Now, herein is a marvellous thing! how could a man really sent from God, assert to the Jews, that of them should be required the blood of Abel, and of all the righteous slain upon the earth?
Did the Jews kill Abel?
or did their fathers kill him?
No! he was slain by Cain, whose posterity all perished in the deluge; how then could God require of the Jews who lived four thousand years after the murder, the guilt of it; nay more, "of all the righteous blood that had been shed upon the earth," were they guilty of all that too?
If such assertions, and such reasonings do not prove what I asserted, what can?
It is said, that Jesus, by giving himself up to suffer death, proved the truth of his mission and doctrines, by his readiness to die for them.

But this is an argument which will recoil upon those who advance it.

Are there no instances upon record of mild, zealous, and amiable men who preached to the savages of America that they ought to worship the Virgin Mary?
and did they not cheerfully die by the most excruciating torments to prove it?
Yes certainly! and let any Protestant Christian read the accounts of the preaching, sufferings, deaths, aye! and miracles too, of the Roman Catholic missionaries in Asia, and America; and then let him candidly answer whether he is willing to rest the issue of his controversy with the Papists upon the argument of martyrdom?
We all know the power of enthusiasm upon a susceptible mind; and we have read of, and perhaps sees, its effects in producing martyrdoms among people of all religions, in all parts of the world.

Nay, more, such is the power of this principle, that even now, women in India burn themselves alive on the funeral piles of their husbands, to prove, as they say, their love for them, and their determination to accompany them to the other world; when it is well known, that they burn themselves from the impulse of vanity, and the fear of disgrace, if they should not do so.

Nay, more still, so little support does martyrdom yield to truth, that there are more martyrdoms in honour of the false, ridiculous, and abominable idols of Hindostan, than any where else.