in their discourses to those whom they converted to Christianity, the works and sayings of Christ, before Luke had penned his Gospel. It is remarkable that learned men have, as it were, agreed to misinterpret this paragraph greatly to the disadvantage of their cause, as they suppose us, in the second verse, to mean Luke himself, whereas it means, as in the preceding verse, the whole body of believers of whom Luke was one, in contradistinction to eμo, me, in the next verse. Hence it was erroneously concluded, that this Evangelist had not been himself a spectator of the transactions which he records, having only received an account of them from others. This is an important concession, of which the enemies of Christianity readily availed themselves.

The author of the New Trial of the Witnesses asserts, on the authority of a passage from Locke, that Luke's testimony is not worthy of credit, because his record is only a copy of another record, having not been himself an eye-witness of its contents. This assertion, however, is utterly groundless: for the Evangelist positively declares that he had attended with close inspection, the things related by him; and he confirms this narrative by the authority of those who, like himself, were eye-witnesses of the word, and who delivered the same to their converts, in the number of whom he was himself a hearer. The style and manner of Luke's Go❤ spel are in unison with his assertion; many parts bearing evident marks that he had been present on the occasion. Nor could he, without the consciousness of his competence in this respect, call upon Theophilus to put full reliance on the truth of his narrative, to the rejec tion of those, who, because they had not been eye-witnesses of what they published, were not worthy of credit.

The "many" to whom the Evangelist alludes, were, as we shall presently see, "wolves in sheep's clothing," enemies of the gospel in the garb of friendship. They taught that Jesus was not the son of Joseph; and, im

puting to him a supernatural birth, sent him to be educated in Egypt, with no other end than to be able to account for his miracles on the principles of magic. It is not to be supposed that Luke, having in view such deceivers as these, would not take proper means to set aside their falsehoods; and we find that he has supplied facts calculated to do this in the most effectual manner. For he states the time from which the narrative is to commence from the beginning, from the time in which Jesus began to preach, and in which the eye-witnesses and ministers of the word were called to be his disciples, see John xv. 27—from the first, avalev, literally from above, that is, from the time when he was announced as the Son of God by a voice from heaven. This reference to men who pretended to give a more early account of their divine master, is still more pointedly made in the Acts, a book known to have been written by this Evangelist. "It is fit, therefore, that of those who accompanied us during the whole time in which the Lord Jesus sojourned with us, having begun with the baptism of John, and continued so to do till the day in which he was taken up from us; one of these should with us become a witness of his resurrection." Two assertions are here implied, namely, that Jesus began with the baptism of John; that he appeared as the Messiah then, and not till then; that no intimation had been given of him, till he was so announced at his baptism. The second assertion is, that none of the twelve Apostles bore any testimony to Jesus, or gave any information of him, before his baptism. This assurance is given to us by Luke himself: and hence we have his authority for saying that the first two chapters now found in his Gospel, never came from his hands, but are a forgery ascribed to him in after days.

Mark is thought to have written his Gospel at Rome, and under the inspection of Peter. His narrative, therefore, has the sanction of that Apostle, and their

omission of the miraculous birth imputed to Jesus stamps upon it the character of falsehood. The Christians at Rome had no authentic history of Christ, but that which was composed for them by this Evangelist: nor is it to be supposed that he would have left them ignorant or uncertain, on so important a subject as the supernatural birth of Jesus, if the story were really true. It is in vain to plead that Mark has passed over in silence many other things in the ministry of his divine Master. The miracles and sayings which he has recorded, are sufficient to prove his delegation from God. The miracles omitted by him, could not prove more than this. The doctrine that Christ was born in a supernatural manner, was intended to prove that he is a supernatural being, and in as much as Mark is silent in regard to this proof, it is obvious that neither the proof itself, nor the object of it, was in the opinion of this honest man founded in truth.

It is a remarkable fact, that, as we shall presently see, the miraculous birth of Jesus was taught by certain impostors in Rome, before Mark published his Gospel. This Evangelist was therefore called upon by his peculiar situation, not only not to give his sanction to this story, but to set it aside as a fiction unworthy of credit. His Gospel, rendered verbatim from the original, begins thus: "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God (as it is written in the prophets, Behold I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way in thy presence) was a voice crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, and make his paths straight."

According to the tale of our Lord's miraculous birth, he was pointed out as "King of the Jews" at the very time in which he was born. If this were true, the Magi from the East were the first who made him manifest. But Mark says expressly, that the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ was a voice in the wilderness. In

other words, he says that John the Baptist was the person in whom originated the first information respecting Jesus as the Saviour of mankind, and this precisely agrees with the testimony of Peter, that the Gospel began in Galilee after the baptism of John.

But to return to Luke. Conformably to his intention of beginning his Gospel with the voice from heaven, he states, "Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip being tetrarch of Iturea, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiphas being the highpriests, the word of God came unto John in the wilderness." Had Luke given an account of the birth of our divine master, he would have dated that period: whereas he hints it to be his purpose to begin with the public appearance of Jesus as the Son of God; and this he defines with a precision unparalleled in the history of past events. The cause of this precision is unknown to modern readers. The first teachers of his miraculous birth represented Jesus as being much older than he really was, when he appeared as the messenger of heaven. They wished it to be believed that he had been brought up in Egypt, in order to account for his miracles by his having learned the arts of magic in that country. This calumny has been handed down by the Jews. See Lard. vii. 149. According to the Talmudists, he went to Egypt in the days of King Jannæus; that is, eighty years before the Christian era. The author of the Har mony ascribed to Tatian, makes his stay in Egypt seven years; and as he fled into that country to avoid the anger of Herod, he must have been born some years before the death of that tyrant. This appears from the statement inserted in Matthew.

These and many other representations equally false induced the Evangelist Luke to cut up the story of his miraculous birth by the root, by enabling every man

throughout the whole Roman Empire to satisfy himself that the Saviour was not born till at least two years after the death of Herod the Great. For he says that he appeared in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, and was then near thirty years old. The fifteenth of Tiberius was the thirty-second of Philip, who succeeded Herod in the government of Iturea and Trachonitis. This date, which was known to every man of information in Judea, is made known to us by Josephus, A. J. 18. 5, 6. Luke asserts that Philip was tetrarch of Iturea and Trichonitis, when the word of God came to John; and the year of his government is defined by connecting the same event with the fifteenth year of Tiberius on one hand, and the age of Jesus on the other. Thus, with the utmost simplicity and precision, he represents the birth of Christ as having taken place two years after the commencement of the reign of Philip, or two years after the death of Herod his father. This is not all. The language of Luke carries a pointed reference to the misrepresentation of the impostors, "Jesus himself was beginning to be about thirty years old." In English the word auros, himself, has no meaning, and its reference to the forgers alone renders it proper and significant. Thus, as if he had said, "The pretended historians of Jesus, who teach his miraculous birth, represent him as an old man at this time, but this was a Jesus of their own fiction; Jesus himself, the real and true Jesus, was but thirty years old." I beg to assure my readers that I do not refine when I thus explain the term autos: for it has no other meaning, but what is here ascribed to it, namely, emphasis, or opposition to some other object express. ed or implied in the context. This pronoun occurs frequently in every writer; and this import must be assigned to it, or it has no sense or propriety at all.

The clause av s svoμicero being understood as an insinuation that Jesus, though supposed to be the son of Joseph, was not so in reality, is a gross and shameful per