The probability is
increased by what we know of the fate of the Founder of the institution,
who was put to death for his attempt; and by what we also know of the
cruel treatment of the converts to the institution, within thirty years
after its commencement: both which points are attested by heathen
writers, and, being once admitted, leave it very incredible that the
primitive emissaries of the religion, who exercised their ministry,
first, amongst the people who had destroyed their Master, and,
afterwards, amongst those who persecuted their converts, should
themselves escape with impunity, or pursue their purpose in ease and
safety. This probability, thus sustained by foreign testimony, is
advanced, I think, to historical certainty, by the evidence of our own
books; by the accounts of a writer who was the companion of the persons
whose sufferings he relates; by the letters of the persons themselves by
predictions of persecutions ascribed to the Founder of the religion,
which predictions would not have been inserted in his history, much less
have been studiously dwelt upon, if they had not accorded with the
event, and which, even if falsely ascribed to him, could only have been
so ascribed, because the event suggested them; lastly, by incessant
exhortations to fortitude and patience, and by an earnestness,
repetition, and urgency upon the subject, which were unlikely to have
appeared if there had not been, at the time, some extraordinary call for
the exercise of these virtues.
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