in my letter asked only what is granted in reading every other historian.  When Livy and Siculus, for example, tell us things which coincide with our experience of the order of nature, we credit them on their word, and place their narrations among the records of credible history.  But when they tell us of calves speaking, of statues sweating blood, and other things against the course of nature, we reject these as fables not belonging to history.  In like manner, when an historian, speaking of a character well known and established on satisfactory testimony, imputes to it things incompatible with that character, we reject them without hesitation, and assent to that only of which we have better evidence.  Had Plutarch informed us that Caesar and Cicero passed their whole lives in religious exercises, and abstinence from the affairs of the world, we should reject what was so inconsistent with their established characters, still crediting what he relates in conformity with our ideas of them.  So again, the superlative wisdom of Socrates is testified by all antiquity, and placed on ground not to be questioned.  When, therefore, Plato puts into his mouth such paralogisms, such quibbles on words, and sophisms, as a school-boy would be ashamed of, we conclude they were the whimsies of Plato’s own foggy brain, and acquit Socrates of puerilities so unlike his character. (Speaking of Plato, I will add, that no writer, ancient or modern, has bewildered the world with more ignes fatui, than this renowned philosopher, in Ethics, in Politics, and Physics.  In the latter, to specify a single example, compare his views of the animal economy, in his Timasus, with those of Mrs. Bryan in her Conversations on Chemistry, and weigh the science of the canonized philosopher against the good sense of the unassuming lady.  But Plato’s visions have furnished a basis for endless systems of mystical theology, and he is therefore all but adopted as a Christian saint.  It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified.  But to return from this parenthesis.) I say, that this free exercise of reason is all I ask for the vindication of the character of Jesus.  We find in the writings of his biographers matter of two distinct descriptions.  First, a ground-work of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms, and fabrications.  Intermixed with these, again, are sublime ideas of the Supreme Being, aphorisms, and precepts of the purest morality and benevolence, sanctioned by a life of humility, innocence, and simplicity of manners, neglect of riches, absence of worldly ambition and honors, with an eloquence and persuasiveness which have not been surpassed.  These could not be inventions of the grovelling authors who relate them.  They are far beyond the powers of their feeble minds.  They show that there was a character, the subject of their history, whose splendid conceptions were above all suspicion of being interpolations from their