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knowledge evidence that is probable is sufficient.

Concluding, then, that the evidence, in all its aspects, is in its nature wholly competent, we still have to show, in order to establish its entire admissibility, and, so far as the truth of the facts is concerned, its worthiness for our acceptance-leaving their weight to be afterward estimated that the record of those facts, as contained in the New Testament Scriptures, is a true account, and is neither forged nor falsified. This topic comprises what is called the Authenticity of the Evidence, and will form the subject of the following chapter.

CHAPTER V.

THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE EVIDENCE.

THE next question that claims our attention is that of the trustworthiness, or authenticity, of the evidence offered. This relates merely to the truth of the Gospel history, and, without considering their weight, examines only whether the occurrences related in that history, and on which Christianity is founded, are truly related, and actually took place. This will form the last question in our consideration of the Admissibility of the Evidence; and, if its examination concludes in favor of the truth of that record the competency of evidence in general being already established-we must admit that the evidence that therein is actually offered is in itself genuine and trustworthy, and of a nature proper to be used for the establishment of Christianity. The weight to which that evidence is entitled, in proving the divinity of Christianity, is a farther question, and one that will next engage our attention.

To show that that history is true, we cite exactly the same kind of proofs, but in a much higher degree, as in establishing the authen

ticity of any other ancient writings, and such as are universally admitted in all other cases to be sufficient to establish authenticity beyond all reasonable doubt. These are the concurrent testimony of contemporaneous and succeeding authors; the difficulty of a forgery, in the very nature of the case; the internal marks of authenticity, in the language of the book, its style, and its agreement within itself; its agreement with the customs, manners, and history, of the time and country in which it professes to have been written; the character of its author or authors for truth and accuracy of information; the merit of the work itself, in moral character, worth, and dignity; the fact of great changes having taken place in the world's history through the facts they allege to have occurred; the present existence of world-wide and powerful institutions—as, e. 9., the Christian Church-alleged to have derived their origin from those facts, and of whose origin-greatest of earthly institutions, as they are, and having their beginning, without doubt, in an age and a country highly enlightened, and of whose history we have a minute account-we have no other explanation, nor even any probable hypothesis. These, and such like proofs, are held sufficient fully to decide the truth of any alleged facts of past times.

Very seldom, if indeed in any single case, do they all coincide to establish the truth of any ancient writings whatever, except that of the Gospel history; and used separately, as they are continually, to test the authenticity of other ancient writings, and combining, as they do, to attest the validity of the Gospels, we must concede that its truth is proved beyond all reasonable doubt. To exhibit the force of that proof, we will present the evidence to show-first, that the Gospel account existed at, or at least immediately after, the time and in the place when and where its alleged facts occurred; and, secondly, that thus existing, as it did, where detection was easy and certain, it could never have gained acceptance or escaped an exposure, if it had been an imposture, and its alleged facts had never happened.

1. The Gospel histories were written in the countries, and very soon after the time, in which the events they record took place.

(1) We have the external testimony of other authors living near the same time and place to this fact. "We receive," writes Horne (Introduction, etc.), from whom much of the following argument is drawn, "the works of Matthew, Mark, etc., for the same reasons that we receive those of Xenophon, Cæsar, etc., but in a much stronger degree. For, very dif

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ferently from the classics, the New Testament was read over three-quarters of the world, while other authors were limited to one nation, or country-were read publicly and often, and were acknowledged by large societies to be the writings of apostles and others, as they profess. An uninterrupted succession of writers, from the apostolic times down-some friends, some enemies—either quote from or make allusions to them. Translations were made in the second century, which were greatly multiplied in the course of one or two centuries, so that forgery became absolutely impossible, unless we suppose that men of different nations, sentiments, languages, and often exceedingly hostile to each other, should all agree in one forg ery. But if we are to do this, we may throw aside all the writings in the world, and reject human testimony altogether." But it is evident that, if not genuine, the Gospels must be forgeries, and forgeries too of later ages, since a forged history could certainly not be palmed off upon the age itself of which it gave its false history. Yet it is equally evident that a forgery in such later age, when it would have had to have been published at once in various and widely-separated languages and countries, and, more still, as the sacred writings which had been held by them and their fathers, through

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