stt 



CHRISTIANITY. 



tory. It he a Gentile ? The tincerity of hit testimony 

 it approved by the persecution!, the sufferings, the dan- 

 nd often the certainty of martyrdom, which the 

 profcttion of Christianity incurred. Is he a Jew ? The 

 sincerity of kit testimony it approved by all these i 

 c*t, and in addition to them by this well known fact, tlut 

 the faith and doctrine of Christianity was in the highest 

 degree repugnant to the withes and prejudices of that 

 people. It ought never to be forgotten, that in as far as 

 Jcwt are concerned, Christianity does not owe a Miiglc 

 proselyte to hi doctrine*, but to the power and credit of 

 in evidence*, and that Judea wat the chief theatre on 

 which these evidences were exhibited. It cannot be too 

 often repeated, that these evidences rett not upon argu- 

 tnentt but upon facts, and that the time, and the place, 

 and the circumtnce, rendered these facts accessible to 

 the enquiries of all who chose to be at the trouble of this 

 examination. And there can be no doubt that this 

 trouble was taken, whether we reflect on the nature of 

 the Christian faith, as being to offensive to the pride and 

 bigotry of the Jewish people, or whether we reflect on the 

 consequences of embracing it, which were derision, and ha- 

 tred, and banishment, and death. We may be sure, that a 

 step which involved in it such painful sacrifices, would not 

 be entered into upon light and insufficient grounds. In the 

 sacrifices they made, the Jewish converts gave every evi- 

 dence of having delivered an honest testimony in favour 

 of the Christian miracles ; and when we reflect, that 

 many of them must have been eye-witnesses, and all of 

 them had it in their power to verify these miracles, by con- 

 versation and correspondence with bye-standers, there 

 can be no doubt, that it was not merely an honest, but a 

 competent testimony. There is no fact better establish- 

 ed, than that many thousands among the Jews believed 

 in Jesus and his apostles ; and we have therefore to allege 

 their conversion, as a strong additional confirmation to the 

 written testimony of the original historians. 



8.5. One of the pcpular objections against the truth of 

 thcChristian miracles, is the general infidelity of the Jewish 

 th general people. We are convinced, that at the moment of pro- 

 '' posing this objection, an actual delusion exists in the 

 mind of the infidel. In his conception, the Jews and the 

 Christians stand opposed to each other. In the belief 

 of the latter, he sees nothing but a party or an interested 

 testimony, and in the unbelief of the former, he sees a 

 whole people persevering in their antient faith, and re- 

 sisting the new faith, on the ground of its^nsufficicnt evi- 

 dences. He forgets all the while, that the testimony of 

 a great many of these Christians, is in fact the testimony 

 ofJews. He only attends to them in their present capa- 

 city. He contemplates them in the light of Christians, 

 and annexes to them all that suspicion and incredulity 

 which are generally annexed to the testimony of an inte- 

 rested party. He is aware of what they are at present, 

 Christians and defenders of Christianity ; but he has lost 

 sight of their original situation, and is totally unmindful 

 of this circumstance, that in their transition from Judaism 

 to Christianity, they have given him the very evidence he 

 it in quest of. Had another thousand of these Jews re- 

 nounced the faith of their ancestors, and embraced the 

 religion of Jesus, they would have been equivalent to a 

 thousand additional testimonies in favour of Christianity, 

 and testimonies too of the strongest and most nniotpicious 

 kind, that can well be imagined. But this evidence 

 would make no impression on the mind of an infidel, and 

 the strength of it it disguised, even fiom the eye* of the 

 1 Thcte thousand, in the moment of their con- 



version, 1< w the appellation of Jews, and merge into the 

 ame and ' ..clioii of Chribtiaus. The Jews, though 



Th objec- 

 tion a* lo 



ik* Jew* 



. .. 



diminished in number, retain the national &pptll->iioa; and f! 



. ninacy with which they persevere in the belief of ty. 

 their ancestors, is still looked upon as the adverse te.-ii- ^""""Y"^*^ 

 mony of an entire people, i is one of that peo- 



ple continue* a Jew, iii- t< looked upon as a 



serious impediment in the way of th. ' evidences. 



But the moment he becomes a Christian, his motives are 

 contemplated with distr: , one of the obnoxious 



and suspected party. The mind carries a only 



to what he is, and not to what he has bcrn. It i verlookt 

 the change of sentiment, and forgets, that in I!K renun- 

 ciation of old habits, and old prejudices, in dcl'.ince to 

 sufferings and disgrace, in attachment to a religion so 

 repugnant to the pride and bigotry of their n.iliun, and 

 above all, in their submission to a system of docirinct 

 which rested its authority on the miracles of their own 

 time, and their own remembrance, every Jewish con. 

 vert gives the most decisive testimony which man can 

 give for the truth and divinity of our religion. 



86. But why then, says the infidel, did they not all be- 

 lieve ? Had the miracles of the gospel been true, we 

 do not see how human nature could have held out against 

 an evidence so striking and so extraordinary ; nor can we 

 at all enter into the obstinacy of that belief which is as- 

 cribed to the majority of the Jewish people, and which 

 led them to shut their eyes against a testimony, that no 

 man of common sense, we think, could have resisted? 



87- Many Christian writers have attempted to resolve 

 this difficulty, and to prove that the infidelity of the Jews, 

 in spite of the miracles which they saw, is perfectly con- 

 sistent with the known principles of human nature. For 

 this purpose, they have enlarged, with much force and 

 plausibility, on the strength and inveteracy of the Jew- 

 ish prejudices on the bewildering influence of religious 

 bigotry upon the understanding of men on the woeful 

 disappointment which Christianity offered to the pride 

 and interests of the nation on the selfishness of the 

 priesthood and on the facility with which they might 

 turn a blind and fanatical multitude, who had been train- 

 ed, by their earliest habits, to follow and to revere them. 



88. In the gospel history itself, we have a very consistent 

 account at least of the Jewish opposition to thechiims of our 

 Saviour. We see the deeply wounded pride of a nation, 

 that felt itself disgraced by the loss of its independence. 

 We see the arrogance of its peculiar and exclusive claims 

 to the favour of the Almighty. We see the anticipation 

 of a great 'prince, who was to deliver them from the 

 power and subjection of their enemies. We sec their in- 

 solent contempt for the people of other countries, and 

 the foullest scorn that they should be admitted to an 

 equality with themselves in the hcnours and benefits of 

 a revelation from heaven. We may easily conceive, how 

 much the doctrine of Christ and his apostles was calcu- 

 lated to gall, and irritate, and disappoint them ; huw it 

 must have mortified their national vanity ; how it must 

 have alarmed the jealousy of an artful and interested 

 priesthood ; and how it must have scandalized the great 

 body of the people, by the liberality with which it ad- 

 dressed itself to all men, and to all nations, and raised 

 loan elevation with themselves, those whom thefirmcotha- 

 bits and prejudices of their country had led them to con*, 

 template under all the disgrace and ignominy of outcasts. 



&!). Accordingly we know, in fact, that bitterness, and 

 resentment, and wounded pride, lay at the bottom of a 

 great deal of the opposition which Christianity expe- 

 ricncul from the Jewish people. In the New Testament 

 history itself, we see repeated examples of their outra- 

 g- 0119 violence, and this is confirmed by the testimony 

 of many other writers. In the history of the martyr- 



