ver have succeeded. If, moreover, in the progress of my inquiries, it appear further, that these very witnesses, who could not be confuted by their own magistrates, have constantly persevered in charging these ma gistrates with the greatest of crimes, and that they even dared to accuse them to their face; in this case, I think the inference will be infinitely more striking. If afterwards it appear, that other enemies of these witnesses have also attributed to magical arts the miraculous facts they attested; if I am convinced that these enemies were as enlightened as the age in which they lived admitted; that they were equally knowing, artful, vigilant, and inveterate; if I know that most of them existed in times not very distant from those of the witnesses; if, finally, I know that one of those enemies, the most subtle, the most artful, the most obstinate of them all, and seated too on one of the most illustrious thrones in the world, has admitted several of these miraculous facts; is it possible for me, consistent with the rules of sound criticism, not to consider these avowals as strong presumptions in fa

vour of the reality of the facts in question ?*

*I again repeat it, the nature of my plan does not admit historical and critical details; the reader will meet with the most material of these concessions of Celsus, Porphyry, Julian, and the other adversaries of the evangelical witnesses, in the excellent treatises of Grotius, Ditton, Vernet, Bergur, Bullet, &c. Many of the best apologists for these witnesses might however, perhaps, be charged (and not without reason) with having con-sidered rather the number of their arguments than their weight. See also Campbell on Miracles. ·

K2

BOOK III.

CHAP. I.

CHARACTER OF THE WRITTEN EVIDENCE, AND OF THE WITNESSES:

HE witnesses to these miraculous

Tfacts have undoubtedly handed down

to posterity, in some book, the testimony which they so publicly, so invariably, and so unanimously gave of these facts. Accor dingly, a book is exhibited as the genuine narration of the witnesses..

I examine this book with all the attention of which I am capable; and I freely own, that the more I examine it, the more I am struck with the characteristics of truth,. the originality, and sublimity, which I dis

cover.

This book appears to me unexampled, and absolutely inimitable. The sublimity of thought, the majesty and simplicity of expression; the beauty, the purity, I could almost say the homogeneity of the doctrine; the importance, the universality, and the expressive brevity and paucity of the precepts; their admirable appropriation to the nature and wants of man; the ardént charity which so generously enforces the observation of them; the affecting piety, force, and gravity of the composition; the profound and truly philosophical sense. which I discover in it; these are the characters which fix my attention to the book I examine, and which I do not meet with, in the same degree, in any production of the human mind. I am equally affected with the candour, the ingenuousness, the modes. ty, I should have said, the humility, of the writers, and that unexampled and constant forgetfulness of themselves, which never admits their own reflections, or the smallest eulogium in reciting the actions of their

master.

When I remark the plain, simple, and dispassionate account given by these wri

ters of the greatest events, never attempting to astonish their readers, but endeavouring always to enlighten and convince them, I am irresistibly led to believe, that their only view was that of attesting to mankind a truth which they conceived of the highest importance to human happiness.

Regardless of themselves, they seem full only of that great truth which they promulgated: I am not surprised, therefore, to find truth the only object which they have studied in their composition. This they exhibit unadorned, unembellished; their language therefore is simple-The leper stretched forth his hand, and it became whole-The sick man took up his bed and walked.

The distinguishing characteristics of the true sublime appear in these writings; for when God is the object, it is sublime to say, He spake, and it was done; but it is easily discerned that the sublime occurs there only because the thing was of an extraordinary nature, and because the writer delivered it. as he saw it, that is, as it was. These writers appear to me not only most completely