The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old

the New Testament canon has been so long respected, seems to have been purely owing to the credulity of the ignorant, and the laziness, indifference, or fears of the learned.

Douglas, in his famous "Criterion," gives us, as infallible tests, by which we may distinguish when written accounts of miracles are fabulous, the following marks:--

1. "We have reason to suspect (he says) the accounts to be false, when they are not published to the world till after the time when they are said to have been performed."

2. "We have reason to suspect them to be false, when they are not published in the place where it is pretended the facts were wrought, but are propagated only at a great distance from the supposed scene of action."

3. "Supposing the accounts to have the two fore-mentioned qualifications, we still have reason to suspect them to be false, if in the time when, and at the place where, they took their rise, they might be suffered to pass without examination."

These are the marks he gives us as infallible tests by which we may distinguish the accounts of miracles in the New Testament to be true; and accounts of miracles in other books (though supported by more testimony than the former,) to be false; with how much justice, may be evident from the following observations:--

1. If "we have reason to suspect the accounts to be false, when they are not published to the world till long after the time when they are said to have been performed," then we have reasons to suspect the accounts given in the four gospels; for we have no proof in the world, that any of them were written till nearly one hundred years after the supposed writers of them were all dead.