Now, if our books be genuine, we have all these. We have the very
species of information which, as it appears to me, our imagination would
have carved out for us, if it had been wanting.
But I have said that if any one of the four Gospels be genuine, we have
not only direct historical testimony to the point we contend for, but
testimony which, so far as that point is concerned, cannot reasonably be
rejected. If the first Gospel was really written by Matthew, we have the
narrative of one of the number, from which to judge what were the
miracles, and the kind of miracles, which the apostles attributed to
Jesus. Although, for argument's sake, and only for argument's sake, we
should allow that this Gospel had been erroneously ascribed to Matthew;
yet, if the Gospel of St. John be genuine, the observation holds with no
less strength. Again, although the Gospels both of Matthew and John
could be supposed to be spurious, yet, if the Gospel of Saint Luke were
truly the composition of that person, or of any person, be his name what
it might, who was actually in the situation in which the author of that
Gospel professes himself to have been, or if the Gospel which bear the
name of Mark really proceeded from him; we still, even upon the lowest
supposition, possess the accounts of one writer at least, who was not
only contemporary with the apostles, but associated with them in their
ministry; which authority seems sufficient, when the question is simply
what it was which these apostles advanced.
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