If we dispose our ideas in a different order, the matter stands
thus:--Whilst the transaction was recent, and the original witnesses
were at hand to relate it; and whilst the apostles were busied in
preaching and travelling, in collecting disciples, in forming and
regulating societies of converts, in supporting themselves against
opposition; whilst they exercised their ministry under the harassings of
frequent persecutions, and in a state of almost continual alarm, it is
not probable that, in this engaged, anxious, and unsettled condition of
life, they would think immediately of writing histories for the
information of the public or of posterity.* But it is very probable,
that emergencies might draw from some of them occasional letters upon
the subject of their mission, to converts, or to societies of
converts, with which they were connected; or that they might address
written discourses and exhortations to the disciples of the institution
at large, which would be received and read with a respect proportioned
to the character of the writer. Accounts in the mean time would get
abroad of the extraordinary things that had been passing, written with
different degrees of information and correctness.
Pages:
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135