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kind or other, is to my apprehension extremely manifest; because, as to the fundamental article, the designation of the person, namely, that this particular person, Jesus of Nazareth, ought to be received as the Messiah, or as a messenger from God, they neither had, nor could have, anything but miracles to stand upon. That the exertions and sufferings of the Apostles were for the story which we have now, is proved by the consideration that this story is transmitted to us by two of their own number, and by two others personally connected with them; that the particularity of the narrative proves, that the writers claimed to possess circumstantial information, that from their situation they had full opportunity of acquiring such information, that they certainly, at least, knew what their colleagues, their companions, their masters, taught; that each of these books contains enough to prove the truth of the religion; that if any one of them therefore be genuine, it is sufficient; that the genuineness, however, of all of them is made out, as well by the general arguments which evince the genuineness of the most undisputed remains of antiquity, as also by peculiar and specific proofs, namely, by citations from them in writings belonging to a period immediately contiguous to that in which they were published;

by the distinguished regard paid by early Christians to the authority of these books (which regard was manifested by their collecting of them into a volume, appropriating to that volume titles of peculiar respect, translating them into various languages, digesting them into harmonies, writing commentaries upon them, and, still more conspicuously, by the reading of them in their public assemblies in all parts of the world); by an universal agreement with respect to these books, while doubts were entertained concerning some others; by contending sects appealing to them; by the early adversaries of the religion not disputing their genuineness, but, on the contrary, treating them as the depositories of the history upon which the religion was founded; by many formal catalogues of these, as of certain and authoritative writings, published in different and distant parts of the Christian world; lastly, by the absence or defect of the above-cited topics of evidence, when applied to any other histories of the same subject.

These are strong arguments to prove, that the books actually proceeded from the authors whose names they bear (and have always borne, for there is not a particle of evidence to show that they ever went under any other); but the strict genuineness of the books is, perhaps, more than

is necessary to the support of our proposition. For even supposing that, by reason of the silence of antiquity, or the loss of records, we knew not who were the writers of the four Gospels, yet the fact that they were received as authentic accounts of the transaction upon which the religion rested, and were received as such by Christians, at or near the age of the Apostles, by those whom the Apostles had taught, and by societies which the Apostles had founded; this fact, I say, connected with the consideration, that they are corroborative of each other's testimony, and that they are further corroborated by another contemporary history, taking up the story where they had left it, and, in a narrative built upon that story, accounting for the rise and production of changes in the world, the effects of which subsist at this day; connected, moreover, with the confirmation which they receive from letters written by the Apostles themselves, which both assume the same general story, and, as often as occasions lead them to do so, allude to particular parts of it and connected also with the reflection, that if the Apostles delivered any different story, it is lost (the present and no other being referred to by a series of Christian writers, down from their age to our own; being likewise recognized in a variety of institutions, which prevailed early and

universally among the disciples of the religion); and that so great a change, as the oblivion of one story, and the substitution of another, under such circumstances, could not have taken place; this evidence would be deemed, I apprehend, sufficient to prove concerning these books, that whoever were the authors of them, they exhibit the story which the Apostles told, and for which, consequently, they acted, and they suffered.

If it be so, the religion must be true. These men could not be deceivers. By only not bearing testimony, they might have avoided all their sufferings, and have lived quietly. Would men in such circumstances pretend to have seen what they never saw; assert facts which they had no knowledge of; go about lying, to teach virtue; and though not only convinced of Christ's being an impostor, but having seen the success of His imposture in His crucifixion, yet persist in carrying it on; and so persist, as to bring upon themselves, for nothing, and with a full knowledge of the consequence, enmity and hatred, danger and death?

OF THE DIRECT HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

OF

CHRISTIANITY,

AND WHEREIN IT IS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE EVIDENCE ALLEGED FOR OTHER MIRACLES.

PROPOSITION II.

CHAPTER I.

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OUR FIRST PROPOSITION WAS, THAT THERE IS SATISFACTORY EVIDENCE THAT MANY, PRE

TENDING TO BE ORIGINAL WITNESSES OF THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES, PASSED THEIR LIVES IN LABOURS, 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 AC

COUNTS; AND THAT THEY ALSO SUBMITTED, FROM THE SAME MOTIVES, TO NEW RULES OF CONDUCT."

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