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Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus — A Closer Reading

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In Category - Logic

Authors: Sherlock, Thomas, 1678-1761 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2004 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Jesus Christ -- Resurrection; Woolston, Thomas, 1670-1733. Sixth discourse on the miracles of our Saviour; Deism -- Controversial literature Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 32,495

Reading time 142 min

Text sections 3

This digital edition of Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus — A Closer Reading is described by source-level measurements including 32,495 words, 2 hr 22 min estimated reading time, and 3 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 27.9 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Jesus Christ -- Resurrection,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #5608

Thomas Sherlock's 1729 work frames a legal debate among barristers on the resurrection's evidence, countering Thomas Woolston's objections by examining witness credibility and the nature of proof for miraculous events.

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Jews had not been lost; for they would have given us a clear insight into this contrivance: but it is happy for us, that the very account given by the pretended witnesses of this fact, is sufficient to destroy the credit of it.

The resurrection was not a thing contrived for its own sake. No! it was undertaken to support great views, and for the sake of great consequences that were to attend it. It will be necessary therefore to lay before you those views, that you may be the better judge of this part of the contrivance, when you have the whole scene before you.

The Jews were a weak superstitious people, and, as is common among such people, gave great credit to some traditionary prophecies about their own country. They had, besides, some old books among them, which they esteemed to be writings of certain Prophets, who had formerly lived among them, and whose memory they had in great veneration. From such old books and traditions they formed many extravagant expectations; and among the rest one was, that some time or other a great victorious prince would rise among them, and subdue all their enemies, and make them lords of the world. In Augustus's time they were in a low state, reduced under the Roman yoke; and as they never wanted a deliverer more, so the eagerness of this hope, as it happens to weak minds, turned into a firm expectation that he would soon come. This proved a temptation to some bold, and to some cunning men, to personate the prince so much expected. And "nothing is more natural and common to promote rebellions, than to ground them on new prophecies, or new interpretations of old ones; prophecies being suited to the vulgar superstition, and operating with the force of religion." Accordingly, many such imposters rose, pretending to be the victorious prince expected; and they, and the people who followed them, perished in the folly of their attempt.

But Jesus, knowing that victories and triumphs are not things to be counterfeited; that the people were not to be delivered from the Roman yoke by sleight of hand; and having no hope of being able to cope with the Emperor of Rome in good earnest, took another and more successful method to carry on his design. He took upon him to be the prince foretold in the ancient Prophets; but then he insisted that the true sense of the prophecies had been mistaken; that they related not to the kingdoms of this world, but to the kingdom of heaven; that the Messias was not to be a conquering prince, but a suffering one; that he was not to come with horses of war, and chariots of war, but was to be meek and lowly, riding on an ass. By this means, he got the common and necessary foundation for a new revelation, which is to be built and founded on a precedent revelation.

To carry on this design, he made choice of twelve men of no fortunes or education, and of such understandings, as gave no jealousy that they would discover the plot. And, what is most wonderful, and shews their ability, while the master was preaching the kingdom of heaven, these poor men, not weaned from the prejudices of their country, expected every day that he would declare himself a king, and were quarreling who should be his first minister. This expectation had a good effect on the service; for it kept them constant to their master.

I must observe further, that the Jews were under strange apprehensions of supernatural powers: and as their own religion was founded on the belief of certain miracles said to be wrought by their lawgiver Moses; so were they ever running after wonders and miracles, and ready to take up with any stories of this kind. Now, as something extraordinary was necessary to support the pretensions of Jesus, he dextrously laid hold of this weakness of the people, and set up to be a wonder-worker. His disciples were well qualified to receive this impression: they saw, or thought they saw many strange things, and were able to spread the fame and report of them abroad.

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Thomas Sherlock's Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus (1729) opens not with theology but with a group of barristers debating Woolston's recent conviction for blasphemy. The setting—the Inns of Court—immediately signals that the argument will be conducted as a legal proceeding, not a sermon. One gentleman, sympathetic to Woolston, finds his arguments against miracles 'unanswerable,' prompting a colleague to challenge him on evidentiary grounds. This framing allows Sherlock to examine the resurrection as a question of testimony and legal proof, sidestepping doctrinal claims while engaging directly with Woolston's objections.

The Legal Frame and Its Limits

The work's conceit is a mock trial: the witnesses to the resurrection are to be examined under rules of evidence familiar to common lawyers. Sherlock's narrator insists the debate be 'confined merely to the nature of the evidence,' avoiding broader religious controversy. This procedural boundary is both a strength and a limitation. It permits a focused analysis of what constitutes credible testimony for an extraordinary event, but it also restricts the discussion to a narrow legal rationality. The reader must decide whether the resurrection can be adjudicated like a property dispute—the narrator explicitly compares it to determining 'a property of five shillings.' The legal frame thus shapes the argument, but it also raises the question of whether such a method can capture the theological weight of the event.

Evidence and the Course of Nature

A central tension in the excerpts is the relationship between empirical evidence and preconceived notions of natural law. Sherlock's advocate argues that a resurrection is 'an object of sense'—witnesses can see, hear, and touch a living person—and therefore admits of proof. He challenges the objection that miracles are impossible because contrary to nature, noting that 'every man frames to himself from his experience and observation, a notion of a course of nature.' The argument turns on the reliability of sensory testimony: if a man claims to have seen a stone roll uphill, one might doubt his veracity, but not the possibility of perceiving such an event. Sherlock thus shifts the debate from metaphysical impossibility to the credibility of witnesses, a move that grounds the discussion in practical jurisprudence.

The Witnesses and the Burden of Proof

Sherlock's method requires more evidence for miracles than for ordinary facts, but he insists that 'it is absurd to say that such cases admit no evidence.' The excerpts show him testing the witnesses' competence: can they distinguish a dead man from a living one? He argues that this is a capacity every person possesses, so the witnesses are not disqualified by the extraordinary nature of the event. The burden of proof, however, is heightened. The reader is left to weigh whether the legal standard Sherlock proposes—requiring 'more evidence'—is satisfied by the gospel accounts. The text does not resolve this; it presents the framework and leaves the verdict to the reader's judgment.

Sherlock's Trial is best read as a piece of forensic rhetoric rather than a devotional work. Its value lies in the clarity with which it poses the evidentiary problem of miracles, not in any final verdict. Readers interested in the history of apologetics or the intersection of law and religion will find a precise, if limited, argument that repays attention to its legal structure and its assumptions about testimony.

Years among such pages taught me that Sherlock’s barristers, weighing testimony of a resurrection, share a quiet kinship with those old magicians’ lives—both are records of men trusting what the senses cannot prove. That Lives of the Necromancers — A Closer Reading makes for a gentle companion, a shared skepticism worn like a familiar coat.