Nor is this inference less direct, or less valid in the case above mentioned, than in any similar instance of more recent occurrence. It is as inevitable to believe that Catiline conspired against the Roman state, and failed in the attempt, as that the descendants of James II. excited rebellions in Scotland, or that a French General was for a short time king of Naples. In the one case, as in the others, unless the documents—all of them, have been forged, the facts must be true.
The principle upon which such an inference is founded, scarcely admits of an exception. Narratives of alleged, but unreal facts, may have been suddenly promulgated, and for a moment credited; or false narratives of events—concealed by place or circumstances from the public eye, may have gained temporary credit. Or narratives, true in their outline, may have been falsified in all those points concerning which the public could not fairly judge; and thus the false, having been slipped in along with the true, has passed, by oversight, upon the general faith. But no such suppositions meet the case of various public transactions, taking place through some length of time, and in different localities, and which were witnessed by persons of all classes, interests, and dispositions, and which were uncontradicted by any parties at the time, and which were particularly recorded, and incidentally alluded to, by several writers whose works were widely circulated—generally accepted, and unanswered, in the age when thousands of persons were competent to judge of their truth.
No one—to recur to the example mentioned above, is at liberty merely to say that he withholds his faith from Sallust, and from Cicero, as he might, on many points, withhold it from Herodotus, from Diodorus, or from Plutarch. Yet even in that case, he ought to show cause of doubt, if he would not be charged with the frivolous affectation of possessing more sagacity than his neighbours pretend to. But in the other case, while in professing to doubt the facts, he is not able to impugn the antiquity of the records, he only gives evidence of some want of coherence in his modes of thinking. He who professes not to believe the narrative, should be required to give an intelligible account of the existence of the writings, on the supposition that the events never took place.
When historical facts which, in their nature, are fairly open to direct proof, are called in question, it is an irksome species of trifling to make a halt upon twenty indirect arguments, while the centre proof—that which a clear mind fastens upon intuitively, remains undisposed of. In an investigation that is purely historical, and which is as simple as any that the page of history presents, it boots nothing to say that the books of the New Testament contain doctrines which do not accord with our notions of the great system of things; or that they enjoin duties which are grievous and impracticable; or that they favour despotism, or engender strifes. It avails nothing to say that some professors of Christianity are hypocrites, and that therefore the religion is not true. No objections of this sort weaken in any way that evidence upon which we believe that our island was once possessed by the Romans. But yet they have as much weight in counterpoising that evidence, as they have in balancing the proof of the facts that are affirmed in the New Testament. If such objections were ten-fold more valid than sophistry can make them, they would not remove, or alter, or impair, one grain of the proper proof, belonging to the historical proposition under inquiry.
The question is not whether we admire and approve of Christianity, or not; or whether we wish to submit our conduct to its precepts, and to abide by the hope it offers; or intend to risk the hazards of it being true. The question is not whether, in our opinion, these books have been a blessing to the world, or the contrary; but simply this—whether the religion was promulgated and its documents were extant, and were well known throughout the Roman empire, in the reign of Nero.
There are evasions enough, by means of which we may remove from our view the inference which follows from an admission of the antiquity and genuineness of the Christian Scriptures. But contradiction may be challenged when it is affirmed that, if the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of Paul, of Peter, of John, and of James, were written in the age claimed for them, and were immediately diffused throughout Palestine, Asia Minor, Africa, Greece, and Italy, then this fact carries with it inevitably the truth of the Christian system.
Remote historical facts, though incapable of that kind of palpable proof which overrules contradiction, are yet open to a kind of proof which no one who really understands it can doubt. Just on this ground stand all the main facts of ancient history;—they are inevitably admitted as true by all into whose minds the whole of the evidence enters; and they are believed or doubted, in every degree between blind faith and blind scepticism, by those whose apprehension of the facts is defective, or obscure, or perverted.
When it is said that the events recorded in the four Gospels are presented to us in a form that has been purposely adapted to exercise our faith, it should be added, by way of illustrating the exact meaning of the words—that the events recorded by Thucydides and Tacitus are also presented to us in a form that is adapted to exercise our faith. Yet it would be more exactly proper to say—that this sort of evidence is adapted to give exercise to reason; for faith has no part in things which come within the known boundaries of the system in the midst of which we are called to act our parts. And here it should be understood that facts (intelligible in themselves) may, in the fullest sense, be supernatural, and yet when they are duly attested, in conformity with the ordinary principles of evidence, they as much belong to the system with which we are every day concerned, as do the most familiar transactions of common life.
The Scriptures do indeed make a demand upon our faith; but this is exclusively in relation to facts which belong to a world above and beyond that with which we are conversant, and of which facts we could know nothing by any ordinary means of information. Our assent to miraculous events, when properly attested, is demanded on the ground of common sense: the facts themselves are as comprehensible as the most ordinary occurrences; and the evidence upon which they are attested implies nothing beyond the well-known principles of human nature. If then we reject this evidence, we exhibit, not a want of faith, for that is not called for; but a want of reason. To one who affected to question the received account of the death of Julius Cæsar, we should not say “you want faith,” but “you want sense.” It is the very nature of a miracle to appeal to the evidence of universal experience, in order that, afterwards, a demand may be made upon faith, in relation to extra-mundane facts.