The circumstance of disappearing, shall be considered under the next head, with other objections of the like kind.  At present I shall only examine the other parts of this story, and inquire whether they afford any ground to conclude that the body of Christ was not a real one.  Had this piece of history been related of any other person I think such suspicion could have risen.  For what is there unnatural or uncommon in this account?  Two men meet an acquaintance whom they thought dead:  They converse with him for some time, without suspecting who he was; the very persuasion they were under that he was dead, contributed greatly to their not knowing him; besides, he appeared in a habit and form different from what he used when he conversed with them; appeared to them on a journey and walked with them side by side; in which situation no one of the company has a full view of another:  afterwards, when they were at supper together, and lights brought in, they plainly discerned who he was.  Upon this occasion, the Gentleman asks what sort of witnesses these are? eye-witnesses?  No; before supper they were eye-witnesses, says the Gentleman, that the person whom they saw was not Christ:  and then he demands a reason for our rejecting the evidence of their sense when they did not know Christ, and insisting on it when they did.

It is no uncommon thing for men to catch themselves and others by such notable acute questions, and to be led by the sprightliness of their imagination out of the road of truth and common sense.  I beg leave to tell the Gentleman a short story, and then to ask him his own question.  A certain Gentleman who had been some years abroad happened in his return to England through Paris to meet his own sister there.  She was not expecting to see him there, nor he to see her, they conversed together with other company, at a publick house, for great part of a day, without knowing each other.  At last the Lady began to shew great signs of disorder; her color came and went, and the eyes of the company were drawn toward her; and then she cried out, Oh my brother! and was hardly held from fainting.  Suppose now this Lady were to depose upon oath in a court of justice that she saw her brother at Paris; I would ask the Gentleman, Whether he would object to the evidence, and say, that she was as good an eye-witness that her brother was not there, as that he was; and demand of the court, why they rejected the evidence of her senses when she did not know her brother, and were ready to believe it when she did.  When the question is answered in this case, I desire only to have the benefit of it in the case now before you.  But if you shall be of opinion, that there was some extraordinary power used on this occasion, and incline to think that the expression, their eyes were holden, imports as much; then the case will fall under the next article.  In which

We are to consider Christ’s vanishing out of sight; his coming in and going out when the doors were shut; and such like passages; which, as they fall under one consideration, so I shall speak to them together.