21 Jan y 1814

Jug. True

Ch.3. Natural Evidence

8

Such multitudes—such countless multitudes—who at so many different occasions had been witnesses of the supernatural powers of Jesus—deriving in so many different shapes their profit from the beneficence of Jesus such countless multitudes to whose minds evidence of his power and of the beneficent purposes to which it was applied had been administered—and yet in the hour of danger and distrust—none to be found to stretch forth a hand to save him—scarce any so much as to utter a word to comfort him! Such and no better according to these historians was the result of real wonders, wrought in pursuance of a commission and powers from the Almighty really delivered:

After due attention paid to these supposed real wonders, and the almost total inefficiency of them in relation to the persuasion the production of which was the end in view for which they were intended, with this inefficiency compare now, to the same purpose of producing credence the efficiency of the few falsely pretended wonders, supposed by others to have been wrought under so many different pretended commissions, by all the believers in these Jewish wonders believed and proclaimed to be false: the supposed supernatural evidence whatsoever they were from which the religion of Mahomet, and the religion of Bramah, (not to mention any other of the various absurd and fantastical systems) were respectively made to obtain the extensive credence which no one there in possession of.

[marginal note]

by all the promises that had been given to them of eternal felicity the destined reward for this attachment to which they were so continually called for /preached to them/ under the name of faith.