circumstances peculiar to it, which made it more authentic than any other tradition in any other age of the world. The Christians, who carried their religion through so many general and particular persecutions, were incessantly comforting and supporting one another with the example and history of our Saviour and his Apostles. It was the subject not only of their solemn assemblies, but of their private visits and conversations. Our virgins,' says Tatian, who lived in the second century, discourse over their distaffs on divine subjects.' Indeed, when religion was woven into the civil government, and flourished under the protection of the Emperors, men's thoughts and discourses were, as they are now, full of secular affairs; but in the three first centuries of Christianity, men, who embraced this religion, had given up all their interests in this world, and lived in a perpetual preparation for the next, as not knowing how soon they might be called to it: so that they had little else to talk of but the life and doctrines of that Divine Person, which was their hope, their encouragement, and their glory. We cannot therefore imagine, that there was a single person, arrived at any degree of age or consideration, who had not heard and repeated above a thousand times in his life, all the particulars of our Saviour's birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. 12. Especially if we consider, that they could not then be received as Christians, till they had undergone several examinations. Persons of riper years, who flocked daily into the church during the three first centuries, were obliged to pass through many repeated instructions, and give a strict account of their proficiency, before they were admitted to baptism. And as for those who were born of Christian parents, and had been baptized in their infancy, they were with the like care prepared and disciplined for confirmation, which they could not arrive at till they were found, upon examination, to have made a sufficient progress in the knowledge of Christianity. 13. We must further observe, that there was not only in those times this religious conversation among private Christians, but a constant correspondence between the churches that were established by the Apostles, or their successors, in the several parts of the world. If any new doctrine was started, or any fact reported of our Saviour, a strict enquiry was made among the churches, especially those planted by the Apostles themselves, whether they had received any such doctrine or account of our Saviour, from the mouths of the Apostles, or the tradition of those Christians who had preceded the present members of the churches, which were thus consulted. By this means, when any novelty was published, it was immediately detected and censured. 14. St. John, who lived so many years after our Saviour, was appealed to in these emergencies as the living oracle of the Church; and as his oral testimony lasted the first century, many have observed, that, by a particular providence of God, several of our Saviour's Disciples, and of the early converts of his religion, lived to a very great age, that they might personally convey the truth of the Gospel to those times, which were very remote from the first publication of it. Of these, besides St. John, we have a remarkable instance in Simeon, who was one of the Seventy sent forth by our Saviour, to publish the Gospel before his crucifixion, and a near kinsman of the Lord. This venerable person, who had probably heard with his own ears our Saviour's prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, presided over the church estab lished in that city, during the time of its memorable siege, and drew his congregation out of those dreadful and unparalleled calamities which befel his countrymen, by following the advice our Saviour had given, when they should see Jerusalem encompassed with armies, and the Roman standards, or abomination of desolation, set up. He lived till the year of our Lord 107, when he was martyred under the Emperor Trajan. SECTION VI. 1. The tradition of the Apostles secured by other excellent institutions; 2. But chiefly by the writings of the Evangelists. 3. The diligence of the Disciples and first Christian converts, to send abroad these writings. 4. That the written account of our Saviour was the same with that delivered by tradition; 5. Proved from the reception of the Gospel by those Churches which were established before it was written; 6. From the uniformity of what was believed in the several Churches; 7. From a remarkable passage in Irenæus. 8. Records which are now lost, of use to the three first centuries, for confirming the history of our Saviour. 9. Instances of such records. 1. THUS far we see how the learned Pagans might apprise themselves from oral information of the particulars of our Saviour's history. They could hear, in every church planted in every distant part of the earth, the account which was there received and preserved among them, of the history of our Saviour. They could learn the names and characters of those first missionaries that brought to them these accounts, and the miracles by which God Almighty attested their reports. But the Apostles and Disciples of Christ, to preserve the history of his life, and to secure their accounts of him from error and oblivion, did not only set aside certain persons for that pur pose, as has been already shown, but appropriated certain days to the commemoration of those facts, which they had related concerning him. The first day of the week was, in all its returns, a perpetual memorial of his resurrection, as the devotional exercises adapted to Friday and Saturday were to denote to all ages that he was crucified on the one of those days, and that he rested in the grave on the other. You may apply the same remark to several of the annual festivals instituted by the Apostles themselves, or, at furthest, by their immediate successors, in memory of the most important particulars in our Saviour's history; to which we must add the sacraments insti tuted by our Lord himself, and many of those rites and ceremonies, which obtained in the most early times of the Church. These are to be regarded as standing marks of such facts as were delivered by those, who were eyewitnesses to them, and which were contrived with great wisdom to last till time should be no more. These, without any other means, might have, in some measure, conveyed to posterity the memory of several transactions in the history of our Saviour, as they were related by his Disciples. At least the reason of these institutions, though they might be forgotten, and obscured by a long course of years, could not but be very well known by those who lived in the three first centuries, |