tically. It is a monody on the death of a friend; but he mentions not the name of the person, nor gives any circumstance of him by which he can be personally known; and it is this silence, which is evidence of nothing, that Matthew has laid hold of to put the name of Christ to it; as if the chiefs of the Jews, whose sorrows were then great, and the times they lived in big with danger, were never thinking of their own affairs, nor the fate of their own friends, but were continually running a wild-goose chase into futurity.

"To make a monody into a prophecy is an absurdity. The characters and circumstances of men, even in different ages of the world, are so much alike, that what is said of one may with propriety be said of many; but this fitness does not make the passage into a prophecy; and none but an impostor or a bigot would call it so.

Isaiah, in deploring the hard fate and loss of his friend, mentions nothing of him but what the human lot of man is subject to. All the cases he states of him, his persecutions, his imprisonment, his patience in suffering, and his perseverance in principle, are all within the line of nature; they belong exclusively to none, and may with justness be said of many. But if Jesus Christ was the person the church represents him to be, that which would exclusively apply to him, must be something that could not apply to any other person; something beyond the lot of mortal man; and there are no such expressions in this chapter, nor any other chapter in the Old Testament.

It is no exclusive description to say of a person, as is said of the person Isaiah is lamenting in this chapter. "He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.' This may be said of thousands of persons, who have suffered oppression and unjust death with patience, silence, and perfect resignation.

Grotius, whom the bishop esteems a most learned man, and who certainly was so, supposes that the person of whom Isaiah is speaking, is Jeremiah. Grotius is led into this opinion, from the agreement there is between the description given by Isaiah, and the case of Jeremiah, as stated in the book that bears his name. If Jeremiah was an innocent man, and not a traitor in the interest of Nebuchadnezzar, when Jerusalem was besieged, his case was hard; he was accused by his countrymen, was persecuted, oppressed, and imprisoned, and he says of himself (see Jeremiah, chap. ii. ver. 19.), " But as for me, I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter."

I should be inclined to the same opinion with Grotius, had Isaiah lived at the time when Jeremiah underwent the cruelties of which he speaks; but Isaiah died about fifty year before: and it is of a person of his own time, whom Isaiah is lamenting in the

chapter in question, and which imposition and bigotry, more than seven hundred years afterwards, perverted into a prophecy of a person they call Jesus Christ.

"I pass on to the eighth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.

"Matthew xii. 14. Then the Pharisees went out and held a council against him, how they might destroy him-But when Jesus knew it he withdrew himself; and great numbers followed him, and he healed them all; and he charged them they should not make him known: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias (Isaiah) the prophet, saying,

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Behold my servant whom I have chosen; my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased, I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles-he shall not strive nor cry, neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets-a bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench till he sends forth judgment unto victory-and in his name shall the Gentiles trust.'

"In the first place, this passage hath not the least relation to the purpose for which it is quoted.

"Matthew says, that the Pharisees held a council against Jesus to destroy him that Jesus withdrew himself—that great numbers followed him that he healed them-and that he charged them they should not make him known.

"But the passage Matthew has quoted as being fulfilled by these circumstances, does not so much as apply to any one of them. It has nothing to do with the Pharisees holding a council to destroy Jesus with his withdrawing himself-with great numbers following him—with his healing them-nor with his charging them not to make him known.

"The purpose for which the passage is quoted, and the passage itself, are as remote from each other, as nothing from something.

"In this passage, as in that last mentioned, the name of the person of whom the passage speaks is not given, and we are left in the dark respecting him. It is this defect in t'e history, that bigotry and imposition have laid hold of, to call it prophecy.

"Had Isaiah lived in the time of Cyrus, the passage would descriptively apply to him. As king of Persia, his authority was great among the Gentiles, and it is of such a character the passage speaks; and his friendship to the Jews whom he liberated from captivity, and who might then be compared to a bruised reed, was extensive. But this description does not apply to Jesus Christ, who had no authority among the Gentiles; and as to his own countrymen, figuratively described by the bruised reed, it was they who crucified him. Neither can it be said of him that he did not cry, and that his voice was not heard in the street. As a preacher it was his business to be heard, and we are told that he travelled about the country for that purpose. Matthew

has given a long sermon, which (if his authority is good, but which is much to be doubted, since he imposes so much,) Jesus preached to a multitude upon a mountain, and it would be a quibble to say that a mountain is not a street, since it is a place equally as public.

"The last verse in the passage (the 4th), as it stands in Isaiah, and which Matthew has not quoted, says, He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth, and the isles shall wait for his law.' This also applies to Cyrus. He was not discouraged, he did not fall, he conquered all Babylon, liberated the Jews, and established laws. But this cannot be said of Jesus Christ, who, in the passage before us, according to Matthew, withdrew himself for fear of the Pharisees, and charged the people that followed him not to make it known where he was; and who, according to other parts of the Testament, was continually moving from place to place to avoid being apprehended*.

"But it is immaterial to us, at this distance of time, to know who the person was: it is sufficient to the purpose I am upon, that of detecting fraud and falsehood, to know who it was not, and to shew it was not the person called Jesus Christ.

66 I pass on to the ninth passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ.

"Matthew xxi. 1..' And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying unto them, go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her, loose them and bring them unto me and if any man say aught to you, ye shall say, the Lord hath need of them, and straightway he will send them.

"All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the Daughter of Sion, behold thy king cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting on an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass.'

* In the second part of the Age of Reason, I have shewn that the book ascribed to Isaiah is not only miscellaneous as to matter, but as to authorship; that there are parts in it which could not be written by Isaiah, because they speak of things one hundred and fifty years after he was dead. The instance I have given of this, in that work, corresponds with the subject I am upon, at least a little better than Matthew's introduction and his quotation.

Isaiah lived, the latter part of his life, in the time of Hezekiah, and it was about one hundred and fifty years from the death of Hezekiah to the first year of the reign of Cyrus, when Cyrus published a proclamation, which is given in the first chapter of the book of Ezra, for the return of the Jews to Jerusalem. It cannot be doubted, at least it ought not to be doubted, that the Jews would feel an affectionate gratitude for this act of benevolent justice, and it is natural they would express that gratitude in the customary style, bombastical and hyperbolical as it was, which they used on extraordinary occasions, and which was, and still is in practice with all the eastern nations.

The instance to which I refer, and which is given in the second part of the Age of Reason, is the last verse of the 44th chapter and the beginning of the

"Zechariah, in the first chapter of his book, indulges himself in several whims on the joy of getting back to Jerusalem. He says at the 8th verse, 'I saw by night (Zechariah was a sharp-sighted seer) and behold a man sitting on a red horse, (yes, reader, a red horse) and he stood among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom, and behind him were red horses speckled and white.' He says nothing about green horses, nor blue horses, perhaps because it is difficult to distinguish green from blue by night, but a Christian can have no doubt they were there, because 'faith is the evidence of things not seen,'

"Zechariah then introduces an angel among his horses, but he does not tell us what colour the angel was of, whether black or white, nor whether he came to buy horses, or only to look at them as curiosities, for certainly they were of that kind. Be this, however, as it may, he enters into conversation with this angel, on the joyful affair of getting back to Jerusalem, he saith at the 16th verse, 66 Therefore thus saith the Lord I AM RETURNED to Jerusalem with mercies; my house shall be built in it saith the Lord of hosts, and a line shall be stretched forth upon Jerusalem." An expression signifying the rebuilding the city.

"All this, whimsical and imaginary as it is, sufficiently proves that it was the entry of the Jews into Jerusalem from captivity, and not the entry of Jesus Christ seven hundred years afterwards, that is the subject upon which Zechariah is always speaking.

"I pass on to the tenth passage, called a prophecy of Jesus Christ. "Matthew, chap. xxvi. ver. 51. And behold one of them which was with Jesus (meaning Peter) stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into its place, for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels. But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be. In that same hour Jesus said to the multitudes, are ye come out as against a thief with swords and with staves for to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me. But all this was done that the scriptures of the prophets might be fullfilled. "This loose and general manner of speaking, admits neither of detection nor of proof. Here is no quotation given, nor the name of any Bible author mentioned, to which reference can be had.

45th-in these words: That saith of Cyrus he is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, thou shalt be built, and to the Temple, thy foundation shalt be laid. Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden to subdue nations before him, and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut.'

This complimentary address is in the present tense, which shews that the things of which it speaks were in existence at the time of writing it; and consequently, that the author must have been at least one hundred and fifty years later than Isaiah, and that the book which bears his name is a compilation. The Proverbs called Solomon's, and the Psalms called David's. are of the same kind. The two last verses of the second book of Chronicles, and the three first verses of the first chapter of Ezra, are word for word the same; which shew that the compilers of the Bible mixed the writings of different authors together, and put them under some common head.

As we have here an instance in the 44th and 45th chapters of the introduction of the name of Cyrus into a book to which it cannot belong, it affords good ground to conclude, that the passage in the 42d chapter, in which the character of Cyrus is given without his name, has been introduced in like manner, and that the person there spoken of is Cyrus.

"There are, however, some high improbabilities against the the truth of the acccount.

"First-It is not probable that the Jews who were then a conquered people, and under subjection to the Romans, should be permitted to wear swords.

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Secondly-If Peter had attacked the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear, he would have been immediately taken up by the guard that took up his master, and sent to prison with him.

"Thirdly-What sort of disciples and preaching apostles must those of Christs have been that wore swords?

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Fourthly-This scene is represented to have taken place the same evening of what is called the Lord's Supper, which makes, according to the ceremony of it, the inconsistency of wearing swords the greater.

"I pass on to the eleventh passage called a prophecy of Jesus Christ. "Matthew, chap. xxvii. ver. 3. Then Judas which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver, and departed and went and hanged himself-And the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, it is not lawful to put them in the treasury, because it is the price of blood-And they took counsel and bought with them the potters' field to bury strangers in-Wherefore that field is called the field of blood unto this day. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value, and gave them for the potters' field, as the Lord appointed me.' "This is a most bare-faced piece of imposition. The passage in Jeremiah which speaks of the purchase of a field, has no more to do with the case to which Matthew applies it, than it has to do with the purchase of lands in America. I will recite the whole passage:

66 Jeremiah, chap. xxxii, v. 6. "And Jeremiah said, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying-Behold Hanamiel, the son of Shallum thine uncle shall come unto thee, saying, buy thee my field that is in Anathoth, for the right of redemption is thine to buy it-So Hanamiel mine uncle's son came to me in the court of the prison, according to the word of the Lord, and said unto me, buy my field I pray thee, that is in Anathoth, which is in the country of Benjamin, for the right of inheritance is thine, and the redemption is thine; buy it for thyself. Then I knew this was the word of the Lord-And I bought the field of Hanamiel mine uncle's son, that was in Anathoth, and weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver -and I subscribed the evidence and sealed it, and took witnesses and weighed him the money in balances. So I took the evidence of the purchase, both that which was sealed according to the law and custom, and that which was open-and I gave the evidence of the purchase unto Baruch, the son of Neriah, the son of Maaseiath, in the sight of Hanamiel mine uncle's son, and in the presence of the witnesses that subscribed, before all the Jews that sat in the court of the prison-and I charged Baruch before them saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Take these evidences, this evidence of the purchase, both which is sealed, and this evidence which is open, and put them in an earthen vessel, that they may continue many days-for thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, houses, and fields, and vineyards, shall be possessed again in this land.

"There is among the whims and reveries of Zechariah, mention made of thirty pieces of silver given to a potter. They can hardly have been so