Sufficient to the present purpose will be the observation, that nothing can be more palpably or irreconcileably inconsistent with every one of them, than the amply and round number, thus added by the effrontery of this uninformed stranger, to the most ample that can be deduced from any of the accounts, thus stated as given by the only description of persons, whose situation would give to their testimony the character of the best evidence. Behold now the account of the number and of the persons in Paul's own words. It is in the fifteenth chapter of the first of his two letters to his Corinthians. "Moreover, brethren," ver. 1, "I declare unto you the Gospel, the good news, which I _preached_ unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand.--By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you unless ye have believed in vain.--For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures:--And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures:--And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:--After that, he was seen of _above five hundred brethren at once_; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.--After that he was seen of James, then of all the Apostles.--And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.--For I am the least of the Apostles, which am not meet to be called as Apostle, because I persecuted the church of God."[64] As to the five hundred brethren at once, with the additions _in petto_, the more closely the Gospel accounts are looked into, the more entire will be a Man's conviction of the extravagance of this account. In addition to the eleven Apostles that remained after the death of the traitor Judas, it may be matter of question, whether so much as a single individual can be found, who, in any one of the Gospels, is stated as having, after the death of Jesus, received from the testimony of sense, the demonstration of his presence. Of the percipient witnesses in question, not to waste space and time in needless discussions, taking a round number, and including both sexes taken together, no number approaching to twenty can be made out from any one of the four Gospel accounts, nor from all of them taken together. To what end then substitute, to less than twenty, more than five hundred? To what, but to supply by falsehood the deficiency left by truth. The thing to be done was the coming up to the expectations, whatever they might be, of his Corinthians. Number twenty,--said he to himself,--may perhaps fall short: well then, strike out the twenty, and set down five hundred. Thus did the self-constituted Apostle take a leaf out of the book of the unjust steward. Luke 16:1-20.