together, but separately, in different countries, before different
tribunals, under all sorts of examinations and cross-examinations, and
in defiance of the gyves, the scourge, the axe, the cross, the stake;
that these whom they persuaded to join their enterprise, persisted like
themselves in the same obstinate belief of the same 'cunningly
devised' frauds; and though they had many accomplices in their singular
conspiracy, had the equally singular fortune to free themselves and
their coadjutors flout all transient weakness towards their cause and
treachery towards one another; and, lastly, that these men, having,
amidst all their ignorance, originality enough to invent the most pure
and sublime system of morality which the world has ever listened to,
had, amidst all their conscious villany, the effrontery to preach it,
and, which is more extraordinary, the inconsistency to practise it!*
____

* So far as we have any knowledge from history, this must have been the
case; and Gibbon fully admits and insists upon it. Indeed, no infidel
hypothesis can afford to do without the virtues of the early Christians
in accounting for the success of the falsehoods of Christianity. Hard
alternatives of a wayward hypothesis!
____

On the second of the above-mentioned hypothesis, that these miracles
were either a congeries of deeply contrived fictions, or accidental
myths, subsequently invented, the infidel must believe, on the former
supposition, that, though even transient success in literary forgery,
when there are any prejudices to resist, is among the rarest of
occurrences; yet that these forgeries--the hazardous work of many minds,
making the most outrageous pretensions, and necessarily challenging the
opposition of Jew and Gentile were successful beyond all imagination,