cluster 10,000 grapes, and each grape which is crushed will yield twenty-five measures of wine.  And when one of the saints will reach after one of these clusters, another will cry:  ’I am a better cluster than it; take me, and praise the Lord because of me.’  Likewise, a grain of wheat will produce 10,000 ears, each ear 10,000 grains, each grain ten pounds of fine white flour.  Other fruits, and seeds, and herbs in proportion.  The whole brute creation, feeding on such things as the earth brings forth, will become sociable and peaceable together, and subject to man with all humility” ("Iren.  Haer.,” v., 33, 3-4, as quoted in Keim’s “Jesus of Nazara,” p. 45).  What trust can be placed in the truth of facts to which these men pretend to bear witness when we find St. Augustine preaching that “he himself, being at that time Bishop of Hippo Regius, had preached the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to a whole nation of men and women that had no heads, but had their eyes in their bosoms; and in countries still more southerly he preached to a nation among whom each individual had but one eye, and that situate in the middle of the forehead” ("Syntagma,” p. 33, as quoted in “Diegesis,” p. 257).

Eusebius tells us of a man, named Sanctus, who was tortured until his body “was one continued wound, mangled and shrivelled, that had entirely lost the form of man;” and, when the tormentors began again on the same day, he “recovered the former shape and habit of his limbs” ("Eccles.  Hist,” bk. v., chap. i.).  He then was sent to the amphitheatre, passing down the lane of scourgers, was dragged about and lacerated by the wild beast, roasted in an iron chair, and after this was “at last dispatched!” Other accounts, such as that of a man scourged till his bones were “bared of the flesh,” and then slowly tortured, are given as history, as though a man in that condition would not speedily bleed to death.  But it is useless to give more of these foolish stories, which weary us as we toil through the writings of the early Church.  Well may Mosheim say that the “Apostolic Fathers, and the other writers, who, in the infancy of the Church, employed their pens in the cause of Christianity, were neither remarkable for their learning nor their eloquence” ("Eccles.  Hist,” p. 32).  Thoroughly unreliable as they are, they are useless as witnesses of supposed miraculous events; and, in relating ordinary occurrences, they should not be depended upon in any matter of importance, unless they be corroborated by more trustworthy historians.

The last point Paley urges in support of his proposition is, that the accounts contained in “the historical Books of the New Testament” are “deserving of credit as histories,” and that such is “the situation of the authors to whom the four Gospels are ascribed that, if any one of the four be genuine, it is sufficient for our purpose.”  This brings us, indeed, to the crucial point of our investigation, for, as we can gain so little information from external