and this alone is sufficient to hold them in doubt, and where we doubt
we do not believe) it is not difficult to ascertain negatively that
they were not written by the persons to whom they are ascribed. The
contradictions in those books demonstrate two things:

First, that the writers cannot have been eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses
of the matters they relate, or they would have related them without
those contradictions; and, consequently that the books have not been
written by the persons called apostles, who are supposed to have been
witnesses of this kind.

Secondly, that the writers, whoever they were, have not acted in
concerted imposition, but each writer separately and individually for
himself, and without the knowledge of the other.

The same evidence that applies to prove the one, applies equally to
prove both cases; that is, that the books were not written by the men
called apostles, and also that they are not a concerted imposition. As
to inspiration, it is altogether out of the question; we may as well
attempt to unite truth and falsehood, as inspiration and contradiction.

If four men are eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses to a scene, they will
without any concert between them, agree as to time and place, when and
where that scene happened. Their individual knowledge of the thing, each
one knowing it for himself, renders concert totally unnecessary; the
one will not say it was in a mountain in the country, and the other at
a house in town; the one will not say it was at sunrise, and the other
that it was dark. For in whatever place it was and whatever time it was,
they know it equally alike.

And on the other hand, if four men concert a story, they will make their
separate relations of that story agree and corroborate with each other
to support the whole. That concert supplies the want of fact in the one
case, as the knowledge of the fact supersedes, in the other case, the
necessity of a concert. The same contradictions, therefore, that
prove there has been no concert, prove also that the reporters had no
knowledge of the fact, (or rather of that which they relate as a fact,)
and detect also the falsehood of their reports. Those books, therefore,
have neither been written by the men called apostles, nor by imposters
in concert.--How then have they been written?

I am not one of those who are fond of believing there is much of that
which is called wilful lying, or lying originally, except in the case of
m