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been less anticipated , much less imagined , by one so slow and difficult ; of conviction , as that the very opportunities of proof which he had made the conditions of his belief were known by Jesus , and would thus be presented before him . What , but the strong force of reality , could have thus produced in a
mind so unprepared to the admission of either , a conviction of such opposites as that the person of his Master was first presented to him from an iuvisible state , and then afforded him every possible proof that he had . resumed the state of ordinary humanity ? The opposite natures of matter and spirit , and that the presence of the one indicated the
absence of the other , is very deserving oi attention ; more especially , if it be admitted that it is only by such a transformation of the person from an ajiimal to a spiritual state , that an immortality of being can be realized ; and that on the other hand the then almost universal , and the present prevailing , opinion of the separation of an immortal spirit from
the body in death , is an illusion which is opposed to . the doctrine of a resurrection from death to life and immortality . We may here observe bow very unsuitable aud unsatisfactory such appearances as those we have been considering must have been to any of the enemies of Jesus at the time . If his disciples at a moment when they had every reason to
believe he was about to meet them alive , and in the spirit of kindness , were introduced to him in such a manner , that € < they were terrified and affrighted , and thought they beheld a spirit , " what would have been its effect upon those who , under the influence of rage or conscious guilt , which last appears to have been the general state of their minds ,
were in continual apprehensions of his appearance ? Could they under the violent agitation of the passions which must thus have been excited , be in any suitable condition for examining the proofs of his corporeality and his identity , supposing them to h , ave been before well acquainted with bis person ? Allowing them to have been chiefly influenced t > y
rage and bent upon his seizure , would not his sudden disappearance or removal from their power haye been construed into an evidence that what they beheld was a mere figment ojf their diseased ima - ginations , or , at most , the shade of the murdered Jesus , and consequently a proof , not that he was risen from the dead , but that his departed spirit had resumed a momentary form without the
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substance of humanity , for the purpose of reproaching them with their cruel outrage upon his person ? Admitting the sense , of conscious guilt to have been predominant at any manifestations of his person , must not the effects upon their fears have been so overwhelming that no reliance whatever could have been placed
upon the report of men thus affected , respecting facts requiring so much coolness and closeness of examination , as well as such a perfect previous acquaintance with the individual , as those which were requisite to evince his ordinary invisibility , and his occasional resumption of the animal nature ? Those who smote
their breasts with remorse on beholding the circumstances of his decease , and who were pierced to the heart at the apprehensions excited by the mild statements of Peter , must have been wholly disqualified for witnessing and bearing testimony to such facts as those which he was commissioned to make known to
them , aud to establish by miracles much better suited to convey conviction to their minds and those of mankind in general . No other proofs of the translation of Jesus to an invisible , spiritual , and celestial state , could have been afforded through his enemies so satisfactory as those which were actually afforded ; in the circumstances of his
having never been seen , nor imagined to have been seen , by any of them , at or near the time of his resurrection , though watchmen on peril of their lives were stationed around his sepulchre at the moment of his disappearance , who beheld uot him , but an angel from heaven effecting his deliverance . The reality of these facts is supported not only by the circumstance of his constant removal from the view of
persona of this description , from this time forward , and his occasional returns , introduced by celestial companions , to the observation of more suitable witnesses , but by the self-confuting report so eagerly circulated by his chief enemies , and quietly received by the Jews in general . It is further confirmed by their
ineffectual attempts to suppress , instead of offering any confutation of the preaching of the apostles ; * by thousands quickly yielding a formal submission to the authority of this invisible Sovereign ; f by ihe great esteem in which the apostles were held by multitudes of the people ; J and in a short time by " the number of the disciples multiplying in
Je-* Acts iv . 16—18 . f Ch . iii . 41 , iv . 4 . X Ch . v . 13 .
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552 MlitcelUtneous Correspondence .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1830, page 552, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2587/page/48/
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