It may seem surprising to you, perhaps, that a matter of this
moment was trusted upon such evidence as this: but it will be still
more surprising to consider that the several nations who received the
gospel, and submitted to the faith of this article, had not even this
evidence: for what people or nation had the evidence of the angels,
the women or even of all the apostles? So far from it, that every
country had its single apostle, and received the faith upon the credit
of his single evidence. We have followed our ancestors without
inquiry; and if you examine the thing to the bottom, our belief was
originally built upon the word of one man.
I shall trouble you, Sir, but with one observation more; which is
this: That although in common life we act in a thousand instances upon
the faith and credit of human testimony; yet the reason for so doing is
not the same in the case before us. In common affairs, where nothing
is asserted but what is probable, and possible, according to the usual
course of nature, a reasonable degree of evidence ought to determine
every man: for the very probability, or possibility of the thing, is
an support to the evidence; and in such cases we have no doubt but a
man's senses qualify him to be a witness. But when the thing testified
is contrary to the order of nature, and, at first sight at least,
impossible, what evidence can be sufficient to overturn the constant
evidence of nature, which she gives us in the uniform and regular
method of her operations? If a man tells me he has been in France, I
ought to give a reason for not believing him; but if he tells me he
comes from the grave what reason can he give why I should believe him?
In the case before us, since the body raised from the grave differed
from common natural bodies, as we have before seen; how can I be
assured that the apostles' senses qualified them to judge at all of
this body; whether it was the same, or not the same which was buried?
They handled the body, which yet could pass through doors and walls;