was ordinary, prevailed at that time in Christian societies. And to me
it appears, that we are authorised to carry his testimony back to the
age of the apostles; because it is not probable that the immediate
hearers and disciples of Christ were more relaxed than their successors
in Pliny's time, or the missionaries of the religion than those whom
they taught.





CHAPTER VI.

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.

When we consider, first, the prevalency of the religion at this hour;
secondly, the only credible account which can be given of its origin,
viz. the activity of the Founder and his associates; thirdly, the
opposition which that activity must naturally have excited; fourthly,
the fate of the Founder of the religion, attested by heathen writers,
as well as our own; fifthly, the testimony of the same writers to the
sufferings of Christians, either contemporary with, or immediately
succeeding, the original settlers of the institution; sixthly,
predictions of the suffering of his followers ascribed to the Founder
of the religion, which ascription alone proves, either that such