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ON THE GENERAL DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE. 



Christian revelation affords the most clear and 

 satisfactory information, and the details which it 

 furnishes on these subjects are of the highest 

 moment, and deeply interesting to every inha 

 bitant of the globe. But ignorance, leagued 

 with depravity and folly, has been the cause 

 that the sacred oracles have so frequently been 

 treated with indifference and contempt; and 

 that those who have professed to recognise them 

 as the intimations of the will of Deity have been 

 prevented from studying them with intelligence, 

 and contemplating the facts they exhibit in all 

 their consequences and relations. 



In order to a profitable study of the doctrines, 

 facts and prophecies contained in the Bible, it 

 is requisite, in the first place, that a deep and 

 thorough conviction be produced in the mind, 

 that they are indeed the revelations of heaven, 

 addressed to man on earth to direct his views 

 and conduct as an accountable agent, and a 

 candidate for immortality. From ignorance of 

 the evidences on which the truth of Christianity 

 rests, multitudes of thoughtless mortals have 

 been induced to reject its authority, and have 

 glided down the stream of licentious pleasure, 

 u sporting themselves with their own deceiv- 

 ings,&quot; till they landed in wretchedness and ruin. 

 The religion of the Bible requires only to be 

 examined with care, and studied with humility 

 and reverence, in order to produce a full con 

 viction of its celestial origin ; and wherever 

 such dispositions are brought into contact with 

 a calm and intelligent investigation of the evi 

 dences of revelation, and of the facts and doc 

 trines it discloses, the mind will not only discern 

 its superiority to every other system of religion, 

 but will perceive the beauty and excellence of 

 its discoveries, and the absolute necessity of their 

 being studied and promulgated in order to raise 

 the human race from that degradation into 

 which they have been so long immersed, and to 

 promote the renovation of the moral world. 

 And, those objections and difficulties which pre 

 viously perplexed and harassed the inquirer will 

 gradually evanish, as the mists of the morning 

 before the orb of day. 



The evidences of Christianity have been ge 

 nerally distributed into the external and the in 

 ternal. The external may again be divided into 

 direct or collateral. The direct evidences are 

 such as arise from the nature, consistency, and 

 probability of the facts ; and from the simplicity, 

 uniformity, competency and fidelity of the testi 

 monies by which they are supported. The col 

 lateral evidences are those which arise from the 

 concurrent testimonies of heathen writers, or 

 others, which corroborate the history of Chris 

 tianity and establish its leading facts. The 

 internal evidences arise, either from the con 

 formity of the announcements of revelation to 

 the known character of God, from their aptitude 

 w&amp;gt; the frame and circumstances of man, or from 



those convictions impressed upon the mind oj 

 the agency of the Divine Spirit. 



In regard to the external evidences, the fol 

 lowing propositions can be supported both from 

 the testimonies of profane writers, the Scrip- 

 tures of the New Testament, and other ancient 

 Christian writings ; viz. 1, &quot; That there is sa 

 tisfactory evidence that many professing to be 

 original witnesses of the Christian miracles, 

 passed their lives in labours, dangers, and suf 

 ferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of 

 the accounts which they delivered, and solely in 

 consequence of their belief of those accounts ; 

 and that they also submitted, from the same 

 motives, to new rules of conduct.&quot; And, 2, 

 &quot; That there is not satisfactory evidence, that 

 persons pretending to be original witnesses of 

 any other miracles, have acted in the same man 

 ner, in attestation of the accounts -which they 

 delivered, and solely in consequence of their be 

 lief of the truth of these accounts.&quot; These pro 

 positions can be substantiated to the conviction 

 of every serious and unbiassed inquirer ; they 

 form the basis of the external evidence of the 

 Christian religion ; and, when their truth is 

 clearly discerned, the mind is irresistibly led to 

 the conclusion, that the doctrines and facts pro 

 mulgated by the first propagators of Christianity 

 are true. 



The following propositions can also be satis 

 factorily proved, viz. That the Jewish religion is 

 of great antiquity, and that Moses was its foun 

 der that the books of the Old Testament were 

 extant long before the Christian era; a Greek 

 translation of them having been laid up in th& 

 Alexandrian library in the days of Ptolemy Phi. 

 ladelphus that these books are in the main ge 

 nuine, and the hisiories they contain worthy of 

 credit that many material facts which are re 

 corded in the Old Testament are also mentioned 

 by very ancient heathen writers that Christi 

 anity is not a modern religion, but was professed 

 by great multitudes nearly 1800 years ago that 

 Jesus Christ, the founder of this religion, was 

 crucified at Jerusalem during the reign of Tibe 

 rius Caesar that the first publishers of this re 

 ligion wrote books containing an account of the 

 life and doctrines of their master, several of 

 which bore the names of those books which now 

 make up the New Testament that these books 

 were frequently quoted and referred to by nu 

 merous writers from the days of the apostles to 

 the fourth century and downwards that they are 

 genuine, or written by the authors whose names 

 they bear that the histories they contain are in 

 the main agreeable to those facts which were 

 asserted by the first preachers and received by 

 the first converts to Christianity that the facts, 

 whether natural or supernatural, which they 

 record, are transmitted to us with as great a de 

 gree of evidence (if not greater) as any histori 

 cal fact recorded by historians of allowed chac 



