Such will be the apprehensions of the religious man, that these seeming irregularities for which we find it sometimes difficult to account, are yet under the conduct of the divine purpose. But the sceptic, on the contrary, will take to himself fresh confidence from the occurrence of such blots, as he deems them, in the moral government of the world. He will laugh at the only solution which sober reason and religion have to give of such gigantic difficulties: "Where, say they, is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." (2 Peter, iii. 4.) The world goes on at its old rate, and still continues under the capricious sceptre of the same blind chance as heretofore. The very

arguments which religion suggests in support of the foreknowledge and power of the Supreme Ruler, even these are turned against her by the modern scoffer. He will not admit of the force of Gamaliel's reasoning, that if the christian religion had not been founded on truth and upheld by divine power, it must have fallen in a little time; if we take into

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account the perpetual discussion it hath un dergone, and the duration and extreme severity of the persecutions it hath sustained. He cannot perceive any accomplishment of prophecy, or even of the promises of the founder of the gospel, in either the rapid progress of christianity in the first century, or the various fortunes of the church in the ages intermediate, or its state and condition at the present day..

The ingenuity of scepticism has suggested five natural causes, of sufficient force, from whence to account for the progress that the faith made in the early ages, and the victory which, after a long struggle, it at last obtained over the opposing powers of paganism. These causes were of such material importance, it is alledged,* to any system of religion that might have offered itself to an enlightened age as an improvement upon the gross absurdities of vulgar paganism, that there was no need of that high degree of a divine influ

Gibbon's Decl. and Fall. vol. 1.

ence which is thought to have accompanied it, and to which alone its success has been generally attributed. The evangelical writers themselves were certainly of a different opinion. They have represented it as an hazardous and arduous undertaking in which they had embarked, and by natural means alone wholly hopeless of a successful issue. By weakness they had to combat strength, and were beforehand warned that they had to engage in a perpetual conflict with the powers not only of the visible, but also of the invisible world, by "turning men from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan, unto God. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood" (only), says the apostle, "but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." (Ephes. vi. 12.) He therefore recommends to the christians to put on a sort of armour, and make use of weapons, very suitable indeed to such a warfare, but quite of another sort from those carnal weapons of a worldly policy, and human motives, to which

infidels would ascribe the steadfastness and heroic virtue of the first believers.

As the sceptic thinks there was little need of that supernatural aid, and extraordinary communication of divine grace, on which the christians appear to us to have wholly thrown themselves for their support in their "fight of faith;" so he is also of opinion that there has been in fact, as little room to boast of an extraordinary protection, or even of such as they had reason to expect, upon the faith of their master's promises.

Insinuations have been thrown out that the prophecies of his messengers, (as far as relates at least to the glorious establishment of his kingdom), have wholly failed; and his own repeated assurances, and even his parting words, have not been made good. "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth, and lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." (Matt. xxviii. 18.) Isaiah, and the other prophets, have given such hyperbolical descriptions of the Messias

and his kingdom, as there never has been, in any age since the time of Christ, any thing corresponding to them; and such as are indeed, if literally taken, altogether an outrage of nature, and inconsistent with the present state of man upon earth.* So little has the religion of Jesus to ascribe to the perpetual presence, and watchful protection over it which he promised; that it had no sooner emerged out of the calamities which threatened to strangle it in its birth, and the perpetual hatred of jews and pagans that pursued it in its earlier periods, than it had adversaries still more formidable, as their enmity was less visible, to contend with "in the house of its friends." Satan transformed into an angel of light, and countless swarms of heresies, the spawn of jewish and heathen philosophy, falsely so called, and engendered within its own bowels, soon corrupted the seed sown by the good husbandman, and the field was covered with tares. The almost universally prevailing heresy of Arius, that blazing star called wormwood + fell upon the waters of

Isaiah xi. 5.-Micah iv, + Rev, Viii. 11,