POSTSCRIPT. PROOFS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. IN arguing for the divinity of Jesus Christ, in the foregoing Letter, I have taken several maxims for granted, and have not attempted to prove them. As the people, to whom the Letter is addressed, allowed these maxims, I had a right to suppose them; but, as the Letter may possibly fall into the hands of some, who may doubt or deny them, it may not be impertinent to subjoin a few proofs and illustrations, explaining what may be doubtful, and proving what may be denied. In general I have taken for granted the following proposi tions." I. The Books of the Old and New Testament were given by divine inspiration. II. The inspired writings contain all things necessary to be believed and practised in religion. III. The words by which the inspired writers expressed their ideas, are to be understood in that sense, in which the people, to whom they wrote, generally understood them at the time of their writing, unless notice be given of the contrary. IV. The belief of a proposition does not necessarily imply a clear idea of that object, of which the proposition affirms any thing. As these maxims are interwoven with the whole argument, I shall not consider either of them apart: but shall follow the order of the letter, and throw in the proofs of them promiscuously, as the articles in question require.. Page 12. Compare the language of the new Testament with the state of the pagan world at the time of its publication. It is here supposed, 1. That God communicated true ideas of religious objects to the apostles. 2. That the apostles intended to convey these ideas to the pagans. 3. That for the purpose of conveying their ideas, they preached and wrote to the pagans. 4. That the apostles used terms, to which the pagans had been accustomed before their time, and which were then in common use amongst them. 5. That the apostles affixed such ideas to the terms, as the pagans affixed to them. And lastly, that they transferred ideas, known to the heathens under those terms, to an object, who had been before unknown to them, that is to Jesus Christ. It would require a volume to discuss these articles fully; but I shall only explain myself briefly by the following remarks. 1. The heathens had a notion of a being superior to human which they called Jos, God; Seov, divinity, deity; Jov 7, something divine; To ov, the being, &c. and they thought a man might as well deny the being of the sun, as the existence of such a deity. Qui dubitet, haud sane intelligo, cur non idem sol sit, an nullus sit, dubitare possit." 2. The contracted minds of the pagans could not admit the grand idea of one infinitely just, infinitely wise, infinitely powerful, and all present God. In one sensible object they discovered a particular display of wisdom, in another of power; in one event they perceived a mark of more than human justice, in another of more than human goodness; but not being able to form an abstract idea of wisdom, justice, goodness, or power, they divided their obscure idea of divinity into endless ideas of displays of it, and what we call an attribute of God, they called a god, with the addition of a form, and thus their So was broken and dispersed into SEO, gods. Hesiod talks of three myriads, or thirty thousand of these deities. Τρις γαρ μύριοι εισιν, ότε * Cicero de Nat. Deor. lib. ii. cap. 2. edit. Dav. † Hesiodiop. et dier. i. 250. 3. The pagans, having accustomed themselves to consider divinity under a form, and to circumscribe it in an action, added demons and heroes to the number of deities, and in genetal called the whole multitude Ja, gods, distinguishing them however from men. Hence Aristotle exhorts his rhetorician to distinguish what he affirms of a god from what he affirms of a man; Η ανθρωπου η θεου ταυλο τουλο έραν. A priestess, says he, would not suffer her son to declaim in public to the people, because, said she, if you inculcate just maxims, aqwra, men, will hate you, and if you teach unjust ones, 9, the gods, will abhor you. The priestess, adds he, might as well have said, declaim in public, for, if you inculcate just maxims, So, the gods, will love you, and if unjust ones, avopwño, men, will respect you.† 4. The pagans, having an idea of order, and unity of design, in nature; and supposing that order could not be maintained without government, and that the best kind of government was monarchical (I speak of the earher Greeks) imagined such a government among the gods, and attributed supremacy to one, whom they called Jupiter; hence Homer's Пang av pur TE FEWY TE, father of gods and men. Hence Orpheus, Αιθερος ηδ' αίδου, πολε γαίης τε τυράννε. Ως βρονταίς σειεις βριαρον δόμον ελύμποιο, Tyrant of heaven and hell, of earth and sea! &c.§ Hence Aristophanes, Zev BiNEY. O Jupiter, king, &c.ll From this popular notion Isocrates derives an argument for monarchical government, Tas Jess UTO TOU AI Caoikea.¶ We ought to prefer a monarchy before a republic, says he, because, according to our own conjectures, and according to an ancient opinion, the gods prefer a monarchy, and Jove is their king. 5. All the terms, which the pagans use of God, express two or three general ideas. Sometimes they are put for an Ho *Arist. Rhetor. lib. ii. cap. 23. † ibid. lib. ii. cap. 24. merus passim. § Poet min. Orph. b. 1, 2, 3. || Nub. v. 2. ¶ Orat. 3. ad Nicoc. obscure notion of what we call deity, unoriginated and eternal; sometimes for what we call an attribute of God; and sometimes for an operation or influence, that governs an event. Having no clear idea of these things, they used their terms in a vague and indiscriminate manner. Longinus uses Gros, Jov, and deponer promiscuously.* Aristotle says, Bdev esiv, añλ' ʼn Je, & TEO Eрyov.† Socrates was accused to the Athenians of not worshipping the gods, 9, which the city worshipped, and of introducing new deities, dona; and Xenophon clears him from the charge by proving that he did sacrifice both abroad and at home to the city gods, and consequently, that he did introduce no new da. He uses the terms Sapone and promiscuously.‡. 6. The apostles used the term in the same sense, in which the heathens used it; that is, they expressed by it the idea of a creative, governing being superior to man. By giving it to one, and to one only, they collected all the pagan notions of wisdom, power, justice, and goodness, into one general idea, and affixed that idea to one single object. By asserting the spirituality and invisibility of the Deity, they rerefined the idea of from whatever of the gross and the human the heathens had mixed with it. When St. Paul went to He Athens, he saw the city wholly given to idolatry; he saw an altar inscribed to the unknown God, Ayw5wew; and, addressing himself to these idolaters, he said, ON 8 ayoles evoebelte, WHOM ye ignorantly worship, ΤΟΥΤΟΝ εγω καταγίέλλω υμιν, HIM I declare unto you. GOD, who made the world, and so on. quoted the poet Aratus, who speaking of the heathen JUPITER, says, We are HIS offspring, and added, Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of GOD, we ought not to think that the GODHEAD is like unto gold; and so on.§ The same apostle went along with Barnabas to Lystra. The people said, the 9, the Gods, Jupiter and Mercury, are come down to us in in the likeness of men. The apostles replied, We preach to you, Sirs! that we should turn from these vanities unto the to wrla, the living God. The same St. Paul * De Sublim. sect. ix. † Rhetor. lib. ii. cap. 24. Xenoph. Memorab. lib. i. § Acts xvii. || ibid. xiv. |