the Rev. W. Turner , Jun. , MA., Lives of the eminent Unitarians

[364] character and reputation as a scholar and a divine, were almost exclusively addressed to his congregation and his pupils, The only piece of his that we have seen in print, is a Latin inaugural Dissertation, ‘De Religionis Christianae Evidentia,’ which he published and defended in the usual forms of academical disputation, when he took his degree of Doctor in Divinity, in the College at Edinburgh, May 27, 1743. In this dissertation he ably refutes the notion strongly insisted on by many sceptical writers, and somewhat incautiously admitted even by Mr. Locke, ‘that the probability of facts depending on human testimony must gradually lessen in proportion to the distance of the time when they happened, and at last become entirely evanescent.’ With respect to traditional evidence, properly so called, it may be admitted that this is true; namely, when our knowledge of the fact attested is derived from the oral testimony of a single line of dependent witnesses; but it is not true of evidence arising from general notoriety; where the fact attested was seen by a number of original witnesses, each of whom communicates his information to many others, who, in their turn, diffuse it through a variety of channels; because, in this case it is probable that the number of witnesses may increase in the same, or even in a greater proportion than the credibility of each individual witness diminishes. Still less can it be admitted in the case of written testimony; where, if the original document no longer exists, copies taken from it may have been multiplied indefinitely, and versions made of it into a great variety of languagesn;