as much proof that that assertion was made, as if we ourselves had lived at the time of the promulgation of the religion, or had learned the facts from eye-witnesses.

...Moreover, it is certain that even the evidence of eye-witnesses may be inferior to documentary evidence. If, indeed, we can examine personally all the witnesses, or a sufficient number of them, we have all the elements of the fullest proof in our hands. No evidence can be imagined more perfect than this. But if we see only one, or only a few of the eye-witnesses, or if we see them without possessing the means of judging of their credibility, an authentic document which details clearly the whole evidence, or even declares merely what was the impression which it made on a sufficient number of grave and considerate men, may be better authority than that of one, or than that of only a few eye-witnesses. The notes which a judge makes of the facts proved on a trial, are far better evidence than the account which may be extracted from only a few out of many witnesses, or may even be better than that which a less able, or a less attentive interrogator might probably have been able to extract from them all.

Hence it follows, that even in this age in which we live, we, if our documents be authentic, and if they be sufficiently ample, may have as good evidence that some miracles were alleged in behalf of the revelations of Moses and of Christ, as even their contemporaries could possess, if not eye-witnesses. And even to the eye-witnesses we yield in the nature, rather than in the degree, of that assurance which we possess. For though between the evidence of sense, which was possessed by the eye-witnesses, and that of reason, which is the evidence of all other persons, no comparison seems possible to be drawn, yet it is not clear that there must be in regard to certainty any difference between the two evidences. I see not that we ought to have a stronger assurance of the existence of Buonaparte, whom we may have seen, than of that of Cæsar, whom we certainly have not seen.

The degree of certainty, therefore, which may be found to exist in any documentary evidence, is to be weakened by nothing, but either the want of fulness in it, or the want of sufficient proof of its authenticity. But the evidence is, in point of fulness, sufficiently full; is sufficiently full, at least, to prove that miracles

were asserted, and that the assertion was generally received and admitted; if the affirmation of their having been so received and admitted is made in terms so full and distinct, that it could not possibly, if a false affirmation, have been imposed as true on the world. The authenticity of the records we in this inquiry assume. I may here add, however, that the mere reception of such records is, for all common purposes, proof enough of their authenticity, coupled as their reception is with the absolute silence of history, as to their having had any other origin than what they pretend to.

It is, then, clear that we possess the same evidence which was possessed in the very first ages of Christianity, that some miracles were at that time asserted to have been performed. And this evidence consists in the utter impossibility that our authentic documents of the origin of the religion, documents containing the assertion of those miracles, could have been derived to us under all the circumstances in which we possess them, unless those assertions had been really made by persons professing to have witnessed those miracles.

But if we have the same evidence that these

miracles were asserted, which was possessed by those who received their accounts of them from the eye-witnesses, we have also the same evidence that they were really performed. We know that they were performed, because if they had not been performed, we know that they either would not, or could not, have been asserted. They would not have been asserted through mistake or enthusiasm, because the historians were neither prejudiced nor enthusiastic, and because the facts were such as could not be mistaken. They would not have been asserted through fraud and imposture, both because the historians were sober-minded and sincere, and because the allegation of miracles attesting a new religion, a religion opposed to existing prejudices and interests, and requiring the greatest and the most disinterested sacrifices, is of itself the highest proof which can be imagined of the highest principle, and of extreme disinterestedness. And farther than this, also, unless really performed, these miracles could not possibly have been alleged with any the least hope of gaining reception.

On all these points we have, I think, no less evidence now, than the evidence possessed at

the first origin of our religion. Of the honesty and sobriety of the Gospel historians we have evidence in their writings which, I apprehend, is not less conclusive than a personal knowledge of them during their lives would have been. Of the fact that they sacrificed all their temporal interests; that in asserting the religion which rested on these miracles they devoted themselves to persecution and death; we have evidence no less cogent than we have of their asserting the miracles, evidence also which is no less cogent to us than it was to the original

converts.

But the greatest and most obvious proof of the whole, and that which is sufficient to decide the whole question at once, is to consider the consequences of asserting any such facts in behalf of a religion which was vehemently opposed by the prevalent party in the state, a party both able and inclined to inflict persecution and death, and actually inflicting them in some instances, on its professors. It is morally impossible that in such circumstances any such assertions could have been falsely made without meeting certain and prompt refutation. That it is impossible we have the assured evidence of