were told, that your friend sickened on Friday, was let blood on Saturday, and the third day he died; what day would you think he died on?  If you have any doubt about it, put the question to the first plain man you meet, and he will resolve it.  The Jews could have no doubt in this case; for so they practised in one of the highest points of their law.  Every male child was to be circumcised on the eighth day.  How did they reckon the days?  Why, the day of the birth was one, and the day of the circumcision another; and though a child was born towards the every end of the first day, he was capable of circumcision on any time of the eighth day.  And therefore it is not new nor strange, that the third day, in our case, should be reckoned into the number, though Christ rose at the very beginning of it.  It is more strange to reckon whole years in this manner; and yet this is the constant method observed in Ptolemy’s canon, the most valuable piece of ancient chronology, next to the Bible, now extant.  If a King lived over the first day of a year, and died the week after, that whole year is reckoned to his reign.

I have now gone through the several objections upon this head:  what credit they may gain in this age, I know not; but ’tis plain they had no credit when they were first spread abroad; nay, ’tis evident, that the very persons who set abroad this story of the body being stolen, did not believe it themselves.  And, not to insist here upon the plain fact, which was, that the guards were hired to tell this lie by the chief priests, it will appear from the after conduct of the chief priests themselves, that they were conscious that the story was false.  Not long after the resurrection of Christ, the disciples having received new power from above, appeard publickly in Jerusalem, and in the very temple, and testified the resurrection of Christ, even before those who had murdered him.  What now do the chief priests do?  They seize upon the apostles, they threaten them, they beat them,. they scourge them, and all to stop their mouths, insisting that they should say no more of the matter.  But why did they not, when they had the disciples in their power, charge them directly with their notorious cheat in stealing the body, and expose them to the people as imposters?  This had been much more to their purpose, than all their menaces and ill usage, and would more effectually have undeceived the people.  But of this not one word is said.  They try to murder them, enter into combinations to assassinate them, prevail with Herod to put one of them to death; but not so much as a charge against them of any fraud in the resurrection.  Their orator Tertullus, who could not have missed so fine a topick of declamation, had there been but a suspicion to support it, is quite silent on this head, and is content to flourish on the common-place of sedition and heresy, profaning the temple, and the like:  very trifles to his cause, in comparison