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their eafe, to traverse feas and kingdoms without reft and without weariness, to commit themselves to extreme dangers, to undertake inceffant toils, to undergo grievous fufferings, and all this, folely in confequence, and in fupport, of their belief of facts, which, if true, establish the truth of the religion, which, if falfe, they must have known to be fo.

PART

PART III.

A BRIEF CONSIDERATION OF SOME

POPULAR OBJECTIONS..

I.

CHAP. fur

The Difcrepancies between the feveral,
Gofpels.

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KNOW not a more rash or unphilofophical conduct of the understanding, than to reject the fubftance of a ftory, by reafon of fome diverfity in the circumftances with which it is related. The ufual character of human teftimony is fubftantial truth under circumftantial variety. This is what the daily experience of courts of juftice teaches. When accounts of a tranfaction come fromthe mouths of different witneffes, it is fel

VOL. II.

U

dom

dom that it is not poffible to pick out appärent or real inconfiftencies between them. Thefe inconfiftencies are ftudiously displayed by an adverse pleader, but oftentimes with little impreffion upon the minds of the judges. On the contrary, a close and minute agreement induces the fufpicion of confederacy and fraud. When written histories touch upon the fame fcenes of action, the comparison almost always affords ground for a like reflection. Numerous, and fometimes important, variations present themfelves; not feldom alfo, abfolute and final contradictions; yet neither one nor the other are deemed fufficient to shake the credibility of the main fact. The embaffy of the Jews to deprecate the execution of Claudian's order to place his ftatue in their temple, Philo places in harveft, Jofephus in feed-time; both contemporary writers. No reader is led by this inconfiftency to doubt, whether fuch aft embaffy was fent, or whether fuch an order was given. Our own hiftory supplies examples of the fame kind. In the account of the Marquis of Argyle's death in the reign

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of Charles the Second, we have a very rés markable contradiction. Lord Clarendon relates that he was condemned to be hanged, which was performed the fame day on the contrary, Burtlet, Woodrow, Heath, Echard, concur in ftating that he was beheaded; and that he was condeinned upon the Saturday, and executed tipon the Monday*. Was any reader of English hiftory ever fceptic enough to ralfe from hence a queftion; whether the Marquis of Argyle was executed, of hot? Yet this ought to be left in uncertainty, according to the principles upon which the Christian history has fometimes been attacked. Dr. Middleton contended, that the different hours of the day affigned to the crucifixion of Chrift, by John and by the other evangelifts, did not admit of the reconcilement which learned men had proposed; and then concludes the difcuffion with this hard temark : “ We must be forced, with feveral of the critics, to leave the difficulty juft as We found it, chargeable with all the confe

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quences of manifeft inconfiftency But what are these confequences? By no means the difcrediting of the hiftory as to the prin cipal fact, by a repugnancy (even supposing that repugnancy not to be refolvable into different modes of computation) in the time of the day in which it is faid to have taken bab place.

i

A great deal of the difcrepancy, obfervable in the Gospels, arifes from omiffion; from a fact or a paffage of Chrift's life being noticed by one writer, which is unnoticed by another. Now omiffion is at all times a very uncertain ground of objection. We perceive it, not only in the comparison of different writers, but even in the fame writer, when compared with himfelf. There are a great many particulars, and fome of them of importance, mentioned by Jofephus in his Antiquities, which, as we should have fupposed, ought to have been put down by him

* Middleton's Reflections answered by Benson, Hift. Chrif. vol. iii. p. 50.

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