But it is otherwise in relation to the Holy Scriptures; for while some few of the learned are, from sinister motives, willing to aid an attempt to bring the authority of these books into suspicion, there are always thousands of the community who may easily be engaged to listen to objectors, and who, from their want of information, and their incapacity to reason correctly, are easily made the dupes of any plausible sophistry.
Nor is it merely the uneducated classes that are exposed to the artifices of sophists; for persons whose acquirements in general literature are respectable, seem sometimes to be perplexed by objections of a kind which, if levelled at the remains of classic authors, they would deem undeserving of any serious regard.
This strange, and often fatal inconsistency, may sometimes arise from the influence of moral causes, which it does not fall within the design of this volume to notice; but it is often attributable to a want of attention to some common principles of evidence which, though they are so obvious that it may seem almost frivolous to insist upon them, are never respected by objectors, and are seldom remembered by the victims of sophistry. The most prominent of these principles may be classed under the five following heads.
I. Facts remote from our personal observation may be as certainly proved by evidence that is fallible in its kind, as by that which is not open to the possibility of error.
By certain proof is here meant, not merely such as may be presented to the senses, or such as cannot be rendered obscure, even for a moment, by a perverse disputant;—but such as when once understood, leaves no room for doubt in a sound mind. And this degree of certainty is every day obtained, in the common occasions of life, by means of evidence that is fallible in its nature, and which may be questionable in all its parts, separately considered. Let us take such an instance as this.—A person receives letters from several of his friends in a neighbouring town, informing him that an extensive fire has happened the night before, in that place, in consequence of which many of the inhabitants have been driven from their homes:—presently afterwards, a crowd of the sufferers, bringing with them the few remains of their furniture, passes his door:—his friends arrive among them, and ask shelter for their families;—the next day the papers contain a full description of the calamity. Does this person entertain any doubt as to the alleged fact? He cannot do so; and yet he admits that human testimony is fallacious:—he knows that men lie much oftener, than that towns are burned down:—perhaps there is not one of all those who have reported the fact whose veracity ought to be considered as absolutely unimpeachable;—some of them deserve no confidence:—and as for the public prints, they every day admit narratives that are altogether unfounded.
Scepticism of this sort, on such an occasion, if it be supposable, could only arise from a degree of mental perversity, not much differing from insanity. In other words, this amount of evidence is such as leaves absolutely no room for doubt in a sound mind; nevertheless, the material of which it is composed—if we may so speak—is in itself fallible, and as to all the parts of it, if separately taken, they might be rejected.
Or we may take an example or two of another kind.—It has been long affirmed by voyagers, and on their authority it has been assumed as certain by the compilers of geographical works, and by the framers of charts, that, midway in the Pacific Ocean, there are several groups of inhabited islands. And the people of England, generally, think these affirmations as certain, as that two and two are four. And yet who does not know that voyagers are too fond of bringing home tales, invented to amuse the weariness of a long voyage, and published to win the wonder of the vulgar, or to turn a penny? Now it may be imagined that some question of national importance—some argument for the remission of taxes—depended upon proving that such islands do not exist; and then let it be supposed that certain interested disputants are permitted to win the ear of the common people, and to keep it to themselves: in such a case the proof of this fact—certain as it is, might easily be made to appear very questionable, or to be altogether unworthy of belief—in a word, a trick of the Government, contrived to wring money from the people!
Or again:—It has been affirmed by historians that some two hundred years ago the Parliament of England quarrelled with their king—levied war against him—vanquished, and beheaded him, and set up a republican form of government, in the place of the monarchy. But in proof of facts so improbable as these we have no better evidence than the testimony of prejudiced political writers: the whole story rests on the credit of old books or manuscripts; nor is there one of the writers who have repeated the narrative that may not be convicted of some misrepresentation; and some of them are plainly chargeable with many direct and wilful untruths. Notwithstanding this array of objections, yet the principal events of the civil war are, in the estimation of all persons of sound mind, as certainly established as any mathematical proposition. The same may be said of innumerable facts—much more remote, or apparently obscure, than those above mentioned; and yet they are so proved, that they cannot be questioned without doing violence to common sense.
The difference between the proof obtained by mathematical demonstration, and that which results from an accumulation of oral or written testimony, is not—that the latter must always, and from its nature, be less certain than the former; but that the certainty of the former may be exhibited more readily, and by a simpler and more compact process, than that of the other. If it were denied that the three angles of every triangle are equal to two right angles, an actual measurement of lines, or the placing of two pieces of card one over the other, would end the dispute in a moment: or even if the problem were of a more complicated kind, belonging to the higher branches of mathematical science, and therefore if it were such as could not be made plain to an uninstructed person, by any means, or to any one by a very brief process, yet whoever will choose to bestow time enough and is capable of giving attention enough to the demonstration, will not fail, at length, to be convinced of its truth; for all the parts of which it consists are certain, and their connexion, one with another, is also certain. But the certainty that is obtained from a mass of testimony, oral or written, does not result from the solidity of the separate parts, or the firmness of the cement which connects them; but from the irresistible pressure of the multifarious mass. The strength of mathematical demonstration is like that of a pier;—the strength of accumulated testimony is like that of the swelling ocean when its tides are mantling upon the shore.
II. Facts, remote from our personal knowledge, are not necessarily more or less certain in proportion to the length of time that has elapsed since they took place.