pulchre; that the women were present, and saw how and where it was laid; and went and prepared spices and ointments to embalm it with, as soon as the sabbath was ended. This writer, on the contrary, informs us, that Joseph and Nicodemus together embalmed the body with an hundred pound weight of myrrh and aloes, and other spices, "as the manner of the Jews is to bury ;" and then laid it in the sepulchre. Luke assures us, that in the evening after our Lord's resur rection, that is, in the beginning of the second day of the week, he appeared to all the ele ven Apostles and other disciples, who were assembled together with them; and, from that time to his ascension,, was frequently seen by them at Jerusalem; that he then explained to them, the meaning of the prophecies concerning himself; instructed them in the nature and purport of the Gospel; and bid them tarry at Jerusalem till the day of Pentecost, when they were to receive the Holy Ghost, or holy inspiration: that they did so, a and never returned again, to dwell in their own country, Galilee. The pretended John, in contradiction to all this, tells us, that the evening on which the disciples saw our Saviour, was the first day of the week, which shews that he was no Jew, but one

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who reckoned his time like the Greeks and Romans: that all the eleven Apostles were not present; for that Thomas was not with them, and did not see him till eight days after; that, instead of telling them to wait till Pentecost for the gift of the holy inspiration, he then "breathed on them, and said, receive ye the Holy Ghost;" and at the same time, (O impious falsehood!) gave them power to remit or to retain any person's sins; that, after this, instead of continuing at Jerusalem, they all went back to Galilee; that our Lord there appeared to them for the third time after his resurrection, at the Sea of Tiberias, to reclaim them, by a second wonderful draught of fishes, from their old occupation to which they had returned; and that, after ordering Peter, if he loved him more than the fishes he had caught, to feed his lambs and his sheep, he left them all in Galilee. Were such irreconcilable, contradictory evidence as this to be brought to support any cause whatever in our own courts of justice, what would be the sentiments of every impartial, honest jury-man, concerning it?

IV. IN prosecution of the plan of inquiry laid down and pursued with the other three Evangelical histories, our next step is

to observe the miracles and extraordinary acts attributed to our Saviour, which are peculiar to this writer; and then the prophecies recorded by him.

The first miracle he has related, and which he calls the beginning of the miracles of Jesus, is the changing the water into wine at a marriage feast, when the inviter's stock of wine grew low; though the story itself informs us, that the guests had already drunk so well, that the master of the feast judged it more probable, that if any more wine had been brought them, it would have been of an inferior quality to what they had been drinking; but this miraculous wine was of so superior and excellent a flavour, that it must necessarily re-excite even the sated appetite, and tempt them to continue their intempe rance with a fresh relish. That this writer, and many another orthodox preacher of what is called Christianity, had he been endowed with sufficient power, would have performed, and gladly partaken of, the intemperate joys of so wonderfully seasonable a transmutation, I can easily suppose; and think it not improbable that he would also have exerted his supernatural ability to the enriching himself and his poor disciples, by transmuting the cheap

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and baser metals into gold, and to the enjoy ment of many other instances of sensual indulgence, equally laudable and equally Chris-. tian as the intemperate use of strong liquor; but whosoever rightly apprehends the character and doctrine of the holy Mediator of the New Covenant, and has observed how utterly incompatible every degree of sensual excess is with the Gospel precepts of sobriety, temperance, moderation, and the subjection of our bodily appetites to reason and religious duty, will find such a miracle as this incredible, though it had been recorded in all the four histories; and coming in so very ex, ceptionable a form, upon the single, unsupported testimony of so very exceptionable an historian, it is altogether as unworthy of belief as the fabulous Roman Catholic legend of St. Nicholas's Chickens, of later times. To Luke's credit, he is so far from giving it the least confirmation, that though he informs us our Lord, from motives of compassion for a large multitude who had followed him to such a distance from their own homes, and staid to hear him so late, that they could not otherwise have been provided with necessary sustenance, miraculously fed five thousand persons with only five loaves and

two fishes; yet he does not tell us of his changing so much as one firkin of water into wine on that charitable occasion, though, here, he is said to transmute eighteen firkins, to prolong the festivity of those who, by their own confession, had already drank very abundantly.

The second miracle recorded by this writer is the healing the nobleman's son at Capernaum, without seeing him, in the fourth chapter: a miracle much more becoming the character of Jesus than the foregoing. It appears, however, to be an imitation of the healing the centurion's servant of the same city, related by Luke; though many of the principal circumstances are so altered, that it cannot pass for the same; and it is highly improbable, that two different cases, so similar to each other, should occur at the same place, within so short a space of time.

In the fifth chapter, our author relates the miraculous cure of a poor, friendless, impotent man. So far all is credible. But unfortunately he tells us, this man had been long waiting to obtain his cure from the miraculous efficacy of the Pool of Bethesda, whose waters, being disturbed at certain seasons, by an Angel, who descended for that purpose,