ter of the person who
was the subject of the history preserved, I apprehend that we should
feel our minds strongly impressed by this discovery of fresh evidence.
We should feel a renewal of the same sentiment in first reading the
Gospel of Saint John. That of Saint Mark perhaps would strike us as an
abridgment of the history with which we were already acquainted; but we
should naturally reflect, that if that history was abridged by such a
person as Mark, or by any person of so early an age, it afforded one of
the highest possible attestations to the value of the work. This
successive disclosure of proof would leave us assured, that there must
have been at least some reality in a story which not one, but many, had
taken in hand to commit to writing. The very existence of four separate
histories would satisfy us that the subject had a foundation; and when,
amidst the variety which the different information of the different
writers had supplied to their accounts, or which their different choice
and judgment in selecting their materials had produced, we observed many
facts to stand the same in all; of these facts, at least, we should
conclude, that they were fixed in their credit and publicity. If, after
this, we should come to the knowledge of a distinct history, and that
also of the same age with the rest, taking up the subject where the
others had left it, and carrying on a narrative of the effects produced
in the world by the extraordinary causes of which we had already been
informed, and which effects subsist at this day, we should think the
reality of the original story in no little degree established by this
supplement. If subsequent inquiries should bring to our knowledge, one
after another, letters written by some of the principal agents in the
business, upon the business, and during the time of their activity and
concern in it, assuming all along and recognising the original story,
agitating the questions that arose out of it, pressing the obligations
which resulted from it, giving advice and directions to these who acted
upon it; I conceive that we should find, in every one of these, a still
further support to the conclusion we had formed. At present, the weight
of this successive confirmation is, in a great measure; unperceived by
us. The evidence does not appear to us what it is; for, being from our
infancy accustomed to regard the New Testament as one book, we see in it
only one testimony. The whole occurs to us