ion of fraud, as all
the old objections did. What account can be given of the body, upon the
supposition of enthusiasm? It is impossible our Lord's followers could
believe that he was risen from the dead, if his corpse was lying before
them. No enthusiasm ever reached to such a pitch of extravagancy as
that: a spirit may be an illusion; a body is a real thing, an object of
sense, in which there can be no mistake. All accounts of spectres leave
the body in the grave. And although the body of Christ might be removed
by fraud, and for the purposes of fraud, yet without any such intention,
and by sincere but deluded men (which is the representation of the
apostolic character we are now examining), no such attempt could be
made. The presence and the absence of the dead body are alike
inconsistent with the hypothesis of enthusiasm: for if present, it must
have cured their enthusiasm at once; if absent, fraud, not enthusiasm,
must have carried it away.

_________

* "And this saying," Saint Matthew writes, "is commonly reported amongst
the Jews until this day" (chap. xxviii. 15). The evangelist may be
thought good authority as to this point, even by those who do not admit
his evidence in every other point: and this point is sufficient to prove
that the body was missing. It has been rightly, I think, observed by Dr.
Townshend (Dis. upon the Res. p. 126), that the story of the guards
carried collusion upon the face of it:--"His disciples came by night,
and stole him away while we slept." Men in their circumstances would not
have made such an acknowledgment of their negligence without previous
assurances of protection and impunity.

+ "Especially at the full moon, the city full of people, many probably
passing the whole night, as Jesus and his disciples had done, in the
open air, the sepulchre so near the city as to be now enclosed within
the walls." Priestley on the Resurr. p. 24.
_________

But further, if we admit, upon the concurrent testimony of all the
histories, so much of the account as states that the religion of Jesus
was set up at Jerusalem, and set up with asserting, in the very place in
which he had been buried, and a few days after he had been buried, his
resurrection out of the grave, it is evident that, if his body could
have been found, the Jews would have produced it, as the shortest and
completest answer possible to the whole story. The attempt of the
apostles could not have survived this refutation a mo