be much as follows:-first, perhaps, we shall have three, five, or more words identical; then as many wholly distinct; then two clauses or more, expressed in the same words but differing order :-then a clause contained in one or two, and not in the third:-then several words identical:-then a clause not only wholly distinct, but apparently inconsistent;-and so forth;-with recurrences of the same arbitrary and anomalous alterations, coincidences and transpositions. Nor does this description apply to verbal and sentential arrangement only; but also, with slight modification, to that of the larger portions of the narratives. Equally capricious would be the disposition of the subject-matter. Sometimes, while coincident in the things related, the Gospels place them in the most various order,-each in turn connecting them together with apparent marks of chronological sequence. Let any one say, divesting himself of the commonly received hypotheses respecting the connection and order of our Gospels, whether it is within the range of probability that a writer should thus singularly and unreasonably alter the subject-matter and diction before him, having (as is now supposed) no design in so doing, but intending, fairly and with approval, to incorporate the work of another into his own? Can an instance be anywhere cited of undoubted borrowing and adaptation from another, presenting similar phenomena

8. " I cannot, then, find in any of the above hypotheses a solution of the question before us, how the appearances presented by our three Gospels are to be accounted for." And the learned writer sums up the whole matter thus:-That these three Gospels contain the substance of the Apostles' testimony, collected principally from their oral teaching current in the church-partly also from written documents embodying portions of that teaching; that there is, however, no reason from their internal structure to believe, but every reason to disbelieve, that any one of the three Evangelists had access to either of the other two Gospels in its present form.

The Gospel according to John is universally allowed to be a dis. tinet and independent composition. The whole of this fine discussion will bear powerfully on the subject of those discrepancies in the Evangelical history, which have caused so much trouble to commentators, afforded so much triumph to sceptics and theorists, and yet furnish such striking proof of the secure honesty of the Evangelists, who narrate the truth, and leave it to its own vindication.-Ed

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PROPOSITION II.

OUR FIRST PROPOSITION WAS, “THAT THERE IS SATISFACTORY EVIDENCE THAT MANY, PRETENDING TO BE ORIGINAL WITNESSES OF THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES, PASSED THEIR LIVES IN LABORS, DANGERS, AND SUFFERINGS, VOLUNTARILY UNDERTAKEN AND UNDERGONE IN ATTESTATION OF THE ACCOUNTS WHICH THEY DELIVERED, AND SOLELY IN CONSEQUENCE OF THEIR BELIEF OF THE TRUTH OF THOSE ACCOUNTS; AND THAT THEY ALSO SUBMITTED, FROM THE SAME MOTIVES, TO NEW RULES OF CONDUCT."

OUR SECOND PROPOSITION, AND WHICH NOW REMAINS TO BE TREATED OF, IS, "THAT THERE IS NOT SATISFACTORY EVIDENCE, THAT PERSONS PRETENDING TO BE ORIGINAL WITNESSES OF ANY OTHER SIMILAR MIRACLES, HAVE ACTED IN THE SAME MANNER, IN ATTESTATION OF THE ACCOUNTS WHICH THEY DELIVERED, AND SOLELY IN CONSEQUENCE OF THEIR BELIEF OF THE TRUTH OF THOSE ACCOUNTS."

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CHAPTER I.

I ENTER upon. this part of my argument, by declaring how far my belief in miraculous accounts goes. If the reformers in the time of Wickliffe, or of Luther; or those of England, in the time of Henry the Eighth, or of Queen Mary; or the founders of our religious sects since, such as were Mr. Whitfield and Mr. Wesley in our own times; had undergone the life of toil and exertion, of danger and sufferings, which we know that many of them did undergo, for a miraculous story; that is to say, if they had founded their public ministry upon the allegation of miracles wrought within their own knowledge, and upon narratives which could not be resolved into delusion or mistake; and if it had appeared, that their conduct really had its origin in these accounts, I should have believed them. Or, to borrow an instance which will be familiar to every one of my readers, if the late Mr. Howard had undertaken his labors and journeys in attestation, and in consequence, of a clear and sensible miracle, I should have believed him also. Or, to represent the same thing under a third supposition; if Socrates had professed to perform public miracles at Athens; if the friends of Socrates, Phædo, Cebes, Crito, and Simmias, together with Plato, and many of his followers, relying upon the attestations which these miracles afforded to his pretensions, had, at the hazard of their lives, and the certain expense of their ease and tranquillity, gone about Greece, after his death, to publish and propagate his doctrines; and if these things had come to our knowledge, in the same way as that in which the life of Socrates is now transmitted to us, through the hands

of his companions and disciples, that is, by writings received without doubt as theirs, from the age in which they were published to the present, I should have believed this likewise. And my belief would, in each case, be much strengthened, if the subject of the mission were of importance to the conduct and happiness of human life; if it testified anything which it be hooved mankind to know from such authority; if the nature of what it delivered, required the sort of proof which it alleged; if the occasion was adequate to the interposition, the end worthy of the means. In the last case, my faith would be much confirmed, if the effects of the transaction remained; more especially, if a change had been wrought, at the time, in the opinion and conduct of such numbers, as to lay the foundation of an institution, and of a system of doctrines, which had since overspread the greatest part of the civilized world. I should have believed, I say, the testimony, in these cases; yet none of them do more than come up to the apos tolic history.

If any one choose to call assent to its evidence credulity, it is at least incumbent upon him to produce examples in which the same evidence hath turned out to be fallacious. And this contains the precise question which we are now to agitate.

In stating the comparison between our evidence, and what our adversaries may bring into competition with ours, we will divide the distinctions which we wish to propose into two kinds, those which relate to the proof, and those which relate to the miracles. Under the former head we may lay out of the case,

I. Such accounts of supernatural events as are found only in histories by some ages posterior to the transaction, and of which it is evident that the historian could know little more than his reader. Ours is contemporary history. This difference alone removes out of our way, the miraculous history of Pythagoras, who lived five hundred years before the Christian era, written by Porphyry and Jamblicus, who lived three hundred years after that era; the prodigies of Livy's history;

the fables of the heroic ages; the whole of the Greek and Roman, as well as of the Gothic mythology; a great part of the legendary history of Popish saints, the very best attested of which is extracted from the certificates that are exhibited during the process of their canonization, a ceremony which seldom takes place till a century after their deaths. It applies also with considerable force to the miracles of Apollonius Tyaneus, which are contained in a solitary history of his life, published by Philostratus, above a hundred years after his death; and in which, whether Philostratus had any prior account to guide him, depends upon his single unsupported assertion. Also to some of the miracles of the third century, especially to one extraordinary instance, the account of Gregory, bishop of Neocesarea, called Thaumaturgus, delivered in the writings of Gregory of Nyssen, who lived one hundred and thirty years after the subject of his panegyric.

The value of this circumstance is shown to have been accurately exemplified in the history of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the order of Jesuits.* His life, written by a companion of his, and by one of the order, was published about fifteen years after his death. In which life, the author, so far from ascribing any miracles to Ignatius, industriously states the reasons why he was not invested with any such power. The life was republished fifteen years afterwards, with the addition of many circumstances, which were the fruit, the author says, of further inquiry, and of diligent examination; but still with a total silence about miracles. When Ignatius had been dead nearly sixty years, the Jesuits, conceiving a wish to have the founder of their order placed in the Roman calendar, began, as it should seem, for the first time, to attribute to him a catalogue of miracles, which could not then be distinctly disproved; and which there was, in those who governed the church, a strong disposition to admit upon the slenderest proofs.

II We may lay out of the case accounts published in one * Douglas' Criterion of Miracles, p. 74.