nt
forth; thither they assembled. The church of Jerusalem, and the several
churches of Judea, subsisted from the beginning, and for many ages;
received also the same books and the same accounts as other churches
did. (The succession of many eminent bishops of Jerusalem in the first
three centuries is distinctly preserved; as Alexander, A.D. 212, who
succeeded Narcissus, then 116 years old.)

This distinction disposes, amongst others, of the above-mentioned
miracles of Apollonius Tyaneus, most of which are related to have been
performed in India; no evidence remaining that either the miracles
ascribed to him, or the history of those miracles, were ever heard of in
India. Those of Francis Xavier, the Indian missionary, with many others
of the Romish breviary, are liable to the same objection, viz. that the
accounts of them were published at a vast distance from the supposed
scene of the wonders. (Douglas's Crit. p. 84.)

III. We lay out of the case transient rumours. Upon the first
publication of an extraordinary account, or even of an article of
ordinary intelligence, no one who is not personally acquainted with the
transaction can know whether it be true or false, because any man may
publish any story. It is in the future confirmation, or contradiction,
of the account; in its permanency, or its disappearance; its dying away
into silence, or its increasing in notoriety; its being followed up by
subsequent accounts, and being repeated in different and independent
accounts--that solid truth is distinguished from fugitive lies. This
distinction is altogether on the side of Christianity. The story did not
drop. On the contrary, it was succeeded by a train of action and events
dependent upon it. The accounts which we have in our hands were composed
after the first reports must have subsided. They were followed by a
train of writings upon the subject. The historical testimonies of the
transaction were many and various, and connected with letters,
discourses, controversies, apologies, successively produced by the same
transaction.

IV. We may lay out of the case what I call naked history. It has been
said, that if the prodigies of the Jewish history had been found only in
fragments of Manetho, or Berosus, we should have paid no regard to them:
and I am willing to admit this. If we knew nothing of the fact, but from
the fragment; if we possessed no proof that these accounts had been
credited and acted upon, from times, probab