1.  If “we have reason to suspect the accounts to be false, when they are not published to the world till long after the time when they are said to have been performed,” then we have reasons to suspect the accounts given in the four gospels; for we have no proof in the world, that any of them were written till nearly one hundred years after the supposed writers of them were all dead.

2.  If “we have reason to suspect them to be false, when they are not published in the place where it is pretended the facts were wrought, but are propagated only at a great distance from the supposed scene of action,” then it is still further evident that the accounts in question are not true.  For they were apparently none of them published in Judea, the scene of the events recorded in them.  But it is pretty clear that they were written in countries at a distance from Palestine.  And the facts recorded in them were-no where so little believed as in Judea, among the people in whose sight they are said to have been wrought, where they ought, if true, to have met with most credit.  It is, however, evident from the histories themselves, that these stories were laughed at, by the learned and intelligent of the Jewish nation, and disbelieved by the great body of the people.  In truth the first Christians were merely one hundred and twenty Galilaeans, who asserted to their co-religionists, that Jesus of Nazareth was the ejected Messiah.  It was a mere national quarrel between the great body of the Jews, and a few schismatics.  This is evident from the Acts, where we find that for several years they confined their preaching to Jews only.  Till the conversion of Cornelius, they do not appear to have thought the Gentiles any way interested in their dispute with their countrymen.  So that it is not improbable, (as the Jewish Christians dwindled very rapidly,) that had it not been for the Gentile proselytes to Judaism, Christianity would have perished in its cradle.  These people were very numerous, and formed the connecting link between the Jews and the Gentiles.  And it was through the medium of these people, that Christianity became known to the heathens.  For we find that after the apostles could make nothing of the stubborn Jews “they shook their garments, and told them that from henceforth we go to the Gentiles.”—­Accordingly, when the apostles preached in the synagogues, and the Jews contradicted, and blasphemed,” and made fun of their mode of proving from the prophets, “that Jesus was the Christ; yet the “proselytes and devout women” listened, and believed.

3.  If “supposing the accounts to have the two foregoing qualifications, we still may suspect them to be false; if, in the time when, and in the place where, they took their rise, they might be suffered to pass without examination,” we have still less reason to believe the gospels.  For one reason why they might be suffered to pass without examination is, where the miracles proposed coincided with the