Government for the sake of taxes, the
Church for the sake of tithes, and the
landlords for the sake of rents. They
had not, it was true, yet succeeded; but
it was now probable that their intention
was, through the appointment of this
agricultural committee, to secure what
they could. These three great bodies of
the state had, somehow or other, a most
extraordinary fear of plenty. They ap-
peared to be all affected with a strange
kind of disorder, which, if he were speak-
ing in another part of the kingdom, he
might perhaps be excused for calling a
hydrophobia of abundance. Seeing that
this fear prevailed so strongly in the
church, and recollecting the willingness
which had on a recent occasion been
shewn to alter the liturgy, he was sur-
prised that it had not yet been deter-
mined to expunge the Prayer for Plenty,
which as it now stood was singularly

anomalous."

MARCH 15.

Tythe-System in Ireland.

THE Duke of DEVONSHIRE presented a petition from the corporation of Waterford, praying their Lordships to take into consideration the disordered state of Ireland, and, in particular, the system of tithes and the mode of their collection, which they regarded as among the principal causes of the disturbances. His Grace enforced the prayer of the petitioners in a judicious and conciliatory speech, which was complimented by the Earl of LIVERPOOL, who stated that the subject was under the consideration of Government. The Marquis of LANSDOWN said that no man who fairly considered the question, could fail to acknowledge it to be most unfortunate that a species of property already abolished in most parts of Europe, should continue in its very worst state in that part of Europe where its existence presented the greatest anomaly with the state of society, and was productive of the greatest possible mischief. If the ingenuity of the Legislature had been devoted to the discovery of a particular institution which should present the

greatest bar to the success of the Protestant church in Ireland-which should have the greatest effect in alienating the minds of the people from the established form of worship-which should be most successful in sowing discord, and encouraging its growth when sown, no better means could have been devised than the state of the law respecting tithes. There was nothing in the inquiry proposed which implied any hostility to the Established Church. The only principle to guide their Lordships in legislating ou this subject, was to do ample justice to

those interested in tithe-property. The
noble Marquis complimented the resident
and laborious clergy, who, he said, were
not benefited by the present system; it
was the indifferent rector, the absent
clergyman, who did nothing, that exacted
most, and employed persons who, in for-
warding his interests, often outraged the
best feelings of the human heart. In al-
lusion to the remedy of substituting land
for tithes, the objection did not apply in
Ireland which had been made in England,
that the clergyman would become too
much interested in the cultivation of his
estate to attend to the care of his parish;
for in Ireland the clergyman had fre-
quently no clerical duties to perform, and
was regarded in many places rather as a
magistrate and a country gentleman than
He concluded
a religious instructor.
with saying, that he should wait and
recommend others to do the same, to see
what Government intended to do. The
Earl of LIMERICK said he was aware that
the present discontents were not wholly
owing to the tithe-system, but they bore
a great share in causing them. Those
who knew the country as he did, would
not hesitate to say that the tithes, which
were intended to support a Protestant
establishment, acted, by the manner in
which the system of collection was car-
ried into effect, as a bounty for the main-
tenance of the Catholic religion in Ire
land. What do the Catholics in many
parts of Ireland know of the Protestant
religion, but through the "tithe-proctor"?
Whenever they hear of the Protestant
religion, the tithe-proctor occurs to their
minds. He, therefore, as a Protestant,
and he trusted a good one, was anxious
to see some change introduced.
existence of the Protestant religion in the
South of Ireland, amid the evil passions
that the tithe-system provokes, must be
regarded as an evidence of its truth.
The Earl of BLESINTON could declare
that the tithe-system was as obnoxious
to the great body of Protestants in the
North, as it was to the whole of the Ca-
The
tholics in the South of Ireland.
conduct of those who held college-liv-
ings was particularly objected to, and
the statutes of the college he thought
should be enforced against them. These
gentlemen remained till good livings fell
vacant; and then, in their old age, una-
ble to perform their duties, they came
down with 14 or 15 children, to enjoy
emoluments for which they did nothing.

The

HOUSE OF COMMONS, MARCH 20.
Law-Taxes.

MR. RICARDO took occasion to ob serve, that he objected to the proposal In principle to raise a surplus revenue.

cording to the ritual of the church, com-
pletely deprived the Dissenters of their
before-enjoyed privileges. He (Mr. Wm.
Smith) was one of the class of persons
now praying to be relieved from the pres-
sure of that Act, and it was important to
those persons as a class, that, coming
before Parliament, they should stand rectus
in curia. He begged then to aver, that the
Dissenters were unarraigned of any crime,
and that they had as good a title to wor-
ship God in their own way as any mem-
bers of the Church of England. Marri-
age was the natural right of the human
species, and neither man nor woman,
without the grossest injustice, could be
deprived of its benefits. Yet the act of
the 26th Geo. II. said to the Dissenters,
"You shall comply with terms which are
contrary to the dictates of your con-
sciences, or you shall forego the advan-
tage of that natural right," Such a hold-
ing was most unjust. It was not without
precedent, because the same course had
been pursued under Louis XIV., towards
the Protestants of France. The measure
in France, however, though unjust, was
not so inconsistent as the law in England;
because the Government of that country
recognized at the time no religion but the
Roman Catholic. To presume every
Frenchman a Roman Catholic was most
unjust; but, such being the presumption,
there was no inconsistency in saying that
members of the Roman Catholic church
should be married according to its rites.
In England, however, there was a gross
and palpable inconsistency about the ar-
rangement. At the very time when the
Act of Geo. II. passed, the Dissenters
had the benefit of the Act of Toleration.
At that time it so happened that the
Unitarian Dissenters were in small num-
bers, so small, indeed, that they had not
a place of worship (so called) belonging
to them; but the Jews and the Quakers
were especially exempted from the pro-
visions of the Act. The Jews could
scarcely, perhaps, be called dissenters
from the Church of England-(the Church
of England might, indeed, more properly
be called dissenters from them, for they
were the more ancient)—but the Quakers
were, to all intents and purposes, a sect
dissenting from the Church of England,
and they could have no right to any ex-
emptions in which the Unitarians were
not entitled to participate. By the canon
law, marriage was nothing else but a civil
contract. This was stated by high au-
thority in this country, when, in 1813, a
question respecting the validity of a Scot-
tish marriage was discussed. The opi-
nion of the Lord Chancellor was, that the
Scottish law was founded on the canon
law, which was the foundation of the

laws respecting marriage throughout Eu-
rope, and which regarded marriage as a
There was no doubt whatever
contract.
but the Scottish law considered a marri-
age by consent of parties, and in presence
of witnesses, to be as valid as if it were
The Marriage-Act
by any clergyman.
With that object
had for its object the prevention of clan-
destine marriages.
he wished not to interfere, and he would
therefore only propose the alteration of
the religious part. Some religious cere-
monies were common to all nations, and
were highly proper, but they were not
necessary.

As a proof of that, he might refer to the decree of Pope Innocent III. in council, which declared the religious solemnity not to be necessary to the validity of Marriages. But the religious ceremony ought to be in unison with the feelings of the parties. The ritual of the Church of England was derived from the Romish Church. Now to make that ritual a necessary part of marriage, where religious objections existed to it, was a positive absurdity. He proposed leaving out the whole of that part of the ritual which stated opinions on which the petitioners dissented from the Church of England.

As he understood from the noble Lord that his motion would not be opposed, he thought it unnecessary to go into further discussion of the subject now. He might, however, mention, that the wisdom of our ancestors had enacted When that law burning alive as the punishment for Christians marrying Jews. was repealed, and some time previously, more persons were found to contend for its justice, and even humanity, than could now be found to advocate the part of the present law, which he wished to alter. He concluded by moving for leave to bring in a bill altering certain points in the 26th Geo. II., commonly called the Marriage-Act.

The Marquis of LONDONDERRY wished not to be understood to pledge himself to the support of the measure.

Mr. H. GURNEY did not see what possible objection there could be to Unitarians being married by their own clergymen.

The whole service would then be suited to their own sentiments, and, bans being regularly proclaimed in the church, no inconvenience could arise from it. Ou the other hand, there were many objec tions to parties having the service performed by clergymen of a different persuasion. He wished, therefore, that instead of such a measure as was now proposed, the hon. and learned gentleman opposite (Dr. Phillimore) would embrace the subject in his bill.

Mr. W. SMITH explained.

Leave was given to bring in the bill.

THE

Monthly Repository.

No. CXCVII.]

MAY, 1822.

[Vol. XVII.

The Introductory Chapters to Luke's Gospel Spurious: their Chronology
inconsistent with Truth and with itself.
April 27, 1822.

SIR,

LLOW me to say, through the

thirty" cannot be fairly explained to
mean any thing else than that he was

A channel of your Repository, that wearer to thirty than he was to twenty

I think Dr. Lant Carpenter is mistaken when he imagines that, "independently of the Introduction to St. Matthew, there is no chronological difficulty whatever in the Introduction to St. Luke's Gospel." (See Mon. Repos. XVI. 360.)

Let us take his own statement, according to which the 15th year of Tiberius commenced August 19th, in the year of Rome 781; and place the baptism of Jesus, as he does, in the following January or February, in the year 782 of Rome. Connecting these premises with what he reads in Luke iii. 23, the Doctor ascribes the birth of Jesus to the year 751. But I think the words of the text do not justify him in placing it earlier than 752.

According to the common translation, with which Wakefield and the Improved Version agree, this text informs us that Jesus at his baptism "began to be about thirty years of age." Now, the words "about

"Jesus was about thirty years of age, beginning so to be. Apxoμevo fixes the seuses of do to the beginning of the thirtieth year." (Newcome's Harmony of the Gospels, fol., Dublin, 1778, Note upon Luke iii. 23, page 5 of his Notes.) In his translation of the New Testament, 8vo., Dublin, 1796, he gives a different explanation. Lightfoot says, the Evangelist "intimateth to us that Jesus, when he was baptized, was but entering on his thirtieth year." "The word apxouevos, beginning to be, denieth his being thirty compleat; for if he were full thirty, then he began not to be so. By the phrase, therefore, is to be understood that he was now nine and twenty years of age compleat, and just entering upon his thirtieth." (See his Harmony of the New Testament, p. 8, [208, errata,] and Harmony of the Four Evangelists, p. 455.) Scaliger critically examines the words, and contends that they mean, "Christum

nine or to thirty-one. He must, there-
fore, have been more than twenty-nine
and a half, and less than thirty and a
half; that is, he must have been bap-
tized some time within the twelve
months that intervened between these
Harmony, p. 8, No. vi. edit. 1702,
two limits of his age. (See Whiston's
4to.) But Luke informs us not only
that our Lord's age, at his baptism,
was within these limits, but that it
began to be so. He could not, there-
fore, have passed through the first
half of the limited year: for if he had,
he would have been ending instead of
beginning those twelve months. Con-
sequently he must have been baptized
before he had completed his thirtieth
year. And therefore if, with Dr. Car-
penter, his baptism be placed in 782,
his birth must be placed in 752.

the first chapter of Luke, the concep-
Now, in what is commonly called
tion of John the Baptist is dated six
months before the conception, and
consequently fifteen months before the
birth, of Jesus. (See verses 26 and
36.) And if this birth were on the
25th of December, in the year of
Rome 752, the conception of the

ad baptismum accessisse trigesimo anno completo, et trigesimo uno ineunte," and, according to custom, is very angry with those who understand them otherwise. (See his Canones Isagogici, Lib. iii. p. 306, at the end of his edition of Euseb. Thesaur. Temp. 1658; also De Emend. Temp. p. 255, ed. 1583, or p. 549, ed. 1629.) Campbell has a good note on the passage in his Translation of the Gospels. Among other sound and sensible observations, he says, that "some critics have justly remarked that there is an incongruity" between agxoμevos and dσI, "the one a definite, the other an indefinite term, which confounds the meaning, and leaves the reader entirely at a loss."

Baptist could not have been earlier
than three months before the expira-
tion of the year 751. But the pre-
tended Luke places it (ch. i. ver. 5,
&c.) in the days of Herod the king
of Judea," who, according to Dr. C.,
died in March, 750, a year and nine
months at least before the expiration
of 751. Here, then, we meet with
some chronological difficulty. The
biography of the baby swaddled in a
manger if a few incoherent and in-
congruous scraps, every one of which
seems to whisper as we pass it, "I
only am escaped alone to tell thee,'
can be called biography-contradicts,
by a year and a half at least, the
chronology of the Christian moralist
whose name he has usurped, whose
miracles he has caricatured, and whose
morality and truth he has abandoned.
This is just what we should expect.
Fiction is regardless of facts and of
dates, of sobriety and moderation, be-
cause its object is to strike us dumb
like Zacharias, and to make us "mar-
vel all" (ch. i. 20, 63); and therefore
it sets before us one born out of
due time," the offspring of a phantom,
ushered into the world with dreams,
and wandering stars, and wise men
from the East, worshiping with gold
and frankincense and myrrh, with
shepherds abiding in the field, keeping
watch over their flocks by night, with
hosts of quiring angels, and with all
the machinery of romance; petrifies
us with an account of murders not only
so extensive and so savage, that they
far "out-herod Herod," but so wild,
so frantic and so useless withal, that
no man could ever have ordered such
deeds of folly as well as horror, but a
raving maniac, whose orders would
never have been obeyed; † soothes
and softens us again by extricating the
chief object of our solicitude from his
perilous situation, not by the aid of
God's providence, ordinary or extra-

Job. i. 15-17, 19. The church in its wisdom has selected this chapter for the evening lesson on St. Luke's day.

+"Infanticidium quod mirum est tacitum a Josepho."...."Sed quod paulo ante dixi mirum est tam belluina crudelitatis exemplum a Josepho præteritum esse, qui tanta diligentia reliqua sævitiæ Herodianæ facinora persequitur." Scalig. Animadvers. in Euseb. Thesaur. Temp. P. 176.

ordinary,-that would not have been sufficiently surprising, but by the sudden appearance of the angel who presides over dreams; at whose command the child flees into Egypt; by whose information it afterwards learns (what never could have been known in Egypt without) the death of Herod, and by whose voice it is "called out of Egypt" again, to fulfil a prophecy which was never uttered, and which, without a call, could never have been fulfilled. The little hero of the tale then becomes a miracle of rabbinical learning at twelve years of age; and then,

"meeting
A vast vacuity; all unawares,
Fluttering his pennons vain, plamb down
he drops

Ten thousand fathom deep"
into a yawning chasm, where he is
lost,-shall I say for 17 years? That
would imply that the son of wonder
whom we lose at twelve, were the son
of Joseph who is baptized at 29. No:
where he remains "a thing forbid,"
one "for whom is reserved the black-
ness of darkness for ever," one never
heard of more. For the Son of man
whom we read of in the gospel was
not a phantom, nor the son of a phan-
tom, but an ordinary man, superior
to the rest of mankind, not in nature,
but in virtue only; who became the
son of God, not by supernatural gene-
ration, but by moral conduct and by
obedience, an obedience unparalleled,
an obedience which no temptation
could seduce, no provocation disturb,
no fear of disgrace could stagger, no
painful suffering subdue. For this,
God was pleased to set his seal upon
him, (Acts ii. 22; Rom. i. 4; Philipp. ii.
8, 9; Heb. ii. 9, xii. 2,) in order that
he might give to all men power to be-
come the sons of God even as Jesus
was the son of God, that thus they
might have life through his name;
(John i. 12, xiii. 15, xx. 31; Rom.
viii. 14; Philipp. ii. 15; 1 Pet. ii. 21,
&c.;) and for this purpose, that all
men might believe, practically believe,
this truth; and for this purpose alone
the evangelists have described, not the
birth, life, parentage and education,
but the ministry, the conduct, the cha
racter of their holy Master, and have
told us, not how he was conceived in
the womb, but how he went about
doing good. (Acts x. 34—39.) For