There is satisfactory evidence that many, professing to be original
witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed their lives in labours,
dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the
accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief
of those accounts; and that they also submitted, from the same motives,
to new rules of conduct.

On the history, of which the last chapter contains an abstract, there
are a few observations which it may be proper to make, by way of
applying its testimony to the particular propositions for which we
contend.

I. Although our Scripture history leaves the general account of the
apostles in an early part of the narrative, and proceeds with the
separate account of one particular apostle, yet the information which
it delivers so far extends to the rest, as it shows the nature of the
service. When we see one apostle suffering persecution in the discharge
of this commission, we shall not believe, without evidence, that the
same office could, at the same time, be attended with ease and safety to
others. And this fair and reasonable inference is confirmed by the
direct attestation of the letters, to which we have so often referred.
The writer of these letters not only alludes, in numerous passages, to
his own sufferings, but speaks of the rest of the apostles as enduring
like sufferings with himself. "I think that God hath set forth us the
apostles last, as it were, appointed to death; for we are made a
spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men; even unto this
present hour, we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are
buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and labour, working with
our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it;
being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of the earth, and as