To conclude; I heartily join with you in grateful acknowledgements, to the Almighty disposer of events, for the manifestations of his universal benevolence to his creatures, and especially unto man whom he hath seen fit to induce with the attributes of his own nature, and constituted him an heir of life and immortality. In view of this, I can be thankful for any faithfulness discoverable in those who publish the word of life, and endeavour to defend it in the spirit of meekness and Christian love.
And I will further add, that I feel a peculiar pleasure in finding your mind to be somewhat divested of its incumberances, and that your doubts of the grounds of your precious faith, are dispersing more and more from your mind, while the evidences of divine truth find a sincere reception in your understanding.
Let us endeavour to cherish, not only the evidences of truth, but truth itself in our afflictions, and in room of being idlers in the markets, go early into our Lord's vineyard trusting the words of him who saith; "whatsoever is right, ye shall receive."
"_Dear sir and brother_--In remarking on your reply to my 8th number, as in a former case I shall follow the arrangement which you have made; taking up the articles in the same order.
"1st. I did not suppose but that the method which I proposed to account for the absence of the body of Jesus would be liable to serious objections; and these objections are increased by connecting with them, circumstances which, if the resurrection be false, must be considered equally false. Because, if the resurrection of Jesus was not a truth, whatever was the truth on which that belief was founded, must be now all mere conjecture.
"There might be persons, however, who thought that Jesus suffered death very wrongfully although he never pretended literally to perform those miracles. Yea I conceive it possible that when this language was first adopted, i. e. of his feeding the hungry, opening the eyes of the blind, raising the dead, &c. it was not understood, nor meant to be understood literally. Therefore although the account at first might have been _literally false_, though not so much so as what it grew to be afterward, yet it might have been considered _spiritually true_; and therefore not designed absolutely to deceive. The only difficulty, i.e. the only irreconcilable difficulty, which I conceive in the case, is in supposing that the first disciples could be made to believe in the resurrection, by any evidence which could have existed, and yet the resurrection not to be true. But we must suppose this, I think, in order to raise a reasonable doubt of the truth of the resurrection. For, if the disciples did not believe it, they could have had no interest or motive, (or certainly no justifiable motive) in making others believe it; and without this, it is difficult to account even for the existence of such a report. I should not think it so strange, however, that others, after the report was once in circulation, and that even St. Paul himself should have been made to believe this, merely by some visionary scene.