covered the existence and attributes of the true God; but then how unsteady and imperfect was their belief, even in this point! and when "they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor give him thanks, but became vain in their thoughts." Rom. i. 21. In short, they were so bewildered on the whole subject of religion, that Socrates, the wisest of them all, declared it "impossible for men to discover this, unless the Deity himself deigned to reveal it to them."* Indeed it was an effort of mercy, worthy the great and good God, to make such a revelation of himself, and of his acceptable worship, to poor, benighted, and degraded man. This he did, first, in favor of a poor afflicted, captive tribe on the banks of the Nile, the Israelites, whom he led from thence into the country of their ancestors, and raised up to be a powerful nation, by a series of astonishing miracles; instructing and confirming them in the knowledge and worship of himself by his different prophets. He afterwards did the same thing in favor of all the people of the earth, and to a far greater extent, by the promised Messiah, and his apostles. It is to this latter Divine legation I shall here confine my arguments: though, indeed, the one confirms the other; since Christ and the apostles continually bear testimony to the mission of Moses.

All history, then, and tradition prove, that in the reign of Tiberius, the second Roman emperor after Julius Cæsar, an extraordinary personage, Jesus Christ, appeared in Palestine, teaching a new system of religion and morality, far more sublime and perfect than any which the pagan philosophers or even the Hebrew prophets had inculcated. He confirmed the truths of natural religion and of the Mosaic revelation; but then he vastly extended their sphere, by the communication of many heavenly mysteries, concerning the nature of the one true God, his economy in redeeming man by his own vicarious sufferings, the restoration and future immortality of our bodies, and the final, decisive trial we are to undergo before him, our destined Judge. He enforced the obligation of loving our heavenly Father above all things, of praying to him continually, and of referring all our thoughts, words, and actions, to his di vine honor. He insisted on the necessity of denying, not merely one or other of our passions, as the philosophers had done, who, as Tertullian says, drove out one nail with another; but the whole collection of them, disorderly and vitiated as they are, since the fall of our first parents. In opposition to our innate avarice, pride, and love of pleasure, he opened his mission by teaching that, Blessed are the poor in spirit; Blessed are the

* Plato, Dialog. Alcibiad.

meek; Blessed are they that mourn, &c. Teaching, as he did, with respect to our fellow-creatures, every social virtue, he singled out fraternal charity for his peculiar and characteristic precept; requiring that his disciples should love one another as they love themselves, and even as he himself has loved them; he who laid down his life for them! and he extended the obligation of this precept to our enemies, equally with our friends.

Not

Nor was the morality of Jesus a mere speculative system of precepts, like the systems of the philosophers: it was of a practical nature, and he himself confirmed, by his example, every virtue which he inculcated, and more particularly that hardest of all others to reduce to practice, the love of our enemies. Christ had gone about, as the sacred text expresses it, doing good to all, Acts, x. 38, and evil to no one. He had cured the sick of Judea and the neighboring countries, had given sight ⚫ to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and even life to the dead; but, above all things, he had enlightened the minds of his hearers with the knowledge of pure and sublime truths, capable of leading them to present and future happiness: yet was he everywhere calumniated and persecuted, till at length, his inveterate enemies fulfilled their malice against him, by nailing him to a cross, thereon to expire, by lengthened torments. content with this, they came before his gibbet, deriding him in his agony with insulting words and gestures! And what is the return which the author of Christianity makes for such unexampled affronts and barbarity? He excuses the perpetrators of them! He prays for them! "Father, forgive them : for they know not what they do!" Luke, xxiii. 34. No wonder this proof of supernatural charity should have staggered the most hardened infidels; one of whom confesses that, "if Socrates has died like a philosopher, Jesus alone has died like a God!”* The precepts and the example of the master have not been lost upon his disciples. These have ever been distinguished by their practice of virtue, and particularly by their charity and forgiveness of injuries. The first of them who laid down his life for Christ, St. Stephen, while the Jews were stoning him to death, prayed thus with his last voice: "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge!" Acts, vii. 60.

Having considered the several systems of paganism, which have prevailed, and that still prevail in different parts of the world, both as to belief and practice, together with the speculations of the wisest infidel philosophers concerning them; and having contemplated, on the other hand, the doctrine of the New Testament, both as to theory and practice; I would ask

* Rousseau, Emile.

any candid unbeliever, where he thought Jesus Christ could have acquired the idea of so sublime, so pure, so efficacious a religion, as Christianity is; especially when compared with the others above alluded to? Could he have acquired it in the workshop of a poor artisan of Nazareth, or among the fishermen of the lake of Genezareth? Then, how could he and his poor unlettered apostles succeed in propagating this religion, as they did, throughout the world, in opposition to all the talents and power of philosophers and princes, and all the passions of all mankind? No other answers can be given to these questions, than that the religion itself has been divinely revealed, And that it has been divinely assisted in its progress throughout the world.

In addition to this internal evidence of Christianity, as it is called, there are external proofs which must not be passed over. Christ, on various occasions, appealed to the miracles which he wrought, in confirmation of his doctrine and mission; miracles public and indisputable, which, from the testimony of Pilate himself, were placed on the records of the Roman empire,* and which were not denied by the most determined enemies of Christianity, such as Celsus, Porphyrius, and Julian, the apostate. Among these miracles, there is one of so extraordinary a nature, as to render it quite unnecessary to mention any others, and which is therefore always appealed to by the apostles, as the grand proof of the gospel they preached; I mean the resurrection of Christ from the dead. To the fact itself must be added also its circumstances; namely, that he raised himself to life by his own power, without the intervention of any living person; and that he did this in conformity with his prediction, at the time which he had appointed for this event to take place, and in defiance of the efforts of his enemies to detain his body in the sepulchre. To elude the evidence resulting from this unexampled prodigy, one or other of the following assertions must be maintained; either that the disciples were deceived in believing him to be risen from the dead, or that they combined to deceive the world into a belief of that imposition. Now it cannot be credited that they themselves were deceived in this matter, being many in number, and having the testimony of their eyes, in seeing their master repeatedly during forty days; of their ears in hearing his voice; and one, the most incredulous among them, the testimony of his feeling, in touching his person and probing his wounds. Nor can it be believed that they conspired to propagate an unavailing falsehood of this nature throughout the nations of the earth; namely, that a person, put to death in

Tertul. in Apolog.

Judea, had risen again to life :-and this too, without any prospect to themselves for this world, but that of persecution, torments, and a cruel death, which they successively endured, as did their numerous disciples after them, in testimony of this fact; without any expectation for the other world, but the vengeance of the God of truth.

Next to the miracles wrought by Christ, is the fulfilment of the ancient prophecies concerning him, in proof of the religion which he taught. To mention a few of these: He was born just after the sceptre had departed from the tribe of Juda, Gen. xlix. 10; at the end of seventy weeks of years from the restoration of Jerusalem, Dan. ix. 24; while the second temple of Jerusalem was in being, Hagg. ii. 7. He was born in Bethlehem, Mic. v. 2; worked the identical miracles foretold of him, Isai. xxxv. 5. He was sold by his perfidious disciple for thirty pieces of silver, which were laid out in the purchase of a polter's field, Zech. xi. 13. He was scourged, spit upon, Isai. 1. 6; placed among malefactors, Isai. xxxiii. 12. His hands and feet were transfixed with nails, Ps. xxii. 16; and his side was opened with a spear, Zech. xii. 10. Finally, he died, was buried with honor, Isai. liii. 9; and rose again to life without experiencing corruption, Ps. xvi. 10. The sworn enemies of Christ, the Jews, were, during many hundred years before his coming, and still are, in possession of the Scriptures, containing these and many other predictions concerning him, which were strictly fulfilled.

The very existence, and other circumstances respecting this extraordinary people, the Jews, are so many arguments in proof of Christianity. They have now subsisted, as a distinct people, for more than four thousand years, during which they have again and again been subdued, harassed, and almost extirpated. Their mighty conquerors, the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Macedonians, the Syrians, and the Romans, have in their turns ceased to exist, and can nowhere be found as distinct nations; while the Jews exist in great numbers, and are known in every part of the world. How can this be accounted for? Why has God preserved them alone, amongst the ancient nations of the earth? The truth is, they are still the subject of prophecy, with respect to both the Old and the New Testament. They exist as monuments of God's wrath against them; as witnesses to the truth of the Scriptures which condemn them; and as the destined subjects of his final mercy before the end of the world. They are to be found in every quarter of the globe; but in the condition with which their great legislator Moses threatened them, if they forsook the Lord; namely, that he would remove them into all the kingdoms of the earth, Deut. xxviii. 25, that they should become, an

astonishment, and a by-word among all nations, ibid. 37, and that they should find no ease, neither should the sole of their foot have rest, ibid. 63. Finally, they are everywhere seen, but carrying, written on their foreheads, the curse which they pronounced on themselves, in rejecting the Messiah; "His blood be upon us and upon our children!" Matt. xxvii. 25. Still is this extraordinary people preserved, to be, in the end, converted, and to find mercy. Rom. xi. 26, &c.

SAMUEL CAREY.

LETTER II.-TO JAMES BROWN, ESQ., &c

PRELIMINARIES.

Winton, October, 20, 1801.

DEAR SIR

These

You certainly want no apology for writing to me on the subject of your letter. For if, as St. Peter inculcates, each Christian ought to be "ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh a reason of the hope that is in him," 1 Pet. iii. 15, how inexcusable would a person of my ministry and commission be, who am a "debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and the unwise," Rom. i. 14, were I unwilling to give the utmost satisfaction, in my power, respecting the Catholic religion, to any human being, whose inquiries appear to proceed from a serious and candid mind, desirous of discovering and embracing religious truth, such as I must believe yours to be? And yet this disposition is exceedingly rare among Christians. Infinitely the greater part of them, in choosing a system of religion, or in adhering to one, are guided by motives of interest, worldly honor, or convenience. inducements not only rouse their worst passions, but also blind their judgment; so as to create hideous phantoms to their intellectual eyes, and to hinder them from seeing the most conspicuous objects which stand before them. To such inconsistent Christians nothing proves so irritating as the attempt to disabuse them of their errors, except the success of that attempt, by putting it out of their power to defend them any longer. These are they, and O! how infinite is their number, of whom Christ says, "They love darkness better than light," John, iii. 16; and who say to the prophets, "Prophesy not unto us right things speak unto us smooth things," Isai. xxx 10. They form to themselves a false conscience, as the Jews did when they murdered their Messiah, Acts, iii. 17; and as he himself foretold that many others would do, in murdering his disciples, John, xvi. 2. And here permit me to observe, that I myself have experienced something of this spirit in my religious dis