On the authenticity of the New Testament

[Timothy Dwight on the authenticity of the New Testament]

Upwards of seventy other persons, many of them of great and deserved reputation for wisdom and integrity, are to be numbered, as additional witnesses to those whom I have now mentioned: all flourishing within one hundred and forty years after the writing of St. Luke’s Gospel. Most of these witnesses yield their testimony by quotations and references, too express to be denied, or doubted; while others, in numerous instances of high character, spent much of life in furthering the progress of Christianity, and sealed their testimony with their blood.

--Timothy Dwight (May 14, 1752 – January 11, 1817, American academic and educator, Congregationalist minister, theologian, and author, and eighth president of Yale College, quoted in Young Man’s Journal: Genuineness and Authenticity of the New Testament, with John Clark DD, Peter B. Gleason and Company, 1838, p. 17)