cles were absolute fictions wickedly invented by some persons who had a wish to impose upon mankind:

Or, secondly, Jesus Christ did not work any true. miracles; but the senses of the people were in some way or other deluded, so that they believed he really did perform miracles, when in fact he did not:

Or, thirdly, that the spectators were not in any way deluded, but knew very well he wrought no miracles: yet were all (both enemies and friends, the Jews themselves not excepted, though they daily "sought "occasion against him ") united in a close confederacy to persuade the world that he performed the most surprising things. So that, while some actively circulated reports of these amazing occurrences, the rest kept their counsel, never offering to unmask the fraud, but managing the matter with so much cunning and dexterity, and such an exact mutual harmony and correspondence, that the story of Jesus Christ's performing miracles should become current, should obtain almost universal credit, and not a single person be able to disprove it :

Or, fourthly, that he did actually perform these astonishing works, and that the accounts given of them by the Christian writers in the New Testament are authentic and correct.

He that does not adopt the last of these conclusions will find it a matter of very small consequence which of the three others he chooses. For that the stories cannot be fictions is evident from the reasoning of Leslie already adduced: and it will be seen farther, from a few moments' consideration, that the denial of

the miracles of Jesus Christ, in any way, leads necessarily to the admission of a series of real miracles of another kind.

The progress of the human mind, as may be seen by all the inquiries into it, is a thing of a determinate nature: a man's thoughts, words, and actions, are all generated by something previous; there is an established course for these things (as well as for the physical part of the universe), an analogy, of which every man is a judge from what he feels in himself, and observes in others: and to suppose any number of men in determinate circumstances to vary from this general tenour of human nature in like circumstances is a miracle, and may, as Dr. Hartley remarks, be made a miracle of any magnitude, i. e. incredible to any degree, by augmenting the number and magnitude of the deviations. It is therefore a miracle in the human mind, as great as any that can possibly be conceived to take place with regard to the body, to suppose that multitudes of Christians, Jews, and Heathens, in the primitive times, should have borne such unquestionable testimony, some expressly, others by indirect circumstances, as we learn from history they did, to the miracles said to be performed by our Lord upon the human body, unless they were really performed. In like manner, the reception which the miracles recorded in the Old Testament met with is a miracle, unless those miracles were true. These are not however the only miracles which unbelievers in the Scripture miracles must admit. The very determination of the apostles to propagate the belief of false miracles (in

dependent of the additional difficulty arising from the silent concurrence of the Jews and Gentiles in the story, according to the third hypothesis suggested above), in support of such a religion as that taught in the New Testament, is as great a miracle as human imagination can conceive. For when they formed this design, whether they hoped to succeed, or conjectured that they should fail in their undertaking, they chose what they knew to be moral evil, with the contingency of experiencing natural evil; nay, so desirous were they to obtain nothing but misery, that they made their own persecution a test of the truth of their doctrines ;-thus violating the strongest possible of all laws of human nature, namely, that "no man can "choose evil for its own sake."

Here, then, an unbeliever must either deny all analogy, association, uniformity of action, operation of motives, selection of good in preference to evil, &c. and become an absolute sceptic in the most extensive acceptation of the term, or acknowledge that very strong physical analogies may sometimes be violated; that is, he must have recourse to something miraculous in order that he may get quit of something miraculous. Let him next inquire which of the two opposite classes of miracles will agree best with his other notions: whether it be more analogous to the nature of God, the course of providence, the history of the world, the known progress of man in this life, &c. to allow that God imparted to certain select persons, of eminent piety, the power of working miracles; or to suppose that he confounded the understandings, affections, and

whole train of associations, of thousands of persons, nay, of entire nations, in such a manner that men, who in all other things seemed to have acted like other men, should, in respect of the history of Jesus Christ, the Prophets, or the Apostles, abandon all established rules of thinking and acting, and conduct themselves in a way miraculously repugnant to all our ideas and all our experience. In order to determine this inquiry, let it not be forgotten that the object, of the class of miracles against which the Deists contend, is worthy of a God of infinite wisdom, power, and goodness: while the object of the latter is decidedly and absolutely inconsistent with wisdom and goodness, attributes which all Theists ascribe to that Great Being by whom alone miracles can be performed, allowing that they can be wrought at all.

V. Much of the preceding reasoning is entirely independent of any minute investigation of the nature of concurrent or successive testimony; and the whole discussion might safely be terminated without any reference to these abstruser inquiries, were it not that Hume and his disciples have frequently adverted to them, and that silence might be construed into inability to break through their web of sophistry. The argument of Dr. Campbell has already been briefly sketched; I shall here add a few distinct considerations. And, first, with regard to concurrent testimony, it has been demonstrated upon genuine mathematical principles, (f) that where the credibility of each witness is great, a very few witnesses will be sufficient to overcome (f) See the article Credibility in the PANTOLOGIA.

any contrary probability, derived from the nature of the fact; that the evidence resulting from testimony can not only approach indefinitely near to certainty, but can at length exceed the evidence of any inference, however cogent, which can possibly be deduced from personal experience, or from personal and derived experience conjointly; that is, that the evidence of testimony can overcome any degree of improbability, however great, which can arise from the nature of the fact. The reason is, that the evidence of testimony admitting of an unlimited increase on two different accounts (namely, that of the veracity of the witnesses, and that of the number of concurrent witnesses), while the probability of the happening of any specific event admits only one of them, the former is capable of indefinitely surpassing the latter.

But, indeed, the force of the evidence resulting from concurrent testimony is avowedly so great upon the minds af all who have not been biassed by the perusal of deistical speculations, or an indulgence in them, that the matter scarcely needs the support of mathematical investigation. Let it be supposed that twelve men of probity and good sense were circumstantially and seriously to tell, each independently of the others, on his own personal conviction, "a round unvarnished tale", of a miracle performed before their eyes, and respecting which it was impossible (as they affirm) for them to be deceived; I believe few persons would wait to receive a thirteenth concurrent testimony before they yielded their assent to the truth of the relation, however extraordinary. Let it be supposed, farther, that the twelve