the family and person of Jesus, and the time when he appeared; but are thereby rendered incapable of being applied to any other per son,) were read in their synagogues every sabbath day, and sometimes read there by Jesus himself, in a manner which they could not misunderstand. (Luke iv. 21.)

Yet the jews, possessed of all these advan tages, and still continuing unprofitable under them, professed themselves to be persons of the most rational and teachable dispositions of in the world. They declared it was mat any ter of astonishment to them, how their forefathers could have had so great a want of dis cernment, and such an inflexibility of disobe dience to the divine ministry of the prophets; and above all, that they should have treated them with so much cruelty as they did: whereas, had it been their happiness to have been hearers of their admirable instructions, their behaviour would have been every thing the contrary to that of their fathers. (Mat. xxiii. 30.) Thus blind are mankind to the evil that is in themselves, and ready censurers

of others less worthy of blame: but Jesus never suffered them to go away without their full share of that reproof which their unwarrantable self-flattery deserved.

He told them, that bad as their fathers (by their own present acknowledgments) had been, yet they themselves were worse than their fathers and that they had nothing more to do than to fill up the measure of their own wickedness, that the judgments impending might fall heavily upon that "wicked and adulterous generation," on the account of both. That they had resisted a greater light than their fathers had enjoyed, and which would have been sufficient to have converted the most abandoned cities of the heathens, had it been offered to them; and that it "would therefore be more tolerable in the day of judgment for even those cities, than for them." That persons the most profligate and most despised, even harlots, and publicans, and sinners of every description amongst themselves, were easier to be wrought upon to repentance and faith, and should fare

better in the kingdom of heaven than they, who fancied themselves men of reason and discernment, and of the highest merits to wards religion.

This wilfulness in the blindness of the jews, reminds us of the similar complaint, and equal unreasonableness in preferring it, which is so frequently in the mouths of our modern sadducees and sceptics;" The want of an evidence sufficiently convincing."

They pretend that if the christian religion ever possessed such a degree of evidence of its truth, as a thinking man ought to be satis fied with, yet it has now been greatly weakened by the lapse of time, and the total cessation of that alledged intercourse with heaven, on which its foundations are said to have been laid; but which ought to have been equally afforded to all mankind, and in every age, had it ever really existed. That, as the ancient evidences have lost much of their force, for want of such a repetition, by a few well timed modern miracles, (of which, no doubt,

they must have the whole direction and choice, Matt. xvi. 4,) so in a little time more they must be wholly worn out.

But not to combat with arguments a strain of reasoning of this sort, very frequent in the sceptical writers, which carries an antidote along with it in its own absurdity, the allega tion is evidently false; the very contrary being easily demonstrable. The evidence of revealed religion does not depend upon the continual existence of miracles in the church, notwithstanding this is insisted upon by the church of Rome; but upon the certainty of those which were originally vouchsafed as its credentials, and other testimonies of a superior nature to even miracles themselves. This evidence is so far from being weakened by time, that, on the contrary, it derives its greatest strength from its antiquity. The sacred histories, in which the miracles of our Saviour and his apostles are recorded, bear evidence to themselves, in the many wonderful prophecies with which they are connected; whereby God is at this day still speaking to

mankind, and setting his own hand to those sacred writings, by the fulfilment of the phecies, some of them in every age.

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Indeed, it has been made a question, whether the evidence of present miracles, (which we know were withstood by the great majority of the jews, the best judges of that sort of testimony,) or that of prophecies delivered many ages ago, (but punctually fulfilled, in such a manner as those of the holy scriptures have been, and are continually fulfilling,) be the more credible and convincing testimony? But our Saviour has already decided the point in our favor, by affirming that it is not the want of proof that makes men unbelievers, but prejudice, and indisposition to attend to it, arising from many different causes; and in short, that the evidence ariseing from prophecies fulfilled, is so sufficient for every purpose, that they who can resist that, would equally resist the evidence of present miracles.*

Luke xvi. 31.