vantage, which might induce men to renounce their native religions and embrace a form of worship so very different from every thing then practised. On the contrary, by becom-, ing Christians they denied themselves many sensual gratifications which their own religions indulged them in; they subjected themselves to a course of life rigid and severe, very dif ferent from that to which they had been accustomed, and which is so agreeable to the flesh. For at their baptism, or admission into the Christian society, they bound themselves to renounce the world with its pleasures, as a sacrifice necessary in such times of persecu tion, and to mortify the strongest inclinations of their nature. By renouncing the religion, of their country, they lost the affections of their relatives, separated themselves from their acquaintance, forfeited the enjoyments of private and social life, estranged themselves from their friends, and banished themselves from their families. Nor was this all; by embracing the gospel, they exposed themselves to still more terrible and positive evils. From the very beginning, the profession of Christianity was attended with the continual hazard of all manner of personal sufferings; and in proportion as this religion spread itself, the

evils accompanying the profession thereof multiplied. Nor is this wonderful; if they did such things to the master of the household, what could the servants expect? The profane and ecclesiastical historians tell us of ten furious persecutions carried on against the Christians in the early ages of the gospel, to compel them to relinquish their faith, in which they endured every species of torture and suffering which rage, cruelty and superstition could invent. St. Paul has given us such a description of them ás must shock the feelings of every man of feeling and humanity. The primitive Christians, instead of sitting under their own vine and their own fig tree, as we do, without any to make us afraid, "had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea moreover of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were "slain with the sword: they wandered about "in sheep-skins and goat-skins, being desti"tute, afflicted, tormented. They wandered "in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens "and caves of the earth.” Powerful inducements these to embrace a system of which they were the inevitable consequence! Nothing but over-bearing evidence, evidence such as

they could not by any means resist, was able to make men in those circumstances receive a religion which plunged them into such terrible misfortunes.

We may add, as connected with this part of the subject, that the constancy, firmness and patience displayed by the primitive martyrs, who submitted to such cruel sufferings rather than renounce their religion or blaspheme their Saviour, could not be the effect of human strength, but must have been produced by supernatural aid. Without such aid, the trials to which they were exposed were sufficient to overbear duty, reason, faith, conviction, nay and the most absolute certainty of a future state. It is natural to man to wish to be delivered from pain; and when they could have been so even by mental reservation, or any hypocrisy which was not without the possibility of being followed by repentance and forgiveness, we must conclude that those who preferred the reproach of Christ, and rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer for his namesake, must have been supported by some miraculous power. We know that St. Stephen, the first martyr for Christianity, was encouraged, in his last moments, by a vision of

that divine person for whom he suffered, and into whose presence he was then hastening. Let any man lay his hand calmly upon his heart, after reading those terrible conflicts in which the ancient martyrs and confessors were engaged, when they passed through such new inventions and varieties of pain as tired their tormentors; and let him ask himself, however zealous and sincere in his religion he may be, whether under such acute and lingering tortures, he could still have held fast his integrity and have professed his faith to the last, without supernatural assistance of some kind or other? When we consider that it was not an unaccountable obstinacy in a single man, or in any particular set of men, in an extraordinary juncture; but that there were multitudes of every age and sex, of different countries and conditions, who for near three hundred years together made this glorious profession of their faith in the midst of tortures and in the hour death, we must conclude, that, they were either of a different constitution from the present race of men, or that they had miraculous support peculiar to those times of Christianity, without which perhaps the very name of it might have been extinguished.

But farther, it is worthy of consideration that those who became converts to the gospel were not induced to do so by the force of arms, the influence of authority, the refinements of policy, or the power of great examples. They were prevailed upon to change their faith, merely by the preaching of a few illiterate mechanicks or fishermen, who were wholly destitute of the advantages of birth, education or fortune, and who, by condemning the established worship of all countries, were every where looked upon as the most flagitious of men. A particular stress has been laid upon this argument by our Lord and his Apostles. They direct us to consider the illiterate character and low station of the first preachers of the gospel, as a proof that, in the conversion of the world, they acted by the power of truth, and with the assistance of God. " We "have this treasure in earthen vessels, says “Paul, that the excellency of the power may "be of God and not of us." But the force of this argument will best appear, if we consider the conversion of the work, first, simply as an event implying a change of men's religious principles, and secondly, as attended with a thorough reformation of their manners.

St.