that it was not he. Tell us therefore upon what account you reject the
evidence of their sense before the breaking of the bread, and insist
on it afterwards? And why did Jesus vanish as soon as known; which has
more of the air of an apparition, than of the appearance of a real man
restored to life?

Cleopas, who was one of these two disciples, finds out the
apostles, to make the report of what had passed to them. No sooner was
the story told, but Jesus appears among them. They were all frightened
and confounded, and thought they saw a spectre. He rebukes them for
infidelity, and their slowness in believing the prophecies of his
resurrection: and though he refused before to let the women touch him
(a circumstance which I ought not to have omitted); yet now he invites
the apostles to handle him, to examine his hands and feet, and search
the wounds of the cross. But what body was it they examined? The same
that came in when the doors were shut; the same that vanished from the
two disciples; the same that the women might not touch: in a word, a
body quite different from a human body, which we know cannot pass
through walls, or appear or disappear at pleasure. What then could
their hands or eyes inform them of in this case? Besides, is it
credible that God should raise a body imperfectly, with the very wounds
in it of which it died? Or, if the wounds were such as destroyed the
body before, how could a natural body subsist with them afterwards?

There are more appearances of Jesus recorded; but so much of the
same kind, so liable to the same difficulties and objections, that I
will not trouble your Lordship and the court with a distinct
enumeration of them. If the Gentleman on the other side finds any
advantage in any of them more than in these mentioned, I shall have an
opportunity to consider them in my reply.