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Evidences of Christianity by William Paley

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From the clear and acknowledged parts of the case, I think it to be
likewise in the highest degree probable, that the story for which these
persons voluntarily exposed themselves to the fatigues and hardships
which they endured was a miraculous story; I mean, that they pretended
to miraculous evidence of some kind or other. They had nothing else to
stand upon. The designation of the person, that is to say, that Jesus of
Nazareth, rather than any other person, was the Messiah, and as such the
subject of their ministry, could only be founded upon supernatural
tokens attributed to him. Here were no victories, no conquests, no
revolutions, no surprising elevation of fortune, no achievements of
valour, of strength, or of policy, to appeal to; no discoveries in any
art or science, no great efforts of genius or learning to produce. A
Galilean peasant was announced to the world as a divine lawgiver. A
young man of mean condition, of a private and simple life, and who had
wrought no deliverance for the Jewish nation, was declared to be their
Messiah. This, without ascribing to him at the same time some proofs of
his mission, (and what other but supernatural proofs could there be?)
was too absurd a claim to be either imagined, or attempted, or credited.
In whatever degree, or in whatever part, the religion was argumentative,
when it came to the question, "Is the carpenter's son of Nazareth the
person whom we are to receive and obey?" there was nothing but the
miracles attributed to him by which his pretensions could be maintained
for a moment. Every controversy and every question must presuppose
these: for, however such controversies, when they did arise, might and
naturally would, be discussed upon their own grounds of argumentation,
without citing the miraculous evidence which had been asserted to attend
the Founder of the religion (which would have been to enter upon
another, and a more general question), yet we are to bear in mind, that
without previously supposing the existence or the pretence of such
evidence, there could have been no place for the discussion of the
argument at all. Thus, for example, whether the prophecies, which the
Jews interpreted to belong to the Messiah, were or were not applicable
to the history of Jesus of Nazareth, was a natural subject of debate in
those times; and the debate would proceed without recurring at every
turn to his miracles, because it set out with supposing these; inasmuch
as without miraculous marks and tokens (real or pretended), or without
some such great change effected by his means in the public condition of
the country, as might have satisfied the then received interpretation of
these prophecies, I do not see how the question could ever have been
entertained. Apollos, we read, "mightily convinced the Jews, showing by
the Scriptures that Jesus was Christ;" (Acts xviii. 28.) but unless
Jesus had exhibited some distinction of his person, some proof of
supernatural power, the argument from the old Scriptures could have had
no place. It had nothing to attach upon. A young man calling himself the
Son of God, gathering a crowd about him, and delivering to them lectures
of morality, could not have excited so much as a doubt among the Jews,
whether he was the object in whom a long series of ancient prophecies
terminated, from the completion of which they had formed such
magnificent expectations, and expectations of a nature so opposite to
what appeared; I mean no such doubt could exist when they had the whole
case before them, when they saw him put to death for his officiousness,
and when by his death the evidence concerning him was closed. Again, the
effect of the Messiah's coming, supposing Jesus to have been he, upon
Jews, upon Gentiles, upon their relation to each other, upon their
acceptance with God, upon their duties and their expectations; his
nature, authority, office, and agency; were likely to become subjects of
much consideration with the early votaries of the religion, and to
occupy their attention and writings. I should not however expect, that
in these disquisitions, whether preserved in the form of letters,
speeches, or set treatises, frequent or very direct mention of his
miracles would occur. Still, miraculous evidence lay at the bottom of
the argument. In the primary question, miraculous pretensions and
miraculous pretensions alone, were what they had to rely upon.

That the original story was miraculous, is very fairly also inferred
from the miraculous powers which were laid claim to by the Christians of
succeeding ages. If the accounts of these miracles be true, it was a
continuation of the same powers; if they be false, it was an imitation,
I will not say of what had been wrought, but of what had been reported
to have been wrought, by those who preceded them. That imitation should
follow reality, fiction should be grafted upon truth; that, if miracles
were performed at first, miracles should be pretended afterwards; agrees
so well with the ordinary course of human affairs, that we can have no
great difficulty in believing it. The contrary supposition is very
improbable, namely, that miracles should be pretended to by the
followers of the apostles and first emissaries of the religion, when
none were pretended to, either in their own persons or that of their
Master, by these apostles and emissaries themselves.





CHAPTER VII.

There is satisfactory evidence that many, professing to be original
witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed their lives in labours,
dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the
accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief
of those accounts; and that they also submitted, from the same motives,
to new rules of conduct.

It being then once proved, that the first propagators of the Christian
institution did exert activity, and subject themselves to great dangers
and sufferings, in consequence and for the sake of an extraordinary and,
I think, we may say, of a miraculous story of some kind or other; the
next great question is, whether the account, which our Scriptures
contain, be that story; that which these men delivered, and for which
they acted and suffered as they did? This question is, in effect, no
other than whether the story which Christians have now be the story
which Christians had then? And of this the following proofs may be
deduced from general considerations, and from considerations prior to
any inquiry into the particular reasons and testimonies by which the
authority of our histories is supported.

In the first place, there exists no trace or vestige of any other story.
It is not, like the death of Cyrus the Great, a competition between
opposite accounts, or between the credit of different historians. There
is not a document, or scrap of account, either contemporary with the
commencement of Christianity, or extant within many ages afar that
commencement, which assigns a history substantially different from ours.
The remote, brief, and incidental notices of the affair which are found
in heathen writers, so far as they do go, go along with us. They bear
testimony to these facts--that the institution originated from Jesus;
that the Founder was put to death, as a malefactor, at Jerusalem, by the
authority of the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate; that the religion
nevertheless spread in that city, and throughout Judea; and that it was
propagated thence to distant countries; that the converts were numerous;
that they suffered great hardships and injuries for their profession;
and that all this took place in the age of the world which our books
have assigned. They go on, further, to describe the manners of
Christians in terms perfectly conformable to the accounts extant in our
books; that they were wont to assemble on a certain day; that they sang
hymns to Christ as to a God; that they bound themselves by an oath not
to commit any crime, but to abstain from theft and adultery, to adhere
strictly to their promises, and not to deny money deposited in their
hands;* that they worshipped him who was crucified in Palestine; that
this their first lawgiver had taught them that they were all brethren;
that they had a great contempt for the things of this world, and looked
upon them as common; that they flew to one another's relief; that they
cherished strong hopes of immortality; that they despised death, and
surrendered themselves to sufferings.+

_________

* See Pliny's Letter--Bonnet, in his lively way of expressing himself,
says,--"Comparing Pliny's Letter with the account of the Acts, it seems
to me that I had not taken up another author, but that I was still
reading the historian of that extraordinary society." This is strong;
but there is undoubtedly an affinity, and all the affinity that could be
expected.

+ "It is incredible, what expedition they use when any of their friends
are known to be in trouble. In a word, they spare nothing upon such an
occasion;--for these miserable men have no doubt they shall be immortal
and live for ever; therefore they contemn death, and many surrender
themselves to sufferings. Moreover, their first lawgiver has taught them
that they are all brethren, when once they have turned and renounced the
gods of the Greeks, and worship this Master of theirs who was crucified,
and engage to live according to his laws. They have also a sovereign
contempt for all the things of this world, and look upon them as
common." Lucian, de Morte Peregrini, t. i. p. 565, ed. Graev.
_________


This is the account of writers who viewed the subject at a great
distance; who were uninformed and uninterested about it. It bears the
characters of such an account upon the face of it, because it describes
effects, namely the appearance in the world of a new religion, and the
conversion of great multitudes to it, without descending, in the
smallest degree, to the detail of the transaction upon which it was
founded, the interior of the institution, the evidence or arguments
offered by those who drew over others to it. Yet still here is no
contradiction of our story; no other or different story set up against
it: but so far a confirmation of it as that, in the general points on
which the heathen account touches, it agrees with that which we find in
our own books.

The same may be observed of the very few Jewish writers of that and the
adjoining period, which have come down to us. Whatever they omit, or
whatever difficulties we may find in explaining the omission, they
advance no other history of the transaction than that which we
acknowledge. Josephus, who wrote his Antiquities, or History of the
Jews, about sixty years after the commencement of Christianity, in a
passage generally admitted as genuine, makes mention of John under the
name of John the Baptist; that he was a preacher of virtue; that he
baptized his proselytes; that he was well received by the people; that
he was imprisoned and put to death by Herod; and that Herod lived in a
criminal cohabitation with Herodias, his brother's wife. (Antiq. I.
xviii. cap. v. sect. 1, 2.) In another passage allowed by many, although
not without considerable question being moved about it, we hear of
"James, the brother of him who was called Jesus, and of his being put to
death." (Antiq. I. xx. cap. ix. sect. 1.) In a third passage, extant in
every copy that remains of Josephus's history, but the authenticity of
which has nevertheless been long disputed, we have an explicit testimony
to the substance of our history in these words:--"At that time lived
Jesus, a wise man, if he may be called a man, for he performed many
wonderful works. He was a teacher of such men as received the truth with
pleasure. He drew over to him many Jews and Gentiles. This was the
Christ; and when Pilate, at the instigation of the chief men among us
had condemned him to the cross, they who before had conceived an
affection for him did not cease to adhere to him; for, on the third day,
he appeared to them alive again, the divine prophets having foretold
these and many wonderful things concerning him. And the sect of the
Christians, so called from him, subsists to this time." (Antiq. I.
xviii. cap. iii. sect 3.) Whatever become of the controversy concerning
the genuineness of this passage; whether Josephus go the whole length of
our history, which, if the passage be sincere, he does; or whether he
proceed only a very little way with us, which, if the passage be
rejected, we confess to be the case; still what we asserted is true,
that he gives no other or different history of the subject from ours, no
other or different account of the origin of the institution. And I think
also that it may with great reason be contended, either that the passage
is genuine, or that the silence of Josephus was designed. For, although
we should lay aside the authority of our own books entirely, yet when
Tacitus, who wrote not twenty, perhaps not ten, years after Josephus, in
his account of a period in which Josephus was nearly thirty years of
age, tells us, that a vast multitude of Christians were condemned at
Rome; that they derived their denomination from Christ, who, in the
reign of Tiberius, was put to death, as a criminal, by the procurator,
Pontius Pilate; that the superstition had spread not only over Judea,
the source of the evil but it had reached Rome also:--when Suetonius, an
historian contemporary with Tacitus, relates that, in the time of
Claudius, the Jews were making disturbances at Rome, Christus being
their leader: and that, during the reign of Nero, the Christians were
punished; under both which emperors Josephus lived: when Pliny, who
wrote his celebrated epistle not more than thirty years after the
publication of Josephus's history, found the Christians in such numbers
in the province of Bithynia as to draw from him a complaint that the
contagion had seized cities, towns, and villages, and had so seized them
as to produce a general desertion of the public rites; and when, as has
already been observed, there is no reason for imagining that the
Christians were more numerous in Bithynia than in many other parts of
the Roman empire; it cannot, I should suppose, after this, be believed,
that the religion, and the transaction upon which it was founded, were
too obscure to engage the attention of Josephus, or to obtain a place in
his history. Perhaps he did not know how to represent the business, and
disposed of his difficulties by passing it over in silence. Eusebius
wrote the life of Constantine, yet omits entirely the most remarkable
circumstance in that life, the death of his son Crispus; undoubtedly for
the reason here given. The reserve of Josephus upon the subject of
Christianity appears also in his passing over the banishment of the Jews
by Claudius, which Suetonius, we have seen, has recorded with an express
reference to Christ. This is at least as remarkable as his silence about
the infants of Bethlehem.* Be, however, the fact, or the cause of the
omission in Josephus,+ what it may, no other or different history on the
subject has been given by him, or is pretended to have been given.

_________

* Michaelis has computed, and, as it should seem, fairly enough; that
probably not more than twenty children perished by this cruel
precaution. Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament, translated by
Marsh; vol. i. c. ii. sect. 11.

+ There is no notice taken of Christianity in the Mishna, a collection
of Jewish traditions compiled about the year 180; although it contains a
Tract "De cultu peregrino," of strange or idolatrous worship; yet it
cannot be disputed but that Christianity was perfectly well known in the
world at this time. There is extremely little notice of the subject in
the Jerusalem Talmud, compiled about the year 300, and not much more in
the Babylonish Talmud, of the year 500; although both these works are of
a religions nature, and although, when the first was compiled,
Christianity was on the point of becoming the religion of the state,
and, when the latter was published, had been so for 200 years.
_________


But further; the whole series of Christian writers, from the first age
of the institution down to the present, in their discussions, apologies,
arguments, and controversies, proceed upon the general story which our
Scriptures contain, and upon no other. The main facts, the principal
agents, are alike in all. This argument will appear to be of great
force, when it is known that we are able to trace back the series of
writers to a contact with the historical books of the New Testament, and
to the age of the first emissaries of the religion, and to deduce it, by
an unbroken continuation, from that end of the train to the present.

The remaining letters of the apostles, (and what more original than
their letters can we have?) though written without the remotest design
of transmitting the history of Christ, or of Christianity, to future
ages, or even of making it known to their contemporaries, incidentally
disclose to us the following circumstances:--Christ's descent and
family; his innocence; the meekness and gentleness of his character (a
recognition which goes to the whole Gospel history); his exalted nature;
his circumcision; his transfiguration; his life of opposition and
suffering; his patience and resignation; the appointment of the
Eucharist, and the manner of it; his agony; his confession before
Pontius Pilate; his stripes, crucifixion, and burial; his resurrection;
his appearance after it, first to Peter, then to the rest of the
apostles; his ascension into heaven; and his designation to be the
future judge of mankind; the stated residence of the apostles at
Jerusalem; the working of miracles by the first preachers of the Gospel,
who were also the hearers of Christ;* the successful propagation of the
religion; the persecution of its followers; the miraculous conversion of
Paul; miracles wrought by himself, and alleged in his controversies with
his adversaries, and in letters to the persons amongst whom they were
wrought; finally, that MIRACLES were the signs of an apostle.+

_________

* Heb. ii. 3. "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation,
which, at the first, began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed
unto us by them that heard him, God also be bearing them witness, both
with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy
Ghost?" I allege this epistle without hesitation; for, whatever doubts
may have been raised about its author, there can be none concerning the
age in which it was written. No epistle in the collection carries about
it more indubitable marks of antiquity than this does. It speaks for
instance, throughout, of the temple as then standing and of the worship
of the temple as then subsisting.--Heb. viii. 4: "For, if he were on
earth, he should not be a priest, seeing there are priests that offer
according to the law."--Again, Heb. xiii. 10: "We have an altar whereof
they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle."

+ Truly the signs of as apostle were wraught among you in all patience,
in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds.' 2 Cor. xii. 12.
_________


In an epistle bearing the name of Barnabas, the companion of Paul,
probably genuine, certainly belonging to that age, we have the
sufferings of Christ, his choice of apostles and their number, his
passion, the scarlet robe, the vinegar and gall, the mocking and
piercing, the casting lots for his coat, (Ep. Bar. c. vii.) his
resurrection on the eighth, (i. e. the first day of the week,[Ep. Bar.
c. vi.]) and the commemorative distinction of that day, his
manifestation after his resurrection, and, lastly, his ascension. We
have also his miracles generally but positively referred to in the
following words:--"Finally, teaching the people of Israel, and doing
many wonders and signs among them, he preached to them, and showed the
exceeding great love which he bare towards them." (Ep. Bar. c. v.)

In an epistle of Clement, a hearer of St. Paul, although written for a
purpose remotely connected with the Christian history, we have the
resurrection of Christ, and the subsequent mission of the apostles,
recorded in these satisfactory terms: "The apostles have preached to us
from our Lord Jesus Christ from God:--For, having received their
command, and being thoroughly assured by the resurrection of our Lord
Jesus Christ, they went abroad, publishing that the kingdom of God was
at hand." (Ep. Clem. Rom. c. xlii.) We find noticed, also, the humility,
yet the power of Christ, (Ep. Clem. Rom. c. xvi.) his descent from
Abraham--his crucifixion. We have Peter and Paul represented as faithful
and righteous pillars of the church; the numerous sufferings of Peter;
the bonds, stripes, and stoning of Paul, and more particularly his
extensive and unwearied travels.

In an epistle of Polycarp, a disciple of St. John, though only a brief
hortatory letter, we have the humility, patience, sufferings,
resurrection, and ascension of Christ, together with the apostolic
character of St. Paul, distinctly recognised. (Pol. Ep. Ad Phil. C. v.
viii. ii. iii.) Of this same father we are also assured, by Irenaeus,
that he (Irenaeus) had heard him relate, "what he had received from
eye-witnesses concerning the Lord, both concerning his miracles and his
doctrine." (Ir. ad Flor. 1 ap. Euseb. l. v. c. 20.)

In the remaining works of Ignatius, the contemporary of Polycarp, larger
than those of Polycarp, (yet, like those of Polycarp, treating of
subjects in nowise leading to any recital of the Christian history,) the
occasional allusions are proportionably more numerous. The descent of
Christ from David, his mother Mary, his miraculous conception, the star
at his birth, his baptism by John, the reason assigned for it, his
appeal to the prophets, the ointment poured on his head, his sufferings
under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch, his resurrection, the
Lord's day called and kept in commemoration of it, and the Eucharist, in
both its Parts,--are unequivocally referred to. Upon the resurrection,
this writer is even circumstantial. He mentions the apostles' eating and
drinking with Christ after he had risen, their feeling and their
handling him; from which last circumstance Ignatius raises this just
reflection;--"They believed, being convinced both by his flesh and
spirit; for this cause, they despised death, and were found to be above
it." (Ad Smyr. c. iii.)

Quadratus, of the same age with Ignatius, has left us the following
noble testimony:--"The works of our Saviour were always conspicuous, for
they were real; both those that were healed, and those that were raised
from the dead; who were seen not only when they were healed or raised,
but for a long time afterwards; not only whilst he dwelled on this
earth, but also after his departure, and for a good while after it,
insomuch that some of them have reached to our times." (Ap. Euseb. H. E.
l. iv. c. 3.)

Justin Martyr came little more than thirty years after Quadratus. From
Justin's works, which are still extant, might be collected a tolerably
complete account of Christ's life, in all points agreeing with that
which is delivered in our Scriptures; taken indeed, in a great measure,
from those Scriptures, but still proving that this account, and no
other, was the account known and extant in that age. The miracles in
particular, which form the part of Christ's history most material to be
traced, stand fully and distinctly recognised in the following
passage:--"He healed those who had been blind, and deaf, and lame from
their birth; causing, by his word, one to leap, another to hear, and a
third to see: and, by raising the dead, and making them to live, he
induced, by his works, the men of that age to know him." (Just. Dial.
cum Tryph. p. 288, ed. Thirl.)

It is unnecessary to carry these citations lower, because the history,
after this time, occurs in ancient Christian writings as familiarly as
it is wont to do in modern sermons;--occurs always the same in
substance, and always that which our evangelists represent.

This is not only true of those writings of Christians which are genuine,
and of acknowledged authority; but it is, in a great measure, true of
all their ancient writings which remain; although some of these may have
been erroneously ascribed to authors to whom they did not belong, or may
contain false accounts, or may appear to be undeserving of credit, or
never indeed to have obtained any. Whatever fables they have mixed with
the narrative, they preserve the material parts, the leading facts, as
we have them; and, so far as they do this, although they be evidence of
nothing else, they are evidence that these points were fixed, were
received and acknowledged by all Christians in the ages in which the
books were written. At least, it may be asserted, that, in the places
where we were most likely to meet with such things, if such things had
existed, no reliques appear of any story substantially different from
the present, as the cause, or as the pretence, of the institution.

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