there is this common to them all, that as learning and common sense prevail in any country, they die away, and are no more heard of.
The next witnesses are the women themselves. The wisest men can hardly guard themselves against the fears of superstition; poor silly women therefore in this case must needs be unexceptionable witnesses, and fit to be admitted into the number of the chosen witnesses to attest this fact. One part of the account given of them is very rational, that they were surprised and frightened beyond measure; and I leave it to your Lordship and the court to judge, how well qualified they were to give a just relation of what passed.
After this, Jesus appears to two of his disciples as they were upon a journey; he joins them, and introduces a discourse about himself; and spent much time, till it began to grow dark, in expounding the prophecies relating to the death and resurrection of the Messias.
All this while, the disciples knew him not. But then going into an house to lodge together, at supper he broke bread, and gave it to them; immediately they knew him, immediately he vanished. Here then are two witnesses more. But what will you call them? eye-witnesses?
Why their eyes were open, and they had their senses, when he reasoned with them and they knew him not. So far therefore they are witnesses that it was not he. Tell us therefore upon what account you reject the evidence of their sense before the breaking of the bread, and insist on it afterwards? And why did Jesus vanish as soon as known; which has more of the air of an apparition, than of the appearance of a real man restored to life?
Cleopas, who was one of these two disciples, finds out the apostles, to make the report of what had passed to them. No sooner was the story told, but Jesus appears among them. They were all frightened and confounded, and thought they saw a spectre. He rebukes them for infidelity, and their slowness in believing the prophecies of his resurrection: and though he refused before to let the women touch him (a circumstance which I ought not to have omitted); yet now he invites the apostles to handle him, to examine his hands and feet, and search the wounds of the cross. But what body was it they examined? The same that came in when the doors were shut; the same that vanished from the two disciples; the same that the women might not touch: in a word, a body quite different from a human body, which we know cannot pass through walls, or appear or disappear at pleasure. What then could their hands or eyes inform them of in this case? Besides, is it credible that God should raise a body imperfectly, with the very wounds in it of which it died? Or, if the wounds were such as destroyed the body before, how could a natural body subsist with them afterwards?
There are more appearances of Jesus recorded; but so much of the same kind, so liable to the same difficulties and objections, that I will not trouble your Lordship and the court with a distinct enumeration of them. If the Gentleman on the other side finds any advantage in any of them more than in these mentioned, I shall have an opportunity to consider them in my reply.
It may seem surprising to you, perhaps, that a matter of this moment was trusted upon such evidence as this: but it will be still more surprising to consider that the several nations who received the gospel, and submitted to the faith of this article, had not even this evidence: for what people or nation had the evidence of the angels, the women or even of all the apostles? So far from it, that every country had its single apostle, and received the faith upon the credit of his single evidence. We have followed our ancestors without inquiry; and if you examine the thing to the bottom, our belief was originally built upon the word of one man.
I shall trouble you, Sir, but with one observation more; which is this: That although in common life we act in a thousand instances upon the faith and credit of human testimony; yet the reason for so doing is not the same in the case before us. In common affairs, where nothing is asserted but what is probable, and possible, according to the usual course of nature, a reasonable degree of evidence ought to determine every man: for the very probability, or possibility of the thing, is an support to the evidence; and in such cases we have no doubt but a man's senses qualify him to be a witness. But when the thing testified is contrary to the order of nature, and, at first sight at least, impossible, what evidence can be sufficient to overturn the constant evidence of nature, which she gives us in the uniform and regular method of her operations? If a man tells me he has been in France, I ought to give a reason for not believing him; but if he tells me he comes from the grave what reason can he give why I should believe him?
In the case before us, since the body raised from the grave differed from common natural bodies, as we have before seen; how can I be assured that the apostles' senses qualified them to judge at all of this body; whether it was the same, or not the same which was buried?
They handled the body, which yet could pass through doors and walls; they saw it, and sometimes knew it, at other times knew it not. In a word, it seems to be a case exempt from human evidence. Men have limited senses, and a limited reason: when they act within their limits, we may give credit to them; but when they talk of things removed beyond the reach of their senses and reason, we must quit our own, if we believe theirs.
Mr. B. My Lord, in answering the objections under this head I shall find myself obliged to change the order in which the gentleman thought proper to place them. He began with complaining, that Christ did not appear publickly to the Jews after his resurrection, and especially to the chief priests and rulers; and seemed to argue, as if such evidence would have put the matter in question out of all doubt: but he concluded with an observation to prove that no evidence in this case can be sufficient; that a resurrection is thing in nature impossible, at least impossible to be proved to the satisfaction of a rational inquirer. If this be the case, why does he require more evidence, since none can be sufficient? Or to what purpose is it to vindicate the particular evidence of the resurrection of Christ, so long as this general prejudice, that a resurrection is incapable of being proved, remains unremoved? I am under a necessity therefore to consider this observation in the first place, that it might lie as a dead weight upon all I have to offer in support of the evidence of Christ's resurrection.
The gentleman allows it to be reasonable in many cases to act upon the testimony and credit of others; but he thinks this should be confined to such cases, where the thing testified is probable, possible, and according to the usual course of nature. The Gentleman does not, I suppose, pretend to know the extent of all natural possibilities, much less will he suppose them to be generally known; and therefore his meaning must be, that the testimony of witnesses is to be received only in cases which appear to us to be possible. In any other sense we can have no dispute; for mere impossibilities, which can never exist, can never be proved. Taking the observation therefore in this sense, the proposition is this: That the testimony of others ought not to be admitted, but in such matters as appear probable, or at least possible to our conceptions. For instance: A man who lives in a warm climate, and never saw ice, ought upon no evidence to believe, that rivers freeze, and grow hard, in cold countries; for this is improbable, contrary to the usual course of nature, and impossible according to his notion of things. And yet we all know, that this is a plain manifest case discernible by the senses of men; of which therefore they are qualified to be good witnesses. An hundred such instances might be named; but 'tis needless: for surely nothing is more apparently absurd than to make one man's ability in discerning and his veracity in reporting plain facts, depend upon the skill or ignorance of the hearer. And what has the Gentleman said upon this occasion against the resurrection, more than any man who never saw ice might say against an hundred honest witnesses, who assert that water turns to ice in cold climates?
Yet it is very true, that men do not so easily believe, upon testimony of others, things which to them seem improbable or impossible; but the reason is not, because the thing itself admits no evidence, but because the hearer's preconceived opinion outweighs the credit of the reporter and makes his veracity to be called in question.
For instance it is natural for a stone to roll down hill, it is unnatural for it to roll up hill: but a stone moving uphill is as much the object of sense as a stone moving downhill; and all men in their senses are as capable of seeing and judging and reporting the fact in one case, as in the other. Should a man then tell you, that he saw a stone go uphill of its own accord, you might question his veracity; but you could not say the thing admitted no evidence, because it was contrary to the law and usual course of nature; for the law of nature formed to yourself from your own experience and reasoning is quite independent of the matter of fact which the man testifies: and whenever you see facts yourself, which contradict your notions of the law of nature, you admit the facts, because
