ers were as humble in spirit as they were zealous of good works; they reasoned on the subject of their meffage with calmness, good temper, and kind affection: with nothing of that pride of fyftem which fubftitutes arrogance for reafoning; which commands where it ought to perfuade; and, which, in the impatience of oppofition, calls for fire from heaven to confume the gainfayers, inftead of acquainting them with the spirit of him who came not to deftroy but to fave.

Christianity then, as it was tendered to men in the early ages, could not fail of fuccefs. At length however, it incurred a great and lafting check. We are now to confider,

II. The caufes of the fufpenfion of its progrefs. The countenance of the Imperial government, which the church obtained in the reign of Conftantine, was naturally calculated to promote, instead of obftructing, the progress of the faith. That great revolution, however, by which the church was brought forward from perfecution and affliction to victory and triumph, required above all things to have been followed out in the exercise of prudence, and with the most delicate and fcrupulous attention to those prin

ciples

ciples by which Chrift and his apostles had regulated the first movements in the great cause. Unhappily the early Chriftian emperors departed alike from prudence and from evangelical principle in their public measures relative to Christianity. These measures had three objects : To oblige their Heathen fubjects to become Chriftians; to oblige all the Christians to hold the fame opinions in fpeculative fubjects; and to increase the power of the clergy.

The continued purfuit of thefe ends for feve ral reigns produced effects which were decifive and fatal. The Pagans, perceiving that Chrif tianity was become the road to preferment, and finding themselves firft fubjected to difabilities, and afterwards to penalties, for continuing to worship the gods of their ancestors, abandoned their profeffion, and flocked into the church by hundreds and by thousands. Their converfion was nominal, and was not founded on conviction; they retained the prejudices of their fuperftition unfubdued, inftead of throwing them down at the foot of the crofs. They could not fee the kingdom of God in its proper character, for they were not born again in the spirit of truth; they came not as little children under

the

the tuition of Chrift; they introduced into the church itself the effential principles of Paganism; by their numbers, they gave to thofe principles a footing which was permanent, and which a great part of Christendom has not even yet been able ro remove.

The terrible influx of the Pagans, upon the converfion of the court, corrupted the church: and the refolution of the emperors to have but one religion among their fubjects, brought unspeakable detriment to the cause which they meant to fupport. The other two objects of the imperial policy were not more fortunate in the event; for, in endeavouring by the fecular arm to compel all the Chriftians to entertain the fame fpeculative opinions on the questions then debated, the fovereigns at once turned free dif cuffion into controversy and ftrife; they inflamed, inftead of extinguishing party fpirit; they formally divided the church into fects; they entailed the disputes of their own times as an inheritance of forrow to pofterity, and wrote intolerance over the portal of the house of God.

The elevation of the clergy to power, by which the teachers of the humble religion of Jefus

were

were transformed into an ambitious priesthood, was the creation of a formidable support to any fuperftitions which might find accefs to the church, and at the fame time an effectual clog to prevent the progrefs of the Chriftian faith in new regions. Thus, in confequence of fatal indifcretion in the measures of the court, and of a fyftem of policy erroneous in principle, Chrif tianity fuffered infinitely more mischief from Conftantine, than it had done from Diocletian; and received wounds from the hands of Theodofius, fuch as Julian could never have inflicted.

The mode of corruption which Christianity' experienced, during its period of decline in the fourth and fifth centuries, confifted partly in an extenfion of the ritual, which transformed the religion in its obvious characters from the difcipline of the heart, to a pitiful exhibition of geftures, forms, and pageantry; and partly in the introduction of dark theories imported from the academies of the Egyptian fophifts, and mixed with the doctrine of the gospel, as alloy and drofs, debafing the gold of the fanctuary. By the extended ritual and the mysticism together, the beauty and authority of religion as a practical rule was loft, the actual redemption from

vice

vice, and the improvement of men individually in piety and holiness, for which the Lord of the Chriftians had laboured and bled, were in effect fet afide, and fupplanted by new contrivances which were adopted as fubftitutes for eternal virtue. From all this it followed, that to tender to a new nation the religion as now altered in fubftance, was to offer fomething else than that which the experience of three centuries had proved to be calculated for fuccefs; it was to offer fomething, which having no foundation in human nature, no fupport from right reason, no accommodation to the general exigencies of the human race, could not fucceed; of course it did not fucceed; men would not exchange for it the opinions and rites of their fathers, and their reluctance is in no degree furprising.

The prefent argument places us on strong ground to meet a prejudice by which many fpeculative and fagacious men have been mifled. It is, That fuperftition is neceffary in human life: That fimple and rational religion. cannot attract and fix the bulk of mankind: That either pageantry or myfticism, or both, must be employed to keep religion afloat: and, That

Ꭰ