But we will still pursue our supposition. The Trinitarians enter a complaint against this teacher, to the authorities, alleging that he is guilty of treason; he is arrested, convicted, and publicly executed. At the time of his arrest his disciples all forsake him, and one being found near him denies that he knows the man. All is over now, and people go about their common avocations; once in a while a word or two may be dropped on the subject of the impostor, but the thing is dying away, till all at once the twelve disciples of him who was executed came boldly before the public and proclaim the resurrection of their leader, charge the rulers of the people of having murdered him, and declare that God has raised him from the dead, and appointed them to be witness of this to the people, and to preach Unitarianism. What would be thought of these men? Would the doctrine of the divine unity be likely to triumph over its opposite, the Trinity, by the preaching of the twelve? Would there be any attention paid to these men, except by authority, to disperse them and cause them to desist from such madness, and go about some honest business? But now they pretend to work miracles in confirmation of the truth of the resurrection! Enough. Suppose, sir, I should tell you that I believe such pretensions might be so managed as to succeed completely, would you not reply, that the success of such pretensions being altogether a fraud, would itself be as great a miracle as is recorded in scripture, with the addition of absurdity? You will remember that you suggested that it would require a miracle to dissuade me from my belief; and I hope you will see that you must believe in a miracle in order not to believe with me!
Will you say that the foregoing does not come to the difficulty, that the question is, was not the account we have of those things in the gospels, forged long since the days in which they are represented to have taken place? Then, sir, in room of the above supposed fraud, undertaken to propagate _Unitarianism_, you may take the supposition of a forged book published by the friends of that doctrine, in which just such a story is told of the first propagations of the sentiment as is told in the New Testament of Jesus and his apostles--and the Trinitarians shall be made to act the part of the old pharisees. Can you, sir, conceive that the book would meet with any better success than the impostors themselves? Would our learned doctors of the Trinitarian school be silent while such a book was in circulation?