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Evidences of Christianity by William Paley

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Now that the original story, the story delivered by the first preachers
of the institution, should have died away so entirely as to have left no
record or memorial of its existence, although so many records and
memorials of the time and transaction remain; and that another story
should have stepped into its place, and gained exclusive possession of
the belief of all who professed, themselves disciples of the
institution, is beyond any example of the corruption of even oral
tradition, and still less consistent with the experience of written
history: and this improbability, which is very great, is rendered still
greater by the reflection, that no such change as the oblivion of one
story, and the substitution of another, took place in any future period
of the Christian aera. Christianity hath travelled through dark and
turbulent ages; nevertheless it came out of the cloud and the storm,
such, in substance, as it entered in. Many additions were made to the
primitive history, and these entitled to different degrees of credit;
many doctrinal errors also were from time to time grafted into the
public creed; but still the original story remained, and remained the
same. In all its principal parts, it has been fixed from the beginning.

Thirdly: The religious rites and usages that prevailed amongst the early
disciples of Christianity were such as belonged to, and sprung out of,
the narrative now in our hands; which accordancy shows, that it was the
narrative upon which these persons acted, and which they had received
from their teachers. Our account makes the Founder of the religion
direct that his disciples should be baptized: we know that the first
Christians were baptized, Our account makes him direct that they should
hold religious assemblies: we find that they did hold religious
assemblies. Our accounts make the apostles assemble upon a stated day of
the week: we find, and that from information perfectly independent of
our accounts, that the Christians of the first century did observe
stated days of assembling. Our histories record the institution of the
rite which we call the Lord's Supper, and a command to repeat it in
perpetual succession: we find, amongst the early Christians, the
celebration of this rite universal. And, indeed, we find concurring in
all the above-mentioned observances, Christian societies of many
different nations and languages, removed from one another by a great
distance of place and dissimilitude of situation. It is also extremely
material to remark, that there is no room for insinuating that our books
were fabricated with a studious accommodation to the usages which
obtained at the time they were written; that the authors of the books
found the usages established, and framed the story to account for their
original. The Scripture accounts, especially of the Lord's Supper, are
too short and cursory, not to say too obscure, and in this view,
deficient, to allow a place for any such suspicion.*

_________

* The reader who is conversant in these researches, by comparing the
short Scripture accounts of the Christian rites above-mentioned with the
minute and circumstantial directions contained in the pretended
apostolical constitutions, will see the force of this observation; the
difference between truth and forgery.
_________


Amongst the proofs of the truth of our proposition, viz. That the story
which we have now is, in substance, the story which the Christians had
then, or, in other words, that the accounts in our Gospels are, as to
their principal parts, at least, the accounts which the apostles and
original teachers of the religion delivered, one arises from observing,
that it appears by the Gospels themselves that the story was public at
the time; that the Christian community was already in possession of the
substance and principal parts of the narrative. The Gospels were not the
original cause of the Christian history being believed, but were
themselves among the consequences of that belief. This is expressly
affirmed by Saint Luke, in his brief, but, as I think, very important
and instructive preface:--"Forasmuch (says the evangelist) as many have
taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which
are most surely believed amongst us, even as they delivered them unto
us, which, from the beginning, were eye-witnesses and ministers of the
word; it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all
things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent
Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things
wherein thou hast been instructed."--This short introduction testifies,
that the substance of the history which the evangelist was about to
write was already believed by Christians; that it was believed upon the
declarations of eye-witnesses and ministers of the word; that it formed
the account of their religion in which Christians were instructed; that
the office which the historian proposed to himself was to trace each
particular to its origin, and to fix the certainty of many things which
the reader had before heard of. In Saint John's Gospel the same point
appears hence, that there are some principal facts to which the
historian refers, but which he does not relate. A remarkable instance of
this kind is the ascension, which is not mentioned by St. John in its
place, at the conclusion of his history, but which is plainly referred
to in the following words of the sixth chapter; "What and if ye shall
see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?" (Also John iii. 31;
and xvi. 28.) And still more positively in the words which Christ,
according to our evangelist, spoke to Mary after his resurrection,
"Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go unto my
brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father,
unto my God and your God." (John xx. 17.) This can only be accounted for
by the supposition that St. John wrote under a sense of the notoriety of
Christ's ascension, among those by whom his book was likely to be read.
The same account must also be given of Saint Matthew's omission of the
same important fact. The thing was very well known, and it did not occur
to the historian that it was necessary to add any particulars concerning
it. It agrees also with this solution, and with no other, that neither
Matthew nor John disposes of the person of our Lord in any manner
whatever. Other intimations in St. John's Gospel of the then general
notoriety of the story are the following: His manner of introducing his
narrative (ch. i. ver. 15.)--"John bare witness of him, and cried,
saying" evidently presupposes that his readers knew who John was. His
rapid parenthetical reference to John's imprisonment, "for John was not
yet cast into prison," (John iii, 24.) could only come from a writer
whose mind was in the habit of considering John's imprisonment as
perfectly notorious. The description of Andrew by the addition "Simon
Peter's brother," (John i. 40.) takes it for granted, that Simon Peter
was well known. His name had not been mentioned before. The evangelist's
noticing the prevailing misconstruction of a discourse, (John xxi. 24.)
which Christ held with the beloved disciple, proves that the characters
and the discourse were already public. And the observation which these
instances afford is of equal validity for the purpose of the present
argument, whoever were the authors of the histories.


These four circumstances:--first, the recognition of the account in its
principal parts by a series of succeeding writers; secondly, the total
absence of any account of the origin of the religion substantially
different from ours; thirdly, the early and extensive prevalence of
rites and institutions, which resulted from our account; fourthly, our
account bearing in its construction proof that it is an account of facts
which were known and believed at the time, are sufficient, I conceive,
to support an assurance, that the story which we have now is, in general,
the story which Christians had at the beginning. I say in general; by
which term I mean, that it is the same in its texture, and in its
principal facts. For instance, I make no doubt, for the reasons above
stated, but that the resurrection of the Founder of the religion was
always a part of the Christian story. Nor can a doubt of this remain
upon the mind of any one who reflects that the resurrection is, in some
form or other, asserted, referred to, or assumed, in every Christian
writing, of every description which hath come down to us.

And if our evidence stopped here, we should have a strong case to offer:
for we should have to allege, that in the reign of Tiberius Caesar, a
certain number of persons set about an attempt of establishing a new
religion in the world: in the prosecution of which purpose, they
voluntarily encountered great dangers, undertook great labours,
sustained great sufferings, all for a miraculous story, which they
published wherever they came; and that the resurrection of a dead man,
whom during his life they had followed and accompanied, was a constant
part of this story. I know nothing in the above statement which can,
with any appearance of reason, be disputed; and I know nothing, in the
history of the human species, similar to it.





CHAPTER VIII.

There is satisfactory evidence that many, professing to be original
witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed their lives in labours,
dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the
accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief
of those accounts; and that they also submitted, from the same motives,
to new rules of conduct.

That the story which we have now is, in the main, the story which the
apostles published, is, I think, nearly certain, from the considerations
which have been proposed. But whether, when we come to the particulars,
and the detail of the narrative, the historical books of the New
Testament be deserving of credit as histories, so that a fact ought
to be accounted true, because it is found in them; or whether they are
entitled to be considered as representing the accounts which, true or
false, the apostles published; whether their authority, in either of
these views, can be trusted to, is a point which necessarily depends
upon what we know of the books, and of their authors.

Now, in treating of this part of our argument, the first and most
material observation upon the subject is, that such was 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. The received
author of the first was an original apostle and emissary of the
religion. The received author of the second was an inhabitant of
Jerusalem, at the time, to whose house the apostles were wont to resort,
and himself an attendant upon one of the most eminent of that number.
The received author of the third was a stated companion and
fellow-traveller of the most active of all the teachers of the religion,
and, in the course of his travels, frequently in the society of the
original apostles. The received author of the fourth, as well as of the
first, was one of these apostles. No stronger evidence of the truth of a
history can arise from the situation of the historian than what is here
offered. The authors of all the histories lived at the time and upon the
spot. The authors of two of the histories were present at many of the
scenes which they describe; eye-witnesses of the facts, ear-witnesses of
the discourses; writing from personal knowledge and recollection; and,
what strengthens their testimony, writing upon a subject in which their
minds were deeply engaged, and in which, as they must have been very
frequently repeating the accounts to others, the passages of the history
would be kept continually alive in their memory. Whoever reads the
Gospels (and they ought to be read for this particular purpose) will
find in them not merely a general affirmation of miraculous powers, but
detailed circumstantial accounts of miracles, with specifications of
time, place, and persons; and these accounts many and various. In the
Gospels, therefore, which bear the names of Matthew and John, these
narratives, if they really proceeded from these men, must either be true
as far as the fidelity of human recollection is usually to be depended
upon, that is, must be true in substance and in their principal parts,
(which is sufficient for the purpose of proving a supernatural agency,)
or they must be wilful and mediated falsehoods. Yet the writers who
fabricated and uttered these falsehoods, if they be such, are of the
number of those who, unless the whole contexture of the Christian story
be a dream, sacrificed their ease and safety in the cause, and for a
purpose the most inconsistent that is possible with dishonest
intentions. They were villains for no end but to teach honesty, and
martyrs without the least prospect of honour or advantage.

The Gospels which bear the names of Mark and Luke, although not the
narratives of eye-witnesses, are, if genuine, removed from that only by
one degree. They are the narratives of contemporary writers, or writers
themselves mixing with the business; one of the two probably living in
the place which was the principal scene of action; both living in habits
of society and correspondence with those who had been present at the
transactions which they relate. The latter of them accordingly tells us
(and with apparent sincerity, because he tells it without pretending to
personal knowledge, and without claiming for his work greater authority
than belonged to it) that the things which were believed amount
Christians came from those who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and
ministers of the word; that he had traced accounts up to their source;
and that he was prepared to instruct his reader in the certainty of the
things which he related.* Very few histories lie so close to their
facts; very few historians are so nearly connected with the subject of
their narrative, or possess such means of authentic information, as
these.

_________

* Why should not the candid and modest preface of this historian be
believed, as well as that which Dion Cassius prefixes to his Life of
Commodus? "These things and the following I write, not from the report
of others, but from my own knowledge and observation." I see no reason
to doubt but that both passages describe truly enough the situation of
the authors.
_________


The situation of the writers applies to the truth of the facts which
they record. But at present we use their testimony to a point somewhat
short of this, namely, that the facts recorded in the Gospels, whether
true or false, are the facts, and the sort of facts which the original
preachers of the religion allege. Strictly speaking, I am concerned only
to show, that what the Gospels contain is the same as what the apostles
preached. Now, how stands the proof of this point? A set of men went
about the world, publishing a story composed of miraculous accounts,
(for miraculous from the very nature and exigency of the case they must
have been,) and upon the strength of these accounts called upon mankind
to quit the religions in which they had been educated, and to take up,
thenceforth, a new system of opinions, and new rules of action. What is
more in attestation of these accounts, that is, in support of an
institution of which these accounts were the foundation, is, that the
same men voluntarily exposed themselves to harassing and perpetual
labours, dangers, and sufferings. We want to know what these accounts
were. We have the particulars, i. e. many particulars, from two of their
own number. We have them from an attendant of one of the number, and
who, there is reason to believe, was an inhabitant of Jerusalem at the
time. We have them from a fourth writer, who accompanied the most
laborious missionary of the institution in his travels; who, in the
course of these travels, was frequently brought into the society of the
rest; and who, let it be observed, begins his narrative by telling us
that he is about to relate the things which had been delivered by those
who were ministers of the word, and eye-witnesses of the facts. I do not
know what information can be more satisfactory than this. We may,
perhaps, perceive the force and value of it more sensibly if we reflect
how requiring we should have been if we had wanted it. Supposing it to
be sufficiently proved, that the religion now professed among us owed
its original to the preaching and ministry of a number of men, who,
about eighteen centuries ago, set forth in the world a new system of
religious opinions, founded upon certain extraordinary things which they
related of a wonderful person who had appeared in Judea; suppose it to
be also sufficiently proved, that, in the course and prosecution of
their ministry, these men had subjected themselves to extreme hardships,
fatigue, and peril; but suppose the accounts which they published had
not been committed to writing till some ages after their times, or at
least that no histories but what had been composed some ages afterwards
had reached our hands; we should have said, and with reason, that we
were willing to believe these under the circumstances in which they
delivered their testimony, but that we did not, at this day, know with
sufficient evidence what their testimony was. Had we received the
particulars of it from any of their own number, from any of those who
lived and conversed with them, from any of their hearers, or even from
any of their contemporaries, we should have had something to rely upon.
Now, if our books be genuine, we have all these. We have the very
species of information which, as it appears to me, our imagination would
have carved out for us, if it had been wanting.

But I have said that if any one of the four Gospels be genuine, we have
not only direct historical testimony to the point we contend for, but
testimony which, so far as that point is concerned, cannot reasonably be
rejected. If the first Gospel was really written by Matthew, we have the
narrative of one of the number, from which to judge what were the
miracles, and the kind of miracles, which the apostles attributed to
Jesus. Although, for argument's sake, and only for argument's sake, we
should allow that this Gospel had been erroneously ascribed to Matthew;
yet, if the Gospel of St. John be genuine, the observation holds with no
less strength. Again, although the Gospels both of Matthew and John
could be supposed to be spurious, yet, if the Gospel of Saint Luke were
truly the composition of that person, or of any person, be his name what
it might, who was actually in the situation in which the author of that
Gospel professes himself to have been, or if the Gospel which bear the
name of Mark really proceeded from him; we still, even upon the lowest
supposition, possess the accounts of one writer at least, who was not
only contemporary with the apostles, but associated with them in their
ministry; which authority seems sufficient, when the question is simply
what it was which these apostles advanced.

I think it material to have this well noticed. The New Testament
contains a great number of distinct writings, the genuineness of any one
of which is almost sufficient to prove the truth of the religion: it
contains, however, four distinct histories, the genuineness of any one
of which is perfectly sufficient.

If, therefore, we must be considered as encountering the risk of error
in assigning the authors of our books, we are entitled to the advantage
of so many separate probabilities. And although it should appear that
some of the evangelists had seen and used each other's works, this
discovery, whist it subtracts indeed from their characters as
testimonies strictly independent, diminishes, I conceive, little either
their separate authority, (by which I mean the authority of any one that
is genuine,) or their mutual confirmation. For, let the most
disadvantageous supposition possible be made concerning them; let it be
allowed, what I should have no great difficulty in admitting, that Mark
compiled his history almost entirely from those of Matthew and Luke; and
let it also for a moment be supposed that were not, in fact, written by
Matthew and Luke; yet, if it be true that Mark, a contemporary of the
apostles, living, in habits of society with the apostles, a
fellow-traveller and fellow-labourer with some of them; if, I say, it be
true, that this person made the compilation, it follows, that the
writings from which he made it existed in the time of the apostles, and
not only so, but that they were then in such esteem and credit, that a
companion of the apostles formed a history out of them. Let the Gospel
of Mark be called an epitome of that of Matthew; if a person in the
situation in which Mark is described to have been actually made the
epitome, it affords the strongest possible attestation to the character
of the original.

Again, parallelisms in sentences, in word, and in the order of words,
have been traced out between the Gospel of Matthew and that of Luke;
which concurrence cannot easily be explained, otherwise than by
supposing, either that Luke had consulted Matthew's history, or, what
appears to me in nowise incredible, that minutes of some of Christ's
discourses, as well as brief memoirs of some passages of his life, had
been committed to writing at the time; and that such written accounts
had by both authors been occasionally admitted into their histories.
Either supposition is perfectly consistent with the acknowledged
formation of St. Luke's narrative, who professes not to write as an
eye-witness, but to have investigated the original of every account
which he delivers: in other words, to have collected them from such
documents and testimonies as he, who had the best opportunities of
making inquiries, judged to be authentic. Therefore, allowing that this
writer also, in some instances, borrowed from the Gospel which we call
Matthew's and once more allowing for the sake of stating the argument,
that that Gospel was not the production of the author to whom we
ascribe it; yet still we have in St. Luke's Gospel a history given by a
writer immediately connected with the transaction with the witnesses of
it with the persons engaged in it, and composed from materials which
that person, thus situated, deemed to be safe source of intelligence; in
other words, whatever supposition be made concerning any or all the
other Gospels, if Saint Luke's Gospel be genuine, we have in it a
credible evidence of the point which we maintain. The Gospel according
to Saint John appears to be, and is on all hands allowed to be, an
independent testimony, strictly and properly so called. Notwithstanding
therefore, any connexion or supposed connexion, between one of the
Gospels, I again repeat what I before said, that if any one of the four
be genuine, we have, in that one, strong reason, from the character and
situation of the writer, to believe that we possess the accounts which
the original emissaries of the religion delivered.

Secondly: In treating of the written evidences of Christianity, next to
their separate, we are to consider their aggregate authority. Now, there
is in the evangelic history a cumulation of testimony which belongs
hardly to any other history, but which our habitual mode of reading the
Scriptures sometimes causes us to overlook. When a passage, in any wise
relating to the history of Christ is read to us out of the epistle of
Clemens Romanus, the epistles of Ignatius, of Polycap, or from any other
writing of that age, we are immediately sensible of the confirmation
which it affords to the Scripture account. Here is a new witness. Now,
if we had been accustomed to read the Gospel of Matthew alone, and had
known that of Luke only as the generality of Christians know the
writings of the apostolical fathers, that is, had known that such a
writing was extant and acknowledged; when we came, for the first time,
to look into what it contained, and found many of the facts which
Matthew recorded, recorded also there, many other facts of a similar
nature added, and throughout the whole work the same general series of
transactions stated, and the same general character of the person who
was the subject of the history preserved, I apprehend that we should
feel our minds strongly impressed by this discovery of fresh evidence.
We should feel a renewal of the same sentiment in first reading the
Gospel of Saint John. That of Saint Mark perhaps would strike us as an
abridgment of the history with which we were already acquainted; but we
should naturally reflect, that if that history was abridged by such a
person as Mark, or by any person of so early an age, it afforded one of
the highest possible attestations to the value of the work. This
successive disclosure of proof would leave us assured, that there must
have been at least some reality in a story which not one, but many, had
taken in hand to commit to writing. The very existence of four separate
histories would satisfy us that the subject had a foundation; and when,
amidst the variety which the different information of the different
writers had supplied to their accounts, or which their different choice
and judgment in selecting their materials had produced, we observed many
facts to stand the same in all; of these facts, at least, we should
conclude, that they were fixed in their credit and publicity. If, after
this, we should come to the knowledge of a distinct history, and that
also of the same age with the rest, taking up the subject where the
others had left it, and carrying on a narrative of the effects produced
in the world by the extraordinary causes of which we had already been
informed, and which effects subsist at this day, we should think the
reality of the original story in no little degree established by this
supplement. If subsequent inquiries should bring to our knowledge, one
after another, letters written by some of the principal agents in the
business, upon the business, and during the time of their activity and
concern in it, assuming all along and recognising the original story,
agitating the questions that arose out of it, pressing the obligations
which resulted from it, giving advice and directions to these who acted
upon it; I conceive that we should find, in every one of these, a still
further support to the conclusion we had formed. At present, the weight
of this successive confirmation is, in a great measure; unperceived by
us. The evidence does not appear to us what it is; for, being from our
infancy accustomed to regard the New Testament as one book, we see in it
only one testimony. The whole occurs to us as a single evidence; and its
different parts not as distinct attestations, but as different portions
only of the same. Yet in this conception of the subject we are certainly
mistaken; for the very discrepancies among the several documents which
form our volume prove, if all other proof were wanting, that in their
original composition they were separate, and most of them independent
productions.

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