They write that 'we may know the certainty of the things which are most surely believed' in their day.

They 'bear record of what they have seen and heard.' I know not how stronger words could have been used to prevent the notion of that plastic, growing myth which Strauss conceives to have been in apostolic times."[69] The character of Christ exhibited in the Gospels is the contrary of that of the heroes of mythology; as contrary as holiness is to sin.

The invention of such a character by any man, or by the wisest set of men who ever lived, would have been a miracle nearly as great as the existence of such a person.

When the character of Christ was presented to the wisest men of the Greeks, and Romans, and Hebrews, so far from admiring him as a hero, they crucified him as an impostor, and persecuted the preachers of his gospel.

There was nothing mythical in the ten persecutions; these at least were hard historical facts.