e false? He can
not; because belief without testimony is impossible; and testimony that
the gospel facts did not occur is not found extant on earth in any
language or nation under heaven. No contemporaneous opposing testimony has
ever been heard of, except in one instance, the sleeping and incredible
testimony of the Roman guard, which has a lie stamped indelibly on its
forehead: "His disciples stole his dead body while we were asleep." He
that can believe this is not to be reasoned with. We repeat it with
emphasis, that no living man can say, according to the English Dictionary,
that he _believes_ the gospel to be false.

Alike destitute of knowledge and of faith to oppose to the testimony of
apostles, prophets, and myriads of contemporaneous witnesses, what has the
skeptic to present against the numerous and diversified evidences of the
gospel? Nothing in the universe but his _doubts_. He can, in strict
conformity to language and fact, only say, he doubts whether it be true.
He is, then, legitimately no more than an inmate of Doubting Castle. His
fortification is built up of doubts and misgivings, cemented by antipathy.
Farther than this the powers of nature and of reason can not go.

How far these doubts are rational, scientific, and modest, may yet appear
in the sequel; meanwhile, we only survey the premises which the infidel
occupies, and the forces he has to bring into the action. These, may we
not say, are already logically ascertained to be an army of doubts only.

Some talk of the immodesty, others of the folly, others of the
maliciousness of the unbeliever; but not to deal in harsh or uncourteous
epithets, may we not say, that it is most unphilosophic to dogmatize
against the gospel on the slender grounds of sheer dubiety. No man,
deserving the name of a _philosopher_, can ever appear among the crusading
forces of pamphleteers and declaimers against the faith of Christians, for
two of the best reasons in the world; he has nothing better to substitute
for the motives, the restraining fears to the wicked, and the animating
hopes to the righteous, which the gospel tenders; and he has nothing to
oppose to its claims but the weakness and uncertainty of his doubts.
Franklin was a philosopher, but Paine was a madman. The former doubted,
but never dogmatized--never opposed the gospel, but always discountenanced
and discouraged the infidel; the latter gave to his doubts the authority
of oracles, and madly attempted to