hich they endured was a miraculous story; I mean, that they pretended
to miraculous evidence of some kind or other. They had nothing else to
stand upon. The designation of the person, that is to say, that Jesus of
Nazareth, rather than any other person, was the Messiah, and as such the
subject of their ministry, could only be founded upon supernatural
tokens attributed to him. Here were no victories, no conquests, no
revolutions, no surprising elevation of fortune, no achievements of
valour, of strength, or of policy, to appeal to; no discoveries in any
art or science, no great efforts of genius or learning to produce. A
Galilean peasant was announced to the world as a divine lawgiver. A
young man of mean condition, of a private and simple life, and who had
wrought no deliverance for the Jewish nation, was declared to be their
Messiah. This, without ascribing to him at the same time some proofs of
his mission, (and what other but supernatural proofs could there be?)
was too absurd a claim to be either imagined, or attempted, or credited.
In whatever degree, or in whatever part, the religion was argumentative,
when it came to the question, "Is the carpenter's son of Nazareth the
person whom we are to receive and obey?" there was nothing but the
miracles attributed to him by which his pretensions could be maintained
for a moment. Every controversy and every question must presuppose
these: for, however such controversies, when they did arise, might and
naturally would, be discussed upon their own grounds of argumentation,
without citing the miraculous evidence which had been asserted to attend
the Founder of the religion (which would have been to enter upon
another, and a more general question), yet we are to bear in mind, that
without previously supposing the existence or the pretence of such
evidence, there could have been no place for the discussion of the
argument at all. Thus, for example, whether the prophecies, which the
Jews interpreted to belong to the Messiah, were or were not applicable
to the history of Jesus of Nazareth, was a natural subject of debate in
those times; and the debate would proceed without recurring at every
turn to his miracles, because it set out with supposing these; inasmuch
as without miraculous marks and tokens (real or pretended), or without
some such great change effected by his means in the public condition of
the country, as might have satisfied the then received interpretation of
these