occasioned  aid*  He  has  discussed  the  *^  Advantage
and  Necessi^  of  the  Christian  Revielatton,''  with
moch  patience  and  erudition.  His  plan,  indeed,  did
not  permit  him  to  take  an  ample  or  a  satisfactory
view  of  the  subject;  and  he  has  been  condemned,
perhaps  justly,  by  the  critic,  for  the  wearisome
minuteness  of  his  details,  the  ostentatious  quotation
tad  needless  prolixity  with  which  he  has  bloated  his
work,  the  tedious,  sluggish,  and  yet  imperfect  ex-
pansion of  his  argument,  and  the  very  defective
statement  which  he  affords  of  the  internal  evidences
6f  Ihe  Christian  Religion*.  But  he  is  prudent,  cir-
cumspect, and  learned,  careless  to  amuse,  anxious  to
convince,  contemptuous  of  subtilty  and  of  paradox,:
and  laborious  to  adduce  whatever  proofe  might  be
gleaned  frotn  the  volumes  of  antiquity,  for  the  con-
firmation of  his  opinions.  The  testimony  which  he
produces,  of  the  wild  and  wanton  absurdity  of  the
Greek  mythology,  is  cogent  and  convincing.  He
leads  us  into  the  interior  of  the  temple  of  Polyidieism,;
and  discloses  the  polluted  altars,  the  monstrous  wor-
ship, and  the  disgusting  or  ludicrous  institutions  of
Paganism;  and  his  whole  discussion,  though  too
much  limited  in  its  topics  for  the  inf<^rence  which  he
is  anxious  to  deduce,  and  sometimes  too  much  dilated
in  its  wordiness  for  the  patience  of  his  reader,  is


*  He  almost  wholly  devotes  two  quarto  volumes,  including
nearly  one  thousand  pages,  to  the  discussion  of  the  errors  and
ahsurdities-ofUie  polytheism  of  the  Greeks ;  and  yet  the  discuasioo
b  Itniited,^  in  a  gr^t  degreie,  to  three  topics, /<  the  knowledge  and
wonhip  of  the  one  true  God,  the  rule  of  moral  duly,  and  the
stale  of  future  reward  and  punishment,'^  as  they  are  disclosed  or
announced  by  the  religion  of  Greece;  The  internal  evidence  of
the  gospel  occupies,  comparatively,  but  a  few  pages  of  thework,^
and  is  very  imperfectly  deduced.
