fall upon us, but not to force them upon ourselves; for we believe the God we serve wise enough to choose His own service, and therefore presume not to add to His commands. With the Jews, it is true, we have something in common, but rather the names than things, our fasts being more the medicines of the body than the punishments of it; spiritual, as our Sabbaths; both good men's delight, not their trouble.
But, lest this discourse should swell into a greatness such as would make it look rather like a defence, which I have laboured to get, than an accompt which I always carry about me, I will now briefly examine whether we believe not with reason those things we have different from the rest of the world. First, then, for the persuasion of the truth of them in general, let us consider what they were that conveyed them to us: men (of all the world) the most unlikely to plot the cozenage of others, being themselves but simple people, without ends, without designs: seeking neither honour, riches, nor pleasure, but suffering (under the contrary) ignominy, poverty, and misery: enduring death itself, nay, courting it; all which are things distasteful to nature, and such as none but men strangely assured would have undergone. Had they feigned a story, certainly they would not in it have registered their own faults, nor delivered Him, whom they propounded as a God, ignominiously crucified. Add to this the progress their doctrine made abroad, miraculous above all other either before or since: other religions were brought in with the sword, power forcing a custom, which by degrees usurped the place of truth, this even power itself opposing; for the Romans (contrary to their custom, which entertained all religions kindly) persecuted this, which by its own strength so possessed the hearts of men, that no age, sex, or condition refused to lay down life for it. A thing so rare in other religions that, among the heathens, Socrates was the sole martyr; and the Jews (unless of some few under Manasses and Antiochus) have not to boast of any. If we cast our eyes upon the healing of the blind, curing the lame, redeeming from the grave, and but with a touch or word, we must conclude them done by more than humane power, and if by any other, by no ill: these busy not themselves so much about the good of man; and this religion not only forbids by precept the worship of wicked spirits, but in fact destroys it wheresoever it comes. Now, as it is clear by authors impartial (as being no Christians) that strange things were done, so it is plain they were done without imposture. Delusions shun the light; these were all acted openly, the very enemies both of the Master
