Farther, in adverting to the promulgation of the gospel among the pagans, they would speak of the christian teachers as Jews preaching judaism; and the converts made by them they would represent, as proselytes made to the Jewish institutions, or to the religion of Moses.

When christianity was introduced into the provinces, or into the great cities of the Roman empire, it proved for a time the innocent cause of confusion and misery. Its preachers, indeed, held it up to the reception of mankind as a blessing calculated to abolish tyranny, superstition, and vice; and enforced its claims by the peaceful influence of reason and example; but they were resisted by the very opposite arts of clamour, falsehood, and violence. The civil magistrate, the pagan priest, the reputed wise and learned, together with all those who were interested in supporting the established system, united against the new faith, and in the absence of real argument assailed its votaries with calumny and persecution. The Jews, in general, had not yet awakened from the golden dream of a tem

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poral deliverer; and the miracles performed by Jesus and his followers they were disposed to consider as pledges, that he would soon return to dethrone Cæsar, and establish on the earth an universal empire. This was a circumstance which, beyond any other, awakened the jealousy, and kindled the animosity of the Roman government. The advocates of the gospel were hence hated and abused, as the enemies of Cæsar and of all mankind: and the whole nation to which they belonged, being universally suspected of treason and rebellion, became the victims of the most unrelenting persecution. In Rome, Alexandria, Cæsarea, Babylon, Antioch, Damascus, and in all other places, the Jews were stripped of their arms, of their properties, and of their privileges, and at length destroyed in heaps, without mercy or compunction.

If the writers abovementioned were to notice these commotions, they would, I apprehend, adopt a mode of writing dif ferent from our ideas, though very natural in their peculiar situation. As friends to their countrymen, and therefore desirous to

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veil their errors or faults, they would pass over in silence the expectation, which the miracles of Jesus had awakened in their minds, and their disposition in consequence to revolt from the Roman power. friends to the gospel, they would not mention the efforts of its advocates to promote its knowledge and influence, and thus to bring the pagan superstition into contempt. Their narratives in this view, however just and true, as far as they went, would be partial, as they only contained effects unconnected with their primary and fundamental causes. The cruelties inflicted on the sufferers by their enemies would appear the more glaring and extraordinary, as the provocations which led to them would be entirely suppressed.

I have supposed Nicodemus and Gamaliel thus to write, to prepare the way for shewing that two men of the same age, equal in rank, and superior to them in moral and intellectual qualities, have actually written in this manner. Philo and Josephus are authors known to the learned, who suppose them to have been Jews, in principles,

as well as in name. My object in the following sheets is to prove the contrary, namely, that in the strictest sense these celebrated men are christian writers; that they are historians and apologists of Christ, of his religion, and of his followers among the Jews and Gentiles; and that they have providentially transmitted to posterity facts which, in a surprising manner, confirm the truth, and illustrate the import, of the evangelical records.

ECCLESIASTICAL

RESEARCHES.

CHAPTER I.

THE CONVERSION OF EPAPHRODITUS.-JOSEPHUS WROTE HIS ANTIQUITIES FOR THE USE OF THE HEATHEN CONVERTS.

SUETONIUS, in his life of Domitian, has thus written concerning Epaphroditus, a character hitherto either mistaken or overlooked, though very worthy the attention of ecclesiastical enquirers. "He (Domitian) capitally condemned Epaphroditus his secretary, because he is supposed to have assisted Nero, after the loss of his power, in destroying himself. Finally, F. Clement, his own cousin, but a man of the most despicable inertness, he, on a sudden, and upon