ot appear till
many ages after that to which they pretend to belong, it is possible
that some contrivance of that sort may take place; but in no others can
it be attempted.

CHAPTER IV.

There is satisfactory evidence that many professing to be original
witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed their lives in labours,
dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone 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.

The account of the treatment of the religion, and of the exertions of
its first preachers, as stated in our Scriptures (not in a professed
history of persecutions, or in the connected manner in which I am about
to recite it, but dispersedly and occasionally, in the course of a mixed
general history, which circumstance, alone negatives the supposition of
any fraudulent design), is the following: "That the Founder of
Christianity, from the commencement of his ministry to the time of his
violent death, employed himself wholly in publishing the institution in
Judea and Galilee; that, in order to assist him in this purpose, he made
choice, out of the number of his followers, of twelve persons, who might
accompany him as he travelled from place to place; that, except a short
absence upon a journey in which he sent them two by two to announce his
mission, and one of a few days, when they went before him to Jerusalem,
these persons were steadily and constantly attending upon him; that they
were with him at Jerusalem when he was apprehended and put to death; and
that they were commissioned by him, when his own ministry was concluded,
to publish his Gospel, and collect disciples to it from all countries of
the world." The account then proceeds to state, "that a few days after
his departure, these persons, with some of his relations, and some who
had regularly frequented their society, assembled at Jerusalem; that,
considering the office of preaching the religion as now devolved upon
them, and one of their number having deserted the cause, and, repenting
of his perfidy, having destroyed himself, they proceeded to elect
another into his place, and that they were careful to make their
election out of the number of those who had accompanied their master
from the first to the last, in order, as they alleged, that he might be
a witness, together with themselves, of the pri