mony: the occurrence of two or three unexceptionable witnesses is sufficient to prove any fact, that is in its own nature credible: and the resurrection of a dead person, by Omnipotence, and for the most important purposes, cannot reasonably be deemed incredible. The ancient prophets had predicted the resurrection of the Messiah;* and indeed every pre-intimation of his glorious and perpetual kingdom, when compared with the prophecies of his suffering and death, implied that he would rise again from the dead. His very enemies knew, that he had foretold his own resurrection within three days, and they took precautions accord. ingly: yet the body was gone, and they could give no rational account what was become of it. The whole authority was vested in them, and their reputation was deeply concerned: yet they rather chose to bear the open charge of the basest murder and prevarication imaginable, than to excite any further enquiry, by bringing either the soldiers who guarded the sepulchre, or the disciples who were said to have stolen the body, to a publick trial, though they had the latter in their custody. The eleven apostles (to whom a twelfth was soon added,) were a sufficient number of competent witnesses: being men of plain sense and blameless lives, they could not but identify the person of their Master whom they had so long attended; they unani. mously testified, that they had received the fullest assurances of their senses to his resurrection, and at

Ps. xvi. 10. Is. liii. 10-12,

length beheld him ascend up towards heaven, till he was received out of their sight; and they persisted invariably in this testimony for many years. They were evidently intimidated to a great degree by the crucifixion of their Lord, and backward to credit his resurrection; and they could have no possible secular motive to invent and propagate such a report; for, ignominy, sufferings, and death must be the probable consequences of espousing the cause of one, who had been crucified as a deceiver. In all other things, they appeared simple, upright, holy men: yet, if in this they deceived, the world never yet produced a company of such artful and wicked impostors; whose schemes were so deeply laid, so admirably conducted, and so extensively and permanently successful. For they spent all the rest of their lives in promoting the religion of Jesus, renouncing every earthly interest, facing all kinds of opposition and persecution, bearing contempt and ignominy, prepared habitually to seal their testimony with their blood; and most of them actually dying martyrs in the cause, recommending it with their latest breath as worthy of universal acceptation. It is likewise observable, that when they went forth to preach Christ as risen from the dead, they were manifestly changed, in almost every respect, from what they had before been; their timidity gave place to the most undaunted courage; their carnal prejudices vanished; their ambitious contests ceased, their narrow views were immensely expanded, and zeal for the honour of their Lord, with love to the souls of men,

seem to have engrossed and elevated all the powers of their mind. There were also many other competent witnesses to the same great event, even to the number of five hundred; these too concurred in the same testimony to the end of their lives; and neither fear, nor hope, nor dissension among themselves, induced so much as one of them to vary from the testimony of the rest: nay, the very apostates from christianity, however malignant, never openly charged the apostles with an imposition in this respect. A more complete human testimony to any event cannot be imagined: 'for if our Lord had shown himself, "openly to "all the people" of the Jews, and their rulers had persisted in rejecting him; it would rather have weakened than have confirmed the evidence: and if they had unanimously received him as the Messiah, it might have excited in others a suspicion, that it was a plan concerted for aggrandizing the nation.

But God himself was also pleased to add his own testimony to that of his servants; conferring on them the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and enabling them to impart the same miraculous powers to others, by the laying on of their hands. Thus the number of witnesses continually increased, the testimony was more widely dif fused, and no enemy could deny that they, who attested Christ's resurrection, performed most stupenduous miracles.* In consequence of this, the unlettered, unarmed, and despised preachers of a crucified

*Acts iv. 13-16.

and risen Saviour, prevailed against all the combined power, learning, wealth, superstition, and wickedness of the world, till christianity was completely established upon the ruins of Judaism and Pagan idolatry!— Here again, it may be demanded, when could the belief of such transactions have been obtruded on mankind, if they had never happened? Surely not in the age, when they were said to have been witnessed by tens of thousands, who were publickly challenged to deny them if they could! not in any subsequent age; for the origin of christianity was ascribed to them, and millions must have been persuaded, that they had always believed those things, which they had never till that time so much as heard of! We may then venture to assert, that no past event was ever so fully proved as our Lord's resurrection: and that it would not be half so preposterous to doubt, whether such a man as Julius Cæsar ever existed, as it would be to question whether Jesus actually arose from the dead.-What then do they mean, who oppose some little apparent variations in the account given of this event by the four Evangelists, (which have repeatedly been shown capable of an easy reconciliation;) to such an unparalleled complication of evidence that it did actually take place?

IV. The prophecies contained in the sacred Scriptures, and fulfilling to this day, prove them to be divinely inspired. These form a species of perpetual miracle, which challenges the investigation of men in every age; and which, though overlooked by the careVOL. V.

D

less and prejudiced, cannot fail of producing conviction proportioned to the attention paid to them. The prophecies of the Messiah, which are found in almost all the books of the Old Testament, when compared with the exact accomplishment of them, as recorded in the authentick writings of the Evangelists, abundantly prove them to have been written under the guidance of the Holy Spirit: whilst the existence of the Jews, as a people differing from all others upon the face of the earth, and their regard to these writings as the sacred oracles handed down from their progenitors, sufficiently vouch for their antiquity; though further proof in abundance is at hand, did brevity allow me to insist upon it. According to the predictions of these books, Nineveh has been desolated; * Babylon "swept "with the besom of destruction;'t Tyre is become a place to dry fishing nets in:‡ and Egypt "the basest "of the kingdoms," which has never since been able "to exalt itself among the nations," These and many other events, fulfilling ancient prophecies so many ages after they were delivered, can never be accounted for, except by allowing, that He, who sees the end from the beginning, thus revealed his secret purposes, that the accomplishment of them might prove the scriptures to be his word of instruction to mankind.

In like manner, there are evident predictions interwoven with the writings of almost every penman of

* Nahum i. ii. iii. † Isaiah xiii. xiv.

6 Ezek. xxix. 14, 15.

Ezek. xxvi. 4, 5.