Note 289 — Chapter VII · THE PARTICULAR EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIANITY.

[Butler states this argument with more than his usual brevity, and its force is not seen without reflection. “If contrivance or accident could have given to Christianity any of its apparent testimonies, its miracles, its prophecies, its morals, its propagation, or [the character of] its founder, there could be no room to believe, or even imagine, that all these appearances of great credibility, could be united together, by any such means. If successful craft could have contrived its public miracles, or the pretence of them, it requires another reach of craft, to adopt its prophecies to the same object. Further, it required not only a different, but a totally opposite art to conceive and promulgate its admirable morals. Again, its propagation, in defiance of the powers and terrors of the world, implied still other qualities of action. Lastly, the model of the life of its founder, is a work of such originality and wisdom, as could be the offspring only of consummate powers of invention, or rather never could have been devised, but must have come from real life. The hypothesis sinks under its incredibility. Each of these suppositions of contrivance, being arbitrary and unsupported, the climax of them is an extravagance.”—Davison, on Prophecy.]