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ascertain where particular prophecies begin and end, and even at what precise time they were written. This is happily the case with the prophecy now before us. It begins at the 1st verse of the 7th chapter, and ends, according to Lowth, at the 7th verse of the 9th, or according to Dr. John Taylor, at the 4th verse of the 10th chapter. At all events, it embraces the passage which forms the subject of the present paper.

This prophecy is introduced by a declaration that it was delivered in the reign of Ahaz (vii. 1), and by comparing this declaration with 2 Kings xvi., we find that it must have been very nearly at the commencement of his reign; probably in the year 742 B. C. The child whose birth is predicted is generally supposed to have been Jesus Christ. "I have no doubt myself," says Mr. Christie, in his able Discourses on the Divine Unity, (3rd ed. p. 125,)" that this prophecy respects the Messiah," meaning of course Jesus, whom he regards as the Messiah; "and there is no difficulty," he adds, "in explaining it upon Unitarian principles." Mr. Lindsey adopts the same interpretation. (Examination of Robinson's Plea for the Divinity of Christ, pp. 37, 39.) Dr. Carpenter does the same, both in the Appendix to his Unitarianism the Doctrine of the Gospel, and in his Sermon delivered at Bristol on Christmas - Day 1816, in which he makes it his object to shew that the titles contained in this passage are "strictly applicable to Jesus Christ, and perfectly consistent with the absolute Unity and unrivalled Supremacy of Jehovah." In short, Unitarian writers have taken it for granted, almost without a single exception, that this prophecy relates to Jesus Christ; and in their attempts to prove that, with this view of it, the titles in question contain nothing derogatory to the Unity and Supremacy of God, many of them have been eminently successful. But when they have gone on to shew that these titles are particularly descriptive of Jesus Christ, there has always appeared to me a lamentable falling off in the strength of the argument.

Some writers, both Jewish and Christian, have applied this prophecy to King Hezekiah. This application

of it is adopted by Rammohun Roy, the celebrated Hindoo Reformer, who has lately embraced Christian Unitarianism, and written with uncommon ability and learning in its defence; and Grotius, although he refers it in a secondary sense to Jesus Christ, admits that its primary application is to Hezekiah. To this application it is objected by Allix that Hezekiah was nine years of age when the prophecy was uttered by Isaiah; and this objection is repeated by Lowth, who says that Hezekiah " was certainly born nine or ten years before the delivery of this prophecy," although he admits, in effect, that, if this difficulty could be obviated, the prophecy might be applied to him, for he says, "No one of that age answered to this character, except Hezekiah;" meaning, of course, that Hezekiah did answer to it, and that there would be no difficulty in applying to him the prophetical titles contained in it, if any means could be suggested of obviating the chronological difficulty already stated. If then we can shew that Hezekiah was not born at the time when the prophecy was delivered, and that his birth took place exactly ten years later than the period usually assigned for it, this objection will instantly fall to the ground.

It is well known that the dates in the books of Kings and Chronicles are often very confused and contradictory; and it is evident that they have in many instances undergone very material alterations. The present is clearly a case of this nature. We are told, (2 Kings xvi. 2,) that Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and that he reigned sixteen years, from which it is evident that he ceased to reign at the age of thirtysix. We are likewise informed, (2 Kings xviii. 2,) that his son Hezekiah succeeded him at the age of twentyfive. Consequently, deducting these twenty-five years from thirty-six, the age of Ahaz when he ceased to reign, we have ELEVEN remaining, which, according to the received Hebrew text, must have been the age of Ahaz at the birth of his son Hezekiah. The attempts made by Bochart, Capellus and others, to account for this extraordinary birth, reflect great credit upon their ingenuity, but fail to produce any thing like a rational conviction

that the numbers above-specified are correct. There seems indeed, to be only one effectual method of clearing up the difficulty, and that is, by supposing a mistake on the part of some early Jewish transcriber, which has affected all the later copies.

Ahaz began to reign when he was twenty years of age, or, (according to the Chronological Table of the Kings of Judah and Israel, published by Dr. John Taylor in his Scheme of Scripture Divinity,) B. C. 742, which was about the time that Isaiah's prophecy was delivered. From the same table it appears that the captivity of Israel by Tiglath Pileser took place in the second year of Ahaz, B. C. 740. But in Isaiah vii. 16, we are told that during the infancy of the child whose birth was predicted, or before he would know to refuse the evil and

choose the good, Retzin and Pekah would cease to be kings over Syria and Israel. This, then, must have been in the year 740 B. C., at which time the child was probably about a year old, so that he must have been born B. C. 741, which corresponds with the second year of the reign of Ahaz. But this will make Ahaz twenty-one instead of eleven at the time of Hezekiah's birth; and here we discover the key to the whole difficulty. If, then, we say that Hezekiah began to reign when he was fifteen instead of twenty-five, by adding this fifteen to twenty-one, the supposed age of Ahaz at the time of Hezekiah's birth, we shall obtain thirty-six, the exact age of Ahaz when the throne became vacant by his death. The whole difficulty, therefore, will be resolved by supposing that, owing to a mistake of some transcriber in 2 Kings xviii. 2, tirenty-five has been substituted for fifteen. That this mistake is likely to have happened, will appear evident from the following considerations.

The Jews from a very early period have been accustomed to express numbers by the letters of the Alphabet, as we now do by figures. For instance: signifies 1, 12, 13, 74, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 10. To express the numbers between 10 and 20, they put, (10,) and add to it the letter necessary to make up the number required. Thus, reading the letters backwards according to the Jewish fashion, R' signifies 11, 12,

,יהוה and inetiable name

and so on. But when they come to 15, they depart from their usual method of notation, and substitute and 1, (9 and 6,) in the place of and 7, (10 and 5,) which latter combination they most cautiously avoid, because it forms part of the sacred JEHOVAH. At what precise period this veneration for the letters composing the name of JEHOVAI began to affect the notation of the Jews, I have no means of decidedly ascertaining; but it appears to me highly probable that it commenced about the time of the Babylonish Captivity. Michaelis, indeed, says, that the Jews never noted the number 15 by ', though Jod is 10 and He is 5." (Introduction to the New Testament translated by Marsh, Vol. III. Pt. I. p. 173.) A transcriber, then, might easily mistake the letters 1, which correspond with our 15, for 1, the letters used to denote 25; and thus the error may have been extended and perpetuated, so as to affect all the manuscripts and versions now in existence. That

When this superstitious fear of writing or pronouncing the word JEHOVAH began is uncertain. It appears, however, from the following passage in Josephus's Jewish Antiquities, (Bk. II. chap. xii. Sect. 4,) to have been at least as early as his time. "God declared to Moses his holy name, which had never been discovered to men before, and concerning which it is not lawful for me to say any thing further." Whiston thinks that this concealment of the name JEHOVAH was practised by the Pharisees in the time of Josephus, and that he learnt it from them. "Certuin est," says Walton, (Proleg. p. 16,)" apud Judæos longe ante Christi tempora (ante tempora 70 Interpretum) nominis hujus pronunciationem sub magna pœna interdictam fuisse omnibus, nisi solis Sacerdotibus, cum in templo populum solenniter benedicerent; unde post templi eversionem nemini omnino licitum fuit illud effari, et sic brevi vera pronunciatio penitus periit."

The mistake may be still more easily accounted for, if we suppose it to have taken place at a time when 15 was expressed by . In this case we have only to change a single letter and substitute Yod for Kaph; an alteration which is very allowable when it is considered that the letters of the Hebrew Alphabet were formerly so rude, that many, which are now totally dissimilar, bore the closest resemblance to each other.

a mistake like this has occurred in the Hebrew Text before the Greek Version was made, will appear highly probable to any one who will take the trouble of comparing the numbers and dates in parallel passages of the Books of Kings and Chronicles. Many similar mistakes are known to exist. The following are selected from a great variety of instances now before me, only because they appeared best adapted for the purpose of illustration.

In 2 Kings viii. 26, Ahaziah is

least of it, requires some pause. But by changing a figure, and substituting 15 for 25, the difficulty vanishes in a moment, and all the dates correspond with the greatest degree of exactness.

It was my first intention to have followed up these remarks by a critical examination of the passage; but want of room compels me to defer the execution of this design till soine future opportunity. R. WALLACE.

Unitarianism.
Dicere verum,

Quid vetat?

SIR,

HOR.

MAY be voted a bore: but unless

said to have been twenty-two years of Matt. xxviii. 19, inconsistent with age when he began to reign; but in 2 Chron. xxii. 2, he is said to have been forty-two, making no less a difference than twenty years. Walton (Prolegom. p. 36) puts this contradiction among the quædam aпoga: and De Dieu says Malim rotunde fateri, inexplicabilem hanc nobis esse difficultatem. Twenty-two is no doubt the genuine reading; for Joram the father of Ahaziah died at the age of forty, (2 Kings viii. 17,) and was immediately succeeded by his son. (Ver. 24.) If we take forty-two as the age of Ahaziah when he began to reign, we shall be reduced to the necessity of admitting that the son was born before the father; and if we receive both readings as true, we shall be compelled to have recourse to one or other of those ingenious hypotheses which have been framed to prove that a person might be forty-two and twenty-two years of age at the same time.

Again, in 2 Kings xxiv. 8, Jehoiachin is said to have been eighteen years old when he began to reign; but in 2 Chron. xxxvi. 9, he is said to have been eight only, which makes a difference of exactly ten years. Now it is impossible that both these numbers can be correct. Either the ten years must have been added in the one case, or subtracted in the other. The probability is that the original reading was eighteen, and accordingly in the Codex Alexandrinus this reading is found under both places.

Now the difficulty is precisely the same in the case before us. Ten years make all the difference; and if we adopt the reading of 2 Kings xviii. 2, we shall be compelled to admit that Ahaz begot Hezekiah at the age of ten, an admission which, to say the

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interdicted by yourself, I shall not cease to press, from time to time, upon the reluctant attention of your, readers, a cardinal point, (as it always appears to my mind,) in our. controversy with Trinitarians, viz. the authenticity or non-authenticity of the baptismal text. That upon the Unitarian hypothesis, the ceremony of the initiation into the religion of Christ, modo et formâ of the xxviiith Matt. was a very probable anticipa tion, the veriest bigot to his creed will scarcely affirm. Or, might I not rather say, let any advocate for the strict Unity of God in the person of the Father only, place himself in ima-, gination at the side of "the Author and Finisher of our faith," when he was about to give his final commission to his disciples to preach his religion to the world, and is there that instruction that would at the moment have surprised him more, than the one which is reported to have fallen just then from his lips, to go and baptize the nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit? In consistency, in deed, with the doctrine which he believes the Son of God to have uniformly taught, he well explains the conception to mean no more than what he finds previously revealed. But that he should be obliged to have recourse (forgive me, my brethren!) to so far fetched an explanation! Standing as an isolated behest, what other sense could it upon a first impression convey, than that of an hierarchy of some sort or other in heaven? And can we

wonder at any interpretation being put upon it, short of Athanasianist itself, which in assuming the equality of the enumerated Three, boldly and roundly gives the lie to the whole doctrine of Christ and of his apostles? For one, I am forward to confess, that if I believed in the authenticity of the text, I should blush to find myself in spite of it an Unitarian. An Athanasian, indeed, I could not be, without forfeiting, in my own opinion, every pretension to the title of Christian. But, baptized at the immediate fiat of my Saviour, not simply and solely in that Saviour's name, but in the name of the Father, and in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Holy Spirit, admitted into the Christian church by a ceremony in hæc verba instituted, at parting, by the second of these three names,-so denominated, so placed, could I believe myself a member of that church, without becoming, under some modification of the strange term, a Trini tarian? I confess honestly I could not. Anomaly, be thou my polar star, I should exclaim, and put to sea upon the trackless ocean of conjec ture, almost careless upon what theological Scylla or Charybdis I might be wrecked. For, to be baptized in the name of any one, what is it but, in other words, to be baptized unto him? By a formal act, I recognize and avow my relation to him for the first time in some way or other. That such, at least, was the import of the phrase, as used by the historian, such the purpose and effect of the rite as administered by the disciples immediately after its institution, is evident from the Epistles of St. Paul compared with the Acts of the Apostles. Were ye baptized in the name of Paul? remonstrates with pious wonder and indignation the apostle to his would-be-sectarian converts. What original allegiance do you owe to me? Was I crucified for you? Is it I that died for your sins? Am I he who is able to save to the uttermost those who come unto God through him? Can I save from the wrath to come? No, there is no other name given under heaven whereby we may be saved but his, whose ye are by bap tism, even Jesus Christ the Lord.*

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The next thing you will say, is, that you were baptized to me, (or in my name,) and set me up as the leader of your particular religious denomination. Verily, under the unexpected and so-much-to-be-deprecated circumstance of your late preferences, I thank my God that I scarcely so much as committed myself by the mere act of baptism; lest you mistake the mere instrument of that rite for its object. Again: "Know ye not, that as many of you as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death?" Your immersion in water is an apt emblem of your plunging into the grave, of being buried with him. The same metaphor occurs again and again on the mention of the ceremony. That mention is never but associated in the apostle's mind with the name of the single party. "As many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ." Your baptism is the seal of your faith in him, of your future devotion to him, of your identity as it were with him. There is but one baptism, as there is but one faith, one Lord. * Instances might be multiplied, but they would be supernumerary. But what now becomes of all this peculiarity and exclusiveness of baptism, if the form of it embrace not one only, but three several names? Could any honest man of any creed lay his hand to his heart, and affirm that such a form (and a form it is upon the face of it) as that prescribed in the disputed text, would or could suggest upon every review no other recollections than those of the solitary name of Christ, of our single relation to him, of the circumstance of his death, and all its associated ideas? I venture to say roundly and at once, absolutely impossible.

A very ingenious discourse preached before the University of Oxford, May 31, 1818, has this remarkable pas

that no precise form of words was enjoined by Christ, but that the injunction was only generally to him or in his name, (i. e.) his religion.

*I do not adduce the phrase of being baptized inεр VEKрwy, though I entertain myself little doubt of the reasoning here being parallel with the reasoning in ver. 16; referring in both to Christ as being one of the quondam dead.

sage in it: "The mystery of the ever-blessed Trinity would, perhaps, be instanced by many orthodox Christians, as a doctrine less directly taught in the book of life, than its supreme importance and fundamental character would have led them to anticipate. But in proportion to its awful importance would tradition be active in suggesting a doctrine, which, when thus suggested, is established to the satisfaction of the great majority of thoughtful Christians, by continual implication of it throughout both the volumes of revelation." The mantle of Postellus seems to have fallen upon our author, when he talks of both the volumes but to be grave and confine ourselves to the latter, would he have had occasion for this "desperately candid" admission, if the contemporaries of the apostles, when "they received the washing of baptism," could have as naturally referred to the extraordinary" form of the sacrament as enjoined by our Lord himself to his disciples, as," he says, "Eusebius afterwards did"? Had it been as familiar to the Apostle Paul as it seems to have been to the good Bishop of Cæsarea, would every benediction in the front of his epistles have run in the name of God the Father, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, and closed without any reference to the Holy Spirit? Would a solitary semblance of such a reminiscence (a semblance, I say, in compliment to the advocates of the orthodox doctrine, for the arrangement and phraseology appear to me completely to negative it) occur at the conclusion of one of his Epistles to the Corinthians? Under like circumstances, how would any one of his Athanasian successors in office salute the objects of his address? We want no better proof of what they would and must have done than the very seasonable supplement of our own reformers to "The peace of God which passeth all understand ing," &c.

As it is my design in the present essay rather to invite than attempt discussion, I shall conclude it with a collateral remark or two. The whole strength of the argument opposed to that opinion which many Unitarians in common with myself, I apprehend, entertain, (I argue from their supposing it optional to baptize in the

name of the Lord, which they surely never could do, if they believed our Saviour to have prescribed in terms the orthodox form,) lies in the generally-admitted genuineness of the text. Of this, the MSS. and versions are the evidence. But do they consider this evidence as decisive even of this? If it could be proved beyond the possibility of contradiction, that Herod was dead before the Messiah was born, would evidence of this kind establish the genuineness of the whole first chapter of St. Matthew? But the desideratum there (an incontestable fact) is here supplied. THE APOSTLES INVA

RIABLY BAPTIZED IN THE NAME OF

THE LORD: if we may believe their historian, there is uniform evidence of this baptism in the Scripture, and there is no evidence of any other. Now if the "Acts" be authentic narrative, what becomes of the genuineness of the received commission?

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But the obloquy that would attach the avowal! the prejudice that it would do to the sect and the cause! I admit the objection in its fullest force, without being a convert to the inference. Both averments cannot be true, that the Lord ordained baptism in the name of the Father, &c., and that the apostles practised it in the name of the Son only. Infidels we must be as to the one assertion or the other.

And if the scandal of the more unpopular infidelity be the more to be deprecated, let us console ourselves in the exclamation, which we may triumphantly repeat, "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." AN APOSTOLIC CHRISTIAN.

Clapton, SIR, January 4, 1824. YOU ought not to have been troubled with the letter mentioned in the last page of Vol. XVIII., and which you have communicated to me as the Editor of Dr. Priestley's Works. "An Original Subscriber," "if really a subscriber, would more readily have gained the information he requires, and might have been relieved from the burthen of his subscription, had he written immediately to me. It is, indeed, difficult not to suppose that he preferred, under the safeguard of an anonymous

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