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ignorance his quotations from I ) r . Chalmers forbid me to allege against him : I suspect he has not expressed his own meaning , if I have gathered his meaning in other places rightly . After quoting JL ) n Chalmers ' s argument , he says , — ' The above extracts present us with two questions , which must be
examined before we can decide on the purity of intention , and the completeness of knowledge evinced by the Evangelical historians ; ( 1 ) Is the nature of the events which the Christian martyrs related compatible with any mixture of delusion on their part ? ( 2 ) Is the sincerity and devotion displayed by those martyrs compatible with any mixture of fraud ?'
Apd under these two questions the whole argument of his book is thenceforth ranged . The peculiarity of his theory seems to be , that he attributes mixed knowledge and delusion , mixed sincerity and fraud to the actors in the Gospel history ; and this alternative of a mixed character of ? good and evil , truth and delusion , virtue and imposture , constitutes the omission which ( to reconcile him with himself ) 1 presume he meant to attribute to Christian
advocates , when he charged them with having ubiade the only alternative to be , the honesty of imposture of the Gospel writers . Our author ought to have been , in this place as well as others , more clear and exact in his way of expressing himself ; as it is not creditable to be indebted to an opponent for vindicating his accuracy of knowledge or regard to truth , by explaining away expressions irreconcileable with both . To what , then , does this omission on the
part of Christian evidence writers amount ? They have discussed the sincerity of the Gospel historians , and they have discussed their competency of knowledge . They have not ( or not generally ) discussed the possibility of a mixture of fraud with the one , and delusion with the other . Why should they ? They have endeavoured to show competency of knowledge and sincerity of testimony , in reference to the things required to be proved . Whether they have succeeded or not is another question . But
more than this they needed not to attempt . If the Apostles and Evangelists were competent to judge , and not disposed to deceive , as to those facts which constitute the essential parts of the Gospel history , it matters not whether they were deluded on other subjects , or dishonest ( if this mixture of character were ' credible ) on others . The supposition of a mixture of knowledge with delusion , and of sincerity with fraud , is , by this author , made in respect to their testimony as regards the essential facts of the Gospel history , or else it is not : if it is . the Q uestion has been discussed (" whether
satisfactorily or not , is another affair ) by every systematic writer on the evidences of Christianity , when he has endeavoured to disprove fraud or deception in toto ; if it is not meant to apply to this part of the testimony , it has nothing to do with the discussion . The former is the real case . The alleged miracles of the Gospel history are the specific facts in respect to which Christian
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78 Q . Orthodoxy and Unbelief . i * - »
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1832, page 780, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1824/page/60/
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