summon nations and ages to the audience; which things are this day sounded in our ears. But I suppose we must endeavour to speak coolly of these venerable men, if we are to save them from being deprived of their manhood, and turned into the petrified images and empty vessels of a physical or intellectual inspiration. Why will the extravagance of Churches compel us to freeze down our religion into logic, to prevent it blazing into an unsocial fanaticism? If, however, we must weigh the Apostles’ claims with nice precision, we must say (at this stage of our enquiry we can say only) that they were honest personal witnesses of visible and audible facts; deserving therefore of all the reliance to which veracity, severely tested, is entitled. To everything then which comes under the description of _personal testimony_, their demand on our confidence extends; their own impressions we believe to have been as they record. But their inferences, their arguments, their interpretations of ancient writings, their speculations on future events, however just and perfect in themselves, are no part of the _report which they give in evidence_, and cannot be established by appeal to their integrity. Nor, in this limitation of testimony to its proper province, is there anything in the slightest degree dishonourable to these “chosen witnesses.” “Is the judgment of the writers of the New Testament,” says Archdeacon Paley, “in interpreting passages of the Old, or, sometimes perhaps in receiving established interpretations, so connected either with their veracity, or with their means of information concerning what was passing in their own times, as that a critical mistake, even were it clearly made out, should overthrow their historical credit? Does it diminish it? Has it any thing to do with it?” “We do not usually question the credit of a writer, by reason of an opinion he may have delivered upon subjects unconnected with his evidence; and even upon subjects connected with his account, or mixed with it in the same discourse or writing, we naturally separate facts from opinions, testimony from observation, narrative from argument.”[63] Moreover, our dependence upon a faithful witness, besides being restricted to matters of fact, is measured by his _opportunities_ of observation; and it would be absurd to insist on his being heard with precisely equal belief, whether he relates, to the best of his knowledge, that which happened before he was born, or tells an occurrence that passed under his eyes. If this distinction be not well founded, then has personal contact with events no advantage; the stranger is on a footing with the observer; and all the defensive reasonings which theologians have thrown round Christianity, from the station which the Apostles occupied as eye-witnesses, are destitute of meaning; supported though they are by the sanction of the Apostles themselves, whose constant claim to belief, when they preached, was this only, “and we are witnesses of these