SECT. VII.-They were received by ancient Christians of dif- SECT. VIII. -The four Gospels, the acts of the Apostles, thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, the First Epistle of St. John, and the SECT. IX.-Our present Gospels were considered by the adver- saries of Christianity, as containing the accounts upon which SECT. X.-Formal catalogues of authentic Scriptures were pub- SECT. XI.—The above propositions cannot be predicated of those That there is not satisfactory evidence that persons pretending to be original witnesses of any similar miracles have acted in the same manner in attestation of the account which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of the truths of those accounts Conformity of the facts occasionally mentioned or referred to in Scripture, with the state of things in those times, as rep- That the Christian miracles are not recited, or appealed to, by early Christian writers themselves, so fully or frequently as CLAIMS OF DIVINE REVELATION. [EDITOR.] 1. THE Bible is a collection of sixty-three works, by upwards of thirty different writers, who belonged to the sam.e nation, and succeeded each other, at greater or less intervals, during a period of seventeen hundred years. 2. The claims of this collection are altogether peculiar. It professes to be literally a revelation from God to man—a supernatural, divine communication of that which man is required to believe concerning God, and of the duty which God requires of man. 3. If this claim can be satisfactorily established, then the authority of the Bible must be supreme and decisive in all matters of religious faith and practice. No system of philosophy which is at variance with it can be correct; no creed can be true and complete which does not embody all its doctrines; and no action can be right which it, either directly or by fair implication, condemns. 4. The importance of these points must be abundantly obvious. An infallible standard of truth in government, economics, and art, would be a most desirable thing; an infallible standard in moral and religious truth would be the most desirable of all things. It would determine the most momentous of all questions-namely, man's relation to time and eternity, to his fellow mortals, and to his Maker, God. 5. Infidelity-by which we mean unbelief in the proper divinity and supremacy of the Bible-assumes various forms. Of these, the one extreme would represent the prophets and apostles, with Jesus Christ at their head, as a band of im |