or the service of mankind: but the life and
death of Socrates had likewise been devoted to the cause of religion
and justice; and although the stoic or the hero may disdain the humble
virtues of Jesus, the tears which he shed over his friend and country
may be esteemed the purest evidence of his humanity. The miracles of the
gospel could not astonish a people who held with intrepid faith the more
splendid prodigies of the Mosaic law. The prophets of ancient days had
cured diseases, raised the dead, divided the sea, stopped the sun, and
ascended to heaven in a fiery chariot. And the metaphorical style of the
Hebrews might ascribe to a saint and martyr the adoptive title of Son of
God.

Yet in the insufficient creed of the Nazarenes and the Ebionites, a
distinction is faintly noticed between the heretics, who confounded the
generation of Christ in the common order of nature, and the less guilty
schismatics, who revered the virginity of his mother, and excluded the
aid of an earthly father. The incredulity of the former was countenanced
by the visible circumstances of his birth, the legal marriage of the
reputed parents, Joseph and Mary, and his lineal claim to the kingdom of
David and the inheritance of Judah. But the secret and authentic history
has been recorded in several copies of the Gospel according to St.
Matthew, which these sectaries long preserved in the original Hebrew, as
the sole evidence of their faith. The natural suspicions of the husband,
conscious of his own chastity, were dispelled by the assurance (in a
dream) that his wife was pregnant of the Holy Ghost: and as this distant
and domestic prodigy could not fall under the personal observation of
the historian, he must have listened to the same voice which dictated to
Isaiah the future conception of a virgin. The son of a virgin, generated
by the ineffable operation of the Holy Spirit, was a creature without
example or resemblance, superior in every attribute of mind and body to
the children of Adam. Since the introduction of the Greek or Chaldean
philosophy, the Jews were persuaded of the preexistence, transmigration,
and immortality of souls; and providence was justified by a supposition,
that they were confined in their earthly prisons to expiate the stains
which they had contracted in a former state. But the degrees of purity
and corruption are almost immeasurable. It might be fairly presumed,
that the most sublime and virtuous of human spirits was inf