Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: they never draw any inferences in his favor, nor do they take any notice of the preference to which this unquestionably entitled him over all the other great geniuses of our race. They never exhibit any disposition to glorify him, as it were, in this respect. They never give a connected delineation of this plan. Their accounts of the various events of his life, are made up of single fragments, the importance and connexion of which, evidently they did not perceive. To form a clear and correct conception of the views of this original personage, we must combine them together and give the whole a laborious examination. This circumstance of itself affords ample proof, that they did not forge the plan which they describe with the intention of palming it off upon Jesus. In such a case, their accounts would have exhibited more effort to represent him as the author of this plan. They would have made greater exertions to call the attention of the reader to this subject. And in general, on the supposition, that Jesus had nothing to do with the designs of which they speak, it is difficult to comprehend how his friends, taken as they were from the lowest ranks of life, and educated in all the partialities of the Jewish religion, could have palmed upon him a plan, embracing all mankind, even the detested heathen ;—a plan, which exhibits more that is great and noble, than the most daring poet ever attributed to his hero, and of which no one for a long time, understood less than these witnesses themselves. In respect to the credibility of these witnesses, however, I think I may fearlessly appeal to what others have said. I proceed, therefore, without further circumlocution to the matter in hand. § 7. In regard to the plan, of which Jesus is said by his friends to have been the author, three ci...