But it is necessary first to see what the Apostles affirm distinctly in their accounts of these facts; for I think more has been said for them, than ever they said, or intended to say for themselves.  In one place [Luke 24:31] it is said, he vanished out of their sight.  Which translation is corrected in the margin of our Bibles thus:  He ceased to be seen of them.  And the original imports no more.  It is said in another place, that the disciples being together, and the doors shut, Jesus came and stood in the midst of them.  How he came, is not said; much less is it said that he came through the door, or the keyhole; and for anything that is said to the contrary, he might come in at the door, though the disciples saw not the door open, nor him, till he was in the midst of them.  But the Gentleman thinks these passages prove that the disciples saw no real body, but an apparition.  I am afraid that the Gentleman, after all his contempt of apparitions, and the superstition on which they are founded, has fallen into the snare himself, and is arguing upon no better principles than the common notions which the vulgar have of apparitions.  Why else does he imagine these passages to be inconsistent with the reality of Christ’s body?  Is there no way for a real body to disappear?  Try the experiment now; do but put out the candles, we shall all disappear.  If a man falls asleep in the day-time, all things disappear to him; his senses are all locked up; and yet all things about him continue to be real, and his senses continue perfect.  As shutting out all rays of light would make all things disappear; so intercepting the rays of light from any particular body, would make that disappear.  Perhaps something like this was the case; or perhaps something else, which we know not.  But, be the case what it will, the Gentleman’s conclusion is founded on no principle of true philosophy:  for it does not follow that a body is not real because I lose sight of it suddenly.  I shall be told, perhaps, that this way of accounting for the passages is as wonderful, and as much out of the common course of things, as the other.  Perhaps it is so; and what then?  Surely the Gentleman does not expect, that, in order to prove the reality of the greatest miracle that ever was, I should shew that there was nothing miraculous in it, but that everything happened according to the ordinary course of things.  My only concern is, to shew, that these passages do not infer, that the body of Christ after the resurrection was no real body.  I wonder the Gentleman did not carry his argument a little further, and prove, that Christ, before his death, had no real body; for we read, that when the multitude would have thrown him down a precipice, he went through the midst of them unseen.  Now, nothing happened after his resurrection more unaccountable than this that happened before it; and if the argument be good at all, it will be good to prove, that there never was such a man as Jesus in the world.  Perhaps the gentleman may think that this is a little too much to prove:  and if he does, I hope he will quit the argument in one case as well as in the other; for difference there is none.