long before his coming, the account given of his perfon and defcent in the genuine Scriptures of the New exactly accords. He is there, in paffages too numerous to be enumerated, reprefented as a man, the fon of man, and the fon of David.' However, you may examine Matthew viii. 20. xii. 23. xxvi. 72. Mark viii. 38. xii. 35. xv. 39. Luke xviii. 38, 39. xxii. 48. xxiii. 41. John xiii. 31. xv. 24. Acts ii. 22. vii. 56. xiii. 38. xvii. 31. Rom. v. 15. 1 Cor. xv.

21, 47. 1 Tim. ii. 5. Heb. iii. 3. X. 12. Moreover he is described to be of

the feed

of Abraham,' Gal. iii. 16. Heb. ii. 16. and laftly it is exprefsly faid, the Lord God fhall give unto him,' Jefus, the throne of his father David; Chrift cometh of the feed of David; God hath fworn with an oath to him,' David, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raife up Chrift to fit on his throne; of this man's,' David's, feed hath God, according to his promife, raised unto Ifrael, a favior, Jefus; Jefus Chrift of the feed of David. See Luke i. 32. John vii. 42. Acts ii. 30. xiii. 23. Rom. i. 3. 2 Tim. ii. 8.

That

That Christ Jesus was the common joint offspring of a man and a woman is evident, because, in the preceding large affemblage of texts, extracted from the New, which correfpond with the prophetic Scriptures of the Old, Teftament, he is defcribed to be the fon of David, and of the feed of David.' It may perhaps be urged, that Jefus, though the fon of Mary alone, exclufively of an human father, defcended from David, might with propriety be stiled the fon of David, as being thus born of an human mother, who was lineally defcended from that king of Ifrael. Still this ingenious argument is deftitute of the authority of the divine prophecies to give its full force; which no where warrant us to interpret the Meffiah to be the fon of David, in this very partial sense of the expreffion: And an infuperable difficulty occurs, to preclude the poffibility of fo understanding this characteristical appellative of the Meffiah, in the inftance of his being expressly faid to be of the feed of David. Now, how an human being can be affirmed to be of the feed of David, and yet the feed of a man defcended from David be represented as unconcerned

in the generation of that being, is an ænig ma equally incapable of folution, with that incomprehenfible arch-myftery of human invention, the Athanafian trinity in unity. Hence it is plain, the expreffions, the fon of David, and of the feed of David,' are terms fynonimous, implying, that Chrift was lineally defcended from that king by an human father, and, confequently, as his mother Mary was of the lineage of David, as well as his father, Jofeph, by both parents. To fuppofe Chrift to be of the feed of David, if the feed of a man of the lineage of David were not instrumentally employed in the procreation of him, is to be guilty of an unpardonable catachrefis, or abuse of words; which tends to confound all language, and to render articulate fpeech, which was defigned as the vehicle of thought, the indeterminate phrafeology of unfeathered magpies, and consequently, men lefs intelligible one to another than brutes are to fellow-brutes. But, when men once defert the plain meaning of the unambiguous expreffions of genuine Christian Scripture, and attempt to force them into a congruity with their own fanci

ful theological hypothefes, common sense is exchanged for refined nonfenfe, revelation becomes a matter unrevealed, and the intelligible language of the latter, and the plain dictates of the former, muft yield to the fublime incomprehenfibility of mysterious abfurdity.

But happily there are certain men who do not maintain, that reafon and faith are at variance; all are not bigots to human fyftems of divinity, are not immovably attached to obfcurity, mystery, and abfurdity, and are not difpofed to excommunicate and anathematize thofe, who take pains to enlighten their own minds and those of their fellow creatures, by a judicious developement of facred truths, the happy confequence of free, difpaffionate and accurate self inquiry. The select number of men of this ftamp, whether they be many or few, will not, I apprehend, be displeased with my fubmitting this quære to their ferious confideration, viz. Whether, as, from the day of the creation of the first man and woman, to the prefent hour, God has uninterruptedly eftablifhed a method of propagation of the human Species,

H

Species, wherein child-bearing woman cannot cooman conceive, and bring forth, without the previous carnal knowledge of generating man, if the God of nature had thought proper to break in upon this his ordinary System of human procreation, difpenfe with it in favor of Jefus Christ, and in refpect to him alone, exchange it for a birth purely and folely feminine; whether, I Jay, the prediction of Christ as a male-offSpring merely maternal, would not, in that cafe, have been delivered in terms as plain and intelligible, as are the prophetic defcriptions of other minute particulars concerning him, fuch as his birth at Bethlehem, his riding on an ass into Jerufalem, his being brought as a lamb to the flaughter,numbered with the tranfgreffors, his foul making an offering for fin, bis making his grave with the rich, and yet his prolonging his days, &c. See Micah, Zechariah, and Ifaiah, events, which were all literally fulfilled?

But, as this fuppofed extraordinary account of the nativity of Chrift is not, in my opinion, prophetically revealed, and, I find, in what are called the canonical Books of the New Testament,

two