[253] [“The miracles of the Jewish historian, are intimately connected with all the civil affairs, and make a necessary and inseparable part. The whole history is founded in them; it consists of little else; and if it were not a history of them, it would be a history of nothing.”--BOLINGBROKE, Posthumous Works, vol. iii. p. 279.] [254] [An admirable work on this recondite mode of proving the truth of the New Testament narrative, is PALEY’S Horæ Paulinæ. The same department of evidence is ably handled by BIRK, in his Horæ Evangelicæ, and Horæ Apostolicæ: GRAVES on the Pentateuch: and BLUNT in his “Undesigned Coincidences both of the Old and New Testament.” GROTIUS, De Veritate, has some excellent passages on the same subject.] [255] [Clem. Rom. Ep. 1. c. 47.] CLEMENT, who is here quoted, lived in the first century, and is mentioned Phil. iv. 3. His epistle to the Corinthians, written in Greek, contains the passage here referred to, which may be thus translated: “Take the letter of the blessed Paul the Apostle. What did he write to you, in the first beginning of the Gospel? Truly he sent you a divinely inspired letter about himself, and Cephas, and Apollos.” [256] Gal. i.: 1 Cor. xi. 23, &c.: 1 Cor. xv. 8. [257] Rom. xv. 19: 1 Cor. xii. 8, 9, 10-28, &c., and xiii. 1, 2, 8, and the whole 14th chapter: 2 Cor. xii. 12, 13: Gal. iii. 2, 5. [258] See the Koran, chap. xiii. and chap. xvii. [259] [MAHOMET expressly declares that he worked no _public_ miracles in confirmation of his mission, “because the former nations have charged them with imposture.” He claims, however, to have had private miraculous assurances of his mission, and most preposterous they were. WHATELY, in his Christian Evidences, has handled this aspect of miracles with great ability. See also PALEY’S Evidences, sec. 3: and GIBBON’S Decline and Fall, chap. 1.] [260] [ALEXANDER, in his Evidences, and several other writers have placed this argument in a very convincing light. ARNOBIUS, one of the earliest Christian writers, asks, “Shall we say that the men of those times were inconsiderate, deceitful, stupid, and brutish enough to feign having seen what they never saw? and that when they might have lived in peace and comfort, they chose gratuitous hatred and obloquy?” The _rejection_ of Christianity by so many in the first age was the result of the continued action of personal and hereditary prejudice and depravity, capable of resisting any supposable evidence. The _reception_ of Christianity by multitudes, under the same evidences, and to their immediate personal damage, shows strongly that there was enough evidence to produce those effects. Thus the rejection by some does not countervail the acceptance by others.] [261] P. 294, &c. [262] [Compare BUTLER’S Sermons; on Balaam, and on Self-deceit.] [263] See the foregoing chapter.