8 Aug 1815

Jug. True

II Principal

Ch John & Jesus

(2)

In this we see a sort of problem which to a first view seems insoluble. But even amidst all the darkness in which the early part of the life of the two kindred prophets is enveloped, circumstances still have reached us sufficient to enable us to form a pretty satisfactory conception of the cause of this apparent incongruity. In point of eloquence manifestly the talents of Jesus were time and place considered of a most transcendent magnitude to have given birth to any other person of equal talents would have been too much for one family and not to say for one country so contracted in its dimensions as was the country of the Jews. John wrought no miracles: whatsoever instructions he may have obtained on that subject from his reverend father, he attempted not as far as appears to put them in practice: a plain proof that appearing as he did in a character from which supernatural talent in some shape or other was so generally and naturally expected, he was not equal either to the task either of actually working miracles or to that of giving rise and currency to rumours in that kind. From which as appears upon the face of the history may with pretty full assurance be inferred [that] MS orig. ‘what’. each of them regarded himself as equal to and most fit for: in such a case at any rate, acts are conclusive and satisfactory evidence of design, designs can have no evidence more satisfactory than that which is afforded by correspondent acts.