The dead body was wrapped up in fine cotton or chintz. The expression "wrapping up" and " linen "" is common to the three evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and as they coincide in this, I believe it to apply not to the regular cloth, in which the dead were, properly speaking, enveloped, but to these wrappers. John alone uses another expression, which makes the case still stronger, and which I will endeavour to explain. From John xi. 44, it seems it was the fashion to wrap the rich in bandages, exactly according to the Eyyptian custom, every foot and hand separately, so that Lazarus, although he was wrapped up in bandages, could still walk. But it may be asked, what "clean linen" means? For it is not probable that Matthew would inform us, which is in itself intelligible without his information, that the rich Joseph would not wrap up the dead body in dirty linen. This word has been generally overlooked by commentators. I believe, that, in that ambiguous word "sindon," which, as Forster observes, is common both to linen and to cotton, it is confined to the last, for cotton garments were clean both to Egyptians and to Jews, and, I might almost

say, sacred, since with both people the priests clothed themselves in calico, and not in linen. It is for this reason, I prefer my own interpretation of the word "a burial cloth" to the Lutheran and to the common translation of the word "clean linen." When Luther translated the Bible, he could not have known this.

Matthew says nothing of the spices, which were wrapped up with the body of Jesus. As this silence, as well as that of Mark and Luke, has been considered by the adversaries of the christian religion, as an argument against the fact, I hope I may be allowed to make a few observations upon this place.

1. The enemies of Christianity contend that there is great inconsistency in Mark and Luke relating the fact of the women bringing spices, and intending to embalm Jesus on our Sunday morning, and at the same time omitting what is related by John, of Joseph and Nicodemus having already wrapped up the body of Jesus with spices, when they interred him. This ceases to be, in point of fact, remarkable, when we consider, that Matthew, although he describes the wrapping, says nothing of the women having brought spices, or of their having

intended to embalm the body early on our Sunday morning. He is perfectly silent with respect to spices and embalming.

2. Where Mark omits, what Matthew omits, for the gospel of Matthew was in the hands of Mark, it does not render Mark in any degree more suspicious than Matthew.

60. "In his own new tomb, which he had hewn out, in the rock."] A doubt here occurs to me which has not yet been noticed by our commentators, nor seems to have attracted the remarks of the enemies of Christianity; the latter always reason, as if Jesus had been placed in the grave of Joseph. If the objection has not been made, it is a proof that their acuteness and acrimony are not equal. According to the language of Matthew, it is evident, that the grave of Jesus was the property of Joseph of Arimathea. This circumstance is not mentioned by any other evangelist, and there is something improbable in the thing itself. According to Mark, Joseph was a counsellor of Arimathea-how comes he to have his own sepulchre hewn in a rock at Jerusalem? and the more so, because the Jews were not in the habit, as we are, of transporting our dead, but of burying them immediately

after their decease. He who reads John will not easily believe it was the separate property of Joseph, but only used on account of its proximity, and near approach to the Sabbath. John says, "Now in the place, where he was crucified, there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepuchre, wherein was never yet man laid; there laid they Jesus, therefore, because of the Jews' preparation day (Friday), for the sepulchre was nigh at hand." I confess, that in this main point, there is, according to my translation of it, an inconsistency between Matthew and John, but yet so, that the case itself, and the other evangelists determine it, in favour of John. In Matthew there are two various readings, which give a new construction to the thing, and adapt it to the translation of Mark, "laid him in a sepulchre, which was hewn out of a rock." The various readings are these :

1. "His own," (avrov) is omitted in the Winchelsea manuscript, which is a very important one, and we cannot suppose that this was done to avoid the inconsistency, because it has still the words, "which he had hewn out, in the rock," and this leaves the property in Joseph of Arimathea. Mark, who had the

Hebrew gospel of Matthew before him, and at times confined himself to translation, does not use the word, "his own."

2. The old Syriac translation has "was hewn out," for "he had hewn out," and the new Syriac translation has the same version in the margin, a proof, that the marginal reading was not from the old Syriac, but from Greek manuscripts of the sixth century. It gains additional importance from its coincidence with Mark, who so generally follows Matthew.

The probability therefore, is, that the authorised version is incorrect, and that the original reading is," in a new tomb, which had been hewn out in a rock." But supposing this reading not to be acquiesced in, the following will be the result. We have not Matthew in the original Hebrew, but only a Greek translation, which may be, from the very nature of translation, in itself, defective. In the original Hebrew, it must have been different, for Mark possessed and read it, and he writes, "laid him in a sepulchre, which was hewn out of a rock." The translator, (for every one, accustomed to translation, knows the extreme difficulty of preserving the perfect sense of the