6th. Your criticism on my argument respecting the evidences of the resurrection I shall now endeavour to show to be incorrect.
You criticise as follows; "The apostles could not have been convinced of the fact of the resurrection by any evidence short of the fact itself. 2d. If the fact did exist there is no evidence which can counterbalance it. _Ergo_, as the apostles were convinced of the truth, the fact did exist. This is pretty much like saying, if the fact were _true_ it could not have been false!"
The first member of your criticism supposes that I contend that the apostles had no evidence of the resurrection but the fact itself. The second member of your criticism supposes that I contend the fact of the resurrection could not exist without proving itself to the apostles in such a way that no evidence could counterbalance it. Now in both of these you are under a mistake, I never urged the fact of the resurrection as evidence of itself to the apostles. I never pretended that they saw him rise. We have no account that any body saw this act performed. If the apostles had stood by the sepulchre and had seen the body of Jesus rise up and walk out of the house of death, then their evidences of his resurrection would have been the fact itself; but this was not the case, nor did I use any intimations of this nature. So the first member of your criticism is an error of yours. 2dly. If Jesus had rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, and never had given any proofs of this to any one, would the fact of his having risen be any evidence of itself to any person? It surely would not. Nor have I suggested any thing which intimates that the resurrection could not have been true without proving itself to be so to the apostles. What seems a little remarkable respecting this subject, is, you profess to care for nothing but simple truth, and yet you seem to study how to avoid it, as the above criticism seems to evince. I say _seems_ to evince, for I am not prepared to accuse you of such a fault--I would charitably believe that you thought your criticism would hit something or another nearly about right, without understanding what the amount of it is.
After having laboured, in a lengthy manner, as you acknowledge, to prove that the evidences which proved to the apostles the truth of the resurrection could not be counterbalanced, you must reasonably suppose that I feel a little disappointed that you should condescend to pay no other attention to my reasoning than the above criticism. If I did not make my argument clear why should you neglect to point out to me wherein it was wanting? Why should I not expect to have my errors corrected, as well as to be called on to correct my brother's? Should not these kind offices be reciprocal? If you conduct in this way, I shall certainly grow vain, and boast of doing more for you, than you do for me.