If, on the other hand, we consult any or all of the hundreds of manuscripts mentioned by Mosheim, Neander and Lardner in their ecclesiastical histories we shall find that there were thousands, aye millions, who believed in a teacher sent from God who had appeared in Palestine and taught this religion which they had embraced, and who had performed wonderful miracles such as opening the eyes of the blind, healing lepers and raising the dead. They believed also that this Teacher had been put to death by Pontius Pilate, a Roman governor, had risen again from the dead, had spoken to hundreds of people and gone out and in among them for six weeks after His resurrection, had ascended up to heaven in the sight of numbers of witnesses, and had promised that He would {95} come again in the clouds of heaven to raise the dead and judge every man according to his works. Further, that before He went away he appointed twelve of His intimate companions to teach His religion to the world; that they and their followers did so in spite of persecutions, sufferings and death, with so much success, that immense numbers gave up idolatry and embraced Christianity, braving the fury of the heathen mob, and the vengeance of the Roman law. Afterwards, when persecution had destroyed great numbers, and through apostasy they had lost the divine authority and priesthood we hear of various councils wherein they assembled for the settling of their disputes. These, so far from giving authority to the books of the New Testament, constantly quoted the words of these books and referred to them for proof and authority. Again, one hundred years before the time of Constantine we find Celsus, a celebrated infidel writer and sensualist, disputing the teachings of the gospel because they interfered with his depraved appetites; and in his writings he quotes freely from the New Testament. So numerous are his quotations that from them alone, the student might gain all the principal facts of the Christian religion. As Paine quotes the New Testament to ridicule it, no man can deny that such a book was in existence at the time he wrote; so the quotations of Celsus are conclusive proofs that the books he referred to were considered authority at the time he wrote. Yet in all his writings, Celsus never {96} once casts a doubt on the authority of the scriptures, never questions the gospels as books of history nor denies the miracles recorded in them. It may also be added that the student who will examine the writings of Celsus, will cease to admire the professed wisdom of our modern skeptics. The objections made by Hume, Voltaire, Hobles and Paine are frequently only the arguments of Celsus served up in a modern style.