The evidences by which the disciples believed in this all-important truth were equal to its importance and to its extraordinary character. These evidences have been noticed.
2d. The mission of Christ and his apostles, the miracles wrought by them in attestation of that mission, and the credibility of their testimony respecting a future state may now receive some notice.
You are disposed to call on me to inform you what I mean by this mission, to which I reply; I mean a divine appointment to act in a certain official character, accompanied with certain powers by which they were _enabled to evince_, by miracles, this their appointment.
Jesus was appointed by God himself to reveal the divine character, nature, and will of the Father to the world, by his preaching, by his miracles of mercy, by his sufferings, by his death and resurrection. The apostles were sent by Jesus Christ on the same mission, on which Jesus himself was sent. See his prayer, John xvii. "As thou has sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world." Those who believed in Jesus, and acknowledged him to be the Messiah, believed on account of the miracles which he wrought, and as I have before argued, Jesus never required of any a belief in him, barely on his testimony of himself, but on the evidence afforded by the works which he did in his Father's name. So likewise, those who believed on Jesus through the ministry of the apostles, never were called on to believe but by the authority of as great wonders as were wrought by Christ himself. I need not say much on this particular, as you must know that the ground on which I have here placed this subject, is the ground on which the New Testament places it.
The absurd notions which have been erroneously adopted by Christian doctors and councils concerning the mission of Christ to appease the divine wrath, to reconcile God to man, to suffer the penalty of the divine law, &c. &c. which have rendered the gospel a mystery and a mist, in room of a high way for the ransomed of the Lord to return to Zion in, is chargeable to the enemy who sowed tares among the wheat. These opinions with a multitude of studied inventions about a mysterious work of sovereign elective grace wrought in certain individuals, in an unknown way and frequently in an unknown time all which is to be followed by a system of mysterious sanctification, connected most mysteriously with final perseverance, together with all the intricate unknown items set down in the Westminister Catechism, have only served to perplex some, puff others up with spiritual pride and exalt them in the kingdom of spiritual wickedness in high places, to drive some to despair, and to disgust reason and common sense in others. There is not a word of all the above jargon in the sacred scriptures, which give us a most rational account of the great object of the gospel ministry. This object is the redemption of mankind from moral darkness, which is the whole occasion of moral evil, and to produce that improvement in the religious world which science is designed to effect in the political. It is to bring truth to light, to commend the character of God to man, to lead all men into the true knowledge, spirit, and temper of the divine nature. Thus we discover in Jesus no partialist, no sectarian, no friend to any one denomination, more than another. And when he had accomplished, by his sufferings, what the prophets had foretold, he then sent his gospel of the love and mercy of God to the whole world. His divinely inspired apostles followed the examples of their leader and preached the universal, impartial goodness of God to all men, and confirmed their mission by similar miracles to those wrought by Jesus.