"It must be granted, as you have suggested, that there was such a report among the Jews at the time when that record was made, or else that record would not appear at all to 'advantage' in support of the truth of christianity.
"That 'reason is candid,' I also admit; and if I am blundering in making mistakes, I believe you will have the goodness to acknowledge that I am candid in retracting them again when they are so pointed out to me that I can see them.
"Respecting divine revelation, it is true, I understood you to mean something more than barely what is predicated on the resurrection of Jesus; yet in the second proposition of the three which you made, viz. 'Is the resurrection of Jesus capable of being proved,' I understand you to state one single fact, on which you are willing to rest the final issue of the argument. This being the most important fact, relative to the truth of christianity, and which, probably, is as difficult of proof as any, I do not perceive any disingenuousness in confining you _now_ to this proposition till it is either proved or admitted. Neither do I perceive how this can embarrass your argument, as you have proposed to consider them 'true, disjunctively,' as well as conjunctively. When therefore you have proved the three propositions _disjunctively_; particularly the second, above named, then I shall be willing you should avail yourself of their _union_.--You may say, perhaps, I have proposed to admit the truth of your three propositions; but you will also perceive, it was only for the sake of introducing a fourth proposition, which it will not be necessary for you to consider until the three first are proved true.
"I conceive that reason has no more to do in this case than to judge of the evidences of facts; and then, if the facts are supported, reason can judge of their relation one to the other; but to assume, in the first place, the truth of revelation, and then infer from _that_ the probability of the truth of the resurrection of Jesus, appears to me to be unreasonable. Therefore, if you attempt to prove the truth of revelation, I conceive you must in the first place prove, 'disjunctively,' the truth of the resurrection. If, therefore, you have considered yourself excused from proving the facts on which the truth of revelation seems to rest, because I have granted them for the sake of the argument, you have misapprehended my meaning. I grant _nothing_, respecting the main question, until it is _proved_.