who said, that,
as there was proof that in the very age in which the miracles were
wrought there were many who did not believe the message which they
professedly confirmed, it was a strong indication that the whole was a
fiction; while some others of still greater acumen discovered that the
very freedom from all discrepancies and contradictions in the account
itself smelt very strongly of art and design; that this perfection of
consistency was not the characteristic of any history ever written by
an honest man, and that no doubt it had been elaborately contrived by
a single highly inventive mind."

"The idiots!" I exclaimed. "Why, this very circumstance ought surely
to have led them to argue the other way."

"They thought otherwise; and I must say I think they argued very
plausibly, and that very much is to be said for them. They thought
that perfect self-consistency might possibly be obtained by a single
mind of highly inventive power, and they preferred believing that,
to receiving such wonderful things supported by any single testimony."

"But did none attempt to remedy this defect of the unhappy speculator?"

"O, yes; another attempted to establish in a second community of our
reasonable shadows a revelation on the same basis of miracles; but
instead of trusting to one witness, he recorded the results by ten;
and with such perfection of art, that all the ingenuity of all the
critics of succeeding ages could not detect a single variation other
than in language; the records themselves and their contents were
precisely the same.

"And what was the result."

"Much the same as before; for this identity of substance and almost
of manner showed most evidently, said the critics, that there had
been collusion between the several parties who had framed the
revelation:--and in the course of three or four generations it was
universally rejected, as totally unworthy of belief."

"I see not, then, how a revelation by any such means could be
authenticated at all?"

"Why, our reasonable creatures require a great deal of management,
--that is the truth. There is no way in which you cannot prove to your
own satisfaction, that no one of any divine communications (given
under the conditions aforesaid) is to be believed; but perhaps after
all, the method would have been more sure, had these sages confined
these communications to different testimonies, in which the general
harmony and undesigned coincidences should be manifest,