ters of genuineness and originality which are not found, and which, in the nature and order of things, cannot be expected to be found in spurious compositions; whatever difficulties we may meet with in other topics of the Christian evidence, we can have little in yielding our assent to the following conclusions: That there was such a person as St. Paul; that he lived in the age which we ascribe to him; that he went about preaching the religion of which Jesus Christ was the founder; and that the letters which we now read were actually written by him upon the subject, and in the course of that his ministry.

mediately present and active. I do not allow that this insinuation is applied to the historical part of the New Testament with any colour of justice or probability; but I say, that to the Epistles it is not applicable at all.

III. These letters prove that the converts to Christianity were not drawn from the barbarous, the mean, or the ignorant set of men which the representations of infidelity would sometimes make them. We learn from letters the character not only of the writer, but, in some measure, of the persons to whom they are written. To suppose that these letters were addressed to a rude tribe, incapable of thought or reflection, is just as reasonable as to suppose Locke's Essay on the Hu

instruction of savages. Whatever may be thought of these letters in other respects, either of diction or argument, they are certainly removed as far as possible from the habits and comprehension of a barbarous people.

And if it be true that we are in possession of the very letters which St. Paul wrote, let us consider what confirmation they afford to the Chris-man Understanding to have been written for the tian history. In my opinion they substantiate the whole transaction. The great object of modern research is to come at the epistolary correspondence of the times. Amidst the obscurities, the silence, or the contradictions of history, if a letter can be found, we regard it as the discovery of a landmark; as that by which we can correct, adjust, or supply the imperfections and uncertainties of other accounts. One cause of the superior credit which is attributed to letters is this, that the facts which they disclose generally come out incidentally, and therefore without design to mislead the public by false or exaggerated accounts. This reason may be applied to St. Paul's epistles with as much justice as to any letters whatever. Nothing could be farther from the intention of the writer than to record any part of his history. That his history was in fact made public by these letters, and has by the same means been transmitted to future ages, is a secondary and unthought-of effect. The sin cerity therefore of the apostle's declarations cannot reasonably be disputed; at least we are sure that it was not vitiated by any desire of setting himself off to the public at large. But these letters form a part of the muniments of Christianity, as much to be valued for their contents, as for their originality. A more inestimable treasure the care of antiquity could not have sent down to us. Beside the proof they afford of the general reality of St. Pauf's history, of the knowledge which the author of the Acts of the Apostles had obtained of that history, and the consequent probability that he was, what he professes himself to have been, a companion of the apostles; beside the support they lend to these important inferences, they meet specifically some of the principal objections upon which the adversaries of Christianity have thought proper to rely. In particular they show,

IV. St. Paul's history, I mean so much of it as may be collected from his letters, is so implicated with that of the other apostles, and with the substance indeed of the Christian history itself, that I apprehend it will be found impossible to admit St. Paul's story (I do not speak of the miraculous part of it) to be true, and yet to reject the rest as fabulous. For instance, can any one believe that there was such a man as Paul, a preacher of Christianity in the age which we assign to him, and not believe that there was also at the same time such a man as Peter and James, and other apostles, who had been companions of Christ during his life, and who after his death published and avowed the same things concerning him which Paul taught? Judea, and especially Jerusalem, was the scene of Christ's ministry. The witnesses of his miracles lived there. St. Paul, by his own account, as well as that of his historian, appears to have frequently visited that city; to have carried on a communication with the church there; to have associated with the rulers and elders of that church, who were some of them apostles; to have acted, as occasions offered, in correspondence, and sometimes in conjunction with them. Can it, after this, be doubted, but that the religion and the general facts relating to it, which St. Paul appears by his letters to have delivered to the several churches which he established at a distance, were at the same time taught and published at Jerusalem itself, the place where the business was transacted; and taught and published by those who had attended the founder of the institution in his miraculous, or pretendedly miraculous, minis

I. That Christianity was not a story set on foot amidst the confusions which attended and imme-try? diately preceded the destruction of Jerusalem; when many extravagant reports were circulated, when men's minds were broken by terror and distress, when amidst the tumults that surrounded them inquiry was impracticable. These letters show incontestably that the religion had fixed and established itself before this state of things took place.

II. Whereas it hath been insinuated, that our Gospels may have been made up of reports and stories, which were current at the time, we may observe that, with respect to the Epistles, this is impossible. A man cannot write the history of his own life from reports; nor, what is the same thing, be led by reports to refer to passages and transactions in which he states himself to have been im

It is observable, for so it appears both in the Epistles and from the Acts of the Apostles, that Jerusalem, and the society of believers in that city, long continued the centre from which the missionaries of the religion issued, with which all other churches maintained a correspondence and connexion, to which they referred their doubts, and to whose relief, in times of public distress, they remitted their charitable assistance. This observation I think material, because it proves that this was not the case of giving our accounts in one country of what is transacted in another, without affording the hearers an opportunity of knowing whether the things related were credited by any, or even published, in the place where they are reported to have passed.

VI. These letters are decisive as to the sufferings of the author; also as to the distressed state of the Christian church, and the dangers which attended the preaching of the Gospel.

V. St. Paul's letters furnish evidence (and what | deeply impressed, but not more so than the occabetter evidence than a man's own letters can be sion merited, with a sense of its importance. This desired?) of the soundness and sobriety of his produces a corresponding animation and solicitude judgment. His caution in distinguishing between in the exercise of his ministry. But would not the occasional suggestions of inspiration, and the these considerations, supposing them to be well ordinary exercise of his natural understanding, is founded, have holden the same place, and produced without example in the history of human enthu- the same effect, in a mind the strongest and the siasm. His morality is every where calm, pure, most sedate? and rational; adapted to the condition, the activity, and the business of social life, and of its various relations; free from the overscrupulousness and austerities of superstition, and from what was more perhaps to be apprehended, the abstractions of quietism, and the soarings and extravagancies of fanaticism. His judgment concerning a hesitating conscience; his opinion of the moral indifferency of many actions, yet of the prudence and even the duty of compliance, where non-compli- "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we ance would produce evil effects upon the minds of are of all men most miserable," 1 Cor. ch. xv. 9. the persons who observed it, is as correct and just "Why stand we in jeopardy every hour? I proas the most liberal and enlightened moralist could test by your rejoicing, which I have in Christ Je form at this day. The accuracy of modern ethics sus our Lord, I die daily. If, after the manner of has found nothing to amend in these determina-men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not?" 1 Cor.

tions.

"Whereof I Paul am made a minister; who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for his body's sake, which is the church," Col. ch. i. 24.

"If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; if so he that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us," Rom. chap. viii. 17, 18.

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter," Rom. ch. viii. 35, 36.

"Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant in prayer," Rom. ch. xii. 12.

What Lord Lyttleton has remarked of the pre-ch. xv. 30, &c. ference ascribed by St. Paul to inward rectitude of principle above every other religious accomplishment, is very material to our present purpose. "In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. xiii. 1-3, St. Paul has these words: Though I speak with the tongue of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Is this the language of enthusiasm? Did ever enthusiast prefer that universal benevolence which comprehendeth all moral virtues, and which, as appeareth by the following verses, is meant by charity here; did ever enthusiast, I say, prefer that benevolence" (which we may add is attainable by every man)" to faith and to miracles, to those religious opinions which he had embraced, and to those supernatural graces and gifts which he imagined he had acquired; nay, even to the merit of martyrdom? Is it not the genius of enthusiasm to set moral virtues infinitely below the merit of faith; and of all moral virtues to value that least which is most particularly enforced by St. Paul, a spirit of candour, moderation, and peace? Certainly neither the temper nor the opinions of a man subject to fanatic delusions are to be found in this passage."-Lord Lyttleton's Considerations on the Conversion, &c.

I see no reason therefore to question the integrity of his understanding. To call him a visionary, because he appealed to visions; or an enthusiast, because he pretended to inspiration, is to take the whole question for granted. It is to take for granted that no such visions or inspirations existed: at least it is to assume, contrary to his own assertions, that he had no other proofs than these to offer of his mission, or of the truth of his

relations.

One thing I allow, that his letters every where discover great zeal and earnestness in the cause in which he was engaged; that is to say, he was convinced of the truth of what he taught, he was

"Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord; yet I give my judgment as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful. I suppose therefore that this is good for the present distress; I say, that it is good for a man so to be," 1 Cor. ch. vii. 25, 26.

"For unto you it is given, in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake, having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me," Phil. ch. i. 29, 30.

"God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world."

"From henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus," Gal. ch. ví. 14, 17.

"Ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost," 1 Thess. ch. i. 6.

We ourselves glory in you in the churches of God, for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure," 2 Thess. chap. i. 4.

We may seem to have accumulated texts unnecessarily; but beside that the point which they are brought to prove is of great importance, there is this also to be remarked in every one of the passages cited, that the allusion is drawn from the writer by the argument or the occasion; that the notice which is taken of his sufferings, and of the suffering condition of Christianity, is perfectly in

cidental, and is dictated by no design of stating the facts themselves. Indeed they are not stated at all; they may rather be said to be assumed. This is a distinction upon which we have relied a good deal in former parts of this treatise; and, where the writer's information cannot be doubted, it always, in my opinion, adds greatly to the value and credit of the testimony.

If any reader require from the apostle more direct and explicit assertions of the same thing, he will receive full satisfaction in the following quo

tations.

"Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned; thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness," 2 Cor. ch. xi. 23-28.

Can it be necessary to add more? "I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men. Even unto this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of the earth, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day," 1 Cor. ch. iv. 9-13. I subjoin this passage to the former, because it extends to the other apostles of Christianity much of that which St. Paul declared concerning himself.

things which Christ hath not wrought by me, * to make the Gentiles obedient, by word and deed, through mighty signs and wonders (y vari on igav,) by the power of the Spirit of God: so that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the Gospel of Christ," Rom. ch. xv. 18, 19.

"Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs and wonders and mighty deeds," (15 xxi Tignσi nas duva. †) 2 Cor. ch. xii. 12.

These words, signs, wonders, and mighty deeds, Conμss, και τέρατα, και δυναμεις,) are the specific appropriate terms throughout the New Testament, employed when public sensible miracles are intended to be expressed. This will appear by consulting, amongst other places, the texts referred to in the note; t and it cannot be known that they are ever employed to express any thing else.

Secondly, these words not only denote miracles as opposed to natural effects, but they denote visible, and what may be called external, miracles, as distinguished,

First, from inspiration. If St. Paul had meant to refer only to secret illuminations of his understanding, or secret influences upon his will or affections, he could not, with truth, have represented them as "signs and wonders wrought by him," or "signs and wonders and mighty deeds wrought amongst them."

Secondly, from visions. These would not, by any means, satisfy the force of the terms, “signs, wonders, and mighty deeds;" still less could they be said to be "wrought by him," or "wrought amongst them" nor are these terms and expressions any where applied to visions. When our author alludes to the supernatural communica"tions which he had received, either by vision or otherwise, he uses expressions suited to the nature of the subject, but very different from the words which we have quoted. He calls them revelations, but never signs, wonders, or mighty deeds. "I will come," says he, "to visions and revelations of the Lord;" and then proceeds to describe a particular instance, and afterwards adds, "lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given me a thorn in the flesh."

In the following quotations, the reference to the author's sufferings is accompanied with a specification of time and place, and with an appeal for the truth of what he declares to the knowledge of the persons whorn he addresses: "Even after that we had suffered before, and were shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the Gospel of God with much contention," 1 Thess. ch. ii. 2.

"But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, long-suffering, persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra: what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me," 2 Tim. ch. iii. 10, 11.

* i. e. "I will speak of nothing but what Christ hath wrought by me;" or, as Grotius interprets it, "Christ hath wrought so great things by me, that I will not dare to say what he hath not wrought."

sions, which, though if they had stood alone, i. e. withTo these may be added the following indirect alluout plainer texts in the same writings, they might have been accounted dubious; yet, when considered in conjunction with the passages already cited, can hardly re

them.

I apprehend that to this point, as far as the tes-ceive any other interpretation than that which we give timony of St. Paul is credited, the evidence from his letters is complete and full. It appears under every form in which it could appear, by occasional allusions and by direct assertions, by general declarations, and by specific examples.

VII. St. Paul in these letters asserts, in positive and unequivocal terms, his performance of miracles strictly and properly so called. "He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles (Iveyor duvaμsis) among you, doth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" Gal. chap.

iii. 5.

"For I will not dare to speak of any of those

"My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of men's wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power; that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God," I Cor.

ch. ii. 4-6.

"The Gospel, whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power," Ephes, ch. iii. 7.

"For he that wrought effectually in Peter to the

apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty

in me towards the Gentiles," Gal. ch. ii. 8.

"For our Gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance," 1 Thess. ch. i. 5.

Mark xvi. 20. Luke xxiii. 8. John ii. 11, 23; iii. 2; iv. 48, 54; xi. 49. Acts ii. 22; iv. 3; v. 12; vi. 8; vii. 16; xiv. 3; xv. 42. Heb. ii. 4.

Let it be remembered that the Acts of the Apostles described various particular miracles wrought by St. Paul, which in their nature answers to the terms and expressions which we have seen to be used by St. Paul himself.

Upon the whole, the matter admits of no soft-hands; we have also a history purporting to be ening qualification, or ambiguity whatever. If St. written by one of his fellow-travellers, and appearPaul did not work actual, sensible public miracles, ing, by a comparison with these letters, certainly he has knowingly, in these letters, borne his tes- to have been written by some person well actimony to a falsehood. I need not add, that, in quainted with the transactions of his life. From two also of the quotations, he has advanced his the letters, as well as from the history, we gather assertion in the face of those persons amongst not only the account which we have stated of him, whom he declares the miracles to have been but that he was one out of many who acted and wrought. suffered in the same manner; and that of those who did so, several had been the companions of Christ's ministry, the ocular witnesses, or pretending to be such, of his miracles, and of his resurrection. We moreover find this same person referring in his letters to his supernatural conversion, the particulars and accompanying circumstances of which are related in the history, and which accompanying circumstances, if all or any Here then we have a man of liberal attain- of them be true, render it impossible to have been ments, and in other points of sound judgment, who a delusion. We also find him positively, and in aphad addicted his life to the service of the Gospel. propriated terms, asserting that he himself worked We see him, in the prosecution of his purpose, miracles, strictly and properly so called, in suptravelling from country to country enduring every port of the mission which he executed; the hisspecies of hardship, encountering every extremity tory, meanwhile, recording various passages of his of danger, assaulted by the populace, punished by ministry, which come up to the extent of this asthe magistrates, scourged, beat, stoned, left for sertion. The question is, whether falsehood was dead; expecting, wherever he came, a renewal of ever attested by evidence like this. Falsehoods, the same treatment, and the same dangers, yet, we know, have found their way into reports, into when driven from one city, preaching in the next; tradition, into books; but is an example to be met spending his whole time in the employment, sa- with, of a man voluntarily undertaking a life of crificing to it his pleasures, his ease, his safety; want and pain, of incessant fatigue, of continual persisting in this course to old age, unaltered by peril; submitting to the loss of his home and counthe experience of perverseness, ingratitude, preju- try, to stripes and stoning, to tedious imprisondice, desertion; unsubdued by anxiety, want, ment, and the constant expectation of a violent labour, persecutions; unwearied by long confine- death, for the sake of carrying about a story of ment, undismayed by the prospect of death. what was false, and of what, if false, he must Such was St. Paul. We have his letters in our have known to be so?

THE

CLERGYMAN'S COMPANION

IN

VISITING THE SICK:

CONTAINING,

L. RULES FOR VISITING THE SICK.-II. THE OFFICE FOR THE VISITATION OF THE SICK. III. THE COMMUNION OF THE SICK.-IV. A GREAT VARIETY OF OCCASIONAL PRAYERS FOR THE SICK; COLLECTED FROM THE WRITINGS OF SOME OF THE MOST EMINENT DIVINES OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND :-TO WHICH ARE ADDED, THE OFFICES OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE BAPTISM, WITH ADDITIONS AND ALTERATIONS.

PREFACE.

THIS Collection has been so much esteemed, that it has passed through nine editions. Having now become exceedingly scarce, it was thought proper to reprint it.

The rules for Visiting the Sick, in five sections, are extracted chiefly from the works of Bishop Taylor. The Occasional Prayers are taken from the devotional tracts of Bishop Patrick, Mr. Kettlewell, and other pious and judicious divines. But in this Edition, the antiquated style of those writers is corrected and improved; at the same time, a spirit of rational piety, and unaffected simplicity, are carefully preserved.

A prayer by Dr. Stonehouse, and four by Mr. Merrick, the celebrated translator of the Psalms, are added to the old collection.

The offices of Public and Private Baptism, though no ways relating to the Visitation of the Sick, are retained; as, in the present form, they will be convenient for the Clergy in the course of their parochial duty.

CANON LXVII.

MINISTERS TO VISIT THE SICK.

WHEN any person is dangerously sick in any parish, the minister or curate, having knowledge there of, shall resort unto him, or her, (if the disease be not known, or probably suspected to be infectious, to instruct and comfort them in their distress, according to the order of Communion, if he be no preacher; or, if he be a preacher, then as he shall think most needful and convenient.

It is recommended to the Clergy to write out the prayers, which are to be used by the Sick themselves, or by the persons whose devotions they wish to assist, and to leave the copies with them. 2 G 233 20*