Did he then believe it by hearing Ananias (Acts ix.

17) enter into details concerning the deeds and words of Jesus?
I cannot imagine that any wise or thoughtful person would so judge, which after all would be a gratuitous invention.

The Acts of the Apostles give us many speeches which set forth the grounds of accepting Jesus as Messiah; but they never press his absolute moral perfection as a fact and a fundamental fact.

"He went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil," is the utmost that is advanced on this side: prophecy is urged, and his resurrection is asserted, and the inference is drawn that "Jesus is the Christ." Out of this flowed the farther inferences that he was Supreme Judge,--and moreover, was Paschal Lamb, and Sacrifice, and High Priest, and Mediator; and since every one of these characters demanded a belief in his moral perfections, that doctrine also necessarily followed, and was received before our present gospels existed.

My friend therefore cannot abash me by the _argumentum ad verecundiam_; (which to me seems highly out of place in this connexion;) for the opinion, which is, as to this single point, held by him in common with the first Christians, was held by them on transcendental reasons which he totally discards; and all after generations have been confirmed in the doctrine by Authority, _i.e._ by the weight of texts or church decisions: both of which he also discards.