In the last ease, my
faith would be much confirmed if the effects of the transaction
remained; more especially if a change had been wrought, at the time, in
the opinion and conduct of such numbers as to lay the foundation of an
institution, and of a system of doctrines, which had since overspread
the greatest part of the civilized world. I should have believed, I say,
the testimony in these cases; yet none of them do more than come up to
the apostolic history.
If any one choose to call assent to its evidence credulity, it is at
least incumbent upon him to produce examples in which the same evidence
hath turned out to be fallacious. And this contains the precise question
which we are now to agitate.
In stating the comparison between our evidence, and what our adversaries
may bring into competition with ours, we will divide the distinctions
which we wish to propose into two kinds,--those which relate to the
proof, and those which relate to the miracles. Under the former head we
may lay out of the case:--
I. Such accounts of supernatural events as are found only in histories
by some ages posterior to the transaction; and of which it is evident
that the historian could know little more than his reader.
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