under the same emblem of the day of Christ, and his coming in his judgments.* In some

of those places it is spoken of as being then very near at hand, and in the stile of our Saviour himself, as a topic of hope and comfort to the believers, under the harassing persecutions and cruelties they endured from the embittered hatred of the jews. Then, said he, shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud, with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. (Luke xxi. 27.)

How injurious an use might have been made of this alledged doctrine of St Paul, to the prejudice of the gospel, by the heretic and pagan opponents of the faith, at that early period, we may form some idea, from the ingenious application of it to the same purpose, by a very celebrated writer in our own time.

He builds a plausible theory, to

*The coming of the Lord. 1 Cor. i. 7: xv. 23. 1 Thess. jv. 15; 2 Thess. ii. 1, 8. James v. 7, 8. It draweth nigh. 1 Thess. v. 23. 2 Pet. i, 16: iii. 4, 12.

+ Mr Gibbon.

the discredit of the christian truth, and to the effect of denying its heavenly influence, upon the supposed idea of the dissolution of all things being immediately at hand: as if this false report of the apostle's doctrine had been the universal and well established belief of the church; and had never been publicly contradicted by St Paul himself, in a canonical epistle, read in all the churches. Upon this wholly imaginary ground, he ingeniously accounts for those bright examples of disinterested virtue and patient suffering, exhibited by the primitive christians; (the number of which he bestows considerable pains in laboring to diminish;) and that astonishing courage, with which they met death and torments, not only without reluctance, but even courting the crown of martyrdom with the greatest zeal and exultation. He conceives the christian world was in general worked up to an high degree of fanatical intoxication, and stimulated by the imagined nearness of the high prize of their calling; the end of the world being close at hand, and with it all the cares and speculations of this life being about to

end, they were absorbed and overwhelmed in the vast expectation of the approaching kingdom of Christ, and the consequent honors and rewards to be assigned to the martyrs, as so many allotments in the heavenly territory. Their superstition produced a general languor and apathy to the innocent enjoyments of life, and their spiritual ambition was of force sufficient to unloose the strongest holdfasts of nature, by presenting to their imaginations an interest still stronger than even that of life, and its dearest connections.

But a spirit of martyrdom such as he bonors by this description of it, is as inconsistent with the principles of the gospel, as it is with right reason, and the common feelings of nature: and the value of such an heroism and virtue as this, would indeed have been, as the historian would insinuate, of a very questionable estimation and worth, It is very certain however, that he most ungenerously, and without justice, accuses the primitive believers of entertaining this unnatural and false conception of their Master's precepts; who in

structs us, so far to give way to the tide of persecution, and to indulge the feelings of na ture, as to withdraw out of the way of danger, where it can be done with innocence.* And that he as erroneously appreciates the power of true faith, and the influence of the grace of God, (which our Saviour promises to the prayer of the faithful, in their pressing emergen cies,) and the extent of that obedience and rea sonable service which he expects from us, there can be no doubt. St Paul himself is an instance to the contrary of this opinion. He was as well apprized of the nature and high value of the crown of martyrdom, and as desirous to depart, and be with Christ,† as any ordinary believer could be; yet he took every prudent precaution for the preservation of his life, and surrendered it in faith and hope, at the time, and in the manner and circumstances unto which God had appointed him. Both he and St Peter were apprized beforehand of their approaching death, yet they both speak of that awful crisis with the calm

of

reflection and rational sensibility of a man like feelings with us, and not with the high flights and unintelligible extravagances of a disordered imagination.

The miracles and personal ministry of our Lord were then recent, and fresh in memory; 'and the same evidences of the faith were still exhibited by the apostles and apostolical men before the eyes of the believers. If ever" the power of the world to come," and the influence of a faith well-founded, can be supposed to produce their due effects upon a rational and devout mind, this surely was the time when they must have done so,

And in support of this argument, that the virtue and fortitude of the primitive christians, in so frequently braving the terrors of death in the most appalling forms, did not proceed from that dubious and suspected principle to which they have been ascribed; but were indeed the genuine fruit of the good seed sown by the heavenly husbandman, we have examples of the same kind, which are removed