cryeth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord make his paths straight," are in the present tense, and, consequenly, not predictive. It is one of those rhetorical figures which the Old Testament authors frequently used. That it is merely metaphorical may be seen at the 6th verse, "And the voice said cry, and he said what shall I cry? All flesh is grass." This is evidently nothing but a figure, for flesh is not grass, otherwise than as a figure or metaphor, where one thing is put for another. Besides which the whole passage is too general and declamatory to be applied, exclusively, to any particular person or purpose.

"I pass on to the eleventh chapter.

"In this chapter Mark speaks of Christ riding into Jerusalem upon a colt, but he does not make it the accomplishment of a prophesy as Matthew has done, for he says nothing about a prophesy. Instead of which he goes on to the other tack, and in order to add new honours to the ass, he makes it to be a miracle; for he says, ver. 2, it was a colt whereon man never sat," signifying thereby, that as the ass had not been broken, he consequently was inspired into good manners, for we do not hear that he kicked Jesus Christ off. There is not a word about his kicking in all the four Evan

gelists.

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"I pass on from these feats of horsemanship, performed upon a jack-ass, to the 15th chapter.

"At the 24th verse of this chapter, Mark speaks of parting Christ's garments and casting lots upon them, but he applies no prophesy to it, as Matthew does. He rather speaks of it as a thing then in practice with executioners as it is at this day.

"At the 28th verse of the same chapter, Mark speaks of Christ being crucified between two thieves, that says he "the scriptures might be fulfilled which saith, and he was numbered with the transgressors. The same thing might be said of the thieves.

"This expression is in Isaiah, chap. liii. ver. 12-Grotius applies it to Jeremiah. But the case has happened so often in the world where innocent men have been numbered with transgressors, and is still continually happening, that it is absurdity to call it a prophecy of any particular person. All those whom the church calls martyrs were numbered with transgressors. All the honest patriots who fell upon the scaffold in France, in the time of Robespierre, were numbered with transgressors; and if himself had not fallen, the same case, according to a note in his own hand-writing, had befallen me, yet I suppose the Bishop will not allow that Isaiah was prophecying of Thomas Paine.

"These are all the passages in Mark which have any reference to prophecies.

Mark concludes his book by making Jesus to say to his disciples, chap. xvi. ver. 15. "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature-be that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned, (fine Popish stuff this) and these signs shall follow them that believe; in my

name they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues -they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover."

"Now, the Bishop, in order to know if he has all this saving and wonder-working faith, should try those things upon himself. He should take a good dose of arsenic, and if he please, I will send him a rattle-snake from America! as for myself, as I believe in God and not at all in Jesus Christ, nor in the books called the Scriptures, the experiment does not concern me.

"I pass on to the book of Luke.

"There are no passages in Luke called prophecies excepting those which relate to the passages I have already examined.

"Luke speaks of Mary being espoused to Joseph, but he makes no references to the passage in Isaiah, as Matthew does. He speaks also of Jesus riding into Jerusalem upon a colt, but he says nothing about a prophecy. He speaks of John the Baptist, and refers to the passage in Isaiah of which I have already spoken.

"At the 13th chapter, ver. 31, he says, "The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him (Jesus) get thee out and depart hence, for Herod will kill thee—and he said unto them, go ye, and tell that Fox, behold I cast out devils and I do cures today and to-morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected."

"Matthew makes Herod to die whilst Christ was a child in Egypt, and makes Joseph to return with the child on the news of Herod's death, who had sought to kill him. Luke makes Herod to be living and to seek the life of Jesus after Jesus was thirty years of age; for he says, chap. iii. ver. 23. "And Jesus began to be about thirty years of age, being as was supposed, the son of Joseph."

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The obscurity in which the historical part of the New Testament is involved with respect to Herod, may afford to priests and commentators a plea, which to some may appear plausible, but to none satisfactory, that the Herod of which Matthew speaks, and the Herod of which Luke speaks, were different persons. Matthew calls Herod a king; and Luke, chap. 3, ver. 1, calls Herod Tetrarch, (that is, Governor) of Galilee. But there could be no such person as a king Herod, because the Jews and their country were then under the dominion of the Roman Emperors who governed then by Tetrarchs or Governors.

"Luke, chap 2, makes Jesus to be born when Cyrenius was governor of Syria, to which government Judea was annexed; and according to this, Jesus was not born in the time of Herod. Luke says nothing about Herod seeking the life of Jesus when he was born; nor of his destroying the children under two years old; nor of Joseph fleeing with Jesus into Egypt; nor of his returning from thence. On the contrary, the book of Luke speaks as if the person it calls Christ had never been out of Judea, and that Herod sought his life after he commenced preaching, as is before stated.

I have already shewn that Luke, in the book called the Acts of the Apostles, (which commentators ascribe to Luke) contradicts the account in Matthew, with respect to Judas and the thirty pieces of silver. Matthew says, that Judas returned the money, and that the high priests bought with it a field to bury strangers in, Luke says, that Judas kept the money and bought a field with it for himself.

"As it is impossible the wisdom of God should err, so it is impossible those books could have been written by divine inspiration. Our belief in God and his unerring wisdom forbids us to believe As for nyself, I feel religiously happy in the total disbelief

it.

of it.

"There are no other passages called prophecies in Luke than those I have spoken of. 1 pass on to the book of John.

THE BOOK OF JOHN.

"JOHN, like Mark and Luke is not much of a prophecy-monger. He speaks of the ass, and the casting lots for Jesus's clothes, and some other trifles, of which I have already spoken. "John makes Jesus to say, chap. v. ver. 46. "For had ye believed Moses ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me." The book of the Acts, in speaking of Jesus, says, chap. iii. ver. 22, "For Moses truly said unto the fathers, a prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you, of your brethen, like unto me, him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you."~

"This passage is in Deuteronomy, chap. xviii. ver. 15. They apply it as a prophecy of Jesus. What imposition! The person spoken of in Deuteronomy, and also in Numbers where the same person is also spoken of, is Joshua, the minister of Moses, and his immediate successor, and just such another Robespierrean character as Moses is represented to have been. The case as related in those books is as follows:

"Moses was grown old and near to his end, and in order to prevent confusion after his death, for the Israelites had no settled system of government; it was thought best to nominate a successor to Moses while he was yet living. This was done, as we are told, in the following manner:

"Numbers, chap. xxvii. ver. 12. "And the Lord said unto Moses, get thee up into this mount Abarim, and see the land which I have given unto the children of Israel-and when thou hast seen it, thou also shall be gathered unto thy people as Aaron thy brother is gathered, ver. 15. And Moses spake unto the Lord, saying, Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation-Which may go out before them, and which may go in before them, and which may lead them out, and which may bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord be not as sheep that have no shepherd-And the Lord said unto Moses, take thee Joshua, the son of

Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay thine hand upon himand set him before Eleazar, the priest, and before all the congregation, and give him a charge in their sight-and thou shalt put some of thine honour upon him, and that all the congregation of the chitdren of Israel may be obedient-ver. 22, and Moses did as the Lord commanded, and he took Joshua, and set him before Eleazar the priest, and before all the congregation: and he laid hands upon him, and gave him charge as the Lord commanded by the hand of Moses."

"I have nothing to do, in this place, with the truth, or the conjuration, here practised, of raising up a successor to Moses like unto himself. The passage sufficiently proves it is Joshua, and that it is an imposition in John, to make the case into a prophecy of Jesus. But the prophecy-mongers were so inspired with falsehood that they never speak truth.*

Newton, Bishop of Bristol in England, published a work in three volumes entitled "Dissertations on the Prophecies." The work is tediously written and tire. some to read. He strains hard to make every passage into a prophecy that suits his purpose. Among others, he makes this expression of Moses," the Lord shall raise thee up a prophet like unto me," into a prophecy of Christ, who was not born, according to the Bible chronologies till fifteen hundred and fifty-two years after the time of Moses, where as it was an immediate successor to Moses, whowas then near his end, that is spoken of in the passage above quoted.

"This Bishop, the better to impose this passage on the world as a prophecy of Christ, as entirely omitted the account in the book of Numbers which I have given at length word for word, and which shews beyond the possibility of a doubt, that the person spoken of by Moses is Joshua and no other person.

"Newton is but a superficial writer. He takes up things upon hear-say and inserts them without either examination or reflection, and the more extraordinary and incredible they are, the better he likes them.

"In speaking of the walls of Babylon, (volume the first, page 263) he makes a quotation from a traveller of the name of Tavernur, whom he calls (by way of giving credit to what he says) a celebrated traveller, that those walls were made of burnt brick, ten feet square and three feet thick.-If Newton had only thought of calculating the weight of such a brick, he would have seen the impossibility of their being used or even made. A brick ten feet square and three feet thick, contains 300 cubit feet, and allowing a cubit foot of brick to be only one hundred pounds, each of the Bishop's bricks would weigh thirty thousand pounds; and it would take about thirty cart loads of clay (one horse carts) to make one brick.

"But his account of the stones used in the building of Solomon's temple (volume 2d, page 211) far exceds his bricks of ten foot square in thewalls of Babylon: these are but brick-bats compared to them.

"The stones (says he) employed in the foundation, were in magnitude forty cubits, that is above sixty feet, a cubit, says he being somewhat more than one foot and a half, (a cubit is one foot nine inches) and the superstructure (says this Bishop) was worthy of such foundations. There were some stones, says he, of the whitest marble forty-five cubits long, five cubits high, and six cubits broad. These are the dimensions this Bishop has given, which in measure of twelve inches to a foot, is 78 feet 9 inches long 10 feet 6 inches thick, and contains 7,234 cubit feet. I now go to demonstrate the imposition of this Bishop.

"A cubit foot of water weighs sixty-two pounds and a half-The specific gravity of marble to water is as 2 is to one. The weight therefore of a cubic

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"I pass on to the last passage in these fables of the Evangelists, called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.

"John having spoken of Jesus expiring on the cross between two thieves, says, chap. xix. ver. 32. "Then came the soldiers and brake the legs of the first (ineaning one of the thieves) and of the other which was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legsver. 36, for these things were done that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.

"The passage here referred to is in Exodus, and has no more to do with Jesus than with the ass he rode upon to Jerusalem; nor yet so much, if a roasted jack-ass, like a roasted he-goat might be eaten at a Jewish passover. It might be some consolation to an ass to know, that though his bones might be picked they would not be broken. I go to state the case.

"The book of Exodus in instituting the Jewish passover, in which they were to eat an he-lamb, or a he-goat, says, chap. xii. ver. 5, "Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it from the sheep or from the goats."

"The book, after stating some ceremonies to be used in killing and dressing it (for it was to be roasted, not boiled) says, ver. 43. "And the Lord said unto Moses and Aaron, this is the ordinance of the passover. There shall no stranger eat thereof. But every man's servant that is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof. A foreigner shall not eat thereof. In

foot of marble is 156 pounds, which, multiplied by 7,234, the number of cubit feet in one of those stones makes the weight of it be 1,128,504 pounds, which is 503 tons. Allowing then a horse to draw about half a ton, it will require a thousand horses to draw one such stone on the ground; how then were they to be lifted into the building by human hands?

"The Bishop may talk of faith removing mountains, but all the faith of all the Bishops that ever lived could not remove one of those stones and their bodily strength given in.

"This Bishop also tells of great guns used by the Turks at the taking of Constantinople, one of which he says, was drawn by seventy yoke of oxen and by two thousand men. Volume 3d, page 117.

"The weight of a cannon that carries a ball of 48 pounds, which is the largest cannon that are cast, weighs 8,000 pounds, about three tons and a half, and may be drawn by three yoke of oxen. Any body may now calculate what the weight of the bishop's great gun must be that required seventy yoke of oxen to draw it. This bishop beats Gulliver.

"When men give up the use of the divine gift of reason in writing on any subject, be it religious or any thing else; there are no bounds to their extravagance, no limit to their absurdities.

The three volumes which this bishop has written on what he calls the prophecies contain above one thousand two hundred pages, and he says in volume 3. page 117. "I have studied brevity." This is as marvellous as the bishop's great

gun.