Whatever fables they have mixed with
the narrative, they preserve the material parts, the leading facts, as
we have them; and, so far as they do this, although they be evidence of
nothing else, they are evidence that these points were fixed, were
received and acknowledged by all Christians in the ages in which the
books were written. At least, it may be asserted, that, in the places
where we were most likely to meet with such things, if such things had
existed, no reliques appear of any story substantially different from
the present, as the cause, or as the pretence, of the institution.
Now that the original story, the story delivered by the first preachers
of the institution, should have died away so entirely as to have left no
record or memorial of its existence, although so many records and
memorials of the time and transaction remain; and that another story
should have stepped into its place, and gained exclusive possession of
the belief of all who professed, themselves disciples of the
institution, is beyond any example of the corruption of even oral
tradition, and still less consistent with the experience of written
history: and this improbability, which is very great, is rendered still
greater by the reflection, that no such change as the oblivion of one
story, and the substitution of another, took place in any future period
of the Christian aera.
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