en setting up to be prophets, as in the Old Testament; for prophesying
is lying professionally. In almost all other cases it is not difficult
to discover the progress by which even simple supposition, with the aid
of credulity, will in time grow into a lie, and at last be told as a
fact; and whenever we can find a charitable reason for a thing of this
kind, we ought not to indulge a severe one.

The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an
apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision,
and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the
assassination of Julius Caesar not many years before, and they generally
have their origin in violent deaths, or in execution of innocent
persons. In cases of this kind, compassion lends its aid, and
benevolently stretches the story. It goes on a little and a little
farther, till it becomes a most certain truth. Once start a ghost, and
credulity fills up the history of its life, and assigns the cause of its
appearance; one tells it one way, another another way, till there are as
many stories about the ghost, and about the proprietor of the ghost, as
there are about Jesus Christ in these four books.

The story of the appearance of Jesus Christ is told with that strange
mixture of the natural and impossible, that distinguishes legendary tale
from fact. He is represented as suddenly coming in and going out when
the doors are shut, and of vanishing out of sight, and appearing again,
as one would conceive of an unsubstantial vision; then again he is
hungry, sits down to meat, and eats his supper. But as those who tell
stories of this kind never provide for all the cases, so it is here:
they have told us, that when he arose he left his grave-clothes behind
him; but they have forgotten to provide other clothes for him to appear
in afterwards, or to tell us what he did with them when he ascended;
whether he stripped all off, or went up clothes and all. In the case of
Elijah, they have been careful enough to make him throw down his mantle;
how it happened not to be burnt in the chariot of fire, they also have
not told us; but as imagination supplies all deficiencies of this kind,
we may suppose if we please that it was made of salamander's wool.

Those who are not much acquainted with ecclesiastical history, may
suppose that the book called the New Testament has existed ever since
the time of Jesus Christ, as they suppose that the boo