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cease to be David's Son, and by a resurrection to a spiritual life, be made the Son of God, before he could become the Christ, and be exalted to that high degree of celestial power, which is called being seated at the right hand of God, where he would be Lord, not only over David, but over all the generations of men, whether dead or living.

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the same purpose, after his resurrection, Luke assures us, he expounded the prophecies respecting himself, to the two disciples at Emmaus, and afterwards to the whole assembly of disciples at Jerusalem; to convince them, that it was necessary he should have suffered death and burial before he could enter into the glorious character of the Christ. Impressed with this conviction, Peter, on the memorable day of Pentecost, explains the same prophecies to the Jews in general; informs them of the actual resurrection from the dead of this promised Son of David, and that the miraculous gift of tongues, which they then witnessed, was the influence of that power to which God had, since his ascension into heaven, exalted him; and adds, "therefore let all the house of Is"rael know assuredly that God hath made "that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified,

"both Lord and Christ." Paul also, some time after, preaching at Antioch, interprets the predictions of the Messiah, contained in the book of Psalms, in the very same manner; and particularly refers to the resurrection, for that birth, whereby he was made the Son of God. "The promise," says the Apostle," which was made unto the Fathers, God "hath fulfilled the same unto us, their chil"dren, in that he hath raised up Jesus again, "as it is also written in the second Psalm, "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten "thee." And the author of the Epistle to the Romans, in the same spirit of interpretation, asserts that Jesus Christ "was made of "the seed of David according to the flesh;" that is, at his first birth, was the natural born Son of David, and "determined, or consti"tuted, the Son of God, with power, accord"ing to the spirit of holiness, by" his second birth," the resurrection from the dead."

But the falsehood of the pretended Angel respecting the reason of our Lord's being denominated the Son of God, is not the only inconsistency between this Pagan fable of the miraculous conception of Jesus Christ, and the subsequent narrative of both the histories written by Luke. It contains in it a contra

diction of much greater importance, which, if admitted to be true, would destroy the very fundamental article of the Christian Faith, as Luke himself informs us it was originally preached both by our Lord and his apostles; and would utterly overthrow every pretension of Jesus to be the Messiah predicted in the scriptures of the Old Testament. For the prophecies concerning the Messiah, in the books of Moses, assure us that he was to be the seed, that is, the natural born descendant of Abraham, through Isaac, Jacob, and Judah; to which subsequent predictions add, that he should also be the Son or seed of David; and that he was to be a prophet, raised up from amongst the Jewish people, like unto Moses. Under these prophecies, our Saviour claimed the title of the promised Messiah or Christ, in his conversations with his Apostles after his resurrection: and to the completion of these same prophecies in their Master's person, the Apostles themselves constantly appealed, in preaching his Gospel to their brethren the Jews. They assert,* that he was the seed of Abraham, promised and sent to bless all mankind; that he was the seed of

Acts iii. 25 and 26. Gal. iii. 16.

↑ Acta ii, 30-xiii. 23.-2 Tim. ii. 3.

David; the fruit of his loins; the* predicted Jewish prophet like unto Moses. It necessarily follows, therefore, either that our Lord Jesus was such a Jewish prophet as Moses, and the naturally descended Son of Abraham and David, or he was not the Christ, the Messiah promised in the Jewish prophecies; and all our faith in him, as such, is vain. The futile sophistry of school divines is well known, whereby they attempt to satisfy the preju dices of orthodox minds, respecting these prophetic descriptions of the Messiah, suggesting a partial resemblance between Moses and the miraculously conceived Son of Mary, in their common characters of mediators, and deliverers, and promulgers of God's will to Men; and supposing that nothing more is meant by his being the lineal descendant of Abraham and David, than his being, though in a preternatural manner, the offspring of a daughter of Abraham and David: but the express words of the sacred scriptures themselves, will by no means warrant these miserable subterfuges of bigotted superstition.

The words of Moses are, "God will raise "thee up from amongst thy brethren, a pro

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phet like unto me;" that is, will exalt a

Acts iii. 22.vii. 37.

common Jewish man like myself to the distinguished character of such a prophet as I

Now a God, or an Angel incarnate, though commissioned to every office that Moses was, is so far from being one of the Jewish people raised up to the prophetic character, that it is a being, infinitely, or transcendently superior to any man, degraded into the station of an human prophet: and even a mere Man, created without the intervention of an human Father, by the miraculous influence of God himself on the mother, is not one of the Jewish people like Moses, nor like any thing else that was ever heard or read of, except in the absurd, fabulous legends of pagan mythology, Neither will the derivation of Mary's genealogy from David and Abraham at all remove the obvious contradiction between this story of the miraculous conception of her son, and those scriptures which assert, that he was the seed of Abraham and the fruit of the lvins of David; for the female, from whatsoever family descended, is no more than the seedbed formed to mature the seed of the male; and therefore, in the genealogies of all nations, the children are accounted the seed or lineal descendants of the male line only, without any regard to the family, or even the

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