Infidels Testify For The Gospel
Illustration★★★★It is remarkable that infidels themselves have been obligated to give their testimony in its favor. Cesar Vaninus, u sworn enemy to the Chris tian religion, and one who was industrious ip searching out objections against it, owned that he could find nothing in it that savored of a carnal and worldly design. What says Bolingbroke? “No religion has ever appeared in the world of which the natural tendency 1s so much directed as the Christian, to promote the peace and happiness of mankind; and the gospel is one continued lesson of the strictest morality of justice, charity, and universal benevolence.”
The testimony of Gibbon is remarkable; ‘While the Roman empire,” says he, “was invaded by open violence, or undermined by slow decay, a pure and humble religion greatly insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and sobriety, derived new vigor from opposition, and finally erected the banner of the cross on the ruins of the capital.’ Again he says, “The Christian religion is a religion which diffuses among the people a pure, benevolent, and universal system of ethics, adapted to every condition of life, and recommended as the will and reason of the Supreme Deity, and enforced by the sanction of eternal rewards and punishments.”
Such are the testimonies of infidels, and true it is, that this noble system allows of no evil, but promotes the greatest good.
— Buck
The point
Even skeptics and infidels such as Bolingbroke and Gibbon have testified, despite themselves, to Christianity's benevolent and civilizing influence on the world.