of conduct.

2. That there is not satisfactory evidence that persons professing to be
original witnesses of other miracles, in their nature as certain as
these are, have ever acted in the same manner, in attestation of the
accounts which they delivered, and properly in consequence of their
belief of those accounts.

The first of these prepositions, as it forms the argument will stand at
the head of the following nine chapters.

CHAPTER I

There is satisfactory evidence that many, professing to be original
witness of the Christian miracles, passed their lives in labours,
dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the
accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their of
belief of those accounts; and that they also submitted, from the same
motives, to new rules of conduct.

To support this proposition, two points are necessary to be made out:
first, that the Founder of the institution, his associates and immediate
followers, acted the part which the proposition imputes to them:
secondly, that they did so in attestation of the miraculous history
recorded in our Scriptures, and solely in consequence of their belief of
the truth of this history.

Before we produce any particular testimony to the activity and
sufferings which compose the subject of our first assertion, it will be
proper to consider the degree of probability which the assertion derives
from the nature of the case, that is, by inferences from those parts of
the case which, in point of fact, are on all hands acknowledged.

First, then, the Christian Religion exists, and, therefore, by some
means or other, was established. Now it either owes the principle of its
establishment, i. e. its first publication, to the activity of the
Person who was the founder of the institution, and of those who were
joined with him in the undertaking, or we are driven upon the strange
supposition, that, although they might lie by, others would take it up;
although they were quiet and silent, other persons busied themselves in
the success and propagation of their story. This is perfectly
incredible. To me it appears little less than certain, that, if the
first announcing of the religion by the Founder had not been followed up
by the zeal and industry of his immediate disciples, the attempt must
have expired in its birth. Then as to the kind and degree of exertion
which was employed, and the mode of life to which these persons
subm