Christian History Institute Presents Pastwords #83: View of the Principal Deistical Writers by John Leland ©2007

LETTER VII. Mr. Woolston Discourses on the miracles of our Saviour; under pretence of standing up for the allegorical sense of Scripture, he endeavours absolutely to destroy the truth of the facts recorded in the gospels. His disingenuous representation of the sense of the fathers on this head, and his false quotations. He charges the accounts given of Christ's miracles as absurd, false, and incredible. His gross and profane buffoonery, and base reflections on the character of our Saviour; and yet he pretends a zeal for his honour and messiahship. A specimen of his way of reasoning with regard to several of Christ's miracles, and his resurrection: Many good answers published against him.

IR, I HAVE already taken notice of several attempts, which were manifestly intended to subvert the truth and divine authority of our holy Religion. The last that was mentioned was that of the author of the Discourse of the grounds and reasons of the Christian religion, who under pretence of setting Christianity on a sure and solid foundation, had endeavoured to shew that it hath no just foundation at all; that it is founded wholly on the Old Testament prophesies, taken not in a literal but merely in an allegorical, i.e., as he plainly designed it, in a false sense, contrary to the original intention of the prophecies themselves. In opposition to him it was clearly shewn, that many of the Old Testament prophecies are justly applied to our Saviour in their proper and literal sense. Besides which it was urged, that there were other solid proofs of Christianity, particularly that our Saviour's miracles, and his resurrection from the dead were illustrious attestations given to him from heaven, and evident proofs of his divine mission. And now under pretence of acting the part of a moderator in this controversy, a new antagonist arose, Mr. Woolston, who endeavoured to allegorize away the miracles of our Saviour, as Mr. Collins had done the prophecies. This he first attempted in a pamphlet intitled a Moderator between Infidel and an Apostate; and in two Supplements to it. And afterwards more largely in six Discourses on the miracles of our Saviour which were successively published at different times, in the years 1727, 1728, and 1729. The design of all which is to shew, that the accounts of the great facts recorded in the gospels are to be understood wholly in a mystical and allegorical sense; and that taken in the literal and historical sense they are false, absurd, and fictitious. This attempt he hath carried on with greater rudeness and insolence than any of those that appeared before him. The Earl of Shaftesbury, even where he unhappily sets up ridicule as the test and criterion of truth, expresseth his disapprobation of scurrilous buffoonery, gross raillery, and an illiberal kind of wit. And if ever there was any performance to which these characters might be justly applied, it is this of Mr. Woolston. The same noble writer observes, that to manage a debate so as to offend the public ear, is to be wanting in that respect that is due to the society: and that what is contrary to good breeding, is, in this respect, as contrary to liberty. If we are to judge of Mr. Woolston's writings by this rule, they are as inconsistent with a just liberty, as they certainly are with good breeding and decency.

There are two ways by which he endeavours to answer the design he hath in view. The one is, by shewing that the literal sense of our Saviour's miracles is denied by the most ancient and venerable writers of the Christian church: the other is, by shewing the absurdity of the accounts given in the gospels, taken in the literal sense. With regard to the first of these, he hath with great pomp produced many testimonies of the fathers, for whom he professeth the profoundest veneration; and, by a strange disingenuity, endeavoureth to represent them as absolutely denying the facts themselves related in the gospel; because, according to a custom which then obtained, they added to the literal, a spiritual and allegorical sense, and took occasion from thence to make pious allusions. He pretendeth, that if we will adhere to the fathers, the gospel is in no sort a literal story; and that the history of Jesus's life is only an emblematical representation of his spiritual life in the souls of men. But it is certain, and was evidently proved by his learned answerers, that in giving the allegorical and mystical sense, the fathers first supposed the literal sense, and the historical truth of the facts, and upon them built their allegorical interpretations. It is acknowledged, that in these they often exceeded just bounds, and too much indulged the vagaries of a pious fancy: but to pretend, that they intended to deny that the facts recorded by the evangelists were really done, is one of the most confident impositions that were ever put upon mankind, and it is not to be doubted, but the author himself was sensible of this. Many glaring instances of unfairness and disingenuity in his quotations from the fathers were plainly proved upon him. It was shewn, that he hath quoted books generally allowed to be spurious, as the genuine works of the fathers, and hath, be false translations, and injurious interpolations, and foisting in of words, done all that was in his power to pervert the true sense of the authors he quotes, and that sometimes he interprets them in a manner directly contrary to their own declared sense, in the very passages he appeals to, as would have appeared, if he had fairly produced the whole passages.

It is not be wonder'd at, that an author who was capable of such a conduct, should stick at no methods to expose and misrepresent the accounts given by the evangelists of our Saviour's miracles. Under pretence of shewing the absurdity of the literal historical sense of the facts recorded in the gospels, he hath given himself an unrestrained license in invective and abuse. The books of the evangelists, and the facts there related, he hath treated in a strain of low and coarse buffoonery, and with an insolence and scurrility that is hardly to be parallel'd. He asserts that they are full of improbabilities, incredibilities, and gross absurdities: that they are like Gulliverian tales of persons and things, that our of the romance never had a being: that neither the fathers, nor the apostles, nor Jesus himself meant that his miracles should be taken in the literal, but in the mystical and parabolical sense. And he expressly declares, that if Jesus's miracles, literally taken, will not abide the test of sense and reason, they must be rejected, and Jesus's authority along with them1. He casteth several reflections on our blessed Lord, so base and scurrilous, that they cannot but be extremely offensive to a Christian ear; and which, even sober heathens, many of whom regarded him as a person of great wisdom and virtue, would have been ashamed of; and yet this author charges the bishop of London with ignorance or malice, in representing him as a writer in favour of infidelity. He declares that he is the farthest of any man from being engaged in the cause of infidels or deists. And that he writes not for the service of infidelity, which has no place in his heart, but for the honour of the holy Jesus, and in defence of Christianity. The like declarations he frequently repeateth. He ends his fourth discourse on our Saviour's miracles with avowing, that his desire in these his discourses, is the advancement of the truth and of the Messiahship of the holy Jesus, to whom be glory for ever, Amen. He concludes his sixth discourse in his first and second Defence to the like purpose. Any one that compares these declarations with the whole strain of his discourses, will be apt to entertain the worst opinion imaginable of the writer's sincerity; and the most extensive charity will scarce be able to acquit him from the most gross and shocking prevarication.

But not to insist farther on this; one would have expected, that after all the clamours he hath raised against the evangelical accounts of our Saviour's miracles, he should have had some formidable objections to produce; and yet, when strip'd of the ridiculous turn he hath given them, they are, except some few difficulties, which are far from being new, and have been solidly answered, contemptibly vain and trifling. It is an objection he frequently repeats against what we are told concerning our Saviour's curing the diseased, the blind, the lame, &c. that the evangelists have not given us an exact account of the nature and symptoms of their distempers, as physicians and surgeons would have done, that we might know whether the cure was supernatural. And if they had done this, it would, no doubt, have been improved as a strong presumption of art and contrivance in the relators, and as no way consistent with that honest, artless simplicity of narration, for which the evangelists are so remarkable. With regard to the cure of the man that was born blind, he finds fault that our Saviour did not cure him with a word speaking, which he says would have been a great and real miracle; and if he had done so, as he did in several other cases, this writer would have been as far from believing it as before. He will have it, that under pretence of anointing the blind man's eyes with clay and spittle, Jesus made use of a sovereign balsam which wrought the cure, and supposes, in direct contradiction to the whole story, that his blindness was only a slight disorder of the eyers, which was wearing away with age, and that therefore the restoring him to his sight was no miracle at all, tho' the man himself, his parents and friends that had known him all along, and the chief priests and pharisees, who made a strict enquiry into the case, could not help acknowledging that it was a very great one. Our Saviour's discovering to the Samaritan woman the secrets of her past life, which convinced her of his being a prophet, and from whence he took occasion to give her the most excellent instructions concerning the nature of true religion, passes with this writer for the trick of a fortuneteller. And whereas it appeareth from the account given by the evangelist, that the Samaritans looked for the Messiah under the idea of a divine teacher, and the Saviour of the world, he represents it as if they expected the Messiah not as a prince or a prophet, but a conjurer only. Several other instances might be produced, in which he addeth or varieth circumstances, and altereth the story as recorded by the evangelists, that he may take occasion to place it in a ridiculous light.

It is a remarkable concession which is made by him in the beginning of his fifth Discourse, that it will be granted on all hands, that the restoring a person indisputably dead to life is a stupendous miracle, and that two or three such miracles well-attested, and credibly reported are enough to conciliate the belief, that the author of them was a divine agent, and invested with the power of God*. Three miracles of this kind are recorded in the gospel to have been wrought by Jesus, viz. his raising Jairus's daughter, the widow's son at Naim, and Lazarus. And what has our author to object against these accounts? He objects in general against them all, that the persons raised ought to have been magistrates or persons of eminence. But the raising such persons would not have been so agreeable to the rest of our Saviour's conduct and character, who shunned what might have the appearance of ostentation, or be looked upon as an attempt to make an interest with the great. He farther objects, that the persons that were raised should have told what they had seen and done in the separation state. And if the evangelists had been romantic writers that wanted to amuse their readers with strange stories, they might probably have inserted some things of this kind into their accounts. But they confined themselves to the plain facts, as far as they knew them, which they have related with the greatest simplicity. He objects particularly against the story of raising Jairus's daughter, because she was but a girl of twelve years old; as if the raising one of that age was not as great a miracle as if she had been twenty. He next pretends that she was only in a fit, though all the persons about her, and her nearest relations were satisfied that she was dead, and were making the usual preparations for her funeral. It is enough with him to discredit the story of raising the widow's son of a poor woman. And he has with great sagacity discovered, that Jesus's accidental meeting the corpse, and touching the bier, is a plain proof that it was all a contrivance between him and the young man: To mention such objections is to confute them. But perhaps he hath stronger ones to produce against the story of the resurrection of Lazarus, which he pronounceth to be such a contexture of folly and fraud, as is not to be equall'd in all romantic history. And yet the principal objection he hath to offer is no more than this, that three of the evangelists have not mentioned it. But no argument can be drawn against the truth of the fact from this silence; since it is evident that they never designed, or pretended to record all the remarkable miracles which our Saviour wrought; and St. John, who was an eye-witness, and who chiefly taketh notice of the things which the others had omitted, hath given us a very distinct and particular account of it. Among the circumstances which Mr. Woolston looks upon to be sufficient to set aside that story, one is, that we are told, Jesus wept. This was a sign of his great humanity, and the goodness of his temper, but our author thinks a stoical apathy would have become him better. Another is, that Jesus called to Lazarus with a loud voice to come forth; which was certainly very proper, that all who were present might attend and observe. And what is very odd, he makes Lazarus's being bound in grave clothes, and having his head bound about with a napkin, to be a very suspicious sign that he had not been really dead; and very wisely has found out, that Lazarus by a concert with Jesus, who was at a considerable distance when it happened, contrived to be buried, and lie in the grave four days, that Jesus might have the honour of seeming to raise him up from the dead. And because the Jews took counsel to kill Jesus, and he withdrew for a while from their rage, this is produced as a proof that the Jews knew he was guilty of a fraud, and that he himself was conscious of it; whereas it appears from the whole account, that their taking counsel to put him to death, was owing to their being sensible of the greatness of the miracle, and that it was too evident to be denied, and was likely to draw the people after him.

The objections which he makes in the person of a Jewish rabbi, against the evangelical story of our Lord's resurrection, which he declareth to be a complication of absurdities, incoherences and contradictions, are equally frivolous. He insinuates, that the guards set by the Roman governor, at the desire of the chief priests, to watch the body of Jesus, suffered themselves to be bribed or intoxicated by the disciples; in which he is more quick-sighted than the chief priests and Pharisees, whom it more nearly concerned, who it is plain suspected no such thing; in which case, instead of excusing, they would have endeavoured to get them severely punished. But what he seems to lay the principal stress upon is a supposed covenant between the chief priests and Jesus's disciples, that the seal with which the stone of the door of the sepulchre was sealed should not be broken, till the three days were entirely past; and that therefore the rolling away the stone from the sepulchre, and breaking the seal before the three days were ended, was a breach of that covenant, and a proof of an imposture. A most extraordinary conceit this! as if the rulers of the Jews would have troubled themselves to enter into a concert with Jesus's disciples, whom they hated and despised, and who at that time had hid themselves for fear of them, and were fled; or as if such a covenant could bind our Lord from rising when he judged fittest. As to that part of the objection which supposes, that he ought to have lain in the grave according to his own prediction, three whole days and nights, it proceeds from a real or affected ignorance of the Jewish phraseology. This is a modern objection. The ancient enemies of Christianity did not pretend that Jesus rose before the time prefixed; for they very well knew that according to a way of speaking usual among the Jews and other nations, his rising again on any part of the third day was sufficient to answer the prediction. This matter was set in a clear light in the trial of the witnesses. Yet the objection was again repeated by the author of the Resurrection of Jesus considered; and was so fully exposed by his learned answerers, that one would hope we shall hear no more of it.

Mr. Woolston makes it also a great objection against the truth of Jesus's resurrection, that he did not shew himself after his death to the chief-priests and rulers of the Jews. And indeed there is no objection with which the deistical writers have made a greater noise than this. It is urged particularly by the author of the Resurrection of Jesus considered; but above all, Mr. Chubb has insisted upon it at large, and with great confidence, in his posthumous works, vol. I. p. 337, et seq. And yet good reasons may be assigned, why it was not proper that it should be so. Considering the cruel and inveterate malice they had shewn against Jesus, and the power of their prejudices, there is no likelihood of their submitting to the evidence. They had attributed his miracles to the power of the devil; and his raising Lazarus from the dead, of which they had full information, only put them upon attempting to destroy him. Instead of being wrought upon by the testimony of the soldiers, they endeavoured to stifle it. And if Jesus had shewn himself to them after his passion, and they had pretended it was a spector or a delusion, and had still refused to acknowledge him after this, it would have been insisted upon as a strong presumption against the reality of his resurrection. But let us suppose that Jesus had not only appeared to them after his resurrection, but that they themselves had acknowledged the truth of his resurrection and ascension, and had owned him for their Messiah, and brought the body of the Jewish nation into it; can it be imagined that they who now make that objection would have been satisfied? It may rather be supposed, that those great men's coming into it would have been represented as a proof that all was artifice and imposture; and that the design was to spirit up the people against the Roman government, and carry on some political scheme under pretence of restoring the kingdom to Israel. The whole would have been treated as a national Jewish affair, a thing concerted between the chief-priests, and the disciples; and there would have been a greater clamour raised against it, than there is now: I am persuaded, that the evidence which was actually given of Christ's resurrection by the apostles and disciples of Christ, in opposition to their own prejudices, and to the authority and power of the Jewish chief-priests and rulers, and notwithstanding the persecutions to which their testimony to it exposed them, was much more convincing and less exceptionable, than it would have been, it they had the favour and countenance of the chiefs of the Jewish nation, or of those persons who were of the greatest interest and authority among them.

What has been mentioned may serve for a specimen of this writer's objections against the accounts of our Saviours miracles recorded in the evangelists: And he might by the same way of management, by arbitrary suppositions, and adding or altering circumstances as he judged proper, have proved the most authentic accounts in the Greek or Roman history to be false and incredible. He might at the same rate of arguing have undertaken to prove that there was no such person as Jesus Christ, or his apostles, or that they were only allegorical persons, and the Christianity was never planted or propagated in the world at all.

This extraordinary writer thought fit to begin his second Discourse on our Saviour's miracles, with boasting that none of the clergy had published their exceptions against what he had offered in his first; and that this shewed that his cause was just, and his arguments and authorities unanswerable; but he did not continue long unanswered. Many learned adversaries soon appeared against him. But they were far from imitating him in his low and scurrilous way of treating the subject. They shewed themselves as much superior in the temper, calmness, and solid and serious manner of treating the argument, as in the goodness of their cause. They considered even his most trifling objections; and whatever things he had urged, that had any real or seeming difficulty in them, (and some such things must be expected in ancient writings, which relate to times and customs different from ours, and especially with regard to facts of an extraordinary nature,) were coolly examined, and fully obviated.

The late worthy bishop of London published on this occasion an excellent pastoral letter, written, as all his are, with great clearness and strength. The learned and ingenious Dr. Zachary Pearse, now Lord Bishop of Bangor, published The miracles of Jesus vindicated in four parts, which came out at different times in the year 1729, and were deservedly much esteemed. But the largest answer was that by Dr. Smallbrook lord bishop of St. Davids, in two volumes 8vo. This learned work is intitled, A vindication of our Saviour's miracles, in which Mr. Woolston's discourses on them are particularly examined, his pretended authority of the fathers against the truth of the literal sense are set in a just light, and his objections in point of reason, answered, London 1729. There were other good answers published, which also took in the whole of Mr. Woolston's discourses: Such was Mr. Rays's Vindication of our Saviour's miracles, in two parts. The first published in 1727, the second in 1729; and Mr. Stevenson's Conference on the miracles of our Saviour, published in 1730, an ingenous and solid performance. Besides which there were several excellent pamphlets that were designed to vindicate some particular miracles against Mr. Woolston's exceptions. Among them the following deserve special notice, as being written with great clearness and judgment. A Vindication of three of our blessed Saviour's miracles, in answer to the objections of Mr. Woolston's fifth Discourse on the miracles of our Saviour, by Nathaniel Lardner, now Dr. Lardner, London, 1729. A Defence of the Scripture History, as far as it concerns the resurrection of Jairus's daughter, the widow's son at Naim, and Lazarus, in answer to Mr. Woolston's fifth Discourse, London, 1729. This is said to have been written by Dr. Henry, who afterwards published a Discourse on our Saviour's miraculous power of healing; in which the six cases excepted against Mr. Woolston, are considered; being a continuation of the Defence of Scripture history, London 1730. And as Mr. Woolston had bent his efforts with a particular virulence against the resurrection of our blessed Lord, this was fully and distinctly considered, especially in a pamphlet written by Dr. Sherlock, now lord bishop of London, intitled The Tryal of the witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus, London, 1729, which has been very justly admired for the polite and uncommon turn, as well as the judicious way of treating the subject.

Mr. Woolston publish'd what he called, A Defence of his Discourses on the Miracles of our Saviour, against the Bishop of London and St. Davids, and his other adversaries, in two pamphlets; the first was published, London, 1729, the second in 1730. These are very trifling performances, in which there is a continued strain of low drollery, but little that has a shew of reason and argument, in answer to what had been strongly urged against him. He has scarce attempted to take notice of the instances which had been brought to shew his great dishonesty in his quotations, and his gross falsifications of the fathers, and ancient writers. This seems to have given him very little disturbance, thought if he had any regard to his own reputation, it highly concerned him to clear himself, if he had been able to do it, from so heavy a char

But I believe you will be of opinion, that I have dwelt long enough upon such an author, though he himself boasts of cutting out such a piece of work for our Boylean lectures, as shall hold them tug, (as he politely expresseth it) so long as the ministry of the letter, and a hireling priesthood lasteth.

1 Difc. iv. p.16 *Difc. 5th. p. 3. * See the Evidence of the resurrection cleared. p. 64, &c and Mr. Chandler's Witnesses of the resurrection reexam. p. 14 - 19. * See his fifth Discourse on Miracles. p. 65.