"They shall lay hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to
the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers
for my name's sake:--and ye shall be betrayed both by parents and
brethren, and kinsfolks and friends, and some of you shall they cause to
be put to death." (Luke xxi. 12--16. See also chap. xi. 49.)

"The time cometh, that he that killed you will think that he doeth God
service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not
known the Father, nor me. But these things have I told you, that when
the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them." (John
xvi. 4. See also chap. xv. 20; xvi. 33.)

I am not entitled to argue from these passages, that Christ actually did
foretell these events, and that they did accordingly come to pass;
because that would be at once to assume the truth of the religion: but I
am entitled to contend that one side or other of the following
disjunction is true; either that the Evangelists have delivered what
Christ really spoke, and that the event corresponded with the
prediction; or that they put the prediction into Christ's mouth, because
at the time of writing the history, the event had turned out so to be:
for, the only two remaining suppositions appear in the highest degree
incredible; which are, either that Christ filled the minds of his
followers with fears and apprehensions, without any reason or authority
for what he said, and contrary to the truth of the case; or that,
although Christ had never foretold any such thing, and the event would
have contradicted him if he had, yet historians who lived in the age
when the event was known, falsely, as well as officiously, ascribed
these words to him.

3. Thirdly, these books abound with exhortations to patience, and with