described, which have been preserved with a care and fidelity answering
to the respect with which we may suppose that such letters would be
received. But as these letters were not written to prove the truth of
the Christian religion, in the sense in which we regard that question;
nor to convey information of facts, of which those to whom the letters
were written had been previously informed; we are not to look in them
for anything more than incidental allusions to the Christian history. We
are able, however, to gather from these documents various particular
attestations which have been already enumerated; and this is a species
of written evidence, as far as it goes, in the highest degree
satisfactory, and in point of time perhaps the first. But for our more
circumstantial information, we have, in the next place, five direct
histories, bearing the names of persons acquainted, by their situation,
with the truth of what they relate, and three of them purporting, in the
very body of the narrative, to be written by such persons; of which
books we know, that some were in the hands of those who were
contemporaries of the apostles, and that, in the age immediately
posterior to that, they were in the hands, we may say, of every one, and
received by Christians with so much respect and deference, as to be
constantly quoted and referred to by them, without any doubt of the
truth of their accounts. They were treated as such histories, proceeding
from such authorities, might expect to be treated. In the preface to one
of our histories, we have intimations left us of the existence of some
ancient accounts which are now lost. There is nothing in this
circumstance that can surprise us. It was to be expected, from the
magnitude and novelty of the occasion, that such accounts would swarm.
When better accounts came forth, these died away. Our present histories
superseded others. They soon acquired a character and established a
reputation which does not appear to have belonged to any other: that, at
least, can be proved concerning them which cannot be proved concerning