If they appear to any to be a cunningly-devised fable, I ask, Why do they appear so? The only answer that can be given is this; That these things are too great to be comprehended by us, and too good to be expected or believed. They arc great, no doubt ; and they are good also, beyond all that any finite intelligence could have conceived. But they are not on that account to be questioned. The creation of the world out of nothing, as far exceeds our conceptions as the redemption of it. Both the one and the other are the offspring of infinite wisdom, and power, and goodness : and, if we were not com- pelled by the evidence of our senses to acknowledge the wonders of creation, we should be as ready to deny the possi- bility of them, as we are to question the wonders of redemp- tion. But the Apostle declares, that even these latter had, as far as they could be, been made objects of sense ; and every evidence of them that could be submitted to the senses had been given to him.]
In confirmation of this the Apostle proceeds to state,
II. On what assured grounds he was enabled to bear his testimony respecting him —
The Apostle had all the evidence respecting the Messiahship of Jesus that was possessed by the Church at large. He had beheld all the miracles that Jesus wrought, and heard all his discourses, and seen his bright example, and witnessed his re- surrection and ascension, and had received from him the Holy Ghost according to his promise on the day of Pentecost; and had beheld also the triumphs of the Gospel over all the power and policy of earth and hell. (Of the prophecies which he had seen fulfilled in him, we shall have occasion to speak hereafter.) But in addition to all these, he himself possessed an evidence which had made the deepest impression on his own mind, an evidence, which no other human being, except James and John, was ever permitted to behold, and which he could not forbear to adduce on this occasion in confirmation of all that he had stated".
He had received the evidence of his senses respect- ing the power and coming of the Lord Jesus —
n ver. 17, 18.