assigned to Agrippa; and though, in the preceding parts of his histories, he has repeatedly given us accurate geographical definitions of the several provinces of Palestine and the adjacent countries, no such province or ethnarchy, as Decapolis, is taken notice of by Josephus, nor does he once mention the name, before Vespasian was governor of Syria, and general against the rebellious Jews, in the latter end of Nero's reign, and then only says of it, that "Scythopolis was "the largest city of the Decapolis;" and, though he afterwards, (in his life) several times, mentions the cities intended by the name Decapolis, he never again uses that aggregate term, of the singular number; but calls them the ten cities of Syria: and since he speaks of the insurrection of the Jewish against the Syrian inhabitants of some of those cities, it is natural to conclude that, from some particular motives, the Romans had been induced to annex ten Jewish cities to the government of Syria, and to place in them colonies of Syrians, to whom the Hebrew inhabitants could not be reconciled; and as the first disturbances amongst the Jews began in that part of Palestine

*Bell. 1. iii. c. 16,

which formed the kingdom of Agrippa, it is most probable, that those rebellious insurrections gave rise to the establishment of such a line of military stations, peculiarly subject to the authority of the Proconsul of Syria, and that before that period of Nero's reign, the very name Decapolis did not exist. At least, şince Pliny tells us,* that the territory which intervened between those ten cities, and which surrounded each of them, was not subject to the same government as the cities themselves, but to the adjoining tetrarchies, and Jose phus informs us, that all those ten cities apарpertained to the government of Syria, it is evident that the Decapolis was not any distinct country or continued district, as the pretended Matthew and Mark represent it, but merely the general appellation of ten detached, insulated cities, lying all, except Scythopolis, beyond, or east of, the river Jordan, which in later times, for some military convenience to the Romans, were taken from the jurisdiction of the original tetrarchies, (most of them probably long after the time allotted for the writing these Gospels) and made subject to Syria. So that to talk of any person's going to or coming from the Decapolis,

* Nat. Hist. l. v. c. 18.

without specifying which of the ten cities is meant, is to use a language devoid of meaning and perfectly unintelligible: and to speak of it as a province, like Galilee or Trachonitis, and as being situated north-west of the Sea of Galilee, is to betray an ignorance of the geography of Palestine too gross to be attributed to any native of that country; and shews that the authors were not primitive disciples of Jesus Christ, but writers of a much later date, who, being personally unacquainted with the country, adopted a term they had heard applied to it, whose signification they did not understand.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW,

CONTINUED.

SECTION I.

HE fifth and two following chapters con

THE

tain what is commonly called, our Lord's sermon upon the mount, a desultory, unconnected harangue, composed of many passages, taken, almost verbatim, from the discourses which Luke has related to us, as held upon many different occasions, with additions either deduced from the writings of the Old Testament, or according with the author's own ideas of Christianity. Concerning the first circumstance, as well as all the other parts of this Gospel, which are expressed exactly, or very nearly, in the words of Luke, I have only to observe, that either Luke must have copied them from this book, or this writer must have adopted them from Luke; but as Luke in both his histories has shewn himself to be a good and elegant writer of the Greek language,

whilst this writer's language, wherever it does not verbally correspond with Luke, is bad, abounding with barbarous idioms, no impartial person can doubt but that it was written after Luke's; and that the bad writer borrowed from the good one, the only flowers which adorn his work, and not the good from the bad.

That such a discourse as this was delivered by our Saviour, at such a time and in such a place, is in the highest degree improbable; for being addressed particularly to his disciples, if it was delivered at all, it must have been intended as a lesson of instruction in Christian ethics, to them in general, and especially to his Apostles, who were to teach the same doctrines to the world: it is but reasonable, therefore, to suppose that so full and ample a moral lecture would have been postponed, at least, till all those who were to be his Apostles, were called, to be his disciples, and actually appointed to their office. Accordingly, Luke informs us this really was the case; and that the first moral lesson given to his disciples particularly, but in the audience of a great multitude of people, was delivered after he had chosen the twelve Apostles. That instructive discourse is recorded by Luke, c. vi. v. 20, &c.