characters of such an account upon the face of it, because it describes
effects, namely the appearance in the world of a new religion, and the
conversion of great multitudes to it, without descending, in the
smallest degree, to the detail of the transaction upon which it was
founded, the interior of the institution, the evidence or arguments
offered by those who drew over others to it. Yet still here is no
contradiction of our story; no other or different story set up against
it: but so far a confirmation of it as that, in the general points on
which the heathen account touches, it agrees with that which we find in
our own books.

The same may be observed of the very few Jewish writers of that and the
adjoining period, which have come down to us. Whatever they omit, or
whatever difficulties we may find in explaining the omission, they
advance no other history of the transaction than that which we
acknowledge. Josephus, who wrote his Antiquities, or History of the
Jews, about sixty years after the commencement of Christianity, in a
passage generally admitted as genuine, makes mention of John under the
name of John the Baptist; that he was a preacher of virtue; that he
baptized his proselytes; that he was well received by the people; that
he was imprisoned and put to death by Herod; and that Herod lived in a
criminal cohabitation with Herodias, his brother's wife. (Antiq. I.
xviii. cap. v. sect. 1, 2.) In another passage allowed by many, although
not without considerable question being moved about it, we hear of
"James, the brother of him who was called Jesus, and of his being put to
death." (Antiq. I. xx. cap. ix. sect. 1.) In a third passage, extant in
every copy that remains of Josephus's history, but the authenticity of
which has nevertheless been long disputed, we have an explicit testimony
to the substance of our history in these words:--"At that time lived
Jesus, a wise man, if he may be called a man, for he performed many