CHAPTER XII.
More Falsehoods.—Resurrection Witnesses multiplied.—World's End predicted.—To save credit, Antichrist invented.
SECTION 1.
RESURRECTION-WITNESSES MULTIPLIED.
After what has been seen of the seven days' course of perjury, proofs of simple falsehood will be apt to appear superfluous. To make certainty more sure, two preeminent ones shall, however, be brought to view. They may have their use, were it only as examples of the palpableness, of those falsehoods, which, for so many hundreds of years, and through so many generations of commentators, are, under favourable circumstances, capable of remaining undetected. The extravagance of the addition, made by the audacious stranger, to the number of the Resurrection-witnesses, as given by themselves:—the predicted end of the world in the prophet's own lifetime,—and the creation of Antichrist for the purpose of putting off that catastrophe,—may even be not altogether unamusing, by the picture they will give, of that mixture of rashness and craftiness, which constitutes not the least remarkable, of the ingredients in the composition of this extraordinary character. Moreover, Antichrist being in the number of the bug-bears, by the images of which many an enfeebled mind has not yet ceased to be tormented;—putting an extinguisher upon this hobgoblin may have the serious good effect, of calming a mass of disquietude, which how completely soever groundless, is not the less afflicting, to the minds into which it has found entrance.
First, as to the resurrection-witnesses. In relation to a fact of such cardinal importance, the accounts which have reached us from the four biographers of Jesus are not, it must be confessed, altogether so clear as could have been wished. But, on so ample a subject, howsoever tempting the occasion, anything that could here be offered, with any promise of usefulness, would occupy far too much space, and be by much too wide a digression from the design of the present work.[63]
Sufficient to the present purpose will be the observation, that nothing can be more palpably or irreconcileably inconsistent with every one of them, than the amply and round number, thus added by the effrontery of this uninformed stranger, to the most ample that can be deduced from any of the accounts, thus stated as given by the only description of persons, whose situation would give to their testimony the character of the best evidence.
Behold now the account of the number and of the persons in Paul's own words. It is in the fifteenth chapter of the first of his two letters to his Corinthians. "Moreover, brethren," ver. 1, "I declare unto you the Gospel, the good news, which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand.—— By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you unless ye have believed in vain.——For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures:—— And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures:—— And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:—— After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.—— After that he was seen of James, then of all the Apostles.—— And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.——For I am the least of the Apostles, which am not meet to be called as Apostle, because I persecuted the church of God."[64]