_________
* Why should not the candid and modest preface of this historian be
believed, as well as that which Dion Cassius prefixes to his Life of
Commodus? "These things and the following I write, not from the report
of others, but from my own knowledge and observation." I see no reason
to doubt but that both passages describe truly enough the situation of
the authors.
_________
The situation of the writers applies to the truth of the facts which
they record. But at present we use their testimony to a point somewhat
short of this, namely, that the facts recorded in the Gospels, whether
true or false, are the facts, and the sort of facts which the original
preachers of the religion allege. Strictly speaking, I am concerned only
to show, that what the Gospels contain is the same as what the apostles
preached. Now, how stands the proof of this point? A set of men went
about the world, publishing a story composed of miraculous accounts,
(for miraculous from the very nature and exigency of the case they must
have been,) and upon the strength of these accounts called upon mankind
to quit the religions in which they had been educated, and to take up,
thenceforth, a new system of opinions, and new rules of action.
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