But, leaving these weighty and well known circumstances to your own reflexion, I beg leave to lay before you another evidence, passed over in silence by the Gentleman on the other side.  He took notice, that a resurrection was so extraordinary a thing, that no human evidence could support it.  I am not sure that he is not in the right.  If twenty men were to come into England with such a report from a distant country, perhaps they might not find twenty more here to believe their story.  And I rather think the Gentleman may be in the right, because in the present case I see clearly, that the credit of the resurrection of Christ was not trusted to mere human evidence.  To what evidence it was trusted, we find by his own declaration:  The Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.  And ye also (speaking to his apostles) shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning [John 15:26,27].  And therefore, though the apostles had conversed with him forty days after his resurrection, and had received his commission to go teach all nations; yet he expressly forbids them entering upon the work, till they should receive powers from above [Acts 1:14] And St. Peter explains the evidence of the resurrection in this manner:  We (the apostles) are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them who obey him [Acts 5:32].

Now, what were the powers received by the apostles?  Where they not the powers of wisdom and courage, by which they were enabled to appear before rulers and princes in the name of Christ; the power of miracles, even of raising the dead to life; by which they convinced the world, that God was with them in what they said and did?  With respect to this evidence, St. John says, If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater. [I John 5:9] Add to this, that the apostles had a power to communicate these gifts to believers.  Can you wonder that men believed the reality of those powers of which they were partakers, and became conscious to themselves?  With respect to these communicated powers, I suppose, St. John speaks, when he says, He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself:  [I John 5:10] appealing, not to an inward testimony of the Spirit, in the sense of some modern enthusiasts; but to the powers of the Spirit, which believers received, and which were seen in the effects that followed.

It was objected, That the apostles separated themselves to the work of the ministry, and one went into one country, another to another; and, consequently, that the belief of the resurrection was originally received every where upon the testimony of one witness.  I will not examine this fact.  Suppose it to be so.  But did this one witness go alone, when he was attended with the powers of heaven?  Was not every blind man restored to sight, and every lame man to his feet, a new witness to the truth reported