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the public offices of devotion, they are obliged to pro nounce; but it was reserved for the author of the discourse before us, to render himself pre-eminently conspicuous by blaspheming his Saviour, and accounting the blood of the covenant an unholy thing," openly from the pulpit, in the face of his superior and brethren in the ministry. How such a man came to be appointed to the office of preaching the sermon on that occasion, can only be accounted for upon the supposi tion that his principles were unknown; otherwise surely it was highly reprehensible to give him an opportunity of venting his pernicious opinions, and of staggering, as we know he did, the faith of plain and unlettered hearers, by the boldness of his assertions.

To add to his guilt, this hoary apostate has sent forth his libel on the gospel into the world, that it may do as much mischief as possible. He professes it to be his intention to give the profits of the publication to the "widows and orphans of the clergy of the Archdeaconry of Essex;" but we hope better things of the clergy of that archdeaconry than to believe they will contaminate their fund with the wages of unrighteousness. Profits so arising must prove a canker to their charity; as it would be the price of the "blood of souls;" and may be fitly compared to the "thirty pieces of silver," which even the hypocritical chief-priests and elders would not defile their treasury with.

We now proceed to a particular examination of the discourse, in which there is nothing new, except it be in the peremptoriness, audacity, and indecency of its language.

The points assumed by the preacher are, that Jesus Christ was the mere son of Joseph and Mary, in the ordinary course of nature; that the doctrine of the Trinity, "whether Arian or Athanasian," was the invention of the Platonic school of Alexandria; and that "the satisfaction of divine justice by the vicarious punishment of Christ, is a disgusting impossibility."

To support these assumptions our adventurous author gets rid of those passages in the gospel of St. Matthew and St. Luke, which assert the divinity and miraculous conception of Christ, by declaring that they are forgeries. But who forged them, or at what period, he has

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not condescended to inform us; though when a man sends forth such a declaration into the world, relating to any ancient and venerated writings, it is reasonably to be expected that he brings forward his evidences. Mr. Stone, however, has no other evidence than his own suspicions, and an arbitrary construction which he chooses very modestly, no doubt, to put upon those passages of the ancient prophets which are directly quoted or alluded to by the Evangelists.

His abundant wisdom and sagacity are strikingly dis played in strengthening his objection to St. Luke's genealogy of our Saviour, by urging what St. Paul says respecting genealogies in 1 Tim. i. 4, Titus iii. 9. Now to wave any observation on the objects of the apostle's censure, which even the most ordinary readers of the Scripture will not require, this reference makes directly against Mr. Stone's assumption; for if such genealogies as those of Matthew and Luke were what St. Paul cautioned Timothy and Titus against, then they are not forgeries of a posterior date. Now if a forgery of this kind, and of so much magnitude, was known in the Apostolic age, how comes it that St. Paul in particular did not expressly mention it?

But Mr. Stone is determined to believe what he pleases; and as to argument, it is obvious enough how it will be received by a man, who after fixing, without assigning any reason for it, his own sense upon the prophecies respecting the Messiah, declares, that "any passage in the received canon of Christian Scripture, which militates against that sense, he is bound to reject as an interpolated forgery?"

This is in other words to say, that having ascertained the precise meaning of the Old Testament prophecies, which must necessarily be obscure and involved, till the fulfilment clears away all the difficulty and determines the application, he will not believe in that fulfilment or application, if in a single point it shall be found to vary from that preconceived notion or judgement of the prophecy which he had formed in his own mind.

But what are the prophecies which Mr. Stone pronounces to be directly against the miraculous conception and divinity of Christ? They are few in number, and therefore may soon be considered,

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"By Isaiah the Messiah is prefigured as "the rod out of the stem of Jesse," the father of David, and "the branch out of his roots." By Jeremiah he is distinguished as a righteous branch." "Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgement and justice on the earth." By Ezekiel, the Messiah is characterized under the patronymic of his his royal progenitor: "I will set up one shepherd over them," the Israelites, "and he shall feed them, even my servant David; and again my servant David shall be their prince for ever." Moreover Isaiah prophesies, "of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to order it and to establish it with judgement and with justice, from henceforth even for ever."

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From these isolated passages, broken and wrested from the whole connected and glorious chain of prophecy respecting the Messiah, this is the forced conclusion, that he must be a mere man, the "joint offspring of a man and a woman, and in the case of our Lord's birth, of a man and his wife."

It would be an insult to the common sense of any of our readers to waste words in refutation of such reasoning; but it is proper to shew the disingenuity of this writer, who makes such an outcry against supposed interpolations. He maintains, that all the prophets when speaking of the Messiah describe him as a mere man; and that the above passages in particular assert his simple and absolute humanity.

The very passages which he has cited and mangled, when taken with their correlatives, and considered in the whole continuity of the prophecy of which they only make a part, will prove the very reverse of what they are alleged to support. Thus in the case of the first quotation from Isaiah, this whole prediction of the person and kingdom of the Messiah, takes in both the 11th and 12th chapters; and in the last the same person, this king foretold to arise in the house of David, is expressly called the LORD JEHOVAH, and the " Holy One of

Israel."

But the citation from Jeremiah is more remarkable, and the liberty taken with it by Mr. Stone is still more impudent and dishonest. The entire prediction is this, "Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise

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unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgement and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is his name whereby he shall be called, p ', JEHOVAH OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS." Why did Mr. Stone omit the latter part of this prophecy? For an obvious reason, because it directly overthrows the whole of his hypothesis.

The citation from Ezekiel is no less unfortunate to his cause for in this same prophecy, both immediately before and after the particular passage here quoted, this Shepherd and Prince, who is to rule over and dwell with his redeemed people, is expressly declared to be the "LORD GOD," (see verses 11, 19, 30, 31.)

After exhibiting this garbled view of part of the prophecies concerning Christ, which, in his usual strain of modesty, he calls a "faithful though not exhausted account of the Messiah," our author commits an outrage upon decency with regard to the doctrine of the "supernatural birth of Jesus," which we dare not pollute our pages by transcribing. It is filthy in the extreme, and depraved, indeed, must be that mind which could embody such ideas in such language. But in wantoning upon this sacred subject, our author does not stand alone. He has the honour of treading in the exact footsteps of that vulgar infidel, Thomas Paine, who in his Age of Reason expressed himself upon this particular point, with just as much decency and force of argument as Mr. Stone has here done.

The audience, and the Christian Church at large, are next insulted, by a declaration that the first two chapters of St. Matthew's gospel are a forgery. This is not a new assertion; it has been brought forward by much abler men than Mr. Stone; and their objections have been answered over and over again. It would answer no useful purpose to consider in detail these hackneyed objections, when nothing new is advanced to enforce them, or to give them a colour of plausibility. Suffice it to say, that the two chapters are contained in three hundred and fifty of the most ancient manuscripts of this gospel which have been collated; and that without them there is a perplexing aud abrupt hiatus, which the beginning of the third chapter does not supply added to this,

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these chapters are quoted by the most venerable Chris tian writers of the very first century. We may ask then who could commit such an act as to forge two chapters of such weight and length, without detection? But we need add no more. When Mr. Stone shall condescend to bring forth his strong reasons, if he has any, it will be time enough to defend the authority of what he has not yet weakened, though he vauntingly says that he has gained a complete triumph over an impostor, who assumes the name of Matthew."

Poor man! his exultation is like that of the knight of La Mancha, who thought he had gained Mambrino's helmet when he placed upon his head the barber's bason.

The massacre of the infants of Bethlehem is brought forward, and alleged to be a falsehood, merely becausé profane history is silent upon the fact; and the preacher here introduces a sort of apology, on the behalf of no less a person than Herod the great, for which he very politely assigns as a reason, that the devil is not so bad as he is painted." This reminds us of the conduct of another Socinian, who, to support the credit of his cause, called in the respectable evidence of Judas Iscariot.

We shall say no more on the subject of the massacre of the infants, than merely to refer to the candid Lardner, who was no friend to the Trinitarian doctrine. That learned and truly modest man observes on the silence of historians with regard to the slaughter: "this appears to me to be at the best an objection of a very extraordinary nature. The most exact and diligent historians have omitted many events, that happened within the compass of those times of which they undertook to write. Nor does the reputation which any one historian has for exactness invalidate the credit of another, who seems to be well informed of the facts he relates. Suetonius, Tacitus, and Dio Cassius, have all three written of the reign of Tiberius: but its no objection against the veracity of any one of them, that he has mentioned some things of that Emperor which have been omitted by the rest *."

Lardner's Credibility, vol. I. p. 436, where the reader will find this bjection thoroughly considered, and satisfactorily answered,

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