wherein to call upon his name; the groves and altars of the idols occupied all the reft; who was to restore his worship? Who was to redeem mankind from almost total ignorance and corruption? Where was the light, that was to lighten the Gentiles? Reafon could do no more; it could only argue for the probability of a future ftate of rewards and punishments, but demonstration was required; an evidence, that might remove all doubts, and this was not in the power of man to furnish: Some Being therefore must appear of more than human talents to inftruct mankind, of more than human authority to reform them: The world was loft, unless it fhould pleafe God to interpofe, for the work was above human hands, and nothing but the power, which created the world, could fave the world.

Let any man caft his ideas back to this period, and afk his reafon, if it was not natural to fuppofe, that the Almighty Being, to whom this general ruin and diforder muft be vifible, would in mercy to his creatures fend fome help amongst them; unless it had been his purpose to abandon them to deftruction, we may prefume to say he furely would: Is it then with man to prescribe in what particular mode and form that redemption should come? Certainly it is not with man, but with God only; he, who grants

the

the vouchfafement, will direct the means: Be these what they may, they must be præternatural and miraculous, because we have agreed that it is beyond the reach of man by any natural powers of his own to accomplish: A fpecial inspiration then is requifite; fome revelation it fhould feem, we know not what, we know not how, nor where, nor whence, except that it muft come from God himself: What if he fends a Being upon earth to tell us his immediate will, to teach us how to please him and to convince us of the reality of a future ftate? That Being then must come down from him, he must have powers miraculous, he must have qualities divine and perfect, he must return on earth from the grave, and perfonally fhew us that he has furvived it, and is corporeally living after death: Will this be evidence demonftrative? Who can withstand it? He must be of all men most obftinately bent upon his own deftruction, who should attempt to hold out against it; he must prefer darkness to light, falfehood to truth, mifery to happiness, hell to heaven, who would not thankfully embrace fo great falvation.

Let us now apply what has been faid to the appearance of that perfon, whom the Chriftian church believes to have been the true Meffias of God, and let us examine the evidences, upon which

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which we affert the divinity of his miffion and the completion of it's purposes.

In what form and after what manner was he fent amongst us? was it by natural or præternatural means? if his first appearance is ufhered in by a miracle, will it not be an evidence in favour of God's special revelation? If he is prefented to the world in fome mode fuperior to and differing from the ordinary course of nature, fuch an introduction must attract to his perfon and character a more than ordinary attention: If a miraculous and myfterious Being appears upon earth, fo compounded of divine and human nature as to furpass our comprehenfion of his immediate effence, and at the fame time fo levelled to our earthly ideas, as to be visibly born of a human mother, not impregnated after the manner of the flesh, but by the immediate Spirit of God, in other words the son of a pure virgin, shall we make the mysterious incarnation of fuch a præternatural being a reason for our disbelief in that revelation, which without a miracle we had not given credit to? We are told that the birth of Chrift was in this wife; the fact refts upon the authority of the evangelifts who defcribe it: The Unitarians, who profefs Chriftianity with this exception, may difpute the teftimony of the facred writers in this par

ticular

ticular, and the Jews may deny their account in toto, but ftill if Chrift himself performed miracles, which the Jews do not deny, and if he rose from the dead after his crucifixion, which the Unitarians admit, I do not fee how either should be staggered by the miracle of his birth: for of the Jews I may demand, whether it were not a thing as credible for God to have wrought a miracle at the birth of Mofes for inftance, as that he fhould afterwards empower that prophet to perform, not one only, but many miracles? To the Unitarians I would candidly fubmit, if it be not as easy to believe the incarnation of Chrift as his refurrection, the authorities for each being the fame? Let the authorities therefore be the teft!

I am well aware that the filence of two of the evangelifts is stated by the Unitarians amongst other objections against the account, and the non-accordance of the genealogies given by Saint Matthew and Saint Luke is urged against the Chriftian church by the author of Lingua Sacra, in a pamphlet lately published, in the following words-The Evangelift Saint Matthew in the first chapter of his gospel gives us the genealogy of Chrift, and Luke in the third chapter of his gofpel does the fame; but with fuch difference, that an unprejudiced perfon would hardly think

they belonged to one and the fame person ; for the latter not only differs from the former in almost the whole genealogy from Jofeph to David, but has alfo added a few more generations, and likewife made Fefus to defcend from Nathan the son of David infiead of Solomon.—(Levi's Letter to Dr. Priestley, p. 81.)

The learned Jew is founded in his observation upon the non-accordance of these pedigrees, but not in applying that to Christ, which relates only to Jofeph. Saint Matthew gives the genealogy of Joseph, whom he denominates the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jefus, who is called Christ. C. 1. v. 16. Saint Luke with equal precifion fays, that Jefus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being, as was fuppofed, the fon of Jofeph. Now when it is thus clear that both thefe genealogies apply to Jofeph, and both these evangelists expressly affert that Jesus was born of an immaculate virgin, I do not think it a fair ftatement to call it the genealogy of Chrift for the purpose of difcrediting the veracity of thefe evangelifts in points of faith or doctrine, merely because they differ in a family catalogue of the generations of Joseph, one of which is carried up to Adam, and the other brought down from Abraham. The gospel hiftorians, as I understand them, profefs feverally

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