on scripture, his usual cant, before his death, and an habitual motion which he had of breaking of bread. Then another time he was corporeally present among his old acquaintance, but they thought they saw a spirit. And a few days after he again appeared among them; but some of them doubted, whether it was the doctor, or not! And sometimes, he would slip into their company when the doors were all shut, either from behind a curtain, or miraculously creep through the key hole! That he would, moreover, change his form and shape, so that his most intimate friend would not believe it was him till he discovered a sore in his side, which the power of God did not heal in his resurrection !— And after that he vanished out of sight, and was taken up to heaven. Suppose all this, I say, that the French prophets had told such like stories of the resurrection of Dr. Emms, and of such appearances to them, what would your priests and all other wise men have said to them? Why that they were all idle tales, manifest lies, sham, and imposture. For, they would say, if the Doctor had truly risen, God, by whose power he must have been raised, would have kept him his full time in the grave, and have raised him in the presence of the priests, magistrates, and people, in order to prevent every suspicion and appearance of fraud. Moreover he would have walked publicly afterwards in the streets without any fear or danger, to the satisfaction of all who had known Dr. Emms, as being the man whom they had seen dead and buried. Without danger I say from the populace; who would have been so far from affronting him, that they would almost have adored him for the miraculous favour which God had conferred upon him in raising him again to life. And instead of sculking about and absconding himself during the forty days he chose to remain here, he would have presented himself at every public meeting and assembly throughout the country. As none of these things were done, it is plain that the whole is a complete fabrication.

"I need not make the application of this case and story of Dr. Emms, as your priests know well enough how to do this for me. To say that there were none who

would be found so desperate as to engage in such a fraud and imposition, as in the supposed case of Dr. Emms, is a mistake; many thousands for their diversion would engage in such a plot. And the stories of ghosts and apparitions, which are mostly the result of fraud and deception in the crafty to delude the ignorant, is a proof thereof. I myself would be most forward to concert and join in such an intrigue; if it were only to banter the clergy, ruffle their tempers, and secretly laugh at them. Nothing would deter me from it, but the dread of the civil power, from which danger the disciples of Jesus were secured. So the disciples stood to the fraud; told the story of Jesus risen so often, till they believed it themselves and drew multitudes besides into a belief thereof!

"Before I conclude this letter I think it my duty to give you my opinion of the religion, which Jesus and his followers were for introducing into the world; notwithstanding the artifice and fraud practised in his pretended miracles. And though our Chief Priests and ancient nation were justified in passing sentence and executing it upon Jesus, yet I must do him the justice to own that the doctrine which he and his disciples taught, was, for the most part, useful and popular; being no other than the law of nature; which, all nations, being wearied with their own superstitions, and sick of the burden of the priests, were running into apace. One of your ancient fathers (Justin Martyr, in Apol. 2) says, that they who lived according to the law of nature, were true Christians. But in process of time, Christians most shamefully adulterated Jesus's doctrine. If they had not sophisticated the primitive religion of Jesus; if they had not built their systematical divinity upon him, and brought strange inventions of men into his worship; if they had not again subjugated and entangled themselves in another and much worse yoke of bondage to an intolerable and tyrannical priesthood, the world might have enjoyed much happiness under his religion, as it was at first promulgated: or more truly speaking, the state of nature and liberty which may be looked for upon the coming of our Messiah, the

allegorical accomplisher of the law and the prophets. "Thus, sir, have I finished my letter on the resurrection of Jesus; and whether I have not said enough to justify our Jewish disbelief of that miracle, let your chief priests judge and determine. They have a potent reason I know for their belief, at which we Jews cannot come, or may be we might believe with them.

"Though I have here shewn that Christ is not risen, yet I have more wit than to say, with Paul, that the preaching of your priesthood is in vain. Their oratory is still useful, if it be but to tickle the ears and amuse the understandings of the people about doctrines they do not understand, whether true of false. And such an order of men as are your priesthood, must, by their habit of long robes, be an ornament to society: therefore it is an honour to the country to have them well fed and clad! Had I room for it, I could write a curious encomium in praise of them, and tell the world of what use and advantage they have been in all ages. O! what wars and persecutions might have been raised in the world, but for their pacific tempers! How would sin and immorality have broken loose upon mankind, like a deluge, but for the goodness of their lives, and excellency of their precepts! How has the increase and multitude of their warm sermons, been the ruin of Satan's hot and divided kingdom of darkness and error! Is it not owing to their pains and labour that every age, for many past, has been improving in virtue?! And is not the present, for piety and good morals, that perfection of time which is not to be equalled, but by the restitution of the golden age?!

In this letter, you may perceive, what great stress the Jew has laid upon the use and design of the watch, and of the sealing of the stone at the mouth of the sepulchre likewise upon those remarkable words spoken by the chief priests, when they besought Pilate to grant them a watch; saying, that the last error, or as he interprets it, deceit or imposture, will be worse than the first; evidently alluding to the fraud practised in the

pretended resuscitation of Lazarus; which shows plainly that the fraud therein was detected and well known to the chief priests, or they never could have had the assurance to assert as much before Pilate. This appears to have been so glaring, and self-evident, that the cunning translators of this book, artfully substituted the word error, for πλavn, planh, or imposition.

No man of common sense would believe it possible for the chief priests, who always considered Jesus to be an impostor and deceiver of the people when living, to be anywise alarmed about his resurrection, in consequence of anything which he might have said to that effect, much less to watch for it, when his own disciples had not the least idea of such a thing. These latter did not entertain such an idea, or why should the women have put themselves to so much trouble and expense in preparing spices and ointments, if they expected him to rise again the same day on which they were applied? I must confess that this account perplexes me much, to imagine why these women, who had seen Nicodemus lay out the body of Jesus with an hundred weight of spices, should think of bringing more! for Luke says, expressly, that these women beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid;22 and, it appears by all the historians, they did not quit it until after the stone was rolled to the door. Then what need had they to bring more spices? Was not an hundred weight sufficient for one body?

Again, if the chief priests and pharisees went the next day to seal the stone, as a matter of course they would look into the sepulchre to see if the body was there, before they clapped on their seals: else the body, for what they knew, might have been taken away the first night, before the watch was appointed! And if they saw the body thus spiced and preserved, they surely would have considered it unnecessary and ridiculous to set a watch for the keeping of that which his own disciples had been so forward in preserving: by which they would be well assured that his disciples had no thoughts of his rising again, nor any intention of stealing away the body in order to propagate such a

report; or they would never have gone to the expense of spicing it in that sumptuous manner. They did not spice the body of Lazarus. Why? because they expected Lazarus would be raised again, according to agreement, before he counterfeited death. But Jesus they knew was actually dead; and seeing him crucified, so spiced his body, not expecting nor supposing it possible for him to rise again to life in this world.

The advocates of this resurrection story say that the chief priests and pharasees did not expect a real resurrection, but was only afraid that such a report might be raised could the disciples but obtain the body. How could they think of such a thing, when they knew that the disciples had run away and left Jesus as soon as he was apprehended, and were moreover fearful of discovering themselves, 23 lest they should be recognized and punished accordingly? Besides the body being left there in safety the first night, without a watch, would convince them that the disciples had seemingly no such design, or they would have taken it away before the next day. Yet supposing that they did make such a report, what then? Without some proof of his resurrection, could they imagine that the people would be such credulous fools as to believe such an unnatural and unheard of prodigy, as that of the revivification of a man after he had been crucified, dead, and buried for three days, without stronger proof than a mere report propagated by his own party, who were already known to the people as deceivers and impostors? Although the chief priests might have known that many of the people had suffered themselves to be deceived by reports of this kind, still in the present instance they would naturally premise that the people would expect ocular demonstration: curiosity would excite them to inquire where he was, and how he looked after his revival? To have shewn them a dead body, would have only discovered the vilainy attempted on them; and surely, they could have been under no apprehensions of his disciples restoring the dead body to life again, after they had got it in their possession in order to make of him a king! What then could they suppose that the disciples could