Your Lordship and the court will now consider the probability of this supposition.  When Christ was seized and carried to his trial, his disciples fled, out of a just apprehension that they should, if apprehended, be sacrificed with their master.  Peter indeed followed him; but his courage soon failed, and it is well known in what manner he denied him.  After the death of Christ, his disciples were so far from being ready to engage for his resurrection, or to enter into terms and agreements for the manner in which it should be done, that they themselves did not believe it ever would be; they gave over all hopes and thoughts of it; and far from entering into engagements with the chief priests, their whole concern was, to keep themselves concealed from them.  This is a well known case, and I will not trouble you with particular authorities to prove this truth.  Can any man now in his right senses think, that the disciples under these circumstances entered into this covenant with the Jews?  I believe the Gentleman don’t think it, and for that reason says, that seals so used import a covenant without a special agreement.  Be it so; and it must then be allowed, that the apostles were no more concerned in these seals, than every other man in the country, and no more answerable for them; for the covenant reached to every body as well as to them, since they were under no special contract.

But I beg pardon for spending your time unnecessarily, when the simple plain account of this matter will best answer all these jealousies and suspicions.  The Jews, it is plain, were exceedingly solicitous about this event; for this reason they obtained a guard from Pilate; and when they had, they were still suspicious lest their guards should deceive them, and enter into combination against them.  To secure this point, they sealed the door, and required of the guards to deliver up the sepulchre to them sealed as it was.  This is the natural and true account of the matter.  Do but consider it in a parallel case.  Suppose a prince should set a guard at the door of his treasury, and the officer who placed the guard should seal the door, and say to the soldiers, You shall be answerable for the seal if I find it broken:  would not all the world understand the seal to be fixed to guard against the soldiers, who might, though employed to keep off others, be ready enough to pilfer themselves?  This is in all such cases but a necessary care; you may place guards, and when you do all is in their power:  Et quis custodes custodiat ipsos?

But it seems, that, notwithstanding all this care, the seals were broken, and the body gone.  If you complain of this, Sir, demand satisfaction of your guards; they only are responsible for it:  the disciples had no more to do in it than you or I.