Author: Tim

The argument from silence

[E]ven if all such means of corroboration should fail, and if we meet with a perplexing silence where we might expect to find confirmation, we are by no means justified in rejecting the unsupported testimony, merely on the ground of this want of correlative support. Many instances may be adduced of the most extraordinary silence of historians relative to facts with which they must have been acquainted, and which seemed to lie directly in the course of their narrative. Important facts are mentioned by no ancient writer, though they are unquestionably established by the evidence of existing inscriptions, coins, statutes, or buildings. There are also facts mentioned only by some one historian, which happen to be attested by an incidental coincidence with some relic of antiquity lately brought to light; if this relic had remained in its long obscurity, such facts might (we see with how little reason) have been disputed.

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Brooke Foss Westcott: The same men, but transfigured

If we compare the portraiture of the Apostles as given in St. Luke’s Gospel with that in his book of the Acts, we cannot but feel that we are looking on the same men, but transfigured in the latter case by the working of some mighty influence.

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To neglect and despise plain and sufficient evidence

There is, to my apprehension, nothing more unreasonable than to neglect and despise plain and sufficient evidence before us, and to sit down to imagine what kind of evidence would have pleased us, and then to make the want of such evidence an objection to the truth, which yet, if well considered, would be found to be well established.

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The contention of reasonable Christian men

The contention of reasonable Christian men is not that they are under an obligation to believe certain doctrines, whether rational or not, but that, on the whole, the truths of the Christian religion appear to them the best induction that can be made from the facts open to our observation in the religious and moral world; and that in matters not open to our observation we have the strongest reasons ever afforded to trust that Master and those teachers by whom assurances respecting the unseen and the future have been conveyed to us.

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There are thousands of Christians who see the difficulties

I should say that such a state of mind is one of very painful trial, and should be treated as such; that it is a state of mental disease, which like many others is aggravated by talking about it, and that he is in great danger of losing his perception of moral truth as well as of intellectual, of wishing Christianity to be false as well as of being unable to be convinced that it is true. There are thousands of Christians who see the difficulties which he sees quite as clearly as he does, and who long as eagerly as he can do for that time when they shall know, even as they are known. But then they see clearly the difficulties of unbelief, and know that even intellectually they are far greater.

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