These are plain facts; facts drawn from the accounts given to us by those who are friends to the belief of the resurrection.  The Gentleman won’t call these imaginations, or complain that I have given him schemes instead of evidence.

Mr. B. My Lord, I am now to consider that part of the argument upon which the Gentleman lays the greatest stress.  He has given us his evidence; mere evidence, he says, unmixed, and clear of all schemes and imaginations.  In one thing indeed he has been as good as his word; he has proved beyond contradiction, that Christ died, and was laid in the sepulchre:  for, without doubt, when the Jews sealed the stone, they took care to see that the body was there; otherwise their precaution was useless.  He has proved too, that the prediction of Christ concerning his own resurrection, was a thing publickly known in all Jerusalem; for he owns, that this gave occasion for all the care that was taken to prevent fraud.  If this open prediction implies a fraudulent design, the evidence is strong with the Gentleman:  but if it shall appear to be, what it really was, the greatest mark that could be given of sincerity and plain dealing in the whole affair, the evidence will still be as strong, but the weight of it will fall on the wrong side for the Gentleman’s purpose.

In the next place, the Gentleman seems to be at a great loss to account for the credit which the chief priests gave to the prediction of the resurrection, by the care they took to prevent it.  He thinks the thing in itself was too extravagant and absurd to deserve any regard; and that no one would have regarded such a prediction in any other time or place.  I agree with the Gentleman entirely:  but then I demand of him a reason why the chief priests were under any concern about this prediction.  Was it because they had plainly discovered him to be a cheat and an imposter?  It is impossible.  This reason would have convinced them of the folly and presumption of the prediction.  It must therefore necessarily be, that they had discovered something in the life and actions of Christ which raised this jealousy, and made them listen to a prophecy in his case, which in any other case they would have despised.  And what could this be, but the secret conviction they were under, by his many miracles, of his extraordinary powers?  This care therefore of the chief priests over his dead, helpless body, is a lasting testimony of the mighty works which Jesus did in his lifetime; for had the Jews been persuaded that he performed no wonders in his life, I think they would not have been afraid of seeing any done by him after his death.

But the Gentleman is of another mind.  He says, they had discovered a plain cheat in the case of Lazarus, whom Christ had pretended to raise from the dead; and therefore they took all this care to guard against a like cheat.