E are now entering on the confidera.
tion of the most important and interesting of all histo-
ries, that of Jefus Chrift, from whom, we who be
lieve his divine miffion, and profefs ourselves to be his
followers, are denominated christians.
We cannot,
therefore, give too much attention to the incidents of
his life, and all his difcourfes; especially as he declared
that the words which he spake were not his own, and
that the Father, who was in him, performed the mira-
culous works by which his divine miffion was attested.
Jefus was a Jew, and the Jewish or Hebrew nation
was a people eminently diftinguished by Almighty God,
as the medium of almost all his communications to
mankind; all the prophets, except Balaam, having
been of that nation. And the hiftory of Jefus is the
more extraordinary, as the Jews had been without any
prophet, or any perfon pretending to prophecy, about
four hundred years before the appearance of John the
Baptift, who announced the coming of Jefus as a prophet
greatly fuperior to himfelf; his own miffion being only
introductory to that of Jefus.