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In fact, the proof of christianity supplies the only probable method of accounting for past and present appearances, and therefore what a true philosopher, whose object it is to inquire into the causes of things, will adopt, in preference to any other.

It was, however, you clearly see, of the greatest advantage to the evidence of the truth of christianity in distant ages, that the bulk of the Jewish nation should from the beginning have been hostile to it; while at the same time the belief of such numbers of them, prejudiced as they must all have been against it, is an abundant proof of its truth. But when, by the long continued enmity of the Jews to the christians, it shall be sufficiently evident, that it was no scheme of that nation in general, and that, so far from giving it any aid in its infant state, they discountenanced it as much as it was in their power to do it; if ever they should be converted to christianity, before or after their return to their own country (both which events are foretold in the scriptures) it will be such a clear fulfilment of prophecy, as it seems probable that no power of incredulity will be able to resist; and then, as Paul says, Rom. xi. 15. If the casting away of the Jews be the reconciling of the world,

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what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?

I shall conclude this part of my discourse with ' observing, that the truth of christianity is founded. upon plain facts, such as any persons who had the use of their senses might be judges of. Opi. nions of other kinds men may become so fully pers. suaded of, as even to die for them, as well as christians have done for their religion; but then the nature and ground of their faith have been different; they having been either misled by an implicit faith in persons who they thought could not mislead them, or by reasoning wrong. That Maho met, for example, or Swedenborg, had divine mis sions, many might be induced to believe on their own confident assertions, having a good opinion of the men; or they might imagine that the conquests of Mahomet and his followers, could not have been so great and so rapid, if his pretensions had not been well founded. But is this such kind of evidence as that on which we believe the truth of christianity, which neither requires that implicit faith be given to any person, nor any reasoning, except the 'plainest of all, viz. that if any person do such works as God only could enable him to do, he must be empowered by God to do them, and

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the evidence of their own senses that such works were done? The truth of christianity rests on the evidence of such visible marks of divine power as the instant curing of the most dangerous disor ders, and the raising of persons, and especially of Jesus himself, from a state of actual death,, with respect to which men who had only eyes, ears and other natural senses, could not possibly be deceiv ed; whereas no visible miracle of any kind was so much as pretended to by either Mahomet or Swedenborg.

We also see the great difference of the ground of belief in these cases in the time that was requisite Mahomet was several to produce their effect.

years in persuading any besides a very few persons, particularly connected with him, and who had a prospect of being gainers by his success, of his divine mission, and it was thirteen years before he had followers enough to venture to take the field with them, so as to attack a caravan, to which they were led by the hope of plunder. As to Swedenborg, though he died several years ago, his followers are only just now beginning to make themselves conspicuous. On the contrary, it is evident that Jesus might, if he had been so disposed, have mustered as large an army as he chose within a month

month or two after he appeared in a public cha

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Some are so incredulous as to say, that, admit-ting all the facts recited in the gospel history, viz. that the apostles, and other disciples of Jesus, had no doubt of his resurrection, and that their previ ous incredulity was overcome by the most satisfactory evidence; yet that it was more probable that their senses, that of feeling, as well as those of seeing and hearing, were repeatedly imposed upon, than that there should have been a proper resurrection of a man who had been dead. But such a deception as this could not have been effected without a miracle, and for what end could such a miracle have been wrought? As it had all the ef fect of a real resurrection, it is liable to all the same: objections, and therefore if the one was produced,, the other might be also..

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If any person will say either that the appearances recorded in the New Testament are no proofs of a real resurrection, or (which has also been said) that the real resurrection of Jesus would be no proof of his divine mission, and of the truth of his religion, so that we could not thence infer the certainty of our own resurrection, they must be so constituted, as that no evidence whatever can pro

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duce that conviction in their minds. The Divine Being himself (and I must in this argument sup pose that there is such a Being) could not do it. For all that he could do to attest the divine mission of any person could only be his enabling him to work miracles, or to do such things as only he himself, the author of nature, could do. But no person, in the age of the apostles, or any subsequent one, ever believed the facts, and doubted the conclusion; so that the miracles were fully adéquate to the purpose of them, and since all men are no doubt constituted alike, the present objectors must be under the influence of a prejudice that nothing can overcome, and must be a case exactly similar to insanity.

I now proceed to shew that the solution of such difficulties as these, respecting the truth of revealed religion, may assist those who have similar difficulties with respect to natural religion; and all great moral truths have, directly or indirectly, a connexion with each other.

Now it seems to be impossible for any person to be convinced by historical evidence, which is the most intelligible of all evidence whatever, of the miracles, the death, and resurrection of Christ, and at the same time to have any doubt of the be

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