our present argument; for an express attempt to deceive, in
which case alone particularity can appear without truth, is charged upon
the evangelists by few. If the historian acknowledge himself to have
received his intelligence from others, the particularity of the
narrative shows, prima facie, the accuracy of his inquiries, and the
fulness of his information. This remark belongs to St. Luke's history.
Of the particularity which we allege, many examples may be found in all
the Gospels. And it is very difficult to conceive that such numerous
particularities as are almost everywhere to be met with in the
Scriptures should be raised out of nothing, or be spun out of the
imagination without any fact to go upon.*

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* "There is always some truth where there are considerable
particularities related, and they always seem to bear some proportion to
one another. Thus, there is a great want of the particulars of time,
place, and persons in Manetho's account of the Egyptian Dynasties,
Etesias's of the Assyrian Kings, and those which the technical
chronologers have given of the ancient kingdoms of Greece; and,
agreeably thereto, the accounts have much fiction and falsehood, with
some truth: whereas Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, and
Caesar's of the War in Gaul, in both which the particulars of time,
place, and persons are mentioned, are universally esteemed true to a
great degree of exactness." Hartley, vol. ii. p. 109.
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It is to be remarked, however, that this particularity is only to be
looked for in direct history. It is not natural in references or
allusions, which yet, in other respects, often afford, as far as they
go, the most unsuspicious evidence.

VI. We lay out of the case such stories of supernatural events as
require, on the part of the hearer, nothing more than an otiose assent;
stories upon which nothing depends, in which no interest is involved,
nothing is to be done or changed in consequence of believing them. Such
stories are credited, if the careless assent that is given to them
deserve that name, more by the indolence of the hearer, than by his
judgment: or, though not much credited, are passed from one to another
without inquiry or resistance. To this case, and to this case alone,
belongs what is called the love of the marvellous. I have never known it
carry men further. Men do not suffer persecution from the love of the
marvellous. Of the indifferent nature we are spea