prove his doctrine by argument. He does not pretend to
have been witness to any of the scenes told of the resurrection and the
ascension; and he declares that he had not believed them.

The story of his being struck to the ground as he was journeying to
Damascus, has nothing in it miraculous or extraordinary; he escaped with
life, and that is more than many others have done, who have been struck
with lightning; and that he should lose his sight for three days, and be
unable to eat or drink during that time, is nothing more than is common
in such conditions. His companions that were with him appear not to have
suffered in the same manner, for they were well enough to lead him the
remainder of the journey; neither did they pretend to have seen any
vision.

The character of the person called Paul, according to the accounts
given of him, has in it a great deal of violence and fanaticism; he had
persecuted with as much heat as he preached afterwards; the stroke
he had received had changed his thinking, without altering his
constitution; and either as a Jew or a Christian he was the same zealot.
Such men are never good moral evidences of any doctrine they preach.
They are always in extremes, as well of action as of belief.

The doctrine he sets out to prove by argument, is the resurrection of
the same body: and he advances this as an evidence of immortality.
But so much will men differ in their manner of thinking, and in the
conclusions they draw from the same premises, that this doctrine of
the resurrection of the same body, so far from being an evidence of
immortality, appears to me to be an evidence against it; for if I have
already died in this body, and am raised again in the same body in which
I have died, it is presumptive evidence that I shall die again. That
resurrection no more secures me against the repetition of dying, than an
ague-fit, when past, secures me against another. To believe therefore in
immortality, I must have a more elevated idea than is contained in the
gloomy doctrine of the resurrection.

Besides, as a matter of choice, as well as of hope, I had rather have a
better body and a more convenient form than the present. Every animal
in the creation excels us in something. The winged insects, without
mentioning doves or eagles, can pass over more space with greater ease
in a few minutes than man can in an hour. The glide of the smallest
fish, in proportion to its bulk, exceeds us in motion almost be