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 moment.  If we also admit, upon the authority of Saint Matthew, that the Jews were advertised of the expectation of Christ’s followers, and that they had taken due precaution in consequence of this notice, and that the body was in marked and public custody, the observation receives more force still.  For notwithstanding their precaution and although thus prepared and forewarned; when the story of the resurrection of Christ came forth, as it immediately did; when it was publicly asserted by his disciples, and made the ground and basis of their preaching in his name, and collecting followers to his religion, the Jews had not the body to produce; but were obliged to meet the testimony of the apostles by an answer not containing indeed any impossibility in itself, but absolutely inconsistent with the supposition of their integrity; that is, in other words, inconsistent with the supposition which would resolve their conduct into enthusiasm.

CHAPTER IX.

The propagation of Christianity.

In this argument, the first consideration is the fact—­in what degree, within what time, and to what extent, Christianity actually was propagated.

The accounts of the matter which can be collected from our books are as follow:  A few days after Christ’s disappearance out of the world, we find an assembly of disciples at Jerusalem, to the number of “about one hundred and twenty;” (Acts i. 15.) which hundred and twenty were probably a little association of believers, met together not merely as believers in Christ, but as personally connected with the apostles, and with one another.  Whatever was the number of believers then in Jerusalem, we have no reason to be surprised that so small a company should assemble:  for there is no proof that the followers of Christ were yet formed into a society; that the society was reduced into any order; that it was at this time even understood that a new religion (in the sense which that term conveys to us) was to be set up in the world, or how the professors of that religion were to be distinguished from the rest of mankind.  The death of Christ had left, we may suppose, the generality of his disciples in great doubt, both as to what they were to do, and concerning what was to follow.