circumftances peculiar to it, which made it more authentic than any other tradition in any other age of the world. The Chriftians, who carried their religion through fo many general and particular perfecutions, were inceflantly comforting and fupporting one another with the example and hiftory of our Saviour and his Apoftles. It was the fubject not only of their folemn affemblies, but of their private vifits and converfations. "Our virgins," fays Tatian, who lived in the fecond century, "difcourfe over their diftaffs on divine fubjects." Indeed when religion was woven into the civil government, and flourifhed under the protection of the emperors, men's thoughts and difcourfes were, as they are now, full of fecular affairs; but in the three first centuries of Christianity, men who embraced this religion, had given up all their interefts in this world, and lived in a perpetual preparation for the next, as not knowing how foon they might be called to it fo that they had little elfe to talk of but the life and doctrines of that Divine Perfon which was their hope, their encouragement, and their glory. We cannot therefore imagine that there was a fingle perfon arrived at any degree of age or confideration, who had not heard and repeated, above a thousand times in his life, all the particulars of our Saviour's birth, life, death, refurrection, and afcenfion..

XII. Efpecially if we confider, that they could not then be received as Chriftians till they had undergone feveral examinations. Perfons of riper years, who flocked daily into the church during the three first centuries, were obliged to pafs through many repeated inftructions, and give a ftrict account of their proficiency, before they were admitted to baptifm. And as for those who were born of Chriftian parents, and had been baptifed in their infancy, they were with the like care prepared and difciplined for confirmation, which they could not arrive at till they were found, upon examination, to have made a fufficient progrefs in the knowledge of Chriftianity.

XIII. We muft further obferve, that there was not only in those times this religious converfation among private Chriftians, but a conftant correspondence between the churches that were established by the Apostles, or their fucceffors, in the several parts of the world. If any new doctrine was started, or any fact reported of our Saviour, a ftrict inquiry was made among the churches, efpecially thofe planted by the Apoftles themselves, whether they had received any fuch doctrine or account of our Saviour, from the mouths of the Apoftles, or the tradition of those Chriftians who had preceded the present members of the churches which were thus confulted. By this means, when any novelty was published, it was immediately detected and cenfured.

XIV. St. John, who lived fo many years after our Saviour, was appealed to in these emergencies as the living oracle of the church; and, as his oral teftimony lafted the firft century, many have obferved that, by a particular providence of God, feveral of our Saviour's difciples, and of the early converts of his religion, lived to a very great age, that they might perfonally convey the truth of the Gospel

to

to thofe times which were very remote from the first publication of it. Of these, befides St. John, we have a remarkable instance in Simeon, who was one of the feventy fent forth by our Saviour to publifh the Gospel before his crucifixion, and a near kinfman of the Lord. This venerable perfon, who had probably heard with his own ears our Saviour's prophecy of the deftruction of Jerusalem, prefided over the church established in that city, during the time of its memorable fiege, and drew his congregation out of thofe dreadful and unparalleled calamities which befell his countrymen, by following the advice our Saviour had given, when they should fee Jerufalem encompaffed with armies, and the Roman ftandards, or abomination of defolation, fet up. He lived till the year of our Lord 107, when he was martyred under the emperor Trajan.

I. The tradition of the Apoftles fecured by other excellent institutions ;
II. But chiefly by writings of the Evangelifts.

III. The diligence of the Disciples and first Chriftian converts, to fend abroad thefe writings.

IV. That the written account of our Saviour was the fame with that delivered by tradition:

V. Proved from the reception of the Gospel by thofe Churches which were eftablished before it was written;

VI. From the uniformity of what was believed in the feveral Churches; VII. From a remarkable paffage in Irenæus.

VIII. Records which are now loft, of use to the three first centuries, for confirming the hiftory of our Saviour.

IX. Inftances of fuch records.

1. THUS far we fee how the learned Pagans might apprife them felves from oral information of the particulars of our Saviour's hiftory. They could hear, in every church planted in every diftant part of the earth, the account which was there received and preferved among them of the hiftory of our Saviour. They could learn the names and characters of those first miffionaries that brought to them these accounts, and the miracles by which God Almighty attefted their reports. But the Apoftics, and Difciples of Chrift, to preferve the history of his life, and to fecure their accounts of him from error and oblivion, did not only fet afide certain perfons for that purpose, as has been already fhewn, but appropriated certain days to the commemoration of those facts which they had related concerning him. The first day in the week was in all its returns a perpetual memorial of his refurrection, as the devotional exercises adapted to Friday and Saturday were to denote to all ages that he was crucified on the one of those days, and that he refted in the grave on the other. You may apply the fame remark to several of the annual festivals inftituted by the Apostles themselves, or at furtheft, by their immediate fucceffors, in memory of the most important particulars in our Saviour's hiftory; to which we must add the

Sacraments

Sacraments inftituted by our Lord himfelf, and many of those rites. and ceremonies which obtained in the moft early times of the church. These are to be regarded as ftanding marks of such facts as were delivered by thofe who were eye-witnesses to them, and which were contrived with great wifdom to laft till time should be no more. Thefe, without any other means, might have, in fome measure, conveyed to pofterity the memory of feveral tranfactions in the hiftory of our Saviour, as they were related by his Difciples. At least, the reason of these inftitutions, though they might be forgotten, and obfcured by a long courfe of years, could not but be very well known by thofe who lived in the three first centuries, and a means of informing the inquifitive Pagans in the truth of our Saviour's hiftory, that being the view in which I am to confider them.

II. But left fuch a tradition, though guarded by fo many expedients, fhould wear out by the length of time, the four Evangelifts within about fifty, or, as Theodoret affirms, thirty years, after our Saviour's death, while the memory of his actions were fresh among them, configned to writing that hiftory, which for fome years had been publifhed only by the mouths of the Apostles and Difciples. The further coufideration of these holy penmen will fall under another part of this difcourfe.

III. It will be fufficient to obferve here, that in the age which fucceeded the Apoftles, many of their immediate Difciples fent or carried in perfon the books of the four Evangelifts, which had been written by the Apoftles, or at leaft approved by them, to most of the churches which they had planted in the different parts of the world. This was done with fo much diligence, that when Pantænus, a man of great learning and piety, had travelled into India for the propagation of Chriftianity, about the year of our Lord 200, he found among that remote people the Gospel of St. Matthew, which upon his return from that country he brought with him to Alexandria. This Gofpel is generally fuppofed to have been left in thofe parts by St. Bartholomew, the Apoftle of the Indies, who probably carried it with him before the writings of the three other Evangelifts were published.

IV. That the hiftory of our Saviour, as recorded by the Evangelifts, was the fame with that which had been before delivered by the Apoftles and Difciples, will further appear in the prosecution of this difcourfe, and may be gathered from the following confiderations.

V. Had thefe writings differed from the fermons of the first planters of Chriftianity, either in hiftory or doctrine, there is no queftion but they would have been rejected by those churches which they had already formed. But fo confiftent and uniform was the relation of the Apoftles, that thefe hiftories appeared to be nothing else but their tradition and oral atteftations made fixed and permanent. Thus was the fame of our Saviour, which in so few years had gone through the whole earth, confirmed and perpetuated by fuch re

cords

cords as would preferve the traditionary account of him to after-ages; and rectify it, if at any time, by paffing through feveral generations, it might drop any part that was material, or contract any thing that was falfe or fictitious.

VI. Accordingly we find the fame Jefus Chrift, who was born of a virgin, who had wrought many miracles in Palestine, who was crucified, rofe again, and afcended into Heaven: I fay, the fame Jefus Chrift had been preached, and was worshipped, in Germany, France, Spain, and Great Britain, in Parthia, Media, Mefopotamia, Armenia, Phrygia, Afia and Pamphilia, in Italy, Egypt, Afric, and beyond Cyrene, India, and Perfia, and, in fhort, in all the islands and provinces that are vifited by the rifing or fetting fun. The fame account of our Saviour's life and doctrine was delivered by thousands of preachers, and believed in thousands of places, who all, as fast as it could be conveyed to them, received the fame account in writing from the four Evangelifts.

VII. Irenæus to this purpose very aptly remarks, that those barbarous nations who in his time were not poffeffed of the written Gofpels, and had only learned the hiftory of our Saviour from those who had converted them to Chriftianity before the Gospels were written, had among them the fame accounts of our Saviour which are to be met with in the four Evangelifts; an unconteftable proof of the harmony and concurrence between the Holy Scripture and the tradition of the churches in those early times of Chriftianity.

VIII. Thus we fee what opportunities the learned and inquifitive Heathens had of informing themselves of the truth of our Saviour's hiftory during the three firft centuries, efpecially as they lay nearer one than another to the fountain-head: befides which, there were many uncontroverted traditions, records of Chriftianity, and particuJar hiftories, that then threw light into these matters, but are now entirely loft, by which, at that time, any appearance of contradiction, or feeming difficulties, in the history of the Evangelifts, were fully cleared up and explained; though we meet with fewer appearances of this nature in the hiftory of our Saviour, as related by the four Evangelifts, than in the accounts of any other perfon, published by fuch a number of different hiftorians who lived at so great a distance from the present age.

IX. Among thofe records which are loft, and were of great ufe to the primitive Chriftians, is the letter to Tiberius, which I have already mentioned; that of Marcus Aurelius, which I fhall take notice of hereafter; the writings of Hegefippus, who had drawn down the hiftory of Chriftianity to his own time, which was not beyond the middle of the fecond century; the genuine Sibylline oracles, which in the first ages of the church were easily distinguished from the spurious; the records preferved in particular churches, with many others of the fame nature.

SECTION

1. The fight of miracles in thofe ages, a further confirmation of Pagan philofophers in the Chriftian faith.

II. The credibility of fuch miracles.

III. A particular inflance.

IV. Martyrdom, why confidered as a standing miracle.

V. Primitive Christians thought many of the martyrs were fupported by a miraculous power.

VI. Proved from the nature of their fufferings.

VII. How martyrs further induced the Pagans to embrace Christianity.

I. THERE were other means, which I find had a great influence on the learned of the three first centuries to create and confirm in them the belief of our bleffed Saviour's hiftory, which ought not to be paffed over in filence. The firft was, the opportunity they enjoyed of examining those miracles which were on feveral occafions performed by Chriftians, and appeared in the church, more or lefs, during thefe first ages of Chriftianity. Thefe had great weight with the men I am now fpeaking of, who, from learned Pagans, became Fathers of the church; for they frquently boaft of them in their writings, as atteftations given by God himself to the truth of their religion.

II. At the fame time that thefe learned men declare how difingenuous, bafe, and wicked, it would be, how much beneath the dig nity of philofophy, and contrary to the precepts of Chriftianity, to utter falfehoods or forgeries in the fupport of a caufe, though never fo juft in itself, they confidently affert this miraculous power, which then fubfifted in the church, nay, tell us that they themselves had been eye-witneffes of it at feveral times, and in feveral inftances; nay, appeal to the Heathens themselves for the truth of feveral facts they relate; nay, challenge them to be present at their assemblies, and fatisfy themselves, if they doubt of it; nay, we find that Pagan authors have in fome inftances confeffed this miraculous power.

III. The letter of Marcus Aurelius, whofe army was preferved by a refreshing shower, at the fame time that his enemies were difcomfited by a ftorm of lightning, and which the Heathen hiftorians themselves allow to have been fupernatural and the effect of magic; I fay, this letter, which afcribed this unexpected affiftance to the prayers of the Chriftians who then ferved in the army, would have been thought an unquestionable teftimony of the miraculous power [ am fpeaking of, had it been ftill preferved. It is fufficient for me in this place to take notice, that this was one of those miracles which had its influence on the learned converts, because it is related by Tertullian, and the very letter appealed to. When these learned men faw fickness and frenzy cured, the dead raised, the oracles put to filence, the dæmons and evil fpirits forced to confefs themselves no gods, by perfons who only made use of prayer and adjurations in the name of their crucified Saviour; how could they doubt of their Saviour's power on the like occafions, as reprefented to them

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