that the reader may not accuse me either of too much haste, or too much delay. I have bestowed upon each subject enough of dissertation to give a body and substance to the chapter in which it is treated of, as well as coherence and perspicuity : on the other hand, I have seldom, I hope, exercised the patience of the reader by the length and prolixity of my essays, or disappointed that patience at last by the tenuity and unim¬ portance of the conclusion. There are two particulars in the following work, for which it may be thought necessary that I should offer some excuse. The first of which is, that I have scarcely ever referred to 480 PREFACE. any other hook ; or mentioned the name of the author whose thoughts, and sometimes, possibly, whose very expressions, I have adopted. My method of writing has constantly been this : to extract what I could from my own stores and my own reflections, in the first place ; to put down that, and afterward to consult upon each subject such readings as fell in my way; which order, I am convinced, is the only one whereby any person can keep his thoughts from sliding into other men’s trains. The effect of such a plan upon the production itself will be, that, whilst some parts in matter or manner may be new, others will be little else than a repetition of the old. I make no pretensions to perfect originality : I claim to be something more than a mere compiler. Much, no doubt, is borrowed ; but the fact is, that the notes for this work having been prepared for some years, and such things having- been from time to time inserted in them as appeared to me worth preserving, and such inser¬ tions made commonly without the name of the author from whom they were taken, I should, at this time, have found a difficulty in recovering those names with sufficient exactness to be able to render to every man his own. Nor to speak the truth, did it appear to me worth while to repeat the search merely for this purpose. When authorities are relied upon, names must be produced ; when a discovery has been made in science, it may be unjust to borrow the invention without acknowledging the author. But in an argumentative treatise, and upon a subject which allows no place for discovery or invention, properly so called; and in which all that can belong to a writer is his mode of reasoning, or his judgment of probabili¬ ties ; I should have thought it superfluous, had it been easier to me than it was, to have interrupted my text, or crowded my margin, with references to every author whose sentiments I have made use of. There is, however, one work to which I owe so much, that it would be ungrateful not to confess the obligation ; I mean the writings of the late Abraham Tucker, Esq., part of which were published by himself, and the remainder since his death, under the title of “ The Light of Nature pursued, by Edward Search, Esq.” I have found in this writer more original thinking and observation upon the several subjects that he has taken in hand, than in any other, not to say, than in all others put together. His talent also for illustration is unrivalled. But his thoughts are diffused through a long, various, and irregular work. I shall account it no mean praise, if I have been sometimes able to dispose into method, to collect into heads and articles, or to exhibit in more compact and tangible masses, what, in that otherwise excellent performance, is spread over too much surface *. The next circumstance for which some apology may be expected, is the joining of moral and political philosophy together, or the addition of a book of politics to a system of ethics. Against this objection, if it be made one, I might defend myself by the example of many approved writers, who have treated cle ojfliciis hominis et civis , or, as some choose to express it, of the rights and obligations of man, in his individual and social capacity,” in the same book. I might allege also, that the part a member of the commonwealth shall take in poli¬ tical contentions, the vote he shall give, the counsels he shall approve, the support he shall afford, or the opposition he shall make, to any system of public measures, is as much a ques¬ tion of personal duty, as much concerns the conscience of the individual who deliberates, as the determination of any doubt which relates to the conduct of private life : that consequently * Abraham Tucker, the author of “The Light of Na- in 1774. Paley, who in the text does ample justice to ture,” was born in 1705, received his education at the his talents, was much indebted to his “ Light of Nature Grammar School of Bishop Stortford, and at Merton Col- but he honourably acknowledges, on most occasions, his lege, Oxfoid. He was oiiginally intended for the Bar, obligation, and lie has so very much improved upon the