The Trial Of The Witnesses Of The Resurrection Of Jesus

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"Thomas Sherlock (1678-1761), Bishop of Bangor and formerly Master of Catherine Hall, Cambridge…couching his argument in the dramatic form of courtroom scene, wrote 'The Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection (1729), a work of such enduring popularity that it continued in reprint for more than a hundred years. In the mock trial, the counsel 'representing' Woolston acts as prosecutor, and the counsel for the apostles as the defense. Two major charges are made against the apostles: the resurrection is a fraud, and the testimony in support of the resurrection is unreliable. The charges are answered, and after the summary of the issues by the judge, the jury renders the verdict: Not guilty!" -William Baird, History of New Testament Research: From Deism to Tübingen, 1992 Bishop Thomas Sherlock (1678-1761) was an English divine who served as a Church of England bishop for 33 years. He is also noted in church history as an important contributor to Christian apologetics. In 1714 he became master of his old college at Cambridge and vice-chancellor of the university, whose privileges he defended against Richard Bentley. In 1715, he was appointed dean of Chichester. He took a prominent part in the Bangorian controversy against Benjamin Hoadly, whom he succeeded as bishop of Bangor in 1728; he was afterwards translated to Salisbury in 1734, and to London in 1748; he was afterwards translated to Salisbury in 1734, and to London in 1748. He published against Anthony Collins's deistic Grounds of the Christian Religion a volume of sermons entitled The Use and Interest of Prophecy in the Several Ages of the World (1725); and in reply to Thomas Woolston's Discourses on the Miracles he wrote a volume entitled The Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (1729), which soon ran through fourteen editions.

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The Gentleman's observation, that the general belief of the resurrection creates a presumption that it stands upon good evidence, and therefore people look no farther, but follow their fathers, as their fathers did their grandfathers did before them, is in great measure true, but it is a truth nothing to his purpose. -from The Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus One of the most famous-and least read-works of Christian apologetics, this is Anglican bishop Thomas Sherlock's classic 1729 rebuttal to Deist Thomas Woolston's skeptical Discourses of the Miracles of Jesus Christ (1728-1729). Within the framework of a courtroom proceeding in which the Apostles are on trial for faking the Resurrection, Sherlock pits Woolston's own arguments against his own powerful defense of the "accused." Applying the logic and reason of the law to the Bible, this is a provocative and original interpretation of the story of Jesus' life and death. British theologian THOMAS SHERLOCK (1678-1761) was educated at Eton and Cambridge and served as a Church of England bishop for 33 years.