For the case is thus. The gospels are accused of being written by credulous and superstitious authors whose names are not certainly known; as containing too inconsistent and contradictory accounts of prodigies and miracles; and also palpable marks of forgery. Now to convince a thinking man, that histories of such suspected character, containing relations of miracles, are divine or even really written, by the persons to whom they are ascribed, and not either some of the many spurious productions, with which it is notorious and acknowledged, the age in which they appeared abounded, calculated to astonish the credulous and superstitious! or else writings of authors who were themselves infected with the grossest superstitious credulity, what is the testimony? For the first hundred years after the lives of the supposed authors, none at all. And the earliest fathers who speak of them are all convicted of gross credulity, and incapacity to distinguish genuine from, fictitious writings, (for they admitted as genuine scripture many books confessedly nonsensical forgeries,) but what is worse, are manifestly guilty by the evidence of their own words of having been palpable liars, cheats, and forgers. But, "it is an obvious rule in the admission of evidence in any cause whatsoever, that the more important the matter to be determined by it is, the more unsullied, and unexceptionable ought to be the characters of the witnesses to be. And when no court of justice among us in determining a question of fraud to the value of sixpence will admit the testimony of witnesses who are themselves notoriously convicted of the same offence of which the defendant is accused;" how can it be expected that any reasonable unprejudiced person should reasonably be required to admit similar evidence, i.e. the testimony of such men as the fathers in favor of the divine authority of books which are accused of being the offspring of fraud and credulity; and which relate too to a case of the greatest importance possible, not to himself only, but to the whole human race?!