The best way to defend the Gospel against its adversaries, is to exhibit its essential and peculiar doctrines in the plainest and fullest manner. This is, indeed, contrary to the practice of many, who labor to prune it of its peculiar doctrines and duties as much as possible, and to bring them down as near as they can to the level of mere natural religion. Locke, Barrow, Clarke, Price, Priestley, and all the liberal and lax divines in Europe and America, who have employed their superior learning and ingenuity in defending Christianity against Infidelity, have generally passed over the internal evidence of the Gospel, and principally insisted upon its external evidence, drawn from miracles, prophecies, and profane history.

But this external evidence is not well adapted to carry conviction to common people, who are incompetent to see its weight. Though this kind of evidence is well suited to stop the mouths, and refute the objections of learned gainsayers; yet the internal evidence of the divinity of the Gospel, drawn from its own peculiar doctrines and duties, is far more plain and convincing to people in general. Wherever these holy and sublime doctrines and duties have been clearly and fully preached, they have convinced thousands of their truth and divinity, and transformed them into cordial believers and zealous defenders of the Gospel.

Paul says, that he and the other apostles, by the manifestation of the great truths of the Gospel, commended themselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. The plainer the Gospel is preached, the more evident it appears to be of Divine original. Those who are the least learned, and of the lowest capacity, are competent to judge of the internal evidence of Christianity; and perhaps nine-tenths of those who have cordially embraced the Gospel, have embraced it upon its internal evidence.