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I wish to confult with honeft and good moral men among them, at fome proper place of interview, on the fubject of projecting an eligible plan for their restoration to their own land. I therefore hold myself prepared to meet any man of a fair character among you, who fhall be pleased to honor me with a line post-paid, addreft to the Author of a Call to the Jews, at Mr. JOHNSON'S, Bookfeller, St. Paul's Church-Yard, fignifying his heart-felt conviction that Jefus was the Meffiah, expreffing a wish of an interview with the author, and figned with his real name and refidence.

May God bless you all, take you under his holy protection, and, in his due appointed time, influence your minds by a train of his fecond causes, to acknowledge this grand truth, that the Jefus crucified by your unthinking ancestors was your promised Meffiah.

I meant to close my poftfcript here, but cannot difpenfe with relating to you the il

luftration

luftration of an obfcure paffage in Jeremiah, given me by a friend, who first suggested to me the idea, that Jefus, your Meffiah, was the real fon of Jofeph. It occurs in Jeremiah xxxi. 22. and at the first blush feems to favor the hypothefis of the miraculous birth, and merely maternal origin of Jefus. The words are, The

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Lord hath created a new thing in the earth, a woman fhall compass a man.' And his argument on them was to this effect, that, if the expreffion, a woman

fhall compafs a man,' referred to a future miraculous birth of Chrift, the Meffiah would have been exprefsly named in that prophecy, as he is under the title of

A prophet like unto Mofes,' in Deuteronomy. He therefore thinks, that, as there is not a word mentioned of this great prophet in this text of Jeremiah, or in the context, it may perhaps point to the event cf queen Efther obtaining her important fuit from king Ahafuerus, in confequence whereof her countrymen, the Jews, were delivered from that general exterminating

maffacre,

maffacre, throughout the twenty-feven provinces of the extenfive Perfian empire, which the wicked Haman had devifed against them.

A woman furely may well be faid to compass a man, when she had interest sufficient to procure from her royal confort the grant of this interefting national petition, whereon depended, not merely the welfare, but the very existence of the Jewish people. It might be called the creation of a new thing in the earth, because it was unusual for women to interfere in public affairs.

But, whatever be the genuine meaning of this prophecy, it does not appear to me fufficiently explicit to authorize an application of it to the fuppofed fupernatural birth of Chrift from a virgin, without her previous carnal knowledge of a man. I fcorn, my Jewish friends, to take the honor of the preceding judicious criticism to myself, when I am confcious it originates in another man. I also candidly confefs,

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confefs, that to the difcernment of my faid friend, I partly owe my fufpicions of the authenticity of the first and second chapters of Matthew's Gofpel, and my ftrictures on fome of the most exceptionable paffages in them.

Laftly, the dark fecrecy and clandeftine management of the fuppofed miraculous virgin-conception of Mary, in violation too, of an express Mosaic inftitution, God's law of betrothment, as my friend juftly obferved to me, (for at the time Mary was betrothed to Jofeph) and the permiffion to the friends and neighbours of the affianced parties to believe a falshood, that he was the son of Joseph, when in this cafe he was not; thefe improbable circumstances apparently fo derogatory from the God of truth, when powerfully aided by the arguments deduced in this work from Reason, and from the Jewish and Chriftian Scriptures, in fupport of the parental relationship of Jofeph to Jefus, throw fuch an air of palpable incredibility over

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the whole of this myfterious transaction, that not the shadow of an argument can now be wanting to difprove it.

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The vifion of Zacharias in the temple, respecting the conception of his aged barren wife, Elizabeth, was indeed conducted without eye-witnesses; but notwithstanding there was full evidence of the fact, for he entered the temple with the faculty of fpeech, and left it fpeechlefs. Accordingly we read in Luke i. 22. When he,' Zacharias, came out unto them,' the people, he could not speak unto them, and they' hereby perceived that he had feen a vifion

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in the temple.' But, as I before remarked, of the fuppofed wonderful conception of Mary, independent on the previous inftrumentality of mafculine generation, there is not the colour of any evidence whatever, nor do we read of any charge either to Joseph or to Mary, to relate it to their neighbours at Nazareth. Therefore the circumftance alone of its abfolute deficiency in point of evidence, is fufficient R 2

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