the number, concurrence, veracity, and private characters of those persons; and being convinced upon all accounts that they had the same reason to believe the history of our Saviour, as that of any other person, to which they themselves were not actually eye-witnesses, they were bound, by all the rules of historical faith, and of right reason, to give credit to this history. This they did accordingly, and in consequence of it published the same truths themselves, suffered many afflictions, and very often death itself, in the assertion of them. When I say, that an historical belief of the acts of our Saviour induced these learned Pagans to embrace his doctrine, I do not deny that there were many other motives, which conduced to it; as the excellency of his precepts, the fulfilling of prophecies, the miracles of his disciples, the irreproachable lives and magnanimous sufferings of their followers, with other considerations of the same nature: but whatever other collateral arguments wrought more or less with philo sophers of that age, it is certain that a belief in the history of our Saviour was one motive with every new convert, and that upon which all others turned, as being the very basis and foundation of Christianity.

7. To this I must further add, that as we have already seen many particular facts, which are recorded in Holy Writ, attested

by particular Pagan authors; the testimony of those I am now going to produce, extends to the whole history of our Saviour, and to that continued series of actions, which are related of him and his disciples in the books of the New Testament.

8. This evidently appears from their quotations out of the Evangelists, for the confirmation of any doctrine or account of our blessed Saviour. Nay, a learned man of our nation, who examined the writings of our most ancient fathers in another view, refers to several passages in Irenæus, Tertullian, Clemens of Alexandria, Origen, and Cyprian, by which he plainly shows that each of these early writers ascribed to the four Evangelists by name their respective histories; so that there is not the least room for doubting of their belief in the history of our Saviour, as recorded in the gospels. I shall only add, that three of the five fathers here mentioned, and probably four, were Pagans converted to Christianity, as they were all of them very inquisitive and deep in the knowledge of heathen learning and philosophy.

SECTION IV.

1. Character of the times in which the Christian Religion was propagated;

2. And of many who embraced it.

3. Three eminent and early instances.

4. Multitudes of learned men who came over to it. 5. Belief in our Saviour's history, the first motive to their conversion.

6. The names of several Pagan philosophers, who were Christian converts.

1. It happened very providentially to the honour of the Christian Religion, that it did not take its rise in the dark and illiterate ages of the world, but at a time when arts and sciences were at their height, and when there were men who made it the business of their lives to search after truth, and sift the several opinions of philosophers and wise men, concerning the duty, the end, and chief happiness of reasonable creatures.

2. Several of these, therefore, when they had informed themselves of our Saviour's history, and examined with unprejudiced minds the doctrines and manners of his disciples and followers, were so struck and convinced, that they professed themselves of that sect; notwithstanding, by this profession in that juncture of time, they bid farewell to all the pleasures of this life, renounced all the views of ambition, engaged in an uninterrupted course of severities, and exposed themselves

to public hatred and contempt, to sufferings of all kinds, and to death itself.

3. Of this sort we may reckon those three early converts to Christianity, who each of them was a member of a senate famous for

its wisdom and learning. Joseph the Arimathean was of the Jewish Sanhedrim; Dionysius, of the Athenian Areopagus; and Flavius Clemens, of the Roman Senate; nay, at the time of his death, consul of Rome. These three were so thoroughly satisfied of the truth of the Christian Religion, that the first of them, according to all the reports of antiquity died a martyr for it: as did the second, unless we disbelieve Aristides, his fellow-citizen and contemporary; and the third, as we are informed both by Roman and Christian authors.

4. Among those innumerable multitudes, who in most of the known nations of the world came over to Christianity at its first appearance, we may be sure there were great numbers of wise and learned men, besides those whose names are in the Christian records, who without doubt took care to examine the truth of our Saviour's history, before they would leave the religion of their country and of their forefathers, for the sake of one that would not only cut them off from the allurements of this world, but subject them to every thing terrible or disagreeable

in it. Tertullian tells the Roman governors, that their corporations, councils, armies, tribes, companies, the palace, senate, and courts of judicature, were filled with Christians; as Arnobius asserts, that men of the finest parts and learning, orators, grammarians, rhetoricians, lawyers, physicians, philosophers, despising the sentiments they had been once fond of, took up their rest in the Christian Religion.

5. Who can imagine that men of this character did not thoroughly inform themselves of the history of that Person, whose doctrines they embraced? for, however consonant to reason his precepts appeared, how good soever were the effects which they produced in the world, nothing could have tempted men to acknowledge him as their God and Saviour, but their being firmly persuaded of the miracles he wrought, and the many attestations of his divine mission, which were to be met with in the history of his life. This was the ground work of the Christian Religion; and, if this failed, the whole superstructure sunk with it. This point, therefore, of the truth of our Saviour's history, as recorded by the Evangelists, is every where taken for granted in the writings of those, who from Pagan philosophers became Christian authors, and who, by reason of their conversion, are to be looked upon as of the