Will you say that the foregoing does not come to the difficulty, that the question is, was not the account we have of those things in the gospels, forged long since the days in which they are represented to have taken place? Then, sir, in room of the above supposed fraud, undertaken to propagate _Unitarianism_, you may take the supposition of a forged book published by the friends of that doctrine, in which just such a story is told of the first propagations of the sentiment as is told in the New Testament of Jesus and his apostles--and the Trinitarians shall be made to act the part of the old pharisees. Can you, sir, conceive that the book would meet with any better success than the impostors themselves? Would our learned doctors of the Trinitarian school be silent while such a book was in circulation? Would they suffer it to be handed down to posterity unanswered and unrefuted? Would they see their churches imposed on in this way, their doctrine sat at nought, and this most extravagant imposture obtain credit? Ask likewise on the other side; would honest Unitarians pay any attention to such a book? Would they impose on their fellow creatures in this way? Would they instruct their children to believe what they knew to be a lie? It should be kept in mind that when the gospels were written and for more than two hundred years afterwards, christianity was hated and persecuted beyond what we can easily conceive, by the emperors of Rome and their wicked governors, who being authorized by special edicts for that purpose put to the most cruel tortures and horrid deaths the followers of Jesus. The superstitious priests of heathen idols, were constantly active with all possible inventions calculated to excite jealousies and sharpen the edge of persecution against a doctrine that was calculated to subvert their order and demolish their temples. It was not until A. D. 311, that Maximin Galerius, who had been the author of the heaviest calamities on the christians, published a solemn edict, ordering the persecution to cease, which his indescribable horrors and painful sickness compelled him to do. The next year Constantine, and his colleague Licinius granted to the christians a full power of living according to their own laws and institutions. For nearly three hundred years then the gospel ministry, founded on miracles, which, if not real, were as easily detected as any falsehood whatever, was oppressed by cruel edicts acted upon by the bitterest enemies. Where was all the boasted learning of this learned age? Where was all the sagacity of the sagacious? Could not a priesthood, for ages improved in scarcely any thing but imposition and fraud, succeed in detecting pretensions, which, if not real, were too grossly absurd to impose on the most artless?