tians, the
celebration of this rite universal. And, indeed, we find concurring in
all the above-mentioned observances, Christian societies of many
different nations and languages, removed from one another by a great
distance of place and dissimilitude of situation. It is also extremely
material to remark, that there is no room for insinuating that our books
were fabricated with a studious accommodation to the usages which
obtained at the time they were written; that the authors of the books
found the usages established, and framed the story to account for their
original. The Scripture accounts, especially of the Lord's Supper, are
too short and cursory, not to say too obscure, and in this view,
deficient, to allow a place for any such suspicion.*

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* The reader who is conversant in these researches, by comparing the
short Scripture accounts of the Christian rites above-mentioned with the
minute and circumstantial directions contained in the pretended
apostolical constitutions, will see the force of this observation; the
difference between truth and forgery.
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Amongst the proofs of the truth of our proposition, viz. That the story
which we have now is, in substance, the story which the Christians had
then, or, in other words, that the accounts in our Gospels are, as to
their principal parts, at least, the accounts which the apostles and
original teachers of the religion delivered, one arises from observing,
that it appears by the Gospels themselves that the story was public at
the time; that the Christian community was already in possession of the
substance and principal parts of the narrative. The Gospels were not the
original cause of the Christian history being believed, but were
themselves among the consequences of that belief. This is expressly
affirmed by Saint Luke, in his brief, but, as I think, very important
and instructive preface:--"Forasmuch (says the evangelist) as many have
taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which
are most surely believed amongst us, even as they delivered them unto
us, which, from the beginning, were eye-witnesses and ministers of the
word; it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all
things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent
Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things
wherein thou hast been instructed."--This short introduction testifies,
that the substance o