with a nature pure in itself, and not capable of alteration or decay.” That he was no Christian, is manifest; yet he is no where found to have spoken with contumely of our religion, like the other writers of his age, and those who succeeded him. Theodoret says of him, “That he had heard of our holy gospel, and inserted many of our sacred mysteries in his works;” which we may easily believe, (because the Christian churches were then spread in Greece, and Pliny the younger was at the same time conversant amongst them in Asia,) though that part of our author’s works is not now extant, from whence Theodoret might gather those passages. But we need not wonder that a philosopher was not easy to embrace the divine mysteries of our faith. A modern God, as our Saviour was to him, was of hard digestion to a man, who probably despised the vanities and fabulous relations of all the old. Besides, a crucified Saviour of mankind; a doctrine attested by illiterate disciples; the author of it a Jew, whose nation at that time was despicable, and his doctrine but an innovation among that despised people, to which the learned of his own country gave no credit, and which the magistrates of his nation punished with an ignominious death; the scene of his miracles acted in an obscure corner of the world; his being from eternity, yet born in time; his resurrection and ascension; these, and many more particulars, might easily choke the faith of a philosopher, who believed no more than what he could deduce from the principles of nature; and that too with a doubtful academical assent, or rather an inclination to assent to probability, which he judged was wanting in this new religion. These circumstances considered, though they plead not an absolute invincible ignorance in his behalf, yet they amount at least to a degree of it: for either he thought them not worth weighing, or rejected them when weighed; and in both cases he must of necessity be ignorant, because he could not know without revelation, and the revelation was not to him.