At any rate, they cannot, in the nature of things, be any thing to the purpose in; this case.

For you to pretend, that they prove what you offer them to prove, is quite absurd; you might as well, and as reasonably, pretend, that they could prove Aristotle to have been Alexander; or the Methodist George Whitfield to be the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte!" To conclude, if any person should feel inclined to attempt to refute this book, let him do it like a man; without evading the question, or equivocating, or caviling about little things.

Let him consider the principal question, and the main arguments on which he perceives that the author relies, and not pass over these silently, and hold up a few petty mistakes and subsidiary arguments as specimens of the whole book.

Such a mode of defence would be very disengenuous, and with a discerning reader, perfectly futile and insufficient.

It would be as if a man prostrate, and bleeding under a lion whose teeth and claws were infixed in his throat, should tear a handful of hairs out of the animal's mane, and hold them up as proofs of victory.
In fine, let him, before his undertaking, carefully consider these pungent words of Bishop Beveridge, "Opposite answers, and downright arguments advantage a cause; but when a disputant leaves many things untouched, as if they were too hot for his fingers; and declines the weight of other things, and alters the true state of the question: it is a shrewd sign, either that he has not weighed things maturely, or else (which is more probable,) that he maintains a desperate cause." FINIS.
APPENDIX A.# As reasons for this assertion, (that "the account of the resurrection given by the evangelists is no better, nay, worse, than conjecture, as it is a mere forgery of the second century .-- Vide page 86) take the following facts, which are now ascertained, and can be proved:--1.