In support of this assertion we have no occasion to appeal to theories but to facts. Happily antiquity has preserved to us several delineations of a mythical Jesus on which the inventors have stamped the most unmistakable impress of their own credulity and superstition. I need not say that I allude to the Apocryphal Gospels, the delineations of Jesus which they contain, and above all to their miraculous narratives. Those who reiterate these charges against the authors of the Canonical Gospels, are very slow to draw attention to their bearing on this portion of the argument. In the Apocryphal Gospels we are brought face to face with the legendary spirit exerting itself in the invention of miraculous stories. There can be no doubt that their authors were both extremely credulous and superstitious; and their miraculous narratives give us the precise measure of their credulity. There is every reason to believe that two of these compositions were written as early as the second century. What, I ask, is the general character of the miracles which they have attributed to Jesus? There can be only one answer. They are mean, ridiculous, degraded, burlesque, destitute of all trait of moral grandeur. If the authors of the four Gospels, or the inventors of their miraculous narratives, whoever they may have been, had been a prey to similar credulity and superstition, the marks of them would have been indelibly stamped on their pages. These documents also contain accounts of miracles wrought by Jesus, some of which, as bare facts, are precisely the same as some recorded in the Canonical Gospels, _i.e._ they contain accounts of resurrections from the dead, and the cure of diseases. I ask, do their accompanying circumstances and moral aspect stand as nothing in our estimate of the credibility of their authors? Compare the account of the resurrection of Lazarus, or that of our Lord himself, with the resurrections in the Apocryphal Gospels, and mark the difference. Compare likewise the other miracles, which, as bare facts, resemble one another. The one have the stamp of historical probability, and precisely fit in with the lofty character of Jesus; the other of an unbelievable legend, in which the character is degraded to a level with the conceptions of the inventors.