After this, Jesus appears to two of his disciples as they were upon a journey; he joins them, and introduces a discourse about himself; and spent much time, till it began to grow dark, in expounding the prophecies relating to the death and resurrection of the Messias.  All this while, the disciples knew him not.  But then going into an house to lodge together, at supper he broke bread, and gave it to them; immediately they knew him, immediately he vanished.  Here then are two witnesses more.  But what will you call them? eye-witnesses?  Why their eyes were open, and they had their senses, when he reasoned with them and they knew him not.  So far therefore they are witnesses that it was not he.  Tell us therefore upon what account you reject the evidence of their sense before the breaking of the bread, and insist on it afterwards?  And why did Jesus vanish as soon as known; which has more of the air of an apparition, than of the appearance of a real man restored to life?

Cleopas, who was one of these two disciples, finds out the apostles, to make the report of what had passed to them.  No sooner was the story told, but Jesus appears among them.  They were all frightened and confounded, and thought they saw a spectre.  He rebukes them for infidelity, and their slowness in believing the prophecies of his resurrection:  and though he refused before to let the women touch him (a circumstance which I ought not to have omitted); yet now he invites the apostles to handle him, to examine his hands and feet, and search the wounds of the cross.  But what body was it they examined?  The same that came in when the doors were shut; the same that vanished from the two disciples; the same that the women might not touch:  in a word, a body quite different from a human body, which we know cannot pass through walls, or appear or disappear at pleasure.  What then could their hands or eyes inform them of in this case?  Besides, is it credible that God should raise a body imperfectly, with the very wounds in it of which it died?  Or, if the wounds were such as destroyed the body before, how could a natural body subsist with them afterwards?

There are more appearances of Jesus recorded; but so much of the same kind, so liable to the same difficulties and objections, that I will not trouble your Lordship and the court with a distinct enumeration of them.  If the Gentleman on the other side finds any advantage in any of them more than in these mentioned, I shall have an opportunity to consider them in my reply.  It may seem surprising to you, perhaps, that a matter of this moment was trusted upon such evidence as this:  but it will be still more surprising to consider that the several nations who received the gospel, and submitted to the faith of this article, had not even this evidence:  for what people or nation had the evidence of the angels, the women or even of all the apostles?  So far from it, that every country had its single apostle, and received