tal scholar). And we are sure that his proof was not of that
order to shine by its own light, else it would have resounded through
England.

2. That for many hundreds of years Christianity should have been
received, generation after generation should have lived under its vital
action, upon no sufficient argument, and suddenly such an argument
should turn up as a reward to a man in a country not Christian for being
more incredulous than his neighbours; how impossible!

That fraudulent argument which affects to view the hardships of an
adventurous life and its perils as capable of one sole impression--that
of repulsion--and secondly as the sole circumstances about such
adventures, injures from the moment when it is perceived: not

1. The writer only; no matter for him, worthless liar, how much he sinks
in the opinion of his readers: but

2. The Apostles. Now see the injury of falsehood. Suddenly it snaps, and
with a great reaction causes a jar to the whole system, which in
ordinary minds it is never likely to recover. The reason it is not
oftener perceived is that people read such books in a somnolent,
inactive state of mind, one-tenth coming to a subject on which they have
already made up their minds, and open to no fresh impressions, the other
nine-tenths caring not one straw about the matter, as reading it in an
age of irreflectiveness and purely through an act of obedience to their
superiors, else not only does this hypocritical attempt to varnish give
way all at once, and suddenly (with an occasion ever after of doubt, and
causing a reflection to any self-sufficient man, suddenly coming to
perceive that he has been cheated, and with some justification for
jealousy thenceforwards to the maker up of a case), but also it robs the
Apostles of the human grace they really possessed. For if we suppose
them armed against all temptations, snares, seductions, by a
supernatural system of endowments, this is but the case of an
angel--nay, not of an angel, for it is probable that when an angel
incarnated himself, or one of the Pagan deities, who was obliged first
to incarnate himself before he could act amongst men, or so much as be
seen by men, he was bound by all the defects of man, _i.e._, he could
choose only an ideal, so far ideal as to elude the worst effects from
vice, intemperance, etc. The angel who wrestled with Jacob probably did
his best; he was a stout fellow, but so was the patriarch. The very
condition of incar