* Do you know (says Rousseau) of many Christians who have taken the pains to examine, with care, what the Jews have to say against them?  If some persons have seen any thing of the kind, it is in the books of Christians, A fine way, truly, to get instructed in the arguments of their adversaries!  But what can they do?  If any one should dare to publish among us, books, in which be openly favours their opinions, we punish the author, the editor, the bookseller.  This policy is convenient, and sure always to be in the right.  There is a pleasure in refuting people who dare not open their lips”—­(Emilius.) In the same work he says that “he will never be convinced that the Jews have not something strong to say, till they shall be permitted to speak for themselves without fear, and without restraint.”  It was this hint of Rousseau which first excited the author’s curiosity with regard to the subject of this book.—­E.

* There are a great many persons who conceive that Christianity is sufficiently proved to be true, if the miracles of Jesus are true, even without any regard to the prophecies, so often appealed to by him.  But supposing the miracles to be true; yet no miracles can prove that which is false in itself to be true.  If therefore Jesus be not foretold as the Messiah in the Old Testament, no miracles can prove Jesus to be the Messiah foretold.  Nay, it would be a stronger argument to prove Jesus to be a false pretender, that he appealed to prophecies as relating to him, when in fact they had no relation whatever to him; and by that means imposed upon the ignorant people; than it would be that he came from God, merely because he worked miracles; for “False Christs and false prophets may arise, and may show such great signs and wonders as to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect.”  Matt. xxiv. 24.  Yet no Christian would allow it to be argued from thence, that those false Christs were true ones:  nor would any one conclude; that a man came from God, (notwithstanding any miracle he might do) if he appealed to Scripture for that which is no where in it.  In fine, if miracles would prove the Messiahship of Jesus, so also they would prove the Messiahship of the false Christs, and false prophets spoken of above.  Nay more, they would demonstrate the Divine mission of Antichrist himself; who, according to the epistle to the Thessalonians, (2 Thes. ch. ii. 8, 9,10) and the Revelations, ch. xiii. 13, 14, was to perform “great signs and wonders,” equal to any wrought by Jesus, for the same Greek words are used to express the wonderful works or “great signs and wonders” of Antichrist, which are elsewhere used to express the miracles, or “great signs and wonders” of Jesus himself.

It is a striking circumstance, that the earliest apologists for Christianity laid little stress upon the miracles of its founder.

Justin Martyr, in his Apology, is very shy of appealing to the miracles of Jesus in confirmation of his pretentions; he lays no stress upon them, but relies entirely upon the prophecies he quotes as in his favor.  Jerome, in his comment on the eighty-first Psalm, assures us, “that the performance of miracles was no extraordinary thing:  and that it was no more than what Appollonius, and Apulias, and innumerable impostors had done before.”