The Epistles, being nearer our own times than the Gospels, claim our first notice, and first among these, those which stand latest on the page of sacred history, the letters of John; two from Peter to the Christians of Asia; and those which Paul, in chains for the gospel, dictated from imperial Rome.
From the abundant notices of the early Christians by historians and philosophers, satirists and comedians, martyrs and magistrates, Jewish, Christian, and heathen, I shall select only two for comparison with the Epistles and of the apostles; and both those heathen--the celebrated letter of Pliny to Trajan, and the well-established history of Tacitus; both utterly undeniable, and admitted by the most skeptical to be above suspicion.

Not that I suppose that the testimony of men who do not take the trouble of making any inquiry into the reality of the facts of the Christian religion is more accurate than that of those whose lives were devoted to its study; or that we have any just reason to attach as much weight to the assertions of persons, who, by their own showing, tortured and murdered men and women convicted of no crime but that of bearing the name of Christ, as to those of these martyrs, whose characters they acknowledged to be blameless, and who sealed their testimony with the last and highest attestation of sincerity--their blood.

Considered merely as a historian, whether, as regards means of knowledge, or tests of truthfulness, by every unprejudiced mind, Peter will always be preferred to Pliny.

But because the world will ever love its own, and hate the disciples of the Lord, there will always be a large class to whom the history of Tacitus will seem more veritable than that of Luke, and the letters of Pliny more reliable than those of Peter.

For their sakes we avail ourselves of that most convincing of all attestations--the testimony of an enemy.