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Evidences of Christianity by William Paley

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This passage is very observable. It exhibits the reasoning of different
sorts of persons upon the occasion of a miracle which persons of all
sorts are represented to have acknowledged as real. One sort of men
thought that there was something very extraordinary in all this; but
that still Jesus could not be the Christ, because there was a
circumstance in his appearance which militated with an opinion
concerning Christ in which they had been brought up, and of the truth of
which, it is probable, they had never entertained a particle of doubt,
viz. That "when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is." Another
sort were inclined to believe him to be the Messiah. But even these did
not argue as we should; did not consider the miracle as of itself
decisive of the question; as what, if once allowed, excluded all further
debate upon the subject; but founded their opinion upon a kind of
comparative reasoning, "When Christ cometh, will he do more miracles
than those which this man hath done?"

Another passage in the same evangelist, and observable for the same
purpose, is that in which he relates the resurrection of Lazarus;
"Jesus," he tells us (xi. 43, 44), "when he had thus spoken, cried with
a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth: and he that was dead came forth,
bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was bound about with
a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go." One might
have suspected, that at least all those who stood by the sepulchre, when
Lazarus was raised, would have believed in Jesus. Yet the evangelist
does not so represent it:--"Then many of the Jews which came to Mary,
and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him; but some of
them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus
had done." We cannot suppose that the evangelist meant by this account
to leave his readers to imagine, that any of the spectators doubted
about the truth of the miracle. Far from it. Unquestionably, he states
the miracle to have been fully allowed; yet the persons who allowed it
were, according to his representation, capable of retaining hostile
sentiments towards Jesus. "Believing in Jesus" was not only to believe
that he wrought miracles, but that he was the Messiah. With us there is
no difference between these two things; with them there was the
greatest; and the difference is apparent in this transaction. If Saint
John has represented the conduct of the Jews upon this occasion truly
(and why he should not I cannot tell, for it rather makes against him
than for him), it shows clearly the principles upon which their judgment
proceeded. Whether he has related the matter truly or not, the relation
itself discovers the writer's own opinion of those principles: and that
alone possesses considerable authority. In the next chapter, we have a
reflection of the evangelist entirely suited to this state of the case:
"But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet believed they
not on him." (Chap. xii. 37.) The evangelist does not mean to impute the
defect of their belief to any doubt about the miracles, but to their not
perceiving, what all now sufficiently perceive, and what they would have
perceived had not their understandings been governed by strong
prejudices, the infallible attestation which the works of Jesus bore to
the truth of his pretensions.

The ninth chapter of Saint John's Gospel contains a very circumstantial
account of the cure of a blind man; a miracle submitted to all the
scrutiny and examination which a sceptic could propose. If a modern
unbeliever had drawn up the interrogatories, they could hardly have been
more critical or searching. The account contains also a very curious
conference between the Jewish rulers and the patient, in which the point
for our present notice is, their resistance of the force of the miracle,
and of the conclusion to which it led, after they had failed in
discrediting its evidence. "We know that God spake unto Moses, but as
for this fellow, we know not whence he is." That was the answer which
set their minds at rest. And by the help of much prejudice, and great
unwillingness to yield, it might do so. In the mind of the poor man
restored to sight, which was under no such bias, and felt no such
reluctance, the miracle had its natural operation. "Herein," says he,
"is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, yet he hath
opened mine eyes. Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any
man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth. Since
the world began, was it not heard, that any man opened the eyes of one
that was born blind. If this man were not of God, he could do nothing."
We do not find that the Jewish rulers had any other reply to make to
this defence, than that which authority is sometimes apt to make to
argument, "Dost thou teach us?"

If it shall be inquired how a turn of thought, so different from what
prevails at present, should obtain currency with the ancient Jews; the
answer is found in two opinions which are proved to have subsisted in
that age and country. The one was their expectation of a Messiah of a
kind totally contrary to what the appearance of Jesus bespoke him to be;
the other, their persuasion of the agency of demons in the production of
supernatural effects. These opinions are not supposed by us for the
purpose of argument, but are evidently recognised in the Jewish writings
as well as in ours. And it ought moreover to be considered, that in
these opinions the Jews of that age had been from their infancy brought
up; that they were opinions, the grounds of which they had probably few
of them inquired into, and of the truth of which they entertained no
doubt. And I think that these two opinions conjointly afford an
explanation of their conduct. The first put them upon seeking out some
excuse to themselves for not receiving Jesus in the character in which
he claimed to be received; and the second supplied them with just such
an excuse as they wanted. Let Jesus work what miracles he would, still
the answer was in readiness, "that he wrought them by the assistance of
Beelzebub." And to this answer no reply could be made, but that which
our Saviour did make, by showing that the tendency of his mission was so
adverse to the views with which this being was, by the objectors
themselves, supposed to act, that it could not reasonably be supposed
that he would assist in carrying it on. The power displayed in the
miracles did not alone refute the Jewish solution, because the
interposition of invisible agents being once admitted, it is impossible
to ascertain the limits by which their efficiency is circumscribed. We
of this day may be disposed possibly to think such opinions too absurd
to have been ever seriously entertained. I am not bound to contend for
the credibility of the opinions. They were at least as reasonable as the
belief in witchcraft. They were opinions in which the Jews of that age
had from their infancy been instructed; and those who cannot see enough
in the force of this reason to account for their conduct towards our
Saviour, do not sufficiently consider how such opinions may sometimes
become very general in a country, and with what pertinacity, when once
become so, they are for that reason alone adhered to. In the suspense
which these notions and the prejudices resulting from them might
occasion, the candid and docile and humble-minded would probably decide
in Christ's favour; the proud and obstinate, together with the giddy and
the thoughtless, almost universally against him.

This state of opinion discovers to us also the reason of what some
choose to wonder at, why the Jews should reject miracles when they saw
them, yet rely so much upon the tradition of them in their own history.
It does not appear that it had ever entered into the minds of those who
lived in the time of Moses and the prophets to ascribe their miracles to
the supernatural agency of evil being. The solution was not then
invented. The authority of Moses and the prophets being established, and
become the foundation of the national polity and religion, it was not
probable that the later Jews, brought up in a reverence for that
religion, and the subjects of that polity, should apply to their history
a reasoning which tended to overthrow the foundation of both.

II. The infidelity of the Gentile world, and that more especially of men
of rank and learning in it, is resolvable into a principle which, in my
judgment, will account for the inefficacy of any argument or any
evidence whatever, viz. contempt prior to examination. The state of
religion amongst the Greeks and Romans had a natural tendency to induce
this disposition. Dionysius Halicarnassensis remarks, that there were
six hundred different kinds of religions or sacred rites exercised at
Rome. (Jortin's Remarks on Eccl. Hist. Vol. i. p. 371.) The superior
classes of the community treated them all as fables. Can we wonder,
then, that Christianity was included in the number, without inquiry into
its separate merits, or the particular grounds of its pretensions? It
might be either true or false for anything they knew about it. The
religion had nothing in its character which immediately engaged their
notice. It mixed with no politics. It produced no fine writers. It
contained no curious speculations. When it did reach their knowledge, I
doubt not but that it appeared to them a very strange system,--so
unphilosophical,--dealing so little in argument and discussion, in such
arguments however and discussions as they were accustomed to entertain.
What is said of Jesus Christ, of his nature, office, and ministry, would
be in the highest degree alien from the conceptions of their theology.
The Redeemer and the destined Judge of the human race a poor young man,
executed at Jerusalem with two thieves upon a cross! Still more would
the language in which the Christian doctrine was delivered be dissonant
and barbarous to their ears. What knew they of grace, of redemption, of
justification, of the blood of Christ shed for the sins of men, of
reconcilement, of mediation? Christianity was made up of points they had
never thought of; of terms which they had never heard.

It was presented also to the imagination of the learned Heathen under
additional disadvantage, by reason of its real, and still more of its
nominal, connexion with Judaism. It shared in the obloquy and ridicule
with which that people and their religion were treated by the Greeks and
Romans. They regarded Jehovah himself only as the idol of the Jewish
nation, and what was related of him as of a piece with what was told of
the tutelar deities of other countries; nay, the Jews were in a
particular manner ridiculed for being a credulous race; so that whatever
reports of a miraculous nature came out of that country were looked upon
by the Heathen world as false and frivolous. When they heard of
Christianity, they heard of it as a quarrel amongst this people about
some articles of their own superstition. Despising, therefore, as they
did, the whole system, it was not probable that they would enter, with
any degree of seriousness or attention, into the detail of its disputes
or the merits of either side. How little they knew, and with what
carelessness they judged of these matters, appears, I think, pretty
plainly from an example of no less weight than that of Tacitus, who, in
a grave and professed discourse upon the history of the Jews, states
that they worshipped the effigy of an ass. (Tacit. Hist. lib. v. c. 2.)
The passage is a proof how prone the learned men of those times were,
and upon how little evidence, to heap together stories which might
increase the contempt and odium in which that people was holden. The
same foolish charge is also confidently repeated by Plutarch. (Sympos.
lib. iv. quaest. 5.)

It is observable that all these considerations are of a nature to
operate with the greatest force upon the highest ranks; upon men of
education, and that order of the public from which writers are
principally taken: I may add also upon the philosophical as well as the
libertine character; upon the Antonines or Julian, not less than upon
Nero or Domitian; and, more particularly, upon that large and polished
class of men who acquiesced in the general persuasion, that all they had
to do was to practise the duties of morality, and to worship the Deity
more patrio; a habit of thinking, liberal as it may appear, which shuts
the door against every argument for a new religion. The considerations
above mentioned would acquire also strength from the prejudices which
men of rank and learning universally entertain against anything that
originates with the vulgar and illiterate; which prejudice is known to
be as obstinate as any prejudice whatever.

Yet Christianity was still making its way: and, amidst so many
impediments to its progress, so much difficulty in procuring audience
and attention, its actual success is more to be wondered at, than that
it should not have universally conquered scorn and indifference, fixed
the levity of a voluptuous age, or, through a cloud of adverse
prejudications, opened for itself a passage to the hearts and
understandings of the scholars of the age.

And the cause which is here assigned for the rejection of Christianity
by men of rank and learning among the Heathens, namely, a strong
antecedent contempt, accounts also for their silence concerning it. If
they had rejected it upon examination, they would have written about it;
they would have given their reasons. Whereas, what men repudiate upon
the strength of some prefixed persuasion, or from a settled contempt of
the subject, of the persons who propose it, or of the manner in which it
is proposed, they do not naturally write books about, or notice much in
what they write upon other subjects.

The letters of the younger Pliny furnish an example of this silence, and
let us, in some measure, into the cause of it. From his celebrated
correspondence with Trajan, we know that the Christian religion
prevailed in a very considerable degree in the province over which he
presided; that it had excited his attention; that he had inquired into
the matter just so much as a Roman magistrate might be expected to
inquire, viz., whether the religion contained any opinions dangerous to
government; but that of its doctrines, its evidences, or its books, he
had not taken the trouble to inform himself with any degree of care or
correctness. But although Pliny had viewed Christianity in a nearer
position than most of his learned countrymen saw it in, yet he had
regarded the whole with such negligence and disdain (further than as it
seemed to concern his administration), that, in more than two hundred
and forty letters of his which have come down to us, the subject is
never once again mentioned. If, out of this number, the two letters
between him and Trajan had been lost, with what confidence would the
obscurity of the Christian religion have been argued from Pliny's
silence about it, and with how little truth!

The name and character which Tacitus has given to Christianity,
"exitiabilis superstitio" (a pernicious superstition), and by which two
words he disposes of the whole question of the merits or demerits of the
religion, afford a strong proof how little he knew, or concerned himself
to know, about the matter. I apprehend that I shall not be contradicted,
when I take upon me to assert, that no unbeliever of the present age
would apply this epithet to the Christianity of the New Testament, or
not allow that it was entirely unmerited. Read the instructions given by
a great teacher of the religion to those very Roman converts of whom
Tacitus speaks; and given also a very few years before the time of which
he is speaking; and which are not, let it be observed, a collection of
fine sayings brought together from different parts of a large work, but
stand in one entire passage of a public letter, without the intermixture
of a single thought which is frivolous or exceptionable:--"Abhor that
which is evil, cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one
to another, with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another; not
slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; rejoicing in
hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer; distributing
to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality. Bless them which
persecute you; bless, and curse not. Rejoice with them that do rejoice,
and weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one towards another.
Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise
in your own conceits. Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things
honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as lieth in
you, live peaceably with all men. Avenge not yourselves, but rather give
place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay,
saith the Lord: therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he
thirst, give him drink: for, in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire
on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power
but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever,
therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they
that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a
terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of
the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the
same: for he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do
that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for
he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that
doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but
also for conscience' sake. For, for this cause pay ye tribute also: for
they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.
Render therefore to all their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due;
custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.

"Owe no man anything, but to love one another; for he that loveth
another, hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit
adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear
false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other
commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, Thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour;
therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

"And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of
sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night
is far spent, the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of
darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly as
in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and
wantonness, not in strife and envying." (Romans, xii. 9--xiii. 13.)

Read this, and then think of "exitiabilis superstitio!" Or, if we be not
allowed, in contending with Heathen authorities, to produce our books
against theirs, we may at least be permitted to confront theirs with one
another. Of this "pernicious superstition" what could Pliny find to
blame, when he was led, by his office, to institute something like an
examination into the conduct and principles of the sect? He discovered
nothing but that they were went to meet together on a stated day before
it was light, and sing among themselves a hymn to Christ as a God, and
to bind themselves by an oath, not to the commission of any wickedness,
but, not to be guilty of theft, robbery, or adultery; never to falsify
their word, nor to deny a pledge committed to them, when called upon to
return it.

Upon the words of Tacitus we may build the following observations:

First; That we are well warranted in calling the view under which the
learned men of that age beheld Christianity an obscure and distant view.
Had Tacitus known more of Christianity, of its precepts, duties,
constitution, or design, however he had discredited the story, he would
have respected the principle. He would have described the religion
differently, though he had rejected it. It has been very satisfactorily
shown, that the "superstition" of the Christians consisted in
worshipping a person unknown to the Roman calendar; and that the
"perniciousness" with which they were reproached was nothing else but
their opposition to the established polytheism; and this view of the
matter was just such an one as might be expected to occur to a mind
which held the sect in too much contempt to concern itself about the
grounds and reasons of their conduct.

Secondly; We may from hence remark how little reliance can be placed
upon the most acute judgments in subjects which they are pleased to
despise; and which, of course, they from the first consider as unworthy
to be inquired into. Had not Christianity survived to tell its own
story, it must have gone down to posterity as a "pernicious
superstition;" and that upon the credit of Tacitus's account, much, I
doubt not, strengthened by the name of the writer, and the reputation of
his sagacity.

Thirdly; That this contempt, prior to examination, is an intellectual
vice, from which the greatest faculties of mind are not free. I know
not, indeed, whether men of the greatest faculties of mind are not the
most subject to it. Such men feel themselves seated upon an eminence.
Looking down from their height upon the follies of mankind, they behold
contending tenets wasting their idle strength upon one another with the
common disdain of the absurdity of them all. This habit of thought,
however comfortable to the mind which entertain it, or however natural
to great parts, is extremely dangerous; and more apt than almost any
other disposition to produce hasty and contemptuous, and, by
consequence, erroneous judgments, both of persons and opinions.

Fourthly; We need not be surprised at many writers of that age not
mentioning Christianity at all, when they who did mention it appear to
have entirely misconceived its nature and character; and, in consequence
of this misconception, to have regarded it with negligence and contempt.

To the knowledge of the greatest part of the learned heathens, the facts
of the Christian history could only come by report. The books, probably,
they had never looked into. The settled habit of their minds was, and
long had been, an indiscriminate rejection of all reports of the kind.
With these sweeping conclusions truth hath no chance. It depends upon
distinction. If they would not inquire, how should they be convinced? It
might be founded in truth, though they, who made no search, might not
discover it.

"Men of rank and fortune, of wit and abilities, are often found, even in
Christian countries, to be surprisingly ignorant of religion, and of
everything that relates to it. Such were many of the heathens. Their
thoughts were all fixed upon other things; upon reputation and glory,
upon wealth and power, upon luxury and pleasure, upon business or
learning. They thought, and they had reason to think, that the religion
of their country was fable and forgery, a heap of inconsistent lies;
which inclined them to suppose that other religions were no better.
Hence it came to pass, that when the apostles preached the Gospel, and
wrought miracles in confirmation of a doctrine every way worthy of God,
many Gentiles knew little or nothing of it, and would not take the least
pains to inform themselves about it. This appears plainly from ancient
history." (Jortin's Disc. on the Christ. Rel. p. 66, ed. 4th.)

I think it by no means unreasonable to suppose that the heathen public,
especially that part which is made up of men of rank and education, were
divided into two classes; these who despised Christianity beforehand,
and those who received it. In correspondency with which division of
character the writers of that age would also be of two classes; those
who were silent about Christianity, and those who were Christians. "A
good man, who attended sufficiently to the Christian affairs, would
become a Christian; after which his testimony ceased to be pagan and
became Christian." (Hartley, Obs. p. 119.)

I must also add, that I think it sufficiently proved, that the notion of
magic was resorted to by the heathen adversaries of Christianity, in
like manner as that of diabolical agency had before been by the Jews.
Justin Martyr alleges this as his reason for arguing from prophecy
rather than from miracles. Origen imputes this evasion to Celsus; Jerome
to Porphyry; and Lactantius to the heathen in general. The several
passages which contain these testimonies will be produced in the next
chapter. It being difficult, however, to ascertain in what degree this
notion prevailed, especially the superior ranks of the heathen
communities, another, and think an adequate, cause has been assigned for
their infidelity. It is probable that in many cases the two causes would
together.

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