I do admit that it would have been the part of an impostor, who
wished his readers to believe that this book was written before the
event, when in truth it was written after it, to have suppressed any
such intimation carefully. But this was not the character of the authors
of the Gospel. Cunning was no quality of theirs. Of all writers in the
world, they thought the least of providing against objections. Moreover,
there is no clause in any one of them that makes a profession of their
having written prior to the Jewish wars, which a fraudulent purpose
would have led them to pretend. They have done neither one thing nor the
other; they have neither inserted any words which might signify to the
reader that their accounts were written before the destruction of
Jerusalem, which a sophist would have done; nor have they dropped a hint
of the completion of the prophecies recorded by them, which an
undesigning writer, writing after the event, could hardly, on some or
other of the many occasions that presented themselves, have missed of
doing.
4. The admonitions* which Christ is represented to have given to his
followers to save themselves by flight are not easily accounted for on
the supposition of the prophecy being fabricated after the event.
Pages:
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322