ribed to any other, and we have
evidence not long after their publication of their bearing the names
which they now bear); their antiquity, of which there is no question,
their reputation and authority amongst the early disciples of the
religion, of which there is as little, form a valid proof that they
must, in the main at least, have agreed with what the first teachers of
the religion delivered.

When we open these ancient volumes, we discover in them marks of truth,
whether we consider each in itself, or collate them with one another.
The writers certainly knew something of what they were writing about,
for they manifest an acquaintance with local circumstances, with the
history and usages of the times, which could belong only to an
inhabitant of that country, living in that age. In every narrative we
perceive simplicity and undesignedness; the air and the language of
reality. When we compare the different narratives together, we find them
so varying as to repel all suspicion of confederacy; so agreeing under
this variety as to show that the accounts had one real transaction for
their common foundation; often attributing different actions and
discourses to the Person whose history, or rather memoirs of whose
history, they profess to relate, yet actions and discourses so similar
as very much to bespeak the same character: which is a coincidence that,
in such writers as they were, could only be the consequence of their
writing from fact, and not from imagination.

These four narratives are confined to the history of the Founder of the
religion, and end with his ministry. Since, however, it is certain that
the affair went on, we cannot help being anxious to know how it
proceeded. This intelligence hath come down to us in a work purporting
to be written by a person, himself connected with the business during
the first stages of its progress, taking up the story where the former
histories had left it, carrying on the narrative, oftentimes with great
particularity, and throughout with the appearance of good sense,*
information and candour; stating all along the origin, and the only
probable origin, of effects which unquestionably were produced, together
with the natural consequences of situations which unquestionably did
exist; and confirmed, in the substance at least of the account, by the
strongest possible accession of testimony which a history can receive,
original letters, written by the person who is the principal s