the more reasonable when we remark that St. Matthew, who records the miracle, takes no account of this circumstance; and that St. Mark, who states it, states also that Christ in his hunger applied to the tree " if haply he might find any thing thereon," which implies expectation. But our Jew hath suggested a better method of performing the miracle, by commanding fruit from a withered tree instead of blasting a living one: "which," says he, "if Jesus had done, it would have been such an instance of his power as to have rendered the proof of the miracle indisputable." Here let him stand to his confession, and I take him at his word: I agree with him in owning that the miracle as he states it would have been indisputable, had Christ given life and fruit to a withered tree; and I demand of him to agree with me, that the miracle was indisputable when the same Christ gave breath and life to dead Lazarus. But alas! I can hardly expect that the raising a dead tree to life would have been thus successful, though even infidelity asserts it, when the miracle of restoring a dead man to life hath not silenced his cavils, but left him to quibble about hogs and figs, and even in the face of his own confession to arraign the Saviour of the world as " unjust and irrational" through the channel of a Christian press; neither am I bound to admit that his correction of the miracle would in any respect have amended it; for as an instance of Christ's miraculous power, I can see no greater energy in the act of enlivening a dead tree than in destroying a living one by the single word of his command. I must yet ask patience of the reader, whilst I attend upon this objector to another cavil started against this miracle of the fig tree in the account of 12 which he says there is a contradiction of dates between St. Matthew and St. Mark, for that in the former it appears " Christ first cast the buyers and sellers out of the temple, and on the morrow cursed the fig tree; whereas, according to St. Mark, it was transacted before the driving them out of the temple; and such a manifest contradiction must greatly affect the credibility of the history." Whether or not a day's disagreement in the dates would so "greatly affect the credibility of the history," we are not called upon to argue, because it will be found that no such contradiction exists. St. Mark agrees with St. Matthew in saying that "Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple," and on the morrow cursed the fig tree; he then adds that he returned to Jerusalem and drove the buyers and sellers out of the temple. Again, the next morning, he and his disciples passed by the fig tree and saw it dried up from the roots. This is told in detail. St. Matthew agrees with St. Mark in saying Jesus went into the temple the day before he destroyed the fig tree, but he does not break the narrative into detail as St. Mark does: for as he relates the whole miracle of the fig tree at once, comprising the events of two days in one account, so doth he give the whole of what passed in the temple at once also. Both Evangelists agree in making Christ's entrance into the temple antecedent to his miracle ; but St. Matthew, with more brevity, puts the whole of each incident into one account: St. Mark more circumstantially details every particular. And this is the mighty contradiction which David Levi hath discovered in the sacred historians, upon which he exultingly pronounces, that "he is confident there are a number of others as glaring as this; but which he has not, at present, either time or inclination to point out." These menaces I shall expect he will make good, for when his time serves to point them out, I dare believe his inclination will not stand in the way. In the meantime, let it be remembered, that David Levi stands pledged as the author of an unsupported charge against the veracity of the Evangelists, and let every faithful Christian to whom those holy records are dear, but most of all the proper guardians of our Church, be prepared to meet their opponent and his charge. But our caviller hath not yet done with the Evangelists, for he asserts that "they are not only contradictory to each other, but are inconsistent with themselves; for what can be more so than Matthew i. 18, with Matthew xiii. 55. Now mark the contradiction! "The birth of Jesus was on this wise; when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost," chap. i. 18. The other text is found in chap. xiii. 55: " is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother Mary? and his brethren James and Joses and Simon and Judas?" Need any child be told, that in the first text Saint Matthew speaks, and in the second the caviling Jews? who then can wonder if they disagree? As well we might expect agreement between truth and falsehood, between the Evangelist and David Levi, as between two passages of such opposite characters. Is this the man who is to confute the holy scriptures? Weak champion of an unworthy cause! What he means by an inconsistency between Luke i. 34, 35, and Luke xiv. 22, I cannot understand, and conclude there must be an error of the press, of which I think no author can have less reason to complain than David Levi. These two unprosperous attacks being the whole of what he attempts upon the inconsistency of the sacred historians with themselves, I shall no longer detain my readers than whilst I notice one more cavil, which this author points against the divine mission of Christ, as compared with that of Moses, viz. "That God speaking with Moses face to face in the presence of six hundred thousand men, besides women and children, as mentioned in Exod. xix. 9, was such an essential proof of the divine mission of Moses, as is wanting on the part of Jesus:" and therefore he concludes, that taking the miracles of Moses and this colloquy with the Supreme Being together, the evidences for him are much stronger than for Christ. A man, who does not instantly discern the futility of this argument, must forget all the several incidents in the the history of Christ, where the voice of God audibly testifies to his divine mission: for instance, Matt. iii. 16, 17: "And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water, and lo! the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him; and lo! a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." The same is repeated by Mark, i. 10, 11; again by Luke, iii. 21, 22; again by John i. 32, 33, 34. If these supernatural signs and declarations do not evince the superiority of Christ's mission above that of Moses; if Christ, to whom angels ministered, when the devil in despair departed from him, Christ, who was transfigured before his disciples, "and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light, and behold! there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him: Christ at whose death the vail of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and the graves were opened, and many bodies of saints, which slept, arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many:" in conclusion, if Christ, whose resurrection was declared by angels, seen and acknowledged by many witnesses, and whose ascension into heaven crowned and completed the irrefragable evidence of his divine mission; if Christ, whose prophecies of his own death and resurrection, of the destruction of Jerusalem and the subsequent dispersion of the Jews, have been and are now so fully verified, cannot, as our caviller asserts, meet the comparison with Moses, then is the Redeemer of lost mankind a less sublime and important character than the legislator of the Jews. I have now attempted in the first place to discover how far the world was illuminated by right reason before the revelation of Christ took place; for had men's belief been such, and their practice also such as Christianity teaches, the world had not stood in need of a Redeemer. The result of this inquiry was, that certain persons have expressed themselves well and justly upon the subject of God and religion in times antecedent to the Christian era, and in countries where idolatry was the established worship. That the nation of the Jews was a peculiar nation, and preserved the worship of the true and only God, revealed in very early time to their fathers, but that this worship, from various circumstances and events, in which they themselves were highly criminal, had not been propagated beyond the limits of a small tract, and that the temple of Jerusalem |