in which are no apologies for the extraordinary stories told, no attempt to conciliate prejudice, no embellishment, no invectives (as Pascal says) against the persecutors of Christ himself;--they are simple witnesses, and nothing more, and are seemingly indifferent whether men despise them or not. I repeat, I said nothing of all these paradoxes; I insisted that the mere fact of the successful machination of false miracles, of such a nature, at so many points, in open day, in defiance of every motive and prejudice which must have prompted the world to unmask the cheat,--of a conspiracy successfully prosecuted, not by one, but by many conspirators, whose fortitude, obstinacy, and circumspection, both when acting together and acting alone, never allowed them to betray themselves,--was, per se, incredible; "and yet," said I to my friend, "you ask me to believe it?" "I ask you to believe it?" cried he, in surprise which equalled my own. "I am not fool enough ask you to believe any thing of the kind: and they are fools who do. The miracles fraudulent machinations! no, no, it was, as you say, evidently impossible. And where shall we look for marks of simplicity and truthfulness, if not in the records which contain them. The fact is." said he (I should mention that it was just about the time that the system of "naturalism" was culminating under the auspices of Paulus of Heidelberg, from whom, at second hand, my infidel friend borrowed as much as he wanted),--"the fact is, that the compilers of the New Testament were pious, simple-minded, excellent enthusiasts, who sincerely, but not the less falsely, mistook natural phenomena for supernatural miracles. What more easy than to suppose people dead when they were not, and who were merely recovered from a swoon or trance? than to imagine the blind, deaf, or dumb to be miraculously healed, when in fact they were cured by medical skill? than to fancy the blaze of a flambeau to be a star, and to shape thunder into articulate speech, and so on? Christ was no miracle-worker, but he was a capital doctor."