has been said under this head, or to go on with your cause

Mr. A. My Lord, the observations I laid before you, were but
introductory to the main evidences on which the merits of the cause
must rest. The Gentleman concluded, that here must be a real miracle
or a great fraud; a fraud, he means, to which Jesus in his lifetime was
a party. There is, he says, no medium. I beg his pardon. Why might
it not be an enthusiasm in the master which occasioned the prediction,
and fraud in the servants who put it in execution?

Mr. B. My Lord, This is new matter, and not a reply. The
Gentleman opened this transaction as a fraud from one end to the other.
Now he supposes Christ to have been an honest, poor enthusiast, and the
disciples only to be cheats.

Judge. Sir, if you go to new matter, the council on the
other side must be admitted to answer.

Mr. A. My Lord, I have no such intention. I was observing,
that the account I gave of Jesus was only to introduce the evidence
that is to be laid before the court. It cannot be expected, that I
should know all the secret designs of this contrivance, especially
considering that we have but short accounts of this affair, and those
too conveyed through hands of friends and parties to the plot. In such
a case it is enough if we can imagine what the views probably were; and
in such case too it must be very easy for a Gentleman of parts to raise
contrary imaginations, and to argue plausibly from them. But the
Gentleman has rightly observed, that if the resurrection be a fraud,
there is an end to all pretensions, good or bad, that were to be
supported by it: therefore I shall go on to prove this fraud, which is