When we contemplate such a conduct, as this, we are ready to say, that it sprung from a more than common perverseness of character, and that the people of Nazareth were more unreasonable and sottish, as the common proverb made them to be, than the rest of Israel[206].
Yet, if we turn our thoughts on the other tribes and cities of that nation, on the inhabitants of Judæa, and even of Jerusalem, we shall find, that they reasoned no better than the men of Nazareth had done; and discovered equal, indeed, much the same prejudices as those, by which our Lord’s own countrymen had been misled.
For, what else was it to say, as they commonly did, that no prophet could come out of Galilee[207]; that he could not be the Messiah, because his disciples were illiterate fishermen[208], and not Scribes and Pharisees; because none of their rulers believed on him[209]; because he conversed, sometimes, with publicans and sinners[210]; because he did not observe their minute ceremonies or traditions[211]; because he manifested his divine power in healing the sick, and casting out devils, and not in breaking to pieces the Roman empire and restoring the temporal kingdom of Israel[212]; because—but I need not instance in more particulars: Universally, the Jews, of all places and denominations, rejected their Lord and Saviour for reasons, the most absurd and trivial; for reasons, that came from the heart, and not the head, which shewed they were under the power of some contemptible prejudice, and would yield to no evidence, unless that was complied with.
Still, “the Jews, in general, you will say, were unlike other people. Tell us how the polished Heathens reasoned on the subject of Christ’s mission; and whether, when the Gospel was addressed to them, they opposed it on the footing of those senseless prejudices, which you have enough disgraced.”
Luckily, I have it in my power to accept this challenge; and to shew you, on the best authority, that those men of enlightened minds and renowned wisdom were as weak in their sophisms, and as childish in their cavils against the new religion, as the Jews themselves.
We read in the Acts of the Apostles[213], that St. Paul came to Ephesus, a rich, learned, idolatrous city of Asia; that he applied himself more especially to the instruction of its Gentile inhabitants; disputing daily, for two years together, in the school of one Tyrannus, a teacher of rhetorick, or philosophy, as we may suppose, and a convert to the faith of Jesus. That his success was great, we may conclude, both from his long residence, and from the special miracles, which he wrought, among them. Yet, when the word of God had grown mightily and prevailed, a certain silver-smith, who made silver shrines for the Goddess of the place, had credit enough with this well instructed city, because its trade was likely to suffer by the downfall of idolatry, to raise such an uproar among the people, that the Apostle’s labours were, at once, overturned by this powerful argument, and he, himself, compelled to leave them to their old infatuations: which was much such treatment, as Jesus himself had received from the Gadarenes; who, because he had permitted the devils, ejected out of one of their people, to enter into a herd of swine, and to destroy them, would not be saved at this expence, and required him, but civilly indeed, to depart out of their coasts. Now, was that craft, or this husbandry, a matter to be put in competition with the saving of their souls, which they had reason to expect from the preaching of Paul and Jesus? Or, is it not clear, that a petty interest, that is, a sordid prejudice, prevailed against the most precious hopes, supported by the fullest evidence?
But these were prejudices of the ignorant vulgar. Let us see, then, what success St. Paul had in a nobler scene, among wits and sages, men of refined sense and reason, in the head-quarters of politeness and civility, in the eye of Greece itself, in one word, Athens[214]. Here, the great Apostle, who had the charity, and the ability, to make himself all things to all men, encountered their ablest philosophers; reasoning with them, even before their revered court of Areopagus, on their own favourite topics of God, and the Soul, in a strain of argument, which was clearly unanswerable; and concluding his weighty apology with Jesus and the Resurrection. But what was the effect of all this truth on the minds of these liberal heathens? Why the text says—when they heared of the resurrection of the dead, some (that is, the Epicureans) mocked; and why? because their philosophy admitted no future state: while others (the Stoics) said, We will hear thee again of this matter; but, for as poor reason, as the other, because their philosophy taught I know not what of a certain renovation of the world, which, for the credit of their sect, they were half inclined to confound with the Christian resurrection. You see, in both parties, the power of prejudice; where yet the occasion was the most interesting, the hearers the most capable, the ability or the speaker, independently of his assumed inspiration, unquestionably great, and where the conclusion, (so carelessly dismissed) was, after all, a question of FACT, which had no dependance on the fanciful tenets of either party.
I should weary you and myself, should I carry on this deduction through the following ages of the Christian church; and shew, as I might easily do, that the ablest men of science, who opposed Christianity, did it on grounds no better than those of these Athenian sophists. We see what these grounds were, in the fragments, that remain to us, of many ancient unbelievers[215], men, the most acute and learned of their times; while yet every man of sense, that now reads and considers their objections, will own, whether he be himself a Christian or not, that they are altogether weak and frivolous, and have the face not so much of sound, or even colourable arguments, as of faint and powerless prepossessions against unwelcome truth.
I shall only instance in one of these prepossessions, which you think prodigious. The Roman empire, labouring under its own vices, and many physical evils, which then lay heavy upon it, experienced, in the fourth century, that reverse of fortune, which, in its turn, the greatest nations must expect. But by this time Christianity had spread itself through all the provinces, and was become the religion of the state. In these circumstances, the Heathens, very generally, not the rabble only, but the gravest and wisest of the Heathens; ascribed these disasters to the abolition of idolatry; and thought it an unanswerable argument against the faith of Jesus, that it did not maintain their empire in that degree of splendour and prosperity, to which, in the days of pagan worship, it had happily been raised. And this miserable superstition, which we now only pity, or, perhaps, smile at, made so deep an impression on the minds of men, that the greatest of the ancient fathers, and particularly St. Austin[216], were scarce able, with all their learning and authority, to bring it into contempt.
Such was the power of ancient prejudice against the Christian religion. But I hasten to set before you, in few words, what its tyranny has been in later times.