40 THE REASON OF FAITH. [BOOK VL, PART I.
judged that it all tended to sedition, and that commotions would ensue thereon. These things enraged the generality of mankind against them and their converts ; who therefore made havoc of them with incredible fury. And yet, notwithstanding all these disadvan- tages, and against all these oppositions, their doctrine prevailed to subdue the world to the obedience thereof. And there may be added unto all these things one or two considerations from the state of things at that time in the world, which signalize the quality of this work, and manifest it to have been of God ; as, —
[1.] That in the New Testament, the writers of it do constantly distribute all those with whom they had to do in this world into Jews and Greeks, which we render Gentiles, the other nations of the world coming under that denomination because of their pre- eminence on various accounts. Now, the Jews at that time were in solidum possessed of all the true religion that was in the world, and this they boasted of as their privilege, bearing up themselves with the thought and reputation of it everywhere and on all occa- sions; it being at that time their great business to gain proselytes unto it, whereon also their honour and advantage did depend. The Greeks, on the other side, were in as full a possession of arts, sciences, literature, and all that which the world calls " wisdom," as the Jews were of religion ; and they had also a religion, received by a long tra- dition of their fathers, from time immemorial, which they had vari- ously cultivated and dressed with mysteries and ceremonies, unto their own complete satisfaction. Besides, the Romans, who were the ruling part of the Gentiles, did ascribe all their prosperity and the whole raising of their stupendous empire to their gods and the religious worship they gave unto them; so that it was a fundamental maxim in their policy and rule, that they should prosper or decay according as they observed or were negligent in the religion they received; as, indeed, not only those who owned the true God and his providence, but, before idolatry and superstition had given place unto atheism, all people did solemnly impute all their achievements and successes unto their gods, as the prophet speaks of the Chal- deans, Hab. i. 11; and he who first undertook to record the ex- ploits of the nations of the world doth constantly assign all their, good and evil unto their gods, as they were pleased or provoked. The Romans, in especial, boasted that their religion was the cause of their prosperity: "Pietate et religione atque hac una sapientia, qubd deorum immortalium numine omnia regi gubernarique perspeximus, omnes gentes nationesque superamus," says their great oracle [ora- tor?] Orat. de Har. Resp., 9. And Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a great and wise historian, giving an account of the religion of the Romans and the ceremonies of their worship, affirms that he doth it unto
CHAP. III.] EXTERNAL ARGUMENTS FOR DIVINE REVELATION. 41
this end, "that those who have been ignorant of the Roman piety should cease to wonder at their prosperity and successes in all their wars, seeing, by reason of their religion, they had the gods always propitious and succourable unto them," Antiq. Rom. lib. ii. The consideration hereof made them so obstinate in their adherence unto their present religion, that when, after many ages and hundreds of years, some books of Numa, their second king, and principal establisher of their commonwealth, were occasionally found, instead of paying them any respect, they ordered them to be burnt, because one who had perused them took his oath that they were contrary to their present worship and devotion ! And this was that which, upon the declension of their empire, after the prevalency of the Christian religion, those who were obstinate in their Paganism reflected se- verely upon the Christians ; the relinquishment of their old religion they fiercely avowed to be the cause of all their calamities; — in answer unto which calumny, principally, Austin wrote his excellent discourse, De Civitate Dei.
In this state of things the preachers of the gospel come among them, and not only bring a new doctrine, under all the disadvan- tages before mentioned, and, moreover, that he who was the head of it was newly crucified by the present powers of the earth for a malefactor, but also such a doctrine as was expressly to take away the religion from the Jews, and the wisdom from the Greeks, and the principal maxim of polity from the Romans, whereon they thought they had raised their empire ! It were easy to declare how all those sects were engaged, in worldly interest, honour, reputation, and principles of safety, to oppose, decry, condemn, and reject, this new doctrine. And if a company of sorry craftsmen were able to fill a whole city with tumult and uproar against the gospel, as they did when they apprehended it would bring in a decay of their trade, Acts xix. 23-41, what can we think was done in all the world by all those who were engaged and enraged by higher provocations? It was as death to the Jews to part with their religion, both on the account of the conviction they had of its truth and the honour they esteemed to accrue to themselves thereby; and for the Greeks to have that wis- dom, which they and their forefathers had been labouring in for so many generations, now to be all rejected as an impertinent foolery by the sorry preachments of a few illiterate persons, it raised them unto the highest indignation; and the Romans were wise enough to secure the fundamental maxim of their state. Wherefore the world seemed very sufficiently fortified against the admission of this new and strange doctrine, on the terms whereon it was proposed. There can be no danger, sure, that ever it should obtain any considerable progress. But we know that things fell out quite otherwise ; religion,