ploits, till the days of Agrippa, jun. and Cumanes, the governor of Judea, fifteen years after the death of our Saviour without one word of Pilate, or what happened under his government, which yet was the only proper place in which this testimony could come to be mentioned. However, since Photius seems therefore, as we have seen, to suspect the treatise ascribed by some to Josephus, "Of the Universe," because it speaks very high things of the eternal generation and divinity of Christ, this looks very like his knowledge and belief of somewhat really in the same Josephus, which spake in a lower manner of him, which could be hardly any other passage than this testimony before us. And since, as we have seen, when he speaks of the Jewish history of Justus of Tiberias, as infected with the prejudices of the Jews, in taking no manner of notice of the advent, of the acts, and of the miracles of Jesus Christ, while yet he never speaks so of Josephus himself, this most naturally implies also, that there was not the like occasion here as there, but that Josephus had not wholly omitted that advent, those acts, or miracles, which yet he has done every where else, in the books seen by Photius, as well as Justus of Tiberias, but in this famous testimony before us, so that it is most probable Photius not only had this testimony in his copy, but believed it to be genuine also. XI. As to the silence of Clement of Alexandria, who cites the Antiquities of Josephus, but never cites any of the testimonies now before us, it is no strange thing at all, since he never cites Josephus but once, and that for a point of chronology only, to determine how many years had passed from the days of Moses to the days of Josephus, so that his silence may almost as well be alleged against a hundred other remarkable passages in Josephus' works as against those before us. XII. Nor does the like silence of Tertullian imply that these testimonies, nor any of them, were not in the copies of his age. Tertullian never once hints at any treatises of Josephus but those against Apion, and that in general only, for a point of chronology: nor does it in any way appear that Tertullian ever saw any of Josephus' writings besides, and far from being certain that he saw even those. He had particular occasion in his dispute against the Jews to quote Josephus, above any other writer, to prove the completion of the prophecies of the Old Testament in the destruction of Jerusalem, and miseries of the Jews at that time, of which he there discourses, yet does he never once quote him upon that solemn occasion; so that it seems to me, that Tertullian never read either the Greek Antiquities of Josephus, or his Greek books of the Jewish wars; nor is this at all strange in Tertullian, a Latin writer, that lived in Africa, by none of which African writers is there any one clause, that I know of, cited out of any of Josephus' writings: nor is it worth my while, in such numbers of positive citations of these clauses, to mention the silence of other later writers, as being here of very small consequence. DISSERTATION II. CONCERNING GOD'S COMMAND TO ABRAHAM TO OFFER UP ISAAC HIS SON FOR A SACRIFICE. SINCE this command of God to Abraham* has of late been greatly mistaken by some, who venture to reason about very ancient facts from very modern notions, and this without a due regard to either the customs, or opinions, or circumstances of the times whereto those facts belong, or indeed to the true reasons of the facts themselves; since the mistakes about those customs, opinions, circumstances, and reasons, have of late so far prevailed, that the very same actions of Abraham's, which was so celebrated by St. Paul,† St. James,‡ the author to the Hebrews,§ Philo, and Josephus, in the first century, and by innumerable others since, as an uncommon instance of signal virtue, of heroic faith in God, and piety toward him: nay, is in the sacred history** highly commended by the divine angel of the covenant, in the name of God himself, and promised to be plentifully rewarded; since this command, I say, is now at last in the eighteenth century become a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence" among us, and that sometimes to persons of otherwise good sense, and of a religious disposition of mind also, I shall endeavour to set this matter in its true, i. e. in its ancient and original light, for the satisfaction of the inquisitive. In order whereto we are to consider: 1. That, till this very profane age, it has been, I think, universally allowed by all sober persons, who owned themselves the creatures of God, that the Creator has a just right over all his rational creatures, to protract their lives to what * Gen. xxii. Rom. iv. 16-25. Phil. de Gyant. p. 294. Jos. Antiq. B. i. ch. xiii, ** Gen. xxii. 15-18, length he pleases; to cut them off when and by what instruments he pleases; to afflict them with what sicknesses he pleases; and to remove them from one estate or place in this his great palace of the universe to another, as he pleases; and that all those rational creatures are bound in duty and interest to acquiesce under the divine disposal, and to resign themselves up to the good providence of God in all such his dispensations toward them. I do not mean to intimate that God may, or ever does act in these cases after a mere arbitrary manner, or without sufficient reason, believing, according to the whole tenor of natural and revealed religion, that he" hateth nothing that he hath made ;"* that whatsoever he does, how melancholy soever it may appear at first sight to us, is really intended for the good of his creatures, and at the upshot of things, will fully appear so to be; but that still he is not obliged, nor does in general give his creatures an account of the particular reasons of such his dispensations toward them immediately, but usually tries and exercises their faith and patience, their resignation and obedience, in their present state of probation, and reserves those reasons to the last day," the day of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God."t 2. That the entire histories of the past ages, from the days of Adam till now, show, that Almighty God has ever exercised his power wer mankind, and that without giving them an immediate account of the reasons of such his conduct; and that withal, the best and wisest men in all ages, heathens as well as Jews and Christians, Marcus Antonius as well as the patriarch Abraham and St. Paul, have ever humbly submitted themselves to this conduct of the Divine Providence, and always confessed that they were obliged to the undeserved goodness and mercy of God for every enjoy. ment, but could not demand any of them of his justice, no, not so much as the continuance of that life whereto those enjoyments appertain. When God was pleased to sweep the wicked race of men away by a flood, the young innocent infants as well as the guilty old sinners; when he wa pleased to shorten the lives of men after the flood, and stil downward till the days of David and Solomon; when he was pleased to destroy impure Sodom and Gomorrha by fire and brimstone from heaven, and to extirpate the main body of the Amorites out of the land of Canaan, as soon as their iniquities were full," and in these instances included the Wisd. xi. 21. † Rom. ii. 5. + Gen. xv. 16 young innocent infants, together with the old hardened sinners; when God was pleased to send an angel, and by him to destroy 185,000 Assyrians, (the number attested to by Berous the Chaldean, as well as by our own Bibles,) in the days of Hezekiah, most of whom seem to have no other peculiar guilt upon them than that common to soldiers in war, of obeying without reserve, their king Sennacherib, his generals and captains; and when at the plague of Athens, London, or Marseilles, &c. so many thousand righteous men and women, with innocent babes, were swept away on a sudden by a fatal contagion, I do not remember that sober men have complained that God dealt unjustly with such his creatures, in those to us seemingly severe dispensations: nor are we cèrtain when any such seemingly severe dispensations are really such, nor do we know but shortening the lives of men may sometimes be the greatest blessing to them, and prevent or put a stop to those courses of gross wickedness which might bring them to greater misery in the world to come: nor is it indeed fit for such poor, weak, and ignorant creatures as we are, in the present state, to call our Almighty, and All-wise, and All-good Creator and Benefactor, to an account on any such occasion; since we cannot but acknowledge, that it is "he that hath made us, and not we ourselves;"* that we are nothing, and have nothing of ourselves, independent on him, but that all we are, all we have, and all we hope for, is derived from him, from his free and undeserved bounty, which therefore, he may justly take from us in what way soever and whensoever he pleases; all wise and good men still say in such cases with the pious Psalmist, xxxix. 9. "I was dumb, opened not my mouth, because thou didst it ;" and with patient Job, i. 21. ii. 40. "Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall not we receive evil? The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord." If therefore this shortening or taking away the lives of men be no objection against any divine command for that purpose, it is full as strong against the present system of the world, against the conduct of Divine Providence in general, and against natural religion, which is founded on the justice of that providence, and is no way peculiar to revealed religion, or to the fact of Abraham now before us: nor in this case much different from what was soon after the days of Abraham thoroughly settled, after Job's and his friends' debates, by the inspiration of Alihu, and the determination of God *Psalm c. 3. |