"To close this letter, which perhaps is already too long, I would here acknowledge that as I have expressed doubts in the subject of divine revelation, you have a right to hear my reasons for doubting. These I promised to give you (as I thought) at the close of my fourth number. You have informed me, verbally, that I promised to give you my _doubts_ only. If I did so, it was only a slip of the pen, to which I am too prone; it was my _reasons for doubting_, which I meant to have promised you; and in my next I shall endeavor to fulfil that promise.
_Dear sir, and brother_,--Your fifth and sixth numbers were received together, and will be noticed in the order in which they came to hand.
You observe that you know of no better evidence that "there ever was such a story reported among the Jews, in the days of the apostles, than there is to prove the actual resurrection of Jesus," &c. This suggestion leads to the following queries.
1st. Was there in the days of the apostles, such a man known in the country of the Jews, as Jesus Christ?
2d. Was this man put to death, as the four evangelists and others testify?
3d. Did the apostles declare to the people who put him to death, that they knew that he had arisen from the dead?
4th. If the Jews who put Jesus to death could go to his sepulchre and show his dead body to the people, would the story of the resurrection ever have gained any credit among the Jews?
5th. If they could not find the body of him who had been crucified, would the opposers not endeavour to report something that might appear as plausible as they could, especially as they had the keeping of the sepulchre in their own hands?
6th. What would more naturally suggest itself to the imagination of men, in the situation of the rulers of the Jews, than the story of the disciples having stolen the dead body, &c. Or,
7th. Was this account written long since the apostles' days, by an unknown author, who made the whole story as he wrote it? If this last question cannot be answered in the affirmative without doing violence to the most authentic testimony and also to the plainest dictates of reason, it seems to follow that the 6th preceding question, must be accepted in the affirmative, which furnishes sufficient evidence to prove that such a story was reported among the Jews in the days of the apostles.