The first transmitters prove Scripture divine: prophets and apostles were not impostors seeking gain, unlike Muhammad

And so that we may bring forward here certain specimens of those arguments: that the Scripture which we hold as sacred is truly such, and divinely inspired, is proved from the condition of those who first handed it down and recommended it as divine. For if sacred Scripture is not true and divine, then the sacred writers, who profess that they wrote as God inspired them, and who testify that the things they write were either seen by them or divinely revealed to them, must have been impostors whose design was to deceive men and mock the world.

But this suspicion cannot fall on the Prophets and Apostles, by whose work Scripture has been consigned to us. For those who mean to deceive aim at that either from desire of gain, or for the sake of some pleasure, or in hope of some glory and of obtaining pleasure. Thus those who were authors of some superstition certainly won wealth and dignities for themselves by their inventions — as, for example, Muhammad, who by deceiving the world with his fables arrogated the highest empire to himself and his own. But such a thing cannot be affixed to the Prophets and Apostles except very shamelessly and against every appearance of truth.

For if the matter is estimated by the sense of men, nearly all of them were most miserable, and of a cast-down and despised condition; nor by their preaching did they produce for themselves any riches in the world, or any empire and glory among men. On the contrary, that doctrine which they asserted by word and writings stirred up against them the hatred of their fellow-citizens and of outsiders, and made them liable to infinite reproaches and insults; nay, it cast them into certain danger of life, so that most of them sealed their writings with their own blood.