of sublimest truth, expressed with unparalleled simplicity, sprang
from ignorance; that precepts enjoining the most refined sanctity were
inculcated by imposture; that the first injunctions to universal love
broke from the lips of bigotry! He must further believe that these men
exemplified the ideal perfection of that beautiful system in the most
unique, original, and faultless picture of virtue ever conceived--a
picture which has extorted the admiration even of those who could not
believe it to be a portrait, and who have yet confessed themselves
unable to account for it except as such.* He must believe, too, that
these ignorant and fraudulent Galileans voluntarily aggravated the
difficulty of their task, by exhibiting their proposed ideal, not by
bare enumeration and description of qualities, but by the most arduous
of all methods of representation--that of dramatic action; and, what is
more, that they succeeded; that in that representation they undertook
to make him act with sublime consistency in scenes of the most
extraordinary character and the most touching pathos, and utter moral
truth in the most exquisite fictions in which such truth was ever
embodied; and that again they succeeded; that so ineffably rich in
genius were these obscure wretches, that no less than four of them were
found equal to this intellectual achievement; and while each has told
many events, and given many traits which the others have omitted, that
they have all performed their task in the same unique style of invention
and the same unearthly tone of art; that one and all, while preserving
each his own individuality, has, nevertheless, attained a certain
majestic simplicity of style unlike any tiring else (not only in
any writings of their own nation, their alleged sacred writings,
and infinitely superior to any thing which their successors, Jews
or Christians, though with the advantage of these models, could ever
attain,) but, unlike any acknowledged human writings in the world, and
possessing the singular property of being capable of ready transfusion,