ar enough to
the time supposed to guarantee the probability of his competent
information on the subject, would have been entitled to our
acquiescence. We could have no reason to deny or to doubt what such an
historian could have had no motive to feign or to exaggerate. The proof,
even to demonstration, of these circumstances would constitute no step
or advance towards the proof of the truth of the Christian religion;
while the absence of a sufficient degree of evidence to render even
these circumstances unquestionable must, _a fortiori_, be fatal to the
credibility of the less credible circumstances founded upon them"
("Diegesis," p. 7).

But Paley pleads some indirect evidence on behalf of Christianity, which
deserves a word of notice since the direct evidence so lamentably breaks
down. He urges that: "there is satisfactory evidence that many,
professing to be original witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed
their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily under-gone,
in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in
consequence of their belief of those accounts; and that they also
submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of conduct." Nearly 200
pages are devoted to the proof of this proposition, a proposition which
it is difficult to characterise with becoming courtesy, when we know the
complete and utter absence of any "satisfactory evidence" that the
original witnesses did anything of the kind.

It is pleaded that the "original witnesses passed their lives in
labours, etc., in attestation of the accounts they delivered." The
evidence of this may be looked for either in Pagan or in Christian
writings. Pagan writers know literally nothing about the "original
witnesses," mentioning, at the utmost, but "the Christians;" and these
Christians, when put to death, were not so executed in attestation of
any accounts delivered by them, but wholly and solely because of the
evil deeds and the scandalous practices rightly or wrongly attributed to
them. Supposing--what is not true--that they had been executed for their
creed, there is no pretence that they were eye-witnesses of the miracles
of Christ.

Paley's first argument is drawn "from the nature of the case"--i.e.,
that persecution ought to have taken place, whether it did or not,
because both Jews and Gentiles would reject the new creed. So far as the
Jews are concerned, we hear of no persecution from Josephus. If we
interrogate th