may be pleaded by prescription; but if, upon showing the custom, anything unreasonable appears in it, the prescription fails; for length of time works nothing towards the establishing anything that could never have a legal commencement.  And if this objection will overthrow all prescriptions for customs; the mischief of which extends perhaps to one poor village only, and affects them in no greater a concern, than their right of common upon a ragged mountain:  shall it not much more prevail, when the interest of mankind is concerned, and in no less a point than his happiness in this life, and all his hopes for futurity?  Besides, if prescription must be allowed in this case, how will you deal with it in others?  What will you say to the ancient Persians, and their fire-altars? nay, what to the Turks, who have been long enough in possession of their faith to plead -----

Mr. B. I beg pardon for interrupting the Gentleman, but it is to save him trouble.  He is going into his favorite common-place, and has brought us from Persia to Turkey already; and if he goes on, I know we must follow him around the globe.  To save us from this long journey, I’ll waive all advantage from the antiquity of the resurrection, and the general reception the belief of it has found in the world; and am content to consider it as a fact which happened but last year, and was never heard of either by the Gentleman’s grandfather, or by mine.

Mr. A. I should not have taken quite so long a journey as the Gentleman imagines; nor, indeed, need any man go far from home to find instances to the purpose I was upon.  But, since this advantage is quitted, I am as willing to spare my pains, as the Gentleman is desirous that I should.  And yet I suspect some art even in this concession, fair and candid as it seems to be.  For I am persuaded, that one reason, perhaps the main reason, why men believe this history of Jesus, is, that they cannot conceive, that any one should attempt, much less succeed in such an attempt as this, upon the foundation of mere human cunning and policy; and ’tis worth to go round the globe, as the Gentleman expressed himself, so see various instances of the like kind, in order to remove this prejudice.  But I stand corrected, and will go directly to the point now in judgement.

Mr. B. My Lord, the Gentleman, in justification of his first argument, has entered upon another of a very different kind.  I think he is sensible of it, and seeming to yield up one of his popular topicks, is indeed artfully getting rid of another; which has made a very good figure in many late writings, but will not bear in any place where he who maintains it may be asked questions.  The mere antiquity of the resurrection I gave up; for, if the evidence was not good at first, it can’t be good now.  The Gentleman is willing, he says, to spare us his history of ancient errors; and intimates, that upon this account he passes over many instances of fraud,