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cafe, that, in a ratio proportioned to the duration of the said abfurd doctrine, much more of that, which exceeds it in abfurdity, the demi-divinity of Jefus, and that, which in its infult on common fenfe, furpaffes both, the advancement of his claim to a third part of the effence of the Supreme Deity, the converfion of the houfe of Ifrael to the belief of the past advent of the Meffiah muft, in the nature of things, be retarded, at least so long, as my brethren grudge the pains to patiently and difpaffionately fearch the Christian Scriptures, whether they do not describe the Jefus there recorded as a man of the feed of David, and as well in this, as in every other refpect, perfectly agreeing withthe perfon and character of the promised Meffiah, foretold in the Jewish prophe'cies.

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I have, dear Chriftian friend, detained

you too long, by my impertinent intru

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fion, from the profecution of your lau⚫dable undertaking, in this 'tionate call to my brethren, 'ward their converfion to the

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the crucified Jefus was their predicted. • Meffiah. Though you may not be altogether fuccessful in an immediate ac• complishment of this great point, yet ceitainly you lay a stable foundation for • their conviction in God's due appointed 'time; and I hope to fee one good effect arife, among others, from your ufeful la

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bors herein, viz. that the Chriftian world

⚫ will be gradually convinced of the extreme folly of oppofing the feeming contrariety ⚫ of a few scattered texts, in their Scriptures, to all the juft notions of the Meffiah, ⚫ formed from our prophecies; and that the ⚫ time is not far diftant, when they will • renounce thofe paffages as fpurious, which have gained a furreptitious admittance ' into their facred canon, and cannot, without a manifest perverfion of their obvious genuine fenfe, be brought to harmonize with our code of prophecy. Those in particular, which militate against the prophetic descriptions of the effence, per• fon, and birth of the Meffiah, ought furely to be rejected, and treated with that con

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all fuch doctrines, inculcated in the hu• man fyftems of divinity, obtruded on them by the tribe of puzzling commentators ⚫ and paraphrafts, as are, in their own private judgment, repugnant to the general fenfe and tenor of their facred ⚫ writings,'

Such may be fuppofed to be the reafoning and difcourfe of a ferious thinking learned Jew, who would willingly renounce his errors, when once convinced of them, and might, by the manly arguments of rational and benevolent perfuafion, be induced to believe and acknowledge the misunderstood Jefus of the Chriftians to be his promifed Meffiah. To his imaginary last words 1 fhall fubjoin this remark, that, as my fellow Chriftians have the fure word of prophecy' to direct them in the knowledge of the Meffiah, it is a duty they owe to those authentic parts of the Christian Scriptures, which will ftand the test of a a comparison with the Jewish prophecies. in this important point, to expose those interpolated forgeries, which abfolutely contradict them. Here I must repeat what I intimated

intimated before, that I defy the most ingenious fubtle fophift to concordize the two difcordant accounts of the birth of the Meffiah, related in what is called the New Teftament, the one defcribing him as the offspring of the miraculous conception of Mary alone, carnally unconnected with Jofeph, or with any man, and the other representing him as the fon as well of Joseph as of Mary. Not the two oppofite elements of fire and water can he more heterogeneous, than these two jarring accounts; and which of them is confiftent with, or repugnant to, the divine predictions concerning the Meffiah, I leave to the judgment of the unprejudiced few to decide, whofe minds are not shackled by theological system. To attempt to reconcile the manifeft contradiction, which fubfifts between thetwo accounts, by urging that Jefus paffed for the son of Jofeph among the unbelieving Jews, but was in fact, the son of Mary alone, is to be wife above what is written. The Evangelifts, who ftile him the fon of Jofeph, make no such distinction, and in three paffages out of the four, where they give him

that

that patronymic, the qualifying parenthefis, as was supposed,' is omitted.

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Hence, as this parenthefis expressly militates against the prophetic defcription of the Meffiah as a man, we should not hesitate one moment to reject it as an interpolated forgery. It is difficult at this distance of time, and it is not in the leaft material, to afcertain the age when, the man through whom, and the manner how, it crept into the facred Hiftory. We do not give an equal degree of credit to every fact recorded in profane history; and when we reflect on the facility, with which theological difputants and fcholaftic controverfialists could fet forth corrupt manuscripts

of any authentic narrative of the birth of Jefus Chrift, in order to accommodate that event to their own refpective hypothetical whimfies, we must neceffarily withhold our affent to those parts of the four Gofpels now commonly received, which give a relation of that interesting transaction, totally different from that which we peruse in other parts of the fameGofpels,adopting that

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