wards himself courageously suffered for the truth, which he had boldly defended by his writings,) “in the days that I was a heathen, and a devoted admirer of Plato's doctrines, when I heard great crimes laid to the charge of the christians, and beheld them at the same time fearlessly to submit themselves to death, and to the most dreadful sufferings,—I could not but be persuaded, that it was impossible that such men should live in the practice of any wickedness, or of gross sensual indulgences. For no one who took pleasure in such gratifications, or in any of those vile things of which they were accused, could so cheerfully have embraced death, which would deprive them of all delights, and would not rather have chosen to prolong life at any rate as much as possible, and have striven to get out of the way of the magistrates, and escape from them, instead of yielding themselves up to them."

To mention only one other instance:

The account written by an eye-witness of what those martyrs at Vienne and Lyons endured not long after, with such patience, meekness, and fortitude, rather than renounce

their

their faith in Christ, under that otherwise good man, but most bigoted idolater, Marcus Antoninus, cannot now be read by any one of a virtuous unprejudiced mind, without admiring and thinking well of that doctrine which could produce such noble effects; and heights of suffering virtue, that do honour to human nature; a doctrine at that early period capable of being traced up to those who were acquainted with the eye-witnesses of Christ, and his miracles, and of those of his apostles; a doctrine, which held forth a future endless recompense to the virtuous, and the severest punishments to the wicked; and that particularly forbad all falsehood, and bound to the observance of the strictest truth.

Thus has it appeared, that the being baptized for the dead, or on account of them, which the apostle speaks of, was the being induced to embrace the christian religion, in dangerous times, from beholding the excellent characters of those who had suffered for it. And we have also seen it to have been verified in history, that this was very generally the motive, and the way by which the gospel was at first propagated.

It remains now to lay before you one or two remarks.

I.

pro

It cannot but give us satisfaction in the fession of our holy religion, that the blessed Jesus, the faithful and true witness, as the apostle (Rev. iii. 14.) styles him, the first martyr for it, surrendered up his existence in tortures, of which he had the certain foreknowledge long before, rather than deny his mission and authority from God, which he had proved and confirmed in his lifetime by many miracles above all human power.

And it is a part and continuation of the same most powerful argument for its truth, that the apostles and first followers of Jesus, who had seen and conversed with their Lord and Master after he was raised from the dead, and through him received extraordinary gifts and powers from God to propagate the gospel, did, many of them, in different countries, under Jewish and heathen magistrates, resign their lives to the sword; not in testimony of any mere doctrines about which men may have their brain heated, and become wild and igno rant enthusiasts, but in cool attestation of this

plain

plain fact, that God had raised the Lord Jesus that was dead in three days to life, and had thereby given the broad seal of heaven to what this his beloved son and messenger had taught from him, of the future punishment of wicked men who refused to be reformed, and of the intended endless happiness of virtuous and holy men, and promoters of truth and righteousness

in the world.

The spectacle of tried virtue and integrity which Christ, first and chief, and those his chosen disciples and followers, thus held up to the world in attestation of the reality of a divine interposition to promote these great ends of Providence and of human happiness, was one of the chief means and instruments whereby men were at the first won over to the belief of the gospel at all hazards; and by which we at this day are still most fully convinced of its truth, and upon which it stands as upon a rock that cannot be moved.

II.

It was a great deliverance and a happy change that was made, when the heathen powers were destroyed, and the emperor Constantine professed himself a christian.

But

But from that time to the present (for one party of christians instigated that first christian emperor to harass and persecute the other), there never has been such a state of things, in which there was no trouble, or loss, or danger, impending over some classes of christians, for adhering to and following the dictates of conscience in the innocent profession and practice of their religion.

As the heathen magistrates had made it a capital crime to be a christian,-so, unhappily, in all countries where christianity has been the religion of the state, it has been made penal in different degrees, frequently in the highest degree, for any to write in defence of or to profess any species of the christian religion, or to practise any method of worshiping the great God, but that of the magistrates making or countenancing; and men of whom the world was not worthy were burnt alive in Smithfield in this metropolis, and in the city of Litchfield, by a protestant king and bishops, so late as in the reign of James I,

Cruel and unjust laws still remain in force against the rights of men and of conscience, though the spirit of the times forbids their execution,