Book contents
- Frontmatter
- HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREN
- PREPARATORY CONSIDERATIONS
- PART I OF THE DIRECT HISTORICAL EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, AND WHEREIN IT IS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE EVIDENCE ALLEGED FOR OTHER MIRACLES
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER VI
- CHAPTER VII
- CHAPTER VIII
- CHAPTER IX
- SECTION I
- SECTION II
- SECTION III
- SECTION IV
- SECTION V
- SECTION VI
- SECTION VII
- SECTION VIII
- SECTION IX
- SECTION X
- SECTION XI
- CHAPTER X
- CHAPTER I
- Frontmatter
- HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREN
- PREPARATORY CONSIDERATIONS
- PART I OF THE DIRECT HISTORICAL EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, AND WHEREIN IT IS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE EVIDENCE ALLEGED FOR OTHER MIRACLES
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER VI
- CHAPTER VII
- CHAPTER VIII
- CHAPTER IX
- SECTION I
- SECTION II
- SECTION III
- SECTION IV
- SECTION V
- SECTION VI
- SECTION VII
- SECTION VIII
- SECTION IX
- SECTION X
- SECTION XI
- CHAPTER X
- CHAPTER I
Summary
There is satisfactory evidence that many, professing to be original witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of those accounts; and that they also submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of conduct.
Of the primitive condition of Christianity, a distant only and general view can be acquired from heathen writers. It is in our own books that the detail and interior of the transaction must be sought for. And this is nothing different from what might be expected. Who would write a history of Christianity, but a Christian? Who was likely to record the travels, sufferings, labours, or successes of the apostles, but one of their own number, or of their followers? Now these books come up in their accounts to the full extent of the proposition which we maintain. We have four histories of Jesus Christ. We have a history taking up the narrative from his death, and carrying on an account of the propagation of the religion, and of some of the most eminent persons engaged in it, for a space of nearly thirty years. We have, what some may think still more original, a collection of letters, written by certain principal agents in the business, upon the business, and in the midst of their concern and connexion with it.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A View of the Evidences of ChristianityIn Three Parts, pp. 51 - 61Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009First published in: 1794