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* This thought occurred to Eusebius:  “Nor were the apostles of Christ greatly concerned about the writing of books, being engaged in a more excellent ministry which is above all human power.”  Eccles.  Hist. 1. iii. c. 24.—­The same consideration accounts also for the paucity of Christian writings in the first century of its aera. _________

This seems the natural progress of the business; and with this the records in our possession, and the evidence concerning them correspond.  We have remaining, in the first place, many letters of the kind above described, which have been preserved with a care and fidelity answering to the respect with which we may suppose that such letters would be received.  But as these letters were not written to prove the truth of the Christian religion, in the sense in which we regard that question; nor to convey information of facts, of which those to whom the letters were written had been previously informed; we are not to look in them for anything more than incidental allusions to the Christian history.  We are able, however, to gather from these documents various particular attestations which have been already enumerated; and this is a species of written evidence, as far as it goes, in the highest degree satisfactory, and in point of time perhaps the first.  But for our more circumstantial information, we have, in the next place, five direct histories, bearing the names of persons acquainted, by their situation, with the truth of what they relate, and three of them purporting, in the very body of the narrative, to be written by such persons; of which books we know, that some were in the hands of those who were contemporaries of the apostles, and that, in the age immediately posterior to that, they were in the hands, we may say, of every one, and received by Christians with so much respect and deference, as to be constantly quoted and referred to by them, without any doubt of the truth of their accounts.  They were treated as such histories, proceeding from such authorities, might expect to be treated.  In the preface to one of our histories, we have intimations left us of the existence of some ancient accounts which are now lost.  There is nothing in this circumstance that can surprise us.  It was to be expected, from the magnitude and novelty of the occasion, that such accounts would swarm.  When better accounts came forth, these died away.  Our present histories superseded others.  They soon acquired a character and established a reputation which does not appear to have belonged to any other:  that, at least, can be proved concerning them which cannot be proved concerning any other.

But to return to the point which led to these reflections.  By considering our records in either of the two views in which we have represented them, we shall perceive that we possess a connection of proofs, and not a naked or solitary testimony; and that the written evidence is of such a kind, and comes to us in such a state, as the natural order and progress of things, in the infancy of the institution, might be expected to produce.