cure of the demoniac at Gadara, the raising of Jairus's daughter, &c., in which, according to the testimony of the other evangelists, he was attended by the twelve apostles. They only refer this part of the Gospel history to an earlier period. To pretend that the journey was one thing, and the particulars, recited immediately afterwards, another, when the writer himself makes no difference, must be void of all foundation; and to suppose that the parable of the sower was repeated, and that the cure of the demoniac at Gadara, &c. happened twice, merely because Matthew and Mark place them in different parts of their history, (and, indeed, expressly assert that they happened in a different order,) would be to load the history with the greatest improbabilities. For it can never be believed that so many things, attended with so many of the same circumstances, ever happened to any man, as must, upon this plan, be believed of Jesus. If your Lordship's idea of the inspiration of the sacred writers obliges you to maintain this, I am truly sorry for it. You ought, then, to have done as Dr. Macknight has done, maintain that all the evangelists relate every thing in the order in which they happened, and thereby make the whole history absolutely incredible. In your margin, your Lordship likewise refers me to Matt. ix. 35, and Mark vi. 6, as authorities for the same circuit. But this, my Lord, is evidently a very different journey from that which is mentioned by Luke. And yet it is one that I have not overlooked, for it was that in which Jesus visited Nazareth. The case seems to have been thus:-our Lord had, in a former excursion, visited the places in the neighbourhood of Capernaum, probably to the north of that city, and among others Chorazin and Bethsaida, and he was now about to visit the places to the west. But he had not made much progress before he perceived that, travelling in this manner, he could not do sufficient justice to them all; and therefore he sent the twelve to the more distant places, while he confined himself to Nazareth and its neighbourhood. That our readers may judge for themselves how far this account is supported by the evangelists, I shall quote their own words on the occasion. After the events of the day on which our Lord called Matthew to attend him, this evangelist says, (ix. 35-38, * Reply, p. 90. x. 1, 5,) "Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then says he to his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few: pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest. And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits.-These twelve Jesus sent forth." According to Mark, (vi. 1,) after the events of the same day at Capernaum, Jesus "went out from thence, and came into his own country, and his disciples follow him." He then arrives at Nazareth, where, being rejected, (vers. 6, 7,) " he went round about the villages teaching. And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two, and gave them power over unclean spirits." There are small variations in these accounts, for which reason your Lordship may be disposed to make another journey out of them, and by this means load and embarrass my system more than you have already done. But I shall not think it at all affected by any thing of this kind. SECTION VII. Of the Number of Miles that Jesus has been supposed to travel per Day. In order to represent the hurry and fatigue that you suppose I make our Saviour to have been in, on my hypothesis, your Lordship, like Mr. Whiston, draws a plan of all his journeys, from the first passover to the next pentecost, and then computes the number of miles he must have travelled per day. But, my Lord, when any scheme is represented, it should be exhibited in all its parts, and not mixed with any other scheme. In this case, therefore, the time should not be mine, and the journeys your Lordship's. And yet this is the manner in which your Lordship has treated me. This makes a mixture of the two schemes, and something agreeable to neither of them. I am really not a little surprised that the manifest unfairness of this treatment should not have struck your Lordship. Had I treated your Lordship in the same manner, you would have felt the impropriety of it in a moment. That we may examine this business with more attention, I must beg your Lordship to turn to p. 93 of your Letter, and we will look over the list that your Lordship has there drawn of our Saviour's journeys, and I will point out what articles I admit, and what I object to. I will then allow the rest in your own numbers, that you may not think that I will contend for trifles, and we shall see how the account of his daily progress really stands upon my hypothesis, unmixed with your Lordship's. If your Lordship will now please to cast up the number of miles as I have corrected them, you will find the whole amount to be 197, instead of 400, that is, not quite half as much travelling. And dividing this number by 50, you * Because I do not suppose Jesus to have passed through Nazareth; and for this, according to your Lordship's map, I ought to deduct more than I do, when 1 I allow 20 miles. (P.) + I deduct from this article at least two-thirds, because I coufine the circuit to the places in the neighbourhood of Capernaum, chiefly to the north of that town. I, therefore, call it 30 miles. (P.) With this journey I have nothing at all to do, and I wonder your Lordship should not have put to my account the journey back again as well as the journey thither, as one of them could not have been made without the other. (P.) This I do not admit, because I suppose the visit to those places to be included in No. 4. (P.) See the reasons in the last Section. (P.) This journey I confine to the neighbourhood of Nazareth, and therefore shall not allow much more than half the number of miles, or 20. (P.) will find that there is no occasion, on my hypothesis, to suppose our Lord to have travelled quite four miles per day; and where is the great improbability in this? Few men of an active life, I believe, walk less, and many persons walk three or four times as much, the whole year through. 66 It is, besides, by no means certain, though it seems to be generally taken for granted, that our Saviour always travelled on foot. Luke (viii. 2, 3) informs us, that in one of his progresses through Galilee, (and it was, probably, the same in most of the others,) he was attended by Mary called Magdalene, and many others, who ministered unto him of their substance." Now these women cannot be supposed to have travelled on foot, and would they suffer the person on whom they attended, and whose expenses they defrayed, to do so, at least always; though this might be the case in little excursions from any more considerable place, to the neighbouring villages, where the women might not always attend him? This, I own, is conjecture. But if our Lord was attended by rich women at all, I cannot think the supposition, of his not travelling always on foot, to be wholly without probability. The twelve apostles also do not, by any means, appear to have been poor, or unable to provide mules for themselves. Peter, Andrew, James, John and Matthew, it is pretty certain, had some property, and none of the apostles were in the capacity of servants, or in the lowest classes of life. SECTION VIII. Of References to more than Two Passovers in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I MUST now attend to another of your Lordship's arguments for extending the time of our Lord's ministry beyond the year and a few months that Mr. Mann assigns to it. It is the indication of other passovers intervening between the two that are allowed to be expressly mentioned by John. Every additional passover undoubtedly adds a year to the duration of our Lord's ministry, but your Lordship must allow me to require sufficient evidence for such passovers. You say, that "the three first evangelists-omit the first passover, and other intermediate events. But they all imply a passover after the imprisonment of John, when they mention the plucking and eating of ears of corn." "* But this event I place before the pentecost after the first passover, the most proper time of the year for that transaction. It is only the long stay that your Lordship makes in Judea that obliges you to defer it till after another passover. "St. Luke," you say, "refers to some national festival between the second and third passover," when he says, (xii. 1,) "There were present-some that told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.' But it is by no means certain that this event happened during the course of our Lord's ministry. It might not be at a public festival, or that festival might not be a passover. " "There is also," your Lordship says, "another implication of the paschal season when St. Mark says, (vi. 39,) that the five thousand, when they were miraculously fed by Jesus, sat down on the green grass." This I think I have sufficiently accounted for before. "St. Luke," your Lordship says, "alludes to one or two of our Lord's journeys to Jerusalem besides his last. Chap. x. 38:"§ "Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village, and a certain woman, named Martha, received him into her house." And also xvii. 11: "And it came to pass as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee." With respect to these journeys, I can only say that they appear to me to be the same, viz. that which preceded the last passover, though there is, evidently, a good deal of confusion in this part of Luke's history. The former is not said to be any journey to Jerusalem at all, or it might be at some other public feast, and not a passover. St. Luke, your Lordship says, "records a reference to his preaching in Judea and Jerusalem, chap. xxiii, 5:"|| "And they were the more fierce, saying, he stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee, to this place." Now it is not denied, but supposed by me, that all the latter part of our Lord's ministry was employed in Judea, after he had spent the first part of it in Galilee. You say, that both "St. Luke and St. Matthew suppose * Reply, p. 139. (P.) + Ibid. (P.) Ibid. p. 140. (P.) Ibid. (P.) |