over the hearts of mankind; and have continued to impose, by an
exquisite appearance of artless truth, and a most elaborate mosaic of
feigned events artfully cemented into the ground of true history, on
the acutest minds of different races and different ages; while, on the
second supposition, he must believe that accident and chance have given
to these legends their exquisite appearance of historic plausibility;
and on either supposition, he must believe (what is still more
wonderful) that the world, while the fictions were being published, and
in the known absence of the facts they asserted to be true, suffered
itself to be befooled into the belief of their truth, and out of its
belief of all the systems it did previously believe to be true; and
that it acted thus notwithstanding persecution from without, as well
as prejudice front within; that strange to say the strictest historic
investigation bring this compilation of fictions or myths-even by the
admission of Strauss himself--within thirty or forty years of the very
time in which all the alleged wonders they relate are said to have
occurred; wonders which the perverse world knew it had not seen, but
which it was determined to believe in spite of evidence, prejudice, and
persecution! In addition to all this, the infidel must believe that the
men who were engaged in the compilation of these monstrous fictions,
chose them as the vehicle of the purest morality; and, though the most
pernicious deceivers of mankind were yet the most scrupulous preachers
of veracity and benevolence! Surely of him, who can receive all these
paradoxes--and they form but a small part of what might be mentioned--we
may say, 'O infidel, great is thy Faith!'

On the supposition that neither of these theories, whether of fraud
or fiction, will account, if taken by itself, for the whole of the
supernatural phenomena, which strew the pages of the New Testament, then
the objector, who relies on both, must believe, in turn, both sets of