generations that it has been received as far back as the period of this institution. The interval must be filled up by other means; the identity of the story can only be traced to a certain point, its truth cannot, by this method, be proved at all; there is nothing to bring us to the ultimate appeal we have to make to the common sense of the generation who should have been eye witnesses of its truth. I do not say that this may not be effectually done by other means; it may, or it may not; I only say that this argument will fail. Thus when the Christian Church annually commemorates the Conversion of St. Paul, or even the Nativity of Christ, we cannot press these festivals as affording any infallible proof of the reality of the facts, because there is nothing in our books to connect the event commemorated with the institution of the commemorating festival; though we have other means of demonstrating both to be true. There must then be something to mark that the institution is coeval with the event it commemorates, and that it has been uninterruptedly continued from that period to the present. This is the fourth of the rules above laid down. Now the Christian Church possesses;

(1.) Two sacred ordinances, denominated sacraments; instituted by the founder of the religion, and made of perpetual obligation.

(2.) An order of men set apart for the administration of these sacraments, and for the preaching of the word. (3.) The dedication of one day out of every seven, as

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a Sabbath, or day of rest, to be kept holy to the Lord. To begin with the third of these: the sabbath was not, in its first institution, a memorial of any thing connected with the New Testament dispensation; but has become so by a change in the day observed. From the very beginning, our books teach us, a day was set apart for rest from the ordinary occupations of life, to keep alive the memory that the Creator rested from his work, after he had framed the worlds; and in the course of ages this day became associated with other acts of mercy and of power. But we are, at present, only concerned with it as an institution of Christianity; and this it became when its observance was transferred from the seventh day of the week, on which it had previously been kept, to the first. We find that the early disciples had a custom of assembling on the first day

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of the week, for the purposes of breaking bread, (that is, of celebrating one of their sacraments,) of preaching and uniting in prayer, and of making collections for objects of charity, (Acts xx. 7. 1 Cor. xvi. 2.). We are further told that there was a day known among them as THE LORD'S DAY, (Rev. i. 10.) clearly this same first day, being the day on which Christ rose from the dead. (Matt. xxviii. 1. Mark xvi. 2. Luke xxiv. 1. John xx. 1.) Now there were two classes of people, in one or other of which was comprised every individual to whom the apostles could address themselves; the heathen, to whom the notion of a sabbatical rest was unknown; and the Jews, who possessed such an institution, but had always appropriated to it a different day. The one class could not have been prevailed on to adopt the institution, carrying with it, as it did, the novel sacrifice of an entire day in seven from their ordinary pursuits, nor the other to have altered an existing religious festival, except they were persuaded of the truth of the ground on which the matter rested, the resurrection of Christ:-and no future generation could have been deluded into the belief that this institution had always been observed among Christians, and always for the reason assigned, if then first introduced among them.

The second of the institutions above enumerated, the appointment of an order of men for the the administration of certain ordinances, and as teachers of the religion to which they appertain, presents us with a feature somewhat differing from any we have yet alluded to. It is a feature not peculiar to Christianity, for where is the religion that has not its priesthood, and its prescribed rites and ceremonies, at which it is their peculiar business to officiate? And wherein do those establishments differ from that of Christians, that the one is brought forward as a proof of the reality of its religion, while the others are passed by? The fourth of our rules will unfold the reason of the distinction. It is not enough that a priesthood exists, or has existed from time immemorial. There must be something to connect it with a definite appointment by some competent authority, at the very time it first appeared before the world. It is not difficult to imagine that designing men may have set on foot such an establishment; or that it has gradually sprung up, and stealthily acquired a growing hold on the minds of men.

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But, for the purposes of evidence, it must be intimately associated with something in the story of the religion it belongs to; otherwise we want the security furnished by contemporary witnesses that the story has not been coined when none remained to contradict it. And if no record of its institution remain, the argument in its favour, so far from being strengthened, as might at first sight appear, by a presumption of supposed antiquity, is utterly lost, for there is nothing whatever to assure us that, when introduced, it had a single mark of authenticity. But in the case of the Christian clergy, our books contain a clear and definite account of their appointment by Christ himself. (Luke vi. 13. Matt. xxviii. 19, 20. Eph. iv. 11, 12.). In the words of the last cited passage, "He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:" and this ministry he rendered perpetual by the promise, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." (Matt. xxviii. 20). The apostles, we are told, carried out the intention of their Master by ordaining elders in every Church, (Acts xiv. 23.), and one of the younger disciples, whose age would place him a generation lower than that of the first teachers, and thus bring us down to the age succeeding theirs, is instructed to commit the things he had heard "to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also." (2 Tim. ii. 2.) Suppose then the gospel were invented in some later age; this order of teachers, whether under the names used in the newly published accounts, or under any other, could not have existed at the time. What then becomes of apostolic practices and injunctions, what becomes of the founder's promise? Not only could there have been no order of teachers, but no church at all; while yet a clause is inserted in the books, declaring there shall always be both one and the other. Would an imposter have inserted such a clause? And did he venture on so reckless and impudent a defiance to the common sense of his age, would it have been rewarded by an implicit credit? This institution, then, is so intimately associated with the account of the first establishment of the Christian faith, that its existence, under such circumstances, renders it impossible for that account to have been invented after its reputed age; and

CHAP. II.] AND TRUTH OF THE CHRISTIAN STORY. V SITY

thus we are once more carried back to that age in which for the reasons already given, any such invention could have taken place.

We come now to the ordinances to which the first place was conceded in our list, as being the most important, and which for the same reason have been reserved for the winding up of these remarks.

1. The words in which the first of these was instituted are as follows:

"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, (or, as it is more correctly rendered in the margin of the English Bible, make disciples, or, Christians, of all nations,) baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." (Matt. Xxxviii. 19.)

2. From the four different narratives of the appointment of the other ordinance, I shall select that of St. Paul, who was not indeed present, but who prefaces his account by a distinct assurance that his authority was of the highest possible nature, that of the Founder himself:

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you:

For," he says, "I have received of the Lord that
which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus,
the night in which he was betrayed, took bread: And
when he had given thanks he brake it, and said,
Take eat: this is my body, which is broken for
this do in remembrance of me. After the same
manner also he took the cup, when he had supped,
saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood:
this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.
For," adds the writer, as often as ye eat this bread,
and drink this cup, ye do shew (or, shew ye,) the
Lord's death till he come."

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That the first disciples understood baptism to be intended as an initiatory rite of universal obligation, is manifest. from the great number of cases in which its use is specifically recorded; and the multiplied allusions to it with which their teaching abounds. (Acts ii. 38, 41; viii. 36, 38; x. 47; xvi. 15, &c. Rom. vi. 3, 4; Gal. iii. 27. 1 Pet. iii. 21, &c.) Nor are the references to the other sacrament much less copiously sprinkled over the remains we possess of their ministry. The custom of breaking bread daily from house to house, and on the first day of the week, in their assem

blies, prevailed among them, (Acts. ii. 46. xx. 7.); and it was their manner to employ the current notions respecting this sacrament to the illustration of their doctrines, or enforcement of their precepts, (1 Cor. x. 16, 17. xi. 20, 34. xii. 13. where both sacraments are included: compare also Rev. iii. 20. and the discourse of Jesus, John vi.). These ordinances then are represented as having been established at the very time when the events they commemorate were done; and to have been made of perpetual obligation, the one, till the Lord come, an expression precisely synonomous with that we have already once before cited, and which is found appended to the appointment of the other: "alway, even unto the end of the world." (Matt. xxviii. 20.)

Now it is absurd to suppose that the contemporaries of the apostles could have been persuaded to celebrate a rite commemorative of an event so public and notorious as the death of Christ is represented to have been, unless they were assured of its truth. It is equally impossible that any future age could have been cajoled into the belief that they were in the habit of partaking of this sacrament, or at least of witnessing its administration to others; or that the invariable practice of the Christian Church was to admit new members, whether converts, or born within its pale, by baptism, if they were strangers to these rites, and had never either seen or heard of them. Or, if the rites existed, but their meaning were unknown, is it imaginable that men could have been brought to regard them as having always been observed in memory of what they now for the first time were made acquainted with; or, if a meaning had been assigned, is it imaginable that this could have been supplanted by another, and that so effectually, that no trace remains to mark an innovation so forced and unnatural? And it must be remembered that the question is not, whether these ceremonies may have fallen into disuse among Christians, and been again revived; but whether the whole Christian scheme were not a fabrication palmed upon the world; Christianity having never before had an existence among the sons of men. The former question assumes the previous institution of the ordinances; and their neglect, supposing for argument's sake there had been neglect, would leave the Christian body open to the charge of a gross