meant the Scriptural events, on which the denominated Christians have founded the historical part of their religious systems, from a belief that they had positively occurred literally. Allow me, Theophila, to suppose that those gentlemen had read all or most of the transmitted accounts that are considered as containing the strongest presumptions that the facts mentioned in the Bible have happened on this earth, before they asserted that there was none of equal authority with Josephus's works, which I believe to have been generally much valued by the writers on Christianity.

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I know not whether you are acquainted with them; and what is your opinion about them. I submit to you mine, which I ground, as to their basis, on the following passage in Josephus: "The ancient descent of the "Jews I have made appear by a faithful deduction of history for five thousand years, extracted from the "authority of the Sacred Writings: yet has this been "insufficient to secure me from the most opprobrious invectives, or to gain my history any other character "than that of a fable. It has been asked by my "enemies, that if the Jews were of so distinguished origin, as I have made them, how it happens that the "best Grecian historians have made no mention of the "circumstance? It therefore becomes me to declare “ the truth,” &c. My opinion, I say, is that Josephus's allegations to prove the pretended distinguished origin of his countrymen are not founded on creditable traditions, that were preserved among them, or among their neighbours; which, had he been able to support his history by them, would have made it an admissible authority as to their ancient and religious existence, and would have protected him against the invectives he complained

of; but that his works, so far as a few centuries before the taking of Jerusalem by the Romans, are only a compilation of the Old Testament, which, like those who followed his persuasion, he mistook for the history of their ancestors: a very unworthy compilation I think, since he has, according to his fancy, altered that part of the Bible in many places; as he confesses it in a paragraph, where he adds that somewhere he will give his reasons for having done it. Whether he has mentioned them in the sequel, or no, I cannot tell; I could not bring myself to read carefully the whole of his two quartos, closely printed, and containing 1363 pages. From the extract which I have quoted, and from other passages, I should suppose that Josephus's intention has been to extol his nation above all others, by representing the Judeans as the descendants of the Scriptural people of God; though, as far as it appears to me, they could not prove by any authentic documents among themselves, nor among their neighbours, that the supernatural plagues said in the Sacred Writings to be inflicted by Moses on Pharaoh and his people, and the destruction of the whole of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, had ever occurred to the inhabitants of our Egypt; no more than to their own ancestors the miraculous preservation from those Divine corrections. Neither could they prove that their forefathers had witnessed the great marvels which they, the Jews of Josephus's time, understood to have happened literally to their ancestors, during their possible sojourning in the deserts eastward of Egypt, where they may have dwelt for some time, if what an Egyptian writer, quoted by Josephus, has said of them was true: viz. that they descended from a large multitude of lepers and diseased people, whom a King of Egypt ordered to be

expelled from his dominions; a circumstance not impossible, nor quite improbable, considering the rude state of this world in those remote ages.

Neither do I believe that there existed among the Jews, and in other countries, good and admissible records by which Josephus could have shown that the wonderful events spoken of in the Old Testament, as happening to the people of God, after their being come out of the wilderness, and to their enemies, had ever occurred to the ancestors of his countrymen, and to the nations against whom they had waged war. No more could he prove, by any traditions entitled to credit, that the promises that are made in the Prophets to the true Israelites, that after their release from the Babylonian captivity, and their return to Jerusalem, the Almighty would write his laws in their heart, that they would be his sons, his chosen people, a peculiar and highlyfavoured people; that those promises, I say, had ever been fulfilled to the ancient Judeans, and that they ever had been gifted with the holy superiority that belongs to the people of God. Let us suppose, for argument sake, that it could be shown by profane history that the Jewish nation had been conquered by the Assyrians, that the greatest part was carried to Babylon and had remained there in captivity during seventy years; and that the whole, according to the Scriptural prophecies, had been sent back to Jerusalem by Cyrus; an event understood by some of our chronologists to have taken place five hundred and thirty-six years before what is called among us the Christian era; would it not in that case appear very strange that a set of people, who were to be so amazingly favoured, as it is said of the people

of God in the Scriptures, instead of having the Messiah sent to them, soon after their return to Jerusalem, as I think the true Sons of God would expect from His words, should never have seen him, nor heard of his doctrine; and that he should have been sent only to their distant posterity, who had not been in captivity, whose mind had not been prepared to receive him by the Babylonian miseries and the longing for Jerusalem; and to whom the promises are not made in the Old Testament? Strange also that they should have been for so long a period as five ages in a manner forsaken by God, and worse off than they ever would have been,

I know not whether the Books of the Maccabees belong to the Sacred History, or not. If they do, though disappointed at not finding in them the fulfilment of the prophecies, which I should look for in writings subsequent to the release from captivity, I should take them for inspired and Sacred Books, and I should not understand them, as they are generally, like profane records. If they do not, being handed to us by uninspired men, I should consider them as writings of doubtful and uncertain knowledge, most likely speaking of things very inferior and totally different from those that are mentioned in the Scripture and I should not bring them in support of them, as it has been done by those who have endeavoured to fill up partly with their accounts the supposed period of five hundred and thirty-six years, between the return to Jerusalem and the coming of the Saviour: which length of time appears to me quite at variance with the Sacred History; admitting that it is, what I take it for, the history of the regeneration of the soul; as it would be a complete and seemingly unaccountable interruption in the process of that new birth.

The generations spoken of in Matt. 1. 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16, I believe to be, like the preceding ones, not natural, but mental, or referring only to the soul: a spirit within man, proceeding or being born from another, or rather from the union of two.

being without Prophets and Judges filled with the Spirit of God, and able to lead them in His ways; differing from other nations only in their religious tenets and worship, but subject to the same accidents, passions, factions, wars, diseases, &c. and quite incapable to show any remarkable superiority over pagans? How could such a condition, evidently in contradiction with the Word of God, how could it be accounted for? It seems to me that to concede that the ancient Judeans were the Scriptural people of God would be on my part equivalent to saying that the Divine promises had been made in vain; since all we know of our Jews, after the taking of Babylon by Cyrus, cannot be reconciled with the prophecies; the accomplishment of which surely would not have failed them, had they been the peculiar people of God. Rather than to entertain an opinion which does not agree with the Sacred History, and tends to raise a doubt that a promise from on high has not been performed, a thing impossible, I should sooner confess that we have been mistaken in the way that we have understood the Bible; that the Jews of this earth two thousand years ago were deceived as to their origin; that their posterity is in a great mental delusion about it; and that the denominated Christians are equally in error respecting their pretended descent, and in the way that they understand what is said of the real Jews in the Old Testament.

I am too deficient in capacity and learning to attempt refuting thoroughly Josephus; but it seems to me that an able writer who would examine his works closely, divesting himself of the long-existing prejudices in his behalf, could easily succeed to demonstrate that he was