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likeness,' Psal. xvii. 14, 15. Those words of his, 'Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption,' show David's own belief of a resurrection and a future state, though they ultimately relate to the Messiah, in whom alone this was properly and literally accomplished. And when it is added, that in God's presence is fulness of joy,' and at his right hand there are pleasures for evermore,' Psal. xvi. 10, 11. This is an excellent and comprehensive description of the happiness reserved for good men in the heavenly state. And when the Psalmist David represents God as having established his throne in the heavens,' and gives that noble account of the blessed angels there, that they excel in strength, and do his commandments, hearkening to the voice of his word,' and in a divine rapture calls upon them to bless the Lord,' Psal. ciii. 19-21. This shows the notion good men then had of those good and holy spirits, which is absolutely inconsistent with their being Materialists or Sadducees, and what they thought of the perfection of happiness and purity in the heavenly world:' and is no obscure intimation that they had the same hopes, for substance, of the heavenly Jerusalem, and an innumerable company of angels there,' which the saints express under the New Testament. See Heb. xii. 22. In Psalm xlix. ver. 14, 15, it is plainly signified, that how rich or prosperous soever the wicked might be here on earth, yet they must be laid in the grave, and the upright should have dominion over them; but that God would redeem his faithful servants from the power of the grave, and would receive them to himself. The prophet Asaph when perplexed with the thoughts of the worldly prosperity of the wicked, declared that he was satisfied by 'entering into the sanctuary of God,' and considering the destruction that should come upon them: and for his own part he expresseth his desire and hope in this excellent manner, Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee. My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever,' see Psalm lxxiii. When the prophet Habbakuk makes that noble declaration, 'Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vine; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stall; yet will I rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation;' as it shows with what truth this writer affirms, that none of the prophets ever understood or taught a faith which can support men under adversity, and above the world; so it shows that they did not look upon the reward they expected as consisting merely in temporal prosperity, or a worldly affluence; that their hopes were of a higher and nobler nature, not merely confined within the narrow limits of this present life, which could not possibly furnish such glorious conceptions, or lay a foundation for such eminent acts of faith and spiritual joy, under the greatest outward difficulties and distresses.

It is expressly declared, that the wicked is driven away in his

wickedness, but the righteous hath hope in his death,' Prov. xiv. 32. And that at death the dust, that is the body, shall return to earth as it was, but the spirit shall return unto God that gave it.' Eccles. xii. 7. Sinners are called upon to consider amidst their vicious pleasures and excesses, that for all these things God will bring them into judgment,' Eccles. xi. 9. And it is expressly asserted, that God will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil,' Eccles. xii. 14. And yet this writer hath the confidence to affirm, that no Jewish writer, before the days of Ezra, ever mentioned a word of a future judgment. The prophet Isaiah after having observed, that the righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart; and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come,' immediately adds, He, i. e. the righteous man, whom he supposes to have perished or died, and to be taken away from this world, and the evil of it, shall enter into peace.' Which can only be understood of a state of rest and happiness, which is the usual meaning of the word peace in the sacred writings. And he there describes that future happiness in metaphorical expressions, by saying they, i. e. the righteous and merciful men, whom he represents as having separated out of this life, shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness,' Isa. lvii. 1, 2. Those words of the same prophet are justly looked upon as containing at least a manifest allusion to the resurrection of the dead; Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise: Awake and sing ye that dwell in dust for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out her dead,' Isa. xxvi. 19. To which may be added those words of Hosea, I will ransom them from the power of the grave: I will redeem them from death. O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction,' Hos. xiii. 14. But it is still more clearly expressed in the book of Daniel, Many that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt,' Dan. xii. 2. When in stating the justice and equity of the divine proceedings, in chap. xviii. of Ezekiel, God is represented as declaring with the greatest solemnity, as a matter of immutable and eternal certainty, concerning every man whatsoever that should persist in a course of sin and disobedience, that he should surely die; and concerning every good and righteous man, that he shall surely live, he should not die; it is evident this cannot be understood merely of temporal life and death, or of worldly prosperity and adversity, since it is undeniable that both these in many instances equally befall the righteous and the wicked; as the wise man observes, Eccles. ix. 1, 2, and must therefore be understood to extend to a state of happiness or misery, after this life is at an end.

This may suffice to show the falsehood and injustice of that charge which this writer brings against Moses and the prophets, and the whole Jewish nation, till the days of Ezra, that they were Deistical Materialists or Sadducees. And now I have gone

through the several objections scattered in different parts of his book against the Old Testament; and perhaps I shall be thought to have examined them more particularly than they deserve. I now proceed to what he offers with a view to destroy the authority of the New Testament.

CHAPTER XII.

A transition to the Moral Philosopher's objections against the New Testament. Though he pretends a very high respect for our blessed Saviour, yet he insinuates several reflections upon his conduct and character. Those reflections shown to be groundless and unjust. Our Lord did not comply with the prejudices of the people in any thing contrary to truth, or to the honour of God. He was far from assuming to be a temporal prince, yet he all along claimed to be the Messiah promised and foretold by the prophets. The author's pretence that he renounced that character at his death, shown to be false. The Messiah spoken of by the prophets, was not merely to be a national Deliverer of the Jews, nor were the benefits of his kingdom to be confined to that nation only, but to be extended to the Gentiles. This shown from the prophecies themselves. The attestation given to Christ's divine mission, by the prophecies of the Old Testament, considered and vindicated.

IN many of the objections that have been hitherto considered, we have had plain proofs of the malice and disingenuity of this writer; but in what remains with regard to the New Testament, there is still greater reason to complain of his conduct. As to the Old Testament, he acts the part of an open enemy, though an enemy that hath little regard to any thing that can be called fair or honourable, and who seems to govern himself by that maxim, 'Dolus an virtus quis in hoste requirat? But when he speaks of the gospel revelation, he frequently puts on the appearance of a friend. He affects to speak honourably of Jesus Christ, and of the religion he taught. He expressly declares himself to be a Christian on the foot of the New Testament,' p. 359, and talks in pretty strong terms of the signal advantages of the gospel revelation, and seems to blame those that do not set a due value upon it. In the beginning of this book I have quoted a long and remarkable passage to this purpose to which I refer the reader; and several other passages might be produced that are no less strong and express. See particularly pp, 358, 359, 392, 394, 411. But all this is only the better to carry on his design against Christianity, by seeming to speak favourably of it whilst he really uses his utmost efforts to subvert it. This will be evident to any one that considers the bare reflections he insinuates upon our blessed Lord himself: his more open attempts against the character of the

apostles, and against the proofs they brought of their divine mission; especially those taken from the extraordinary gift and powers of the Holy Ghost in the apostolical age: the account he gives of the false and absurd Jewish gospel, which he pretends they all preached except the apostle Paul, and of the great differences among them about points of the highest consequence and importance: the endeavours he uses to destroy the credit of the whole canon of the New Testament, and to show that it is not to be depended on for a right account either of doctrines or facts: besides the pains he takes to misrepresent and expose some particular doctrines of Christianity. I shall take some notice of what he offers with regard to each of these. And shall begin with considering his insinuations against the character of our blessed Saviour himself, notwithstanding he frequently affects to speak of him with great seeming veneration.

He commends him, p. 168, among other things for this, that he did not like other lawgivers in any instance give up the cause of virtue and the common good of mankind, to comply with the prevailing prejudices of the people.' And yet he would have us believe, that in compliance with the prejudices of the people,* he 'justified the gospel scheme on the foot of Moses and the prophets; that he not only asserted the authority of those writings, though they only falsely pretended to divine inspiration, but imposed a sense upon them which he knew was not their sense, and put that false sense upon the Jews for the real original intention of the Holy Ghost, and particularly that he pretended to be the person that had been foretold and spoken of by the prophets, under the character of the Messiah; whereas according to this writer he himself could not but be sensible that the prophets had never spoken of him at all; but of some temporal prince that should sometime or other rise up in Judea, and deliver the Jews from their enemies.

But this is not all. He represents him as suffering himself to be carried about for a twelvemonth together by the Jewish mob all over the country, and to be declared their Messiah' (i. e. their temporal prince in opposition to Cæsar, which is the only sense he puts upon that expression), and that they had led him in triumph to Jerusalem, and proclaimed him king in this sense but three days before he was apprehended, without his opposing it. That therefore the Jewish chief priests and rulers were under a necessity of doing what they did, in order to save their country from ruin. That

But certainly he that on all occasions declared with so noble a zeal and freedom against the traditions of the elders, for which the Jews had the highest veneration, and detected the hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees, whom the people admired and reverenced as holy persons, would have declared with equal zeal against the law of Moses itself if he had looked upon it to be as this author represents it, a wretched scheme of superstition, blindness, and slavery, contrary to all reason and common sense,' imposed upon them under the specious pretence of a divine institution. And he would not have deserved the name of a true reformer in religion, if he had not endeavoured to undeceive the people, and to detect and expose so pernicious an imposture. And his not doing so, but all along representing that law as divine, and never once in the whole course of his ministry, dropping an insinuation to the contrary, is a manifest proof that he himself looked upon it to be divine original and authority.

though they could not prove that he had made any pretensions to the crown against Cæsar, yet they presumed he must have given the people some encouragement that way, or else so strong and general an expectation could never have been raised and kept up.' And our author himself observes, that had he renounced any such pretensions sooner, as he did at last, the people would all have forsook him, as they did as soon as they found he was not for their turn, and that he had as they thought, betrayed them.' Thus it is evident, that he justifies our Lord's murderers, and represents them as only having acted as became good patriots to prevent the ruin of their nation:* and insinuates that he brought his own death upon himself, by having encouraged the Jewish mob to take him for their Messiah or temporal king, and to proclaim him to be so but three days before: and that he never renounced these pretensions till he was before the Roman governor. And if so, I know not upon what foundation he there represents him as glorious martyr and confessor for the truth.' Thus his determined malice against our blessed Lord plainly discovers itself from under the disguise he endeavours to throw over it. See p. 350-353.

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But it may be easily proved that these insinuations are as false as they are malicious. Nothing is more evident than that on the one hand our Lord all along disclaimed all pretences to the being a temporal prince in opposition to Cæsar; though this writer insinuates, that he never renounced these pretensions till he came upon his trial before Pilate: and that on the other hand, he all along claimed to be the Messiah foretold and spoken of by the prophets, though he affirms that he renounced that character upon his trial, and died upon that renunciation.'

As to the first, not only did he withdraw when the populace would have 'taken him by force to have made him a king,' John vi. 5. but to avoid all appearance of setting up for a temporal sovereignty, when one desired him to speak to his brother to divide the inheritance with him, he answered Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?' Luke xii. 14. There was nothing he more severely rebuked among his disciples than ambitious contentions who

* Whatever glosses the chief priests, the scribes and Pharisees, might think proper to put upon it in their council, and however they might colour over their design with a pretence of zeal for the public good, John xi. 17, 48, &c., yet it is evident from the whole evangelic history, that the real motive was their malice and envy; because with an impartial zeal he had rebuked their crimes and vices, and detected their hypocrisy, and opposed their authority and traditions. Hence we read so often of their being filled with rage against him, and taking counsel to slay him. Their malice was so apparent that Pilate himself could not but observe it. If he had believed that Jesus had set himself up for a prince of the Jews in opposition to Cæsar, it concerned him more than it did them to prevent it. But he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy,' Mark xv. 10, and therefore endeavoured to get him freed from punishment. And whereas this writer, to excuse the chief priests, &c., lays his death upon the multitude, who he pretends were enraged at him for at last disclaiming his being their Messiah; on the contrary, it is evident, that it was the chief priests and elders that moved and persuaded the people to do what they did, Matt. xxvii. 20; Mark xv. 11. And their honesty appears in this, that they accused him to Pilate as perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Cesar, Luke. xxiii. 2, though they knew that accusation was false, and that when the question was proposed to him, he had required them to render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's.'