CONTENTS. That there is satisfactory Evidence, that many, professing to be original Witnesses of the Christian Miracles, passed their Lives in Labours, Dangers, and Sufferings, voluntarily under- gone in attestation of the Accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their Belief of those Accounts; Evidence of the Sufferings of the first Propagators of Christian- Indirect Evidence of the Sufferings of the first Propagators of Christianity, from the Scriptures and other ancient Christian ib. Of the Authenticity of the Historical Scriptures, in eleven Of the peculiar Respect with which they were SECT. III. The Scriptures were in very early Times collected SECT. VII. They were received by ancient Christians of dif- SECT. VIII. The four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, thir- teen Epistles of Saint Paul, the First Epistle of John, and the First of Peter, were received with- out Doubt by those who doubted concerning the other Books of our present Canon SECT. IX. Our present Gospels were considered by the Ad- versaries of Christianity, as containing the Ac- counts upon which the Religion was founded Formal Catalogues of Authentic Scriptures were SECT. XI. The above Propositions cannot be predicated of OF THE DIRECT HISTORICAL EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, AND That there is NOT satisfactory Evidence, that Persons pretend- ing to be original Witnesses of any other similar Miracles, have acted in the same Manner, in Attestation of the Ac- counts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their Belief of the Truth of those Accounts ib. That the Christian Miracles are not recited, or appealed to, by early Christian Writers themselves, so fully or frequently as : PREPARATORY 1 CONSIDERATIONS. I DEEM it unnecessary to prove that mankind stood in need of a revelation, because I have met with no serious person who thinks that even under the Christian revelation we have too much light, or any degree of assurance which is superfluous. I desire moreover, that, in judging of Christianity, it may be remembered, that the question lies between this religion and none: for, if the Christian religion be not credible, no one, with whom we have to do, will support the pretensions of any other. Suppose, then, the world we live in to have had a Creator; suppose it to appear, from the predominant aim and tendency of the provisions and contrivances observable in the universe, that the Deity, when he formed it, consulted for the happiness of his sensitive creation; suppose the disposition which dictated this council to continue; suppose a part of the creation to have received faculties from their Maker, by which they are capable of rendering a moral obedience to his will, and of voluntarily pursuing any end for which he has designed them; suppose the Creator to intend for these his rational and accountable agents, a second state of existence, in which their situation will be regulated by their behaviour in the first state, by which supposition (and by no other) the objection to the divine government in not putting a difference between the good and the bad, and the inconsistency of this confusion with the care and benevolence discoverable in the works of the Deity is done away; suppose it to be of the utmost importance to the subjects of |