+ “It is incredible, what expedition they use when any of their friends are known to be in trouble.  In a word, they spare nothing upon such an occasion;—­for these miserable men have no doubt they shall be immortal and live for ever; therefore they contemn death, and many surrender themselves to sufferings.  Moreover, their first lawgiver has taught them that they are all brethren, when once they have turned and renounced the gods of the Greeks, and worship this Master of theirs who was crucified, and engage to live according to his laws.  They have also a sovereign contempt for all the things of this world, and look upon them as common.”  Lucian, de Morte Peregrini, t. i. p. 565, ed.  Graev. _________

This is the account of writers who viewed the subject at a great distance; who were uninformed and uninterested about it.  It bears the characters of such an account upon the face of it, because it describes effects, namely the appearance in the world of a new religion, and the conversion of great multitudes to it, without descending, in the smallest degree, to the detail of the transaction upon which it was founded, the interior of the institution, the evidence or arguments offered by those who drew over others to it.  Yet still here is no contradiction of our story; no other or different story set up against it:  but so far a confirmation of it as that, in the general points on which the heathen account touches, it agrees with that which we find in our own books.

The same may be observed of the very few Jewish writers of that and the adjoining period, which have come down to us.  Whatever they omit, or whatever difficulties we may find in explaining the omission, they advance no other history of the transaction than that which we acknowledge.  Josephus, who wrote his Antiquities, or History of the Jews, about sixty years after the commencement of Christianity, in a passage generally admitted as genuine, makes mention of John under the name of John the Baptist; that he was a preacher of virtue; that he baptized his proselytes; that he was well received by the people; that he was imprisoned and put to death by Herod; and that Herod lived in a criminal cohabitation with Herodias, his brother’s wife. (Antiq.  I. xviii. cap. v. sect. 1, 2.) In another passage allowed by many, although not without considerable question being moved about it, we hear of “James, the brother of him who was called Jesus, and of his being put to death.” (Antiq.  I. xx. cap. ix. sect. 1.) In a third passage, extant in every copy that remains of Josephus’s history, but the authenticity of which has nevertheless been long disputed, we have an explicit testimony to the substance of our history in these words:—­“At that time lived Jesus, a wise man, if he may be called a man, for he performed many wonderful works.  He was a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure.  He drew over to him many Jews and Gentiles.  This was the Christ; and when Pilate,