be greater than in the preceding cases? If not, and if,
moreover, while the evidence turns as before on principles with which we
are familiar, the more formidable objections, as before, are such that
we are not competent to decide upon their absolute insolubility, we
see how man ought to act; that is, not to let his ignorance control his
knowledge, but to let his reason accept the proofs which justify his
faith, in accepting the difficulties. In no case is he, it appears,
warranted to look for the certainty which shall exclude (whatever the
triumphs of his reason) a gigantic exercise of his faith. Let us briefly
consider a few of the evidences. And in order to give the statement a
little novelty, we shall indicate the principal topics of evidence, not
by enumerating what the advocate of Christianity believes in believing
it to be true, but what the infidel must believe in believing it to
be false. The a priori objection to Miracles we shall briefly touch
afterwards.

First, then, in relation to the Miracles of the New Testament, whether
they be supposed masterly frauds on men's senses committed at the time
and by the parties supposed in the records, or fictions (designed
or accidental) subsequently fabricated--but still, in either case,
undeniably successful and triumphant beyond all else in the history
whether of fraud or fiction--the infidel must believe as follows: On
the first hypothesis, he must believe that a vast number of apparent
miracles--involving the most astounding phenomena--such as the instant
restoration of the sick, blind, deaf, and lame, and the resurrection
of the dead--performed in open day, amidst multitudes of malignant
enemies--imposed alike on all, and triumphed at once over the strongest
prejudices and the deepest enmity:--those who received them and those
who rejected them differing only in the certainly not very trifling
particular--as to whether they came from heaven or from hell. He
must believe that those who were thus successful in this extraordinary
conspiracy against men's senses and against common sense, were Galilaean
Jews, such as all history of the period represents them; ignorant,
obscure, illiterate; and, above all, previously bigoted, like all
their countrymen, to the very system, of which, together with all other
religions on the earth, they modestly meditated the abrogation; he must
believe that, appealing to these astounding frauds in the face both of
Jews and Gentiles as an o