Egyptian writers, whose opinions and accounts of things are preserved by Diogenes, Laertius, Diodorus Siculus, and others; the fragments we have ascribed to Linus, Orpheas, Epicharmus; the remains of Sanchoniathon, Berosus, Menetho, Philo Bybilus, Eurysus the Pytha gorean, Hipparchus, Amelius the Platonist, Herclitus, Timæus, Chalsidicus, (who writes of Moses) Homer, Hesiod, Callimachus, Aristohanes, Plato, Cicero, Ovid, all these in what they say of the creation, agree in the main with Moses' account of it. Homer, Hesiod, Callimachus, Aristobulus, Theophilus of Antioch, Lucian, Dion Cassius, Suetonius, Josephus, Philo, Tibullus, mention, or allude to, the universal custom of resting every seventh day. The Egyptian writers, Plato, Strabo, Ovid, Virgil, and others, mention the state of innocence, and the Fall. Philo Byblius, from Sanchoniathon and Plutarch, show, that several particulars of that Fall were received by the most ancient heathens. Ferdinand Mendesius testifies, that many particulars relating to Adam, Eve, the forbidden tree, and the serpent, are to be found among the natives of Peru, and the Philippine islands. And the name of Adam is known among the Indian Brachmans, which word has been by some thought to have been a corruption of Abrahamans; and it has been thought probable that the religion of Zoroastres and the Magi is derived from that patriarch. The truth of Moses' account of the flood is attested by Berosus, Diodorus, Varro, Pliny, Plutarch, Lucian, Molo, Nicolaus, Damascenus, and others; some of whom mention the name of Noah, the ark, and the dove. Josephus Acosta, and Antonio Herrera affirm, that at Cuba, Mechoana, Nicaragua, and other parts of America, the memory of the flood, and the ark, are preserved, and were found, with several other doctrines, of mere revelation, upon the first discoveries of those places by the Europeans. But to proceed, Berosus Manetho, Hesiod, Nicolaus, Damastenus, and others, mention the age of the first men to have been almost a thousand years. Plutarch Maximus, Tyrius, Catullus, and others, speak of an intercourse between God and men in ancient times.-Porphyry, Jamblicus, and others, speak of angels. The history of the tower of Babel, under the poetical disguise of the giants to scale heaven, is found in Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, and the

Sybilline Oracle quoted by Josephus. Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Tacitus, Pliny, and Solinus, mention the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The history of Abraham and other patriarchs, agreeable to the writings of Moses, is found in Philo Byblius, from Sanchoniathon, and in Berosus, Hecatæus, Damocenus, Artapanus, Eupolemus, Demetrius, and Justin from Trogus Pompeius, who also gives Joseph's history agreeable to scripture. By several of these the principal acts of Moses are related. Of whom mention is also made by Manetho, Lysimachus Charemon, Diodorus Siculus, Longinus, Strabo, Pliny, and Tacitus. Diodorus speaks of the dry ing up of the Red Sea. Herodotus, Diodorus, Strabo, Philo Byblius, Aristophanes, Tacitus, Horace, and Juvenal, mention the ceremony of circumcision. Eusebius tells us, that a book was written by Eupo lemus on Elijah's Miracles. The History of Jonah is in Lycophron and Eneas Gazæus. Julian the Apostate owns that there were inspired men among the Jews. Menander mentions the great drought in the time of Elijah. The histories of David and Solomon are given in a pretty full manner in the remains of the Phenician Annals, and Damascenus' History, in Eupolemus, and Dius' Phoenician History, who speaks of riddles, or hard questions, sent betwixt Solomon and Hiram; of which also Menander the Ephesian Historian, Alexander, Polyhistor, and others, give an account. Hazael, king of Syria, is mentioned by Justin. Menander the Historian mentions Salmanasor, who carried the Israelites, or ten tribes, into that captivity, from which they are not yet returned. The name and expeditions of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, are found in Berosus' Chaldaic's and Herodotus' History, which last relates the destruction of his vast army (2 Kings XVII) with a mixture of fable. Suetonius, Tacitus, Pliny the younger, and Numenius testify, that there was such a person as Jesus Christ. His miracles are owned by Celsus, Julian the Apostate, and the Jewish writers, who oppose Christianity. Porphyry, though an enemy to the Christian Religion, says, "after Christ was worshipped, no one received any benefit from the gods." Suetonius, Tacitus, Pliny, Julian the Apostate, and the Jewish writers men. tion his being put to death. And Tacitus affirms, that many were put to death for their adherence to his religion.

A very particular and favourable account of the character and behaviour of the first Christians is given by Pliny, in a letter to the Emperor Trajan, still extant. Phlegon, in his Annals, mentions the miracles of St. Peter. And: St. Paul is celebrated in a fragment of Longinus among eminent orators. The History of our Saviour's life, death, resurrection, and ascension, was declared by the Apostles: in the face of his enemies, and in the very country, where he lived, died and rose again.-They wrote their accounts in Greek, which was universally understood, and related the things, as they passed a very few years before, and which must have been fresh in every body's memory. The name of Jesus, must have been entered into the public tables, or registers, at his birth. To which accordingly Justin Martyr and Tertullian appeal. And the account of his death and resurrection must, according to the cus tom, when any thing remarkable happened in any of the provinces of the empire, have been sent to the court of Rome. The memory of the slaughter of the innocents is preserved by Augustus' remark on Herod's cruelty. The miraculous darkness at our Saviour's crucifixion (which was undoubtedly supernatural; it being impossible that the sun should be eclipsed by the moon, which was then in opposition) is affirmed by Tertullian to have been upon re. cord in his time in the public registers. Our Saviour is several times mentioned by Josephus; though not in such a manner as so extraordinary à character deserved. But nothing is more common than such expected neglects in historians. Besides, it is probable that Josephus might be under some constraint in touching upon the subject of Christ and his Religion; as he makes honourable mention of John Baptist, and of James the brother of Jesus; to whose murder he ascribes the destruction of Jerusalem.

Such public passages as the dumbness inflicted on Zacharius, while the people were waiting without the temple; of the wise men from the east; of the murder of the innocents; of our Saviour's driving some hundreds, probably, of people out the outer court of the temple, immediately after his triumph, which must have alarmed the whole city; the prodigies at his death; the dreadful end of Judas Iscariot; the names of the Roman Emperor, and Gover nor, of Herod, of the High Priest, of Nicodemus, of Joseph

of Arimathea, of Gamaliel, Dionysius the Areopagite, Sergius Paulus, Simon Magus. Felix, king Agrippa, Tertullus, Gallio, and many other persons of the highest rank mentioned with great freedom, shows, that the historians were under no apprehension of being detected; and, at the same time, establish the genuineness of the New Testament History by chronological and geographical evidences. Nor would any set of imposters have overloaded their scheme with such a number of circumstances no way necessary to it, for fear of committing some blunder, which might have detected them. The miraculous power of inflicting death upon offenders, as in the case of Ananias and Sapphira, and blindness in that of Elymas, was not a thing to be boasted of, if it had not been true; because of the danger of being called to account by the civil magistrate. And that the New Testament History is not a forgery of latter times, is much better established, than that the Æneid, the Metamorphosis, and Horace's works, were writ in the Augustan age. For none of them was authenticated by whole churches, nor are they cited by multitudes of authors cotemporary with them, as the apostolical writings are by Barnabas, Clemens, Romanus, Ignatius, Polycarp, and the rest, and acknowledged to be the genuine works of the authors, whose names they bear, by enemies, as Tripo, Julian the Apostate, and others of the earliest ages, and authenticated by succeeding writers through every following period. The numerous ancient apologists for Christianity, in their addresses to the Emperors, confirm the particulars of the New Testament History by their appeals to records then extant, and persons then living. And history shows, that those appeals were so convincing as to gain the Christians, from time to time, favour and mercy from the Emperors.

That the Mosaic history of the Patriarchs, and their posterity the Jews and Israelites, is genuine, is in a manner visible at this day from the present circumstances of that part of them, who are distinguished from all other people, I mean the Jews, or the posterity of the two tribes; for those of the ten are, according to the predictions of prophecy, at present undistinguished, though hereafter to be restored with their brethren the Jews to their own land. There is no such minute and circumstantial proof,

that the Italians are the descendants of the ancient Romans, or the French of the Gauls.

It is to be observed, that the miraculous and super, natural parts of the sacred story depend on the very same authority as the common, and accordingly related in the same manner; and the whole hangs so together, and rests on the same foundation, that they must either be both true, or both false. But no one ever imagined the latter to be the case.

The simplicity of the Scripture accounts of the most striking and amazing events any where. related, their being described in the same artless and unaffected manner as the common occurrences of history, is at least a very strong presumption, that the relators had no design of any kind, but to give a true representation of facts. Had Moses, the most ancient of historians, had any design to im pose upon mankind; could he, in his account of the creation, the flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire, from heaven, of the escape of the Israelitish peo ple from Egyptian tyranny, and their passage through the wilderness under his own conduct (a retreat more remarkable than that of the ten thousand under Xenophon, which makes such a figure in history, could the relator of these amazing events have avoided expatiating and flourishing upon such astonishing scenes, had they been mere invention? Would the fabulous writer of a set of adventures, of which himself was the fictitious hero, have spoke of himself with the modesty which appears in the Mosaic history? Would he have represented himself as capable of timidity, diffidence, or passion? Would he have im mortalized his own weaknesses? Had the inventor of the scripture account of Abraham, and his posterity, intended his fictitious history as an encomium upon that people, as Virgil did his neid on his countrymen, would he have represented them as perverse, disobedient people, so often under the displeasure of their God; condemned to wander forty years, and perish at last to the number of many thousands in the wilderness, to the seeming disparagement of the wisdom of their leader; ever deviating into the worship of idols, contrary to what might have been expected from the numerous miracles wrought in their favour by the true God, a circumstance very improper