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* Why should not the candid and modest preface of this historian be believed, as well as that which Dion Cassius prefixes to his Life of Commodus?  “These things and the following I write, not from the report of others, but from my own knowledge and observation.”  I see no reason to doubt but that both passages describe truly enough the situation of the authors. _________

The situation of the writers applies to the truth of the facts which they record.  But at present we use their testimony to a point somewhat short of this, namely, that the facts recorded in the Gospels, whether true or false, are the facts, and the sort of facts which the original preachers of the religion allege.  Strictly speaking, I am concerned only to show, that what the Gospels contain is the same as what the apostles preached.  Now, how stands the proof of this point?  A set of men went about the world, publishing a story composed of miraculous accounts, (for miraculous from the very nature and exigency of the case they must have been,) and upon the strength of these accounts called upon mankind to quit the religions in which they had been educated, and to take up, thenceforth, a new system of opinions, and new rules of action.  What is more in attestation of these accounts, that is, in support of an institution of which these accounts were the foundation, is, that the same men voluntarily exposed themselves to harassing and perpetual labours, dangers, and sufferings.  We want to know what these accounts were.  We have the particulars, i. e. many particulars, from two of their own number.  We have them from an attendant of one of the number, and who, there is reason to believe, was an inhabitant of Jerusalem at the time.  We have them from a fourth writer, who accompanied the most laborious missionary of the institution in his travels; who, in the course of these travels, was frequently brought into the society of the rest; and who, let it be observed, begins his narrative by telling us that he is about to relate the things which had been delivered by those who were ministers of the word, and eye-witnesses of the facts.  I do not know what information can be more satisfactory than this.  We may, perhaps, perceive the force and value of it more sensibly if we reflect how requiring we should have been if we had wanted it.  Supposing it to be sufficiently proved, that the religion now professed among us owed its original to the preaching and ministry of a number of men, who, about eighteen centuries ago, set forth in the world a new system of religious opinions, founded upon certain extraordinary things which they related of a wonderful person who had appeared in Judea; suppose it to be also sufficiently proved, that, in the course and prosecution of their ministry, these men had subjected themselves to extreme hardships, fatigue, and peril; but suppose the accounts which they published had not been committed to writing till some ages after their times, or at least that