187
CHAPTER V.
THE ESSENTIAL EXCELLENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
Let us call the religious teachings of Jesus Christianity; it agrees generically with all other forms in this, that it is a Religion. Its peculiarity is not in its doctrine of one Infinite God, of the Immortality of Man, nor of future Retribution. It is not in particular rules of Morality, for precepts as true and beautiful may be found in Heathen writers, who give us the same view of Man's nature, duty, and destination. The great doctrines of Christianity were known long before Jesus, for God did not leave man four thousand years unable to find out his plainest duty. There is no precept of Jesus, no real duty commanded, no promise offered, no sanction held out, which cannot be paralleled by similar precepts in writers before him. The pure in heart saw God before as well as after him. Every imperfect form of Religion was, more or less, an anticipation of Christianity. So far as a man has real Religion, so far he has what is true in Christianity.[1] By its light Zoroaster, Confucius, Pythagoras, Socrates, with many millions of holy men, walked in the early times of the world. By this they were cheered when their souls were bowed down, and they knew not which way to turn. They and their kindred, like Moses, were schoolmasters to prepare the world for Christianity; shadows of good things to come; the dayspring from on high; the Bethlehem star announcing
- ↑ See Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation, &c. See Lactantius, Hist. Div. Lib. VII. C. 7, Nos. 4 and 7, who admits that all the doctrines of Christianity were taught before, but not collected into one mass. See Clem. Alex. Strom. I. 13, p. 349. Dr Reginald Peacock, writing in the 15th century against the Lollards, says that Christianity added nothing at all (except the Sacraments) to the moral law, for all of that was primarily established, not on the Scriptures but on natural reason; and adds that natural Law must be obeyed, even if Christ and the apostles had taught what was opposed thereto. Wharton in Appendix to Cave, Historia literaria, &c., Lond. 1698, Vol. I. p. 136.
