part of this story. I know nothing in the above statement which can,
with any appearance of reason, be disputed; and I know nothing, in the
history of the human species, similar to it.





CHAPTER VIII.

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.

That the story which we have now is, in the main, the story which the
apostles published, is, I think, nearly certain, from the considerations
which have been proposed. But whether, when we come to the particulars,
and the detail of the narrative, the historical books of the New
Testament be deserving of credit as histories, so that a fact ought
to be accounted true, because it is found in them; or whether they are
entitled to be considered as representing the accounts which, true or
false, the apostles published; whether their authority, in either of
these views, can be trusted to, is a point which necessarily depends
upon what we know of the books, and of their authors.

Now, in treating of this part of our argument, the first and most
material observation upon the subject is, that such was the situation of