that the
accounts of them were published at a vast distance from the supposed
scene of the wonders. (Douglas's Crit. p. 84.)
III. We lay out of the case transient rumours. Upon the first
publication of an extraordinary account, or even of an article of
ordinary intelligence, no one who is not personally acquainted with the
transaction can know whether it be true or false, because any man may
publish any story. It is in the future confirmation, or contradiction,
of the account; in its permanency, or its disappearance; its dying away
into silence, or its increasing in notoriety; its being followed up by
subsequent accounts, and being repeated in different and independent
accounts--that solid truth is distinguished from fugitive lies. This
distinction is altogether on the side of Christianity. The story did not
drop. On the contrary, it was succeeded by a train of action and events
dependent upon it. The accounts which we have in our hands were composed
after the first reports must have subsided. They were followed by a
train of writings upon the subject. The historical testimonies of the
transaction were many and various, and connected with letters,
discourses, controversies, apologies, successively produced by the same
transaction.
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