between irony and concession; just as Swedenbourg steers between a metaphor and a literal meaning.

However, his day is over; all the harm he can ever do is probably done. It is the pride of this age, that the crossing streams of literature have purified the ocean. Not even the genius of Gibbon can cloud the truths of time; and though his history will be read for its facts, and its weighty maxims, it will be read with such allowance and exceptions by every discerning reader, as will preserve him from being blinded to the illustrations which the truths of Christianity have received from time.

It is remarkable that the object for which this work was written, should be so little promoted by it. As the pyramids which were built by the kings of Egypt, to preserve their names, are still preserved, though the names of their builders are lost; so this history, written to promote infidelity, will fail of its object, and last forever.

The history proceeds in an inoffensive tenour, until we come to the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters, in which the author gives an account of the rise of Christianity. I have already remarked, that he often presents a series of facts, as all standing on equal credit, without giving notice of the different degrees of probability by which they are supported. He sometimes seems to approach that vulgar delusion of supposing that an event, or writing, must be entirely received, or entirely rejected, without adverting to the degrees of probability on which a rejected testimony may stand. Thus, he treats with the utmost scorn, the fact alluded to by all the ecclesiastical writers, that Pilate sent to Tiberius an account of the Crucifixion.

"The Apology of Tertullian contains two very ancient, very singular, but at the same time very suspicious instances of imperial clemency; the edicts published by Tiberius and by Marcus Antonius, and designed not only to protect the innocence of the Christians, but even to proclaim those stupendous miracles which had attested the truth of their doctrine. The first of these examples is attended with some difficulties, which might perplex the skeptical mind. We are required to believe, that Pontius Pilate informed the emperor of the unjust sentence of death which he had pronounced against an innocent, and, as it appeared, a divine person; and that, without acquiring the merit, he exposed himself to the danger of martyrdom; that Tiberius, who avowed his

contempt for all religion, immediately conceived the design of placing the Jewish Messiah among the gods of Rome; that his servile senate ventured to disobey the commands of of their master; that Tiberius, instead of resenting their refusal, contented himself with protecting the Christians from the severity of the laws, many years before such laws were enacted, or before the church had assumed any distinct name or existence; and lastly, that the memory of this extraordinary transaction was preserved in the most public and authentic records, which escaped the knowledge of the historians of Greece and Rome, and were only visible to the eyes of an African Christian, who composed his Apology one hundred and sixty years after the death of Tiberius."

But not one of these reasons will be found so conclusive

as he represents. There was no need that Pilate should represent his own sentence as unjust; for he sentenced Christ on the charge of striving to be a king,-a point on which Tiberius was peculiarly jealous. In the second place, it is not so absurd as our historian seems to insinuate, that Tiberius, who avowed his contempt for all religion, should conceive the design of placing the Jewish Messiah among the gods of Rome; for all tyrants, however atheistic themselves, pay some external deference, at least, to the prejudices of their people; and to adopt a new deity, was exactly according to the accommodating spirit of polytheism; perhaps it was the best way to degrade Jesus from the exclusive pre-eminence which he might hold in the minds of some of the people. In the third place, it is not very absurd to suppose that his servile senate might venture on such a point to dispute his commands; for as it is suggested by Reading in his notes on Eusebius, (see Eusebius, lib. ii. chap. 2d, page 47, Cambridge, 1820,) this is one of those indifferent points on which a tyrant allows his subjects a license, in order more effectually to veil his purposes in more important affairs. Bonaparte was accustomed to allow his senate to oppose his will in points which he deemed non-essential, as a decent veil to cover the deformity of oppression; and we are told by Tacitus, that Tiberius often did the same. The bargain was with the senate, "you shall play with the shadow of authority, only leave me the substance." In the last place, it is not very improbable that so trifling an incident (as the Pagans would conceive it,) should escape the notice of the secular historian, and be preserved by a Christian teacher, who was

more interested in preserving whatever related to Christianity. The objections of Gibbon were first brought forward by Tanaquill Faber, and are well answered in a note to the English edition of Eusebius. I do not believe myself, on the whole, that Pilate wrote any such account; but still I should reject it, conscious that there are a great many probabilities on the other side. So he rejects without doubt, and without adverting to any opposite evidence, the famous passage in Josephus, in which that historian alludes to the miracles, and describes the person of our Saviour. He has no doubt that it is a forgery, although he allows it to be a very skilful one. The reader will find this question very beautifully discussed in one of Dr. Lardner's volumes; and it would be well worth the time of any one to read it, and to contrast the caution and doubts, the patient examination and careful result of Lardner the Christian, with the rashness and dogmatism of Gibbon the skeptick. Lardner has

* Some people seem to be hardly aware, that a well-regulated mind moves by degrees over the scale of evidence, and often feels deeply the force of a probability, which is, after all, far from producing a settled conviction. In the mental world there is a twilight, as well as a noon-day; and all kinds of twilight, from the first dawn of a doubtful morning, to that which verges to highest illumination of meridian light. Thus the famous passage in John respecting the three witnesses, is rejected by our modern latitudinarians with scorn and contempt, as if nothing could be said in its favour; as if it were as manifest a forgery, as though it were foisted in by the last Trinitarian who happened to write in a religious dispute. Some have gone so far as to say it ought to be expunged from every subsequent edition of the Bible. But, with submission, I would suggest to these critical butchers, with their cleavers in their hands, that this is to lose all the intermediate ground between absolute proof and absolute disproof. A temperate judge never proceeds so in a court of justice. It is true the verdict must be absolute-one way or the other; but much evidence is always admitted which falls short of supreme conviction. Let us suppose that the evidence for the disputed part of these verses,-i. e. 1 John v. 7, 8,—to be as eighteen probabilities to two; there are eighteen probabilities or grains of evidence against their genuineness, and only two for it, (and this, perhaps, is a pretty fair statement of the case.) Ought the passage to be rejected from the text? I answer boldly, No. It ought to be retained, with a note stating how the evidence stands; and thus every reader would be taught to regulate his mind according to the nicer gradations of comparative evidence, and saved from a rashness equally uncritical and irreligious.

+ In order to show that the passage is spurious, he points us to the objections of Le Fevre, (Havercamp. Joseph. tom. ii. p. 267-273,) the laboured answer of Daubuz, (p. 187–232,) and the masterly reply (Bibliotheque Ancienne et Modern, tom. vii. 237-288) of an anonyinous critic, whom he supposes to be the Abbé de Longuerue. However masterly the reply may be, it seems not to have satisfied all the learned judges of a more recent day. Bretschneider, an able German theologian, maintains the genuineness of the passage. See a translation of his Capita Theologia Judeorum dogmatica e Flavii Josephi scriptis collecta, auctore C. F. Bretschneider, Leipsic, 1812, in the Christian Spectator, vol. VII. for March, 1825.

I allude to it from memory, and cannot therefore point to the volume. I call Lardner a Christian, because he was so compared with Gibbon. No man

a mind like a very delicate pair of scales, which, under the influence of almost equal weights, can incline one way without totally subsiding. But no sooner does the intellectual scale in Gibbon begin to incline, than one side strikes the ground, and the other kicks the beam. It illustrates what I have before remarked, that the skeptick is sometimes very dogmatical.

He often disguises the truth, when the sun-light of events forces him to see it, under the vocabulary of his own school. Whatever may be said of Christianity, it cannot be denied that it wrought a great reformation in the manners of men. This is evident from the testimony of its enemies. When Pliny, for the first time, had Christians before his tribunal, and subjected some of them to the torture, in order to find out what crimes they had committed, he tells us that they affirmed, this was the sum of their crime or mistake, that they were accustomed, on a stated day, to assemble, to sing a hymn to Christ as God (carmenque Christo, quasi Deo), and then to bind themselves, by a solemn obligation, not to commit any wickedness, and then to separate, after an innocent repast. We have likewise in a later age the testimonies of Lucian and Julian, (one of them a laugher at all religion, and the other a hater of Christianity,) to the innocence and simplicity of the first Christians. Now, mark how Gibbon manages this fact! He relates it; but clothes it in such language, that the simple reader is hardly conscious of what he is reading.

"It is a very ancient reproach, suggested by the ignorance or the malice of infidelity, that the Christians allured into their party the most atrocious criminals, who, as soon as they were touched by a sense of remorse, were easily persuaded to wash away, in the water of baptism, the guilt of their past conduct, for which the temples of the gods refused to grant them any expiation. But this reproach, when it is cleared from misrepresentation, contributes as much to the honour as it did to the increase of the church. The friends of Christianity may acknowledge without a blush, that many of the most eminent saints had been before their baptism, the most abandoned sinners. Those persons, who in the world had followed, though in an imperfect man

knew better how to hold the balance of historical probability with a critical eye and an untrembling hand. The discussion on this passage is a beautiful specimen of the coolest impartiality.

ner, the dictates of benevolence and propriety, derived such a calm satisfaction from the opinion of their own rectitude, as rendered them much less susceptible of the sudden emotions of shame, of grief, and of terrour, which have given birth to so many wonderful conversions. After the example of their Divine Master, the missionaries of the Gospel disdained not the society of men, and especially of women, oppressed by the consciousness, and very often by the effects, of their vices. As they emerged from sin and superstition to the glorious hope of immortality, they resolved to devote themselves to a life, not only of virtue but of penitence. The desire of perfection became the ruling passion of their soul; and it is well known, that while reason embraces a cold mediocrity, our passions hurry us, with rapid violence, over the space which lies between the most opposite extremes." [Vol. I. p. 267, Harpers' edit.]

I suppose the love of God is a passion; and I suppose that self-righteousness, under the form of a very partial but decent morality, is the greatest obstacle that the humbling spirit of the Gospel can meet with in its claims to enter the heart.

In some cases his insinuations vanish before the inductive method of reasoning. Thus he throws out, under the guise of stating the views of the Gnostics, some singular objections to the belief of Christians. The religion of Moses was to give place to a new economy.

"These Judaising Christians seem to have argued with some degree of plausibility from the divine origin of the Mosaic law, and from the immutable perfections of its great Author. They affirmed, that if the Being, who is the same through all eternity, had designed to abolish those sacred rites which had served to distinguish his chosen people, the repeal of them would have been no less clear and solemn than their first promulgation; that, instead of those frequent declarations, which either suppose or assert the perpetuity of the Mosaic religion, it would have been represented as a provisionary scheme intended to last only till the coming of the Messiah, who should instruct mankind in a more perfect mode of faith and of worship; that the Messiah himself, and his disciples who conversed with him on earth, instead of authorizing by their example, the most minute observances of the Mosaic law, would have published to the world the abolition of those useless and obsolete VOL. II.

7