solely in consequence of their belief of the truth of that history.

The argument, by which these two propositions have been maintained by
us, stands thus:

No historical fact, I apprehend, is more certain, than that the original
propagators of Christianity voluntarily subjected themselves to lives of
fatigue, danger, and suffering, in the prosecution of their undertaking.
The nature of the undertaking; the character of the persons employed in
it; the opposition of their tenets to the fixed opinions and
expectations of the country in which they first advanced them; their
undissembled condemnation of the religion of all other countries; their
total want of power, authority, or force--render it in the highest
degree probable that this must have been the case. The probability is
increased by what we know of the fate of the Founder of the institution,
who was put to death for his attempt; and by what we also know of the
cruel treatment of the converts to the institution, within thirty years
after its commencement: both which points are attested by heathen
writers, and, being once admitted, leave it very incredible that the
primitive emissaries of the religion, who exercised their ministry,
first, amongst the people who had destroyed their Master, and,
afterwards, amongst those who persecuted their converts, should
themselves escape with impunity, or pursue their purpose in ease and
safety. This probability, thus sustained by foreign testimony, is
advanced, I think, to historical certainty, by the evidence of our own
books; by the accounts of a writer who was the companion of the persons
whose sufferings he relates; by the letters of the persons themselves by
predictions of persecutions ascribed to the Founder of the religion,
which predictions would not have been inserted in his history, much less
have been studiously dwelt upon, if they had not accorded with the
event, and which, even if falsely ascribed to him, could only have been
so ascribed, because the event suggested them; lastly, by incessant
exhortations to fortitude and patience, and by an earnestness,
repetition, and urgency upon the subject, which were unlikely to have
appeared if there had not been, at the time, some extraordinary call for
the exercise of these virtues.

It is made out also, I think, with sufficient evidence, that both the
teachers and converts of the religion, in consequence of their new
profession, took up a new course of life and behaviour