LET. acknowlege, that the tree was curfed XVII. very improperly for having none.

This interpretation makes a trajection neceffary, but there is one of the fame kind in Mark xvi. 3, 4. Where the claufe, for it was very great, namely, the stone at the door of the fepulchre, does not relate to what immediately precedes it, and must be confidered parenthetically, but to the remote member-They said among themselves, Who fball roll us away the ftone from the door of the fepulchre? (and when they looked, they saw the tone rolled away)-for it was very great.

I cannot help here obferving, once more, that when in any writer we meet with abfurdities fo glaring and palpable as this and others imputed to the Evangelifts, it is but doing him common justice, whoever he be, to take it

for

for granted that, by fome means or LET. other, we misapprehend his meaning; xvII. and mere candour should induce us, inftead of cavilling and fquabbling, gladly to accept of any fair and equitable interpretation of his words, that may ferve to clear them of fuch fuppofed abfurdity, and to fet him right in our opinion.

P. 41. Our Saviour is fcoffed at, for having affirmed, "that wheat does "not produce fruit, except it die."

A grain of corn, when laid in the earth, fwells, putrifies, fuffers a diffolution of it's parts, fhoots it's fibres, and disappears. This is a death and refurrection fufficient to anfwer all the purposes for which the illuftration is adduced by our Lord and St. Paul.

P. 42.

John the Baptift being

"afked if he were Elias, anfwered I

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LET. am not; but Jefus affirms the con

He was Elias in fpirit and in power ; but he was not the perfonal Elias, or Elijah, whom the people erroneously expected, and the priests meant, when they asked him, "Art thou Elias?” "Out of forty Gospels we "receive four as canonical Why do "we receive them, and not the reft?"

P. 43.

For the best reasons in the world, affigned at large by Dr. Lardner in his Eredibility &c. a work which these gentlemen should answer, or for ever hold their peace upon this fubject. The true Gospels are fhewn by proper evidence to have been written at the time when they are faid to have been written, and by the perfons

* See the review of his work in the x11th volume.

whofe

whose names they bear. It matters LET. not how many others were written, if XVII. upon their appearance, after due examination, they were found to be spurious, and rejected as fuch.

P. 43. The primitive Chriftians are complained of, for "preventing the arguments against their religion "from being exposed to view."

I hope there is no ground for any fuch complaint now. There is no argument yet devised against Christianity, we may prefume, which has not been proposed in public; and there is none, we may affirm, which has not received it's answer.

The few remaining pages of this pamphlet are spent in enumerating fome particulars in the hiftory of our Lord's paffion and refurrection, which are differently related by the four T 2 Evan

LET. Evangelifts. But how many times XVII. have thefe objections been confidered,

and replied to? Have the Infidels the modesty or the confcience to expect, that we are to draw up a new harmony of the Gospels, as often as any one of them fhall think proper to afk a few old questions over again? If any Chriftian find himself perplexed by difficulties of this fort, let him carefully perufe the Gospels as they lie in Macknight's Harmony and Commentary, and weigh well the folutions of fuch difficulties with which that book will furnish him.

These gentlemen tell us in plain terms, P. 46. that "the event of "Chrift's refurrection bears every "mark of a forgery;" and speak of the apostles as men "engaged in the attempt of forming a fect or party;" that