A Series of Letters, in Defence of Divine Revelation / In Reply to Rev. Abner Kneeland's Serious Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Same. To Which is Added, a Religious Correspondence, Between the Rev. Hosea Ballou, and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Buckminster and Rev. Joseph Walton, Pastors of Congregational Churches in Portsmouth, N. H.

by Hosea Ballou

We will suppose then that Jesus, in room of ascending into heaven, had remained on earth. Would this have done any good, unless he had made himself known to all the people? Well, we will suppose he had made himself known after his resurrection, to the whole house of Israel, would the people not have believed? They would have believed most assuredly, or his making himself known to them would have done no good. If they had all believed they would not have persecuted the religion of Christ, all would have embraced it at once being convinced by their eyes, that Jesus who was crucified, had actually rose from the dead, and was not subject to death any more. All this would have been as evident to the Roman government as to the Jewish hierarchy, and the whole would have been christianized at once. How long would all this remain a wonder? Jesus remains on earth from generation to generation. How long ago would the conjecture have arisen, that this man who has lived through so many ages, had always been here on earth, and that the tradition of his once having been mortal like other men, was nothing but a superstition gotten up in some age of antiquity beyond our reach? There would have been no occasion of preserving any records of the wonderful works of Jesus in the days of his flesh, for as the whole would become immediately connected to christianity, there would have been no necessity nor excitement to write and preserve the accounts we have in the gospel, or if they had been written, they could have had no support now but ancient tradition. Not one martyr, not one instance of persecution, not a Celsus in the second, a Porphyry in the third, nor a Julian in the fourth centuries to oppose the truth, and thereby bear testimony to the antiquity of the christian history.

This immortal man would be here on earth, and the sun and the moon and the stars would be in the heavens, the mountains and the rivers here on earth; and the same mind that would conjecture that all these visible things were from everlasting to everlasting, would make no exception of this man Christ Jesus. But now you are called on to prove your christian tradition; and what have you to convince the Deist with? Will you say my conjectures are by no means correct? Well, I expected it would turn out so. You mean then that Jesus should not only remain on earth, but that he should continue the evidences of his having been mortal, of his having died, and of his resurrection as clear as they were when they convinced the world in the first place.—Would there, in this case, be any room for any inquiry? any for doubts? Would there be as many denominations of christians as there are now? Should we get at this religion by reasoning? Perhaps you would prefer your second proposal, and have Jesus manifested in every generation. But this would have been a regular return of the same event, and would have been placed among the phenomena of nature, and the Deist would say that there never had been any beginning to this regular operation, it has always been so from time beyond date.

Thus far, but no more. The evidences of our religion are like the religion itself, infinitely superior to any thing ever contrived by human wisdom. And it is an opinion in which I am the more confirmed, the more I examine it, that if the wisest set of philosophers which ever lived on earth had been a council to contrive a method by which christianity could have been perpetuated in the world, that scheme which they would have projected, would of itself defeated the object.

The wisdom of this great scheme corresponds with the divine power which has been manifested in it. What set of impostors, either wise or simple, learned or unlearned would ever have thought of such an undertaking as that of which we have an account in the four evangelists? Would they be likely to find one who would be their leader, the one to die, and leave the rest to make the people believe that he arose from the dead? Could a man be found now who would be willing to undertake such a piece of madness and folly? If we pretend to reason shall we not keep to human nature, and reason according to those laws by which ourselves and others are governed?

Do you believe, sir, that a man could be found who would undertake to lead a party, whose object should be to impose on the people by a pretended resurrection, and consent himself to be the hero of this imposture?

You answer, no. But then ask; if this wonderful story was not written some considerable time after that period to which the dates of the writings are assigned, and such large additions made that the whole appears entirely different from what was really true?

This brings me to consider the third particular selected for consideration, out of your epistle.

3dly. In allusion to the supposed controversy between the Unitarians and Trinitarians, you think I ought to have considered the circumstance of the destruction of the Jews by the Romans, as giving a favourable opportunity for the fabricating the books of the evangelists, and of giving them success in the world, as the old pharisees and rulers of the Jews were principally cut off in that awful destruction of their nation and city.

You will observe that by your suggestion you leave the first section of the argument to which you refer, in which no book or books were used, and notice only the last section in which you were indulged, for sake of the argument, in the supposition that the gospels were not written until after the destruction of Jerusalem, nor propagated on the miracles on which the gospels have founded it. Here, sir, have I not an occasion of some little complaint? If you really thought that the gospels were, none of them, written in the life time of the apostles, and considered it safe to predicate an argument on this ground, why should you withhold the proof of this fact? Why did you not inform me of the authority by which your argument is supported in your own mind? And furthermore, why do you try to get away from the argument as stated in its first form, without showing its want of force, or without allowing its merit? By conducting arguments in this way, in room of converguing them to some definite point of conclusion, they are diverged indefinitely, and the mind seems bewildered without an object.

However, I am disposed to follow you, and will now endeavour to shew the probability of the gospel's having been written even before the destruction of Jerusalem.