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of persons who it is known must be absent from their house at the time fixed upon, and the laugh is alway's in proportion to the trouble given." Maurice's Ind. Antiq. völ. vi. p. 71, &c.

The great similitude between the Scripture phrases, which treat of the destruction of Sodom, and those of Ovid in his description of the FLOOD in Deucalion's days,' which seems to be the same with Noah's, makes it probable that the latter are taken from the former. The words in Gen. xvii. 81, are: "I will go down and see whether they have done according to the cry of it which is coine unto me, and, if not, I will know."

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Contigerat nostras infamia temporis aures
Quam cupiens falsam, summo delabor Olympo,
Et Deus human lustro sub imagine terras.".

Ov. lib. i. line 213, &c.

Stillingfleet's arguments for a partial and local flood are not sufficient to prove.it; for, as we read in Genesis that all the animals passed before Adam to be named, it is as difficult to account for any of those animals going into America, supposing it an island, as it is to account for their return at the flood.

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-It is to be allowed that the prescience of God implies an exact FOREKNOWLEDGE: both of his own and of our actions, and consequently a foresight, or, if you will, ap predetermination, of the final allotments of men. But this cannot be conceived by. us in a manner consistent with the divine justice, unless we suppose the latter to be. grounded on the former, and that God has, therefore, from all eternity, determined the final portion of men; because he has, from all eternity, known how they would determine their own free and voluntary choice of good or evil whether they would comply with or refuse the offers of his grace, whether they would serve God or not; SO: that the ultimate allotment of God to men is really a consequence of their own volun-: tary choice in doing good or evil. But the choice of men, and the allotments of the divine justice consequent to it, being foreknown and foreseen by the prescience of God from all eternity, the final period of every man's conduct is properly said to be predestined or predetermined by God. Rogers's Serm. on Gal. vi. 7, and on Heb. ii.

13.

Whitby supposes, that by FORNICATION, Matt. xix. 9, is to be understood fornication committed before matrimony and found out after cohabitation..

For every one (thạt thus offends) shall be salted with fire, (so as to endure for ever, in a state of torment); and every sacrifice, (saith the Scripture, even the whole burntoffering,) shall be salted with salt, (the symbol of incorruption). Salt is good (to make things savoury and to preserve them from corruption); but, if the salt have lost its saltness, wherewith will you season it? (if by keeping these offending members, 42,

45,

L

1

45, &c or corrupt affections, you corrupt yourselves and become unsavoury, and, like a sacrifice without salt, you can never be acceptable to God). Have (therefore) salt in yourselves, and have peace (the bond of unity) one with another. Whitby on Mark ix. 49, 50.

Quid sali cum igne? Ut prophetæ eos qui a Deo aut hîc, aut post mortem, puniuntur victimas vocare solent (ut-a Grotio notatum) Christus de damnatis, tanquam de victimis loquitur, quos proinde ex lege Levit. ii. 18, saliendos dicit; sed pro sale ignem illis futurum. Sensus ergò versus est, sicut omnis victima ex lege sale salietur; ita omnis damnatus salietur igne. Maldonatus, Daubuz, &c.

Hic sensus mihi perplacet, "Quicunque meus discipulus esse vult, ille hoc sibi faciendum esse cogitet, ut sibi suisque affectibus renunciet, et non dubitet diligenti curâ ac studio, veluti igne quodam quicquid in se est malorum affectuum exurere. Sic enim erit grata Deo Hostia, quia omnis Hostia, &c." Episcopius.

Sensus est, "Quémadmodum (nam et pro ut ponitur) omnis victima sale condire solebat, sine quo Deo accepta non erat; sie sine tribulatione nemo Deo gratus." Vatabus. And Bishop Hurd adopts this sense, as most agreeable to what follows; and observes, that this metaphorical sense of fire, to denote afflictions, may be proved from 1 Cor. iii. 13, 1 Pet. i. 7, 4, 12, &c.

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Bishop Pearce thinks that these two verses may be an interpolation, as they are not to be found in four MSS. of: Wetstein. But I do not see any reason for this supposition, as they very aptly illustrate the doctrine of eternal punishments, which are so: emphatically and so peremptorily declared three different times, to put the certainty of thent past all doubt.

The GENTILES acknowledge one supreme God; but their error was this, that they imagined many inferior gods, and they seem to have been, led into this error not so much by false réàsonings as by old tradition. Their ancestors had believed so for many ages backward, and this depravation arose from the corruption of a true doctrine: of one God, and of many angels who under him had the care of human affairs andwho were his messengers and ministers. But, when men proceeded to pay divine honours to these inferior spirits aud to forget their Creator, God gave them up to illusions and they fell lower and lower to the grossest idolatrics. Jertin's Serm. vol. vij. p. 118.

King Ina, as the antient records of GLASTENBURY affirm, employed. 15,984 pounds weight of gold, in decorating the church of that monastery, in vessels for thealtar, in images, &c. besides silver and precious stones. Campbell's Pol. Survey, vol. ii. p. 335.

And this, according to the present value of money at four pounds per ounice, would come to £767,232; but, if we make a difference for the value of money,, it would come to a much greater summpo!

The

The GENEALOGIES of St Matthew and St Luke reconciled thus. 1st. The title of Father and Son, as well as the terms to beget and be begotten, in the language of Scripture, do frequently imply a remote succession; hence that phrase, Deut. iv. 25, When thou shalt beget children and children's children, &c.; and the name of father, given to a predecessor at the distance of two or more generations. 2dly. St Matthew gives

one, St Luke another, genealogy. Sdly. St Matthew, beginning from Abraham, divides it into forty-two successions, called by him generations; fourteen before, fourteen under, fourteen after, the regal government. The first fourteen agree with the Old Testament and St Luke; the second fourteen contain the legal succession of the line of Solomon, till its extinction in Jechoniah, or Coniah, or Jehoiachin, when the line of Nathan took place. 4thly. The inheritance in the Jewish polity being unalienable farther than the jubilee, and then revolving to the next heir, the latter, though at some distance from the former, was called the son, i. e. properly the successor, of the former. Thus Salathiel, who by St Luke's genealogy appears to have been descended from Nathan, is by St Matthew said to be begotten by Jechoniah, the last of the Solomonic line. Had not therefore Solomon's line been set down, and the end thereof noted, it could not have appeared from St Luke how Salathiel came by his title of succession; for the line of Nathan could not have any claim to it while that of Solomon subsisted: and this accounts for the evangelists difference in these middle generations. And the reason why St Matthew varies in number from the Old Testament is, that the historical books set down all the kings in general from David to Jechoniah; but St Matthew, as a genealogist, seems to take notice only of those who had a legal title, and to omit the others. Of this latter sort are Ahaziah, the son of Jehoram by Athaliah, who is said to have been made king by the inhabitants of Jerusalem, upon his father's death, because his elder brother had been killed by the Philistines; which seems to intimate, that they had chosen him in lieu of some infant son of his deceased brother; for, had not this been the case, he would have succeeded of course without the people's choice. And Joash, the son of Ahaziah, and Amaziah, the son of Joash, might all succeed each other in prejudice to the elder branch, till this, being extinct, made way for the younger in Uzia, or Ozias, the son of Amaziah; who is therefore called by the evangelist the son, i. e. the successor, of Jehoram. Zedekiah is likewise omitted, because set up by the king of Babylon in prejudice to Jechoniah, his elder brother. The evangelists differ likewise in the last fourteen generations, which arises from the one's pointing out the passing of the inheritance as far as it goes in the elder branch. They both agree as far as Zerubbabel, after which St Matthew goes on with Abiud and his heirs down to Eleazar, where the line of Abiud ends; and then he sets down, as his son and successor, Matthan, who is styled Matthat by St Luke, and was of the line of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel; so that he entered into the regular succession after the extinction of that of Abiud. Thus, again, Matthat, or Matthan, dying childless, Eli was obliged, according to the Mosaic

Mosaic law, to take his wife and raise up seed unto his brother, and by her begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, who, according to the same law, was still reputed as the son of the dead elder brother. For this reason, St Matthew rightly calls him the son of Jacob; whereas St Luke, who did not proceed in the same method, calls him the son of Eli, the former his legal, the latter his natural, father. St Matthew might in all probability have fetched his genealogy from the records of Bethlehem, the patrimony of David, and wherein none were entered but such as, by a regular lineal descent, were in actual possession of it; and where the younger branch could not be regularly enrolled as long as there was any heir of the elder left alive, or till such time as this latter failed. St Luke, on the other hand, who, as he tells us in the preface of his Gospel, proposed to supply such defects as he found in those who had written the history of Jesus Christ before him, fearing lest these omissions should 'cause some confusion for want of pointing out when the younger succeeded the elder branch, had recourse to the book of Chronicles, where the series of the suc cessions, both regular and irregular, legal and illegal, are exhibited; so that both had their genealogies from the most authentic though different records, and scrupulously adhered each to his own, according to the scheme they had in view; and, consequently, instead of clashing, do more probably clear and confirm each other. There is still one difficulty with respect to St Luke's genealogy, viz. his introducing of Cainan ia the line of Shem, adding one generation contrary to the Hebrew text in Genesis and Chronicles, and all the versions except the Septuagint. But this may have been jumbled into St Luke's text by the carelessness of the transcribers, there being another Cainan mentioned in the verse immediately following, which might be also according to the old close way of writing in the very next line. But, allowing it to have been originally in St Luke, it is plain he must have had it out of the Septuagint, which version both he and the other sacred writers, his cotemporaries, used; and the copy, which he then had, might be carelessly corrupted, as it doth not appear that all the copies of that version had this name. It might likewise have crept in through the inadvertency of the seventy interpreters, as they were not infallible; or, if this will not satisfy, the difficulty will be removed if we suppose that Arphaxad might be the natural father of Sala and the legal one of Cainan, or vice versa. Univ. Hist. vol. x. p. 455.

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There is no reason to suppose that both the evangelists are deducing the pedigree of Joseph only, since, as Joseph's pedigree is set down in St Matthew, so Mary's lineage is recited in St Luke's genealogy. St Matthew intends only to set down his (Jesus's) political or regal pedigree. St Luke shews his natural descent through the several successions of those from whom he took flesh and blood. That, David having three sons by Bathsheba besides, Solomon, the eldest of which was Nathan, Christ's natural descent was not from Solomon but from Nathan; for, upon Jechoniah's having no issue, the crown of Judah came into the line of Nathan by Salathiel, who was

succeeded

succeeded by Zerobabel. That, Zerobabel having two sons, Abiud and Rhesa, from Abiud, the elder, lineally descended Joseph, according to St Matthew's calculation; and from Rhesa, the younger, according to St Luke's, the virgin Mary, of whom Jesus was born. That, as it was a custom among the Jews not to reckon the woman by name in her pedigree, but to reckon the husband in right of his wife, so Joseph is twice mentioned, first in his own by St Matthew; then in his wife's right by St Luke; for Mary was properly the daughter of Eli, and Joseph is only named after him as his son-in-law. 'That, though Jesus truly descended from Mary only, yet did he not derive his title to the kingdom of the Jews by her line, which was from Rhesa, the younger, but from Joseph of the elder line by Abiud; but, this elder line failing in" Joseph, who had no issue, the right of inheritance devolved upon one of the younger liné, viz. Mary, and consequently on Jesus, her son. Stackhouse on Creed.

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Fuit sententia Julii. Africani, quæ aliis omnibus præferenda est, qui eam se accepisse aiebat ab illis qui ex cognatione forent Christi, Matthæum attendere naturale, Lucam legale. Vide Vossium, tom vi. p. 56. Episcopius. > pack

Mihi certissimum est a Matthæo spectari juris successionem. Ac si quis tempora recte putet a Zorobabele ad Christum, videbit, secundum id quod plerunque accidit, totum id tempus personis ab illo (Lucâ) recitatis recte expleri; a Matthæo non item. Quare hinc quoque discimus a Matthæo rò, a Lucû to quod spectari. Grotius in Poole. See also South, Tillotson, Macknight, &c. ct 15

Credibile est Mariam ex eadem familia cum Josepho oriundam; et licet nos omnes circa genealogiam Christi difficultates, nunc plene expedire non possimus, omnia apostolorum temporibus fuisse plana atqué expedita, argumento est quod Scriptor ad Heb. vii. 14 ait.

Limborch.

Et quamvis concedamus Mariam fuisse ex tribu Levi (vide Luc. i. 36) nihilominus: recte dicetur Jesus noster filius Davidis. Nam Jesus noster natus est ex Maria, non cælibe, sed jam Josepho desponsatâ, ac proinde quæ jam transierat in familiam et tribum sponsi sui. Episcopius.

Matthæus genealogiam Christi patris legalis recenset. Sed utrum Lucas genus Christi naturale a Maria deducit, in dubio mihi videtur. Quamvis pro certo habeo Mariam a Davide ortam. Vide Act. ii. 30. Pearce.

There cannot be a doubt, in my opinion, that, though we may not be able to solve all the objections which may be raised at this distance of time, St Matthew's is the legal, and St Luke's the natural, genealogy of Christ.

A very extraordinary instance of moderation in PEDRO DE LA GASCA, a Spanish. priest, who, without army, fleet, or public funds, set out to oppose a formidable rebellion which Pizarro had raised in Peru. For, having vanquished him by very sin gular measures, and distributed among his countrymen possessions of greater extent. and value than had ever been in the disposal of a subject in any age or nation, he himself remained in his original poverty and, at the very time when he brought such

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