should be investigated thoroughly, and settled
firmly.

2. Because if it is not from God it must be the fruit of either of
error or fraud, if of the first it ought to be rejected as a delusion;
if of the second it ought to be cast off as a deception practiced in
the name of the God of truth, and therefore disrespectful to him.

It also merits, you most truly say, a respectful examination on account
of the character of its founder, for the character of Jesus you justly
consider as too excellent and unexceptionable to be reproached.
Whatever may be said concerning the moral excellence of that person's
character I will cheerfully assent to, and I could not listen without
disgust to language impeaching his moral purity. This I can do without
ceasing to suppose him an enthusiast; for there appears to me to be too
many marks of it in the New Testament for the idea to be set aside by a
few eloquent exclamations, and notes of admiration; if I am wrong in
this idea or in others, I will not prove indocile to arguments that
shall sufficiently show the contrary.

You observe, p. 16. "another consideration which entitles Christianity
to respectful attention is this. That Jesus Christ appeared at a time
when there prevailed in the east a universal expectation of a
distinguished personage who was to produce a great and happy change in
the world. This expectation was built on writings which claimed to be
prophetic, which existed long before Jesus was born."

I cannot help thinking the very great stress which has been laid upon
this "rumour spread all over the east" a little unreasonable.

For 1. "A rumour" is not as I apprehend an adequate foundation on which
to build such a thing as the Christian religion, which claims to be
derived from heaven.

2. Those who have brought forward with so much earnestness this popular
rumour, have not, I conceive, paid due attention to the causes that
might naturally have produced it, which were possibly these. There is
in the Jewish prophets frequent mention of a great deliverer, and it is
represented that he should appear in the time when the Jewish nation
should be suffering under most grievous afflictions, and who should
deliver them therefrom, Now was it not perfectly natural for the Jews,
dispersed over Asia, to expect, and to circulate the notion of this
deliverer when their own sufferings, inflicted by their enemies, were
intolerable? If you will open Josephus, you will there read that a