(2.) How came Origen to be so surprised officiated with the priests in the temple; and at Josephus's ascribing the destruction of the latter, that the destruction of Jerusalem, Jerusalem to the Jews' murdering of James and miseries of the Jews, were owing to their the Just, and not to their murdering of Jesus, putting Jesus to death, which are in none of as we have seen he was, if he had not known our present copies, nor cited thence by any that Josephus had spoken of Jesus and his ancienter authors, nor indeed do they seem death before, and that he had a very good altogether consistent with the other most opinion of Jesus, which yet he could learn no authentic testimonies. However, since Suidas way so authentically as from this testimony? cites his passage from a treatise of Josephus, Nor do the words he here uses, that Josephus called Memoirs of the Jews' Captivity, a book was not remote from the truth, perhaps allude never heard of elsewhere, and since both citato any thing else but to this very testimony tions are not at all disagreeable to Josephus's before us. character as a Nazarene or Ebionite, I dare not positively conclude they are spurious, but must leave them in suspense, for the farther consideration of the learned. (3.) How can the same Origen, upon another slight occasion, when he had just set down that testimony of Josephus concerning James the Just, the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, say that "it may be questioned whether the Jews thought Jesus to be a man, or whether they did not suppose him to be a being of a diviner kind?" This looks so very like the fifth and sixth clauses of this testimony in Josephus, that Jesus was a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, that it is highly probable Origen thereby alluded to them; and this is the more to be depended on, because all the unbelieving Jews, and all the rest of the Nazarene Jews, esteemed Jesus with one consent, as a mere man, the son of Joseph and Mary; and it is not, I think, possible to produce any one Jew but Josephus, who in a sort of compliance with the Romans and the Catholic Christians, who thought him a God, would say any thing like his being a God. (4.) How came Origen to affirm twice, so expressly, that Josephus did not himself own, in the Jewish and Christian sense, that Jesus was Christ, notwithstanding his quotations of such eminent testimonies out of him for John the Baptist his forerunner, and for James the Just, his brother, and one of his principal disciples? There is no passage in all Josephus so likely to persuade Origen of this as is the famous testimony before us, wherein, as he and all the ancients understood it, he was generally called Christ indeed, but not any otherwise than as the common name whence the sect of Christians was derived, and where he all along speaks of those Christians as a sect then in being, whose author was a wonderful person, and his followers great lovers of him and of the truth, yet as such a sect as he had not joined himself to; which exposition, as it is a very natural one, so was it, I doubt, but too true of our Josephus at that time; nor can I devise any other reason but this, and the parallel language of Josephus elsewhere, when he speaks of James as the brother, not of Jesus who was Christ, but of Jesus who was called Christ, that could so naturally induce Origen and others to be of that opinion. IX. There are two remarkable passages in Suidas and Theophylact, already set down, as citing Josephus; the former, that Jesus; X. As to that great critic Photius, in the ninth century, who is supposed not to have had this testimony in his copy of Josephus, or else to have esteemed it spurious; because, in his extracts out of Josephus's Antiquities, it is not expressly mentioned, this is a strange thing indeed!-that a section, which had been cited out of Josephus's copies all along before the days of Photius, as well as it has been all along cited out of them since his days, should be supposed not to be in his copy, because he does not directly mention it in certain short and imperfect extracts, no way particularly relating to such matters. Those who lay a stress on this silence of Photius, seem little to have attended to the nature and brevity of those extracts. They contain little or nothing, as he in effect professes at their entrance, but what concerns Antipater, Herod the Great, and his brethren and family, with their exploits, till the days of Agrippa junior, and Cumanus, 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 also 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, whica yet he has done everywhere 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 ever saw any of Josephus's writings besides, 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's works as against these before us. XII. Nor does the like silence of Tertullian imply that these testimonies, or 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 any way appear that Tertullian 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's 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. In order whereto we are to consider, SINCE this command of God to Abraham | light, for the satisfaction of the inquisitive. (Gen. xxii.) has of late been greatly mistaken by some, who venture to reason about very 1. That till this very profane age, it has ancient facts from very modern notion's, and been, I think, universally allowed by all sothis without a due regard to either the cus- ber persons, who owned themselves the creatoms, or opinions, or circumstances of the tures of God, that the Creator has a just times whereto those facts belong, or indeed right over all his rational creatures, to proto the true reasons of the facts themselves; tract their lives to what length he pleases,since the mistakes about those customs, opi- to cut them off when and by what instrunions, circumstances, and reasons, have of latements he pleases,-to afflict them with what so far prevailed, that the very same action of sicknesses he pleases,-and to remove them Abraham, which was so celebrated by St. from one state or place in this his great paPaul (Rom. iv. 16-25), St. James (chap. ii. lace of the universe to another, as he pleases; 21, 22), the author to the Hebrews (chap. and that all those rational creatures are bound xi. 17-19), Philo, and Josephus,† in the in duty and interest to acquiesce under the first century, and by innumerable others divine disposal, and to resign themselves up since, as an uncommon instance of signal vir- to the good providence of God in all such tue, of heroic faith in God, and piety towards his dispensations towards them. I do not him; nay, is in the sacred history (Gen. xxii. mean to intimate, that God may, or ever 15-18) highly commended by the divine does, act in these cases after a mere arbitrary Angel of the Covenant, in the name of God manner, or without sufficient reason, believhimself, and promised to be plentifully re-ing, according to the whole tenor of natural warded; since this command, I say, is now and revealed religion, that he hateth nothing at last, in the eighteenth century, become a that he hath made (Wisdom. xi. 14); that stone of stumbling and a rock of offence among whatsoever he does, how melancholy soever us, and that sometimes to persons of otherwise it may appear at first sight to us, is really ingood sense, and of a religious disposition of tended for the good of his creatures, and, at mind also, I shall endeavour to set this mat-the upshot of things, will fully appear so to ter in its true, i. e. in its ancient and original be: but that still he is not obliged, nor does Phil, de Gigant. p. 294. +Antiq. b. i. ch. xiii. in general give his creatures an account of the particular reasons of such his dispensations | acknowledge that it is He that hath made us, towards them immediately, but usually tries and not we ourselves (Psalm c. 3), that we and exercises their faith and patience, their are nothing, and have nothing of ourselves resignation and obedience, in their present independent of him, but that all we are, all state of probation, and reserves those reasons we have, and all we hope for, is derived from to the last day, the day of the revelation of the him, from his free and undeserved bounty, righteous judgment of God. (Rom. ii. 5.) which therefore he may justly take from us in what way soever and whensoever he pleases; all wise and good men still saying in such cases with the pious Psalmist (Ps. xxxix. 9), I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it; and with patient Job (ch. ì. 21; ii. 10), 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 an 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 Elihu, and the determination of God himself, where the Divine Providence was at length thoroughly cleared and justified before all the world, as it will be, no question, more generally cleared and justified at the final judgment. 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 over mankind, and that without giving them an immediate account of the reasons of such his conduct; and that withal, the best and wisest men of all ages, Heathens as well as Jews and Christians,-Marcus Antoninus, 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 enjoyment, but could not demand any of them of his justice;-no, not so much as the continuance of that life whereto those enjoyments do 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 was pleased to shorten the lives of men after the Flood, and still downward till the days of David and Solomon; when he was pleased to destroy impure Sodom and Gomorrah 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 (Gen. xv. 16), and in these instances included the 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 Berosus the Chaldean, as well as by our own Bibles) in the days of Hezekiah, most of whom seem to have had 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, 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 certain 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 a greater misery in the world to come; nor is it 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 upon any such occasions, since we cannot but 3. That till this profane age, it has also, I think, been universally allowed by all sober men, that a command of God, when sufficiently made known to be so, is abundant authority for the taking away the life of any person whomsoever. I doubt both ancient and modern princes, generals of armies, and judges, even those of the best reputation also, have ventured to take many men's lives away upon much less authority; nor indeed do the most sceptical of the moderns care to deny this authority directly; they rather take a method of objecting somewhat more plausible, though it amounts to much the same: they say that the apparent disagreement of any command to the moral attributes of God, such as this of the slaughter of an only child seems plainly to be, will be a greater evidence that such a command does not come from God, than any pretended revelation can be that it does; but as to this matter, although divine revelations have now so long ceased, that we are not well acquainted with the manner of conveying such revelations with certainty to men, and by consequence the apparent disa greement of a command with the moral attributes of God, ought at present, generally, if not constantly, to deter men from acting upon such a pretended revelation, yet was there no such uncertainty in the days of the old prophets of God, or of Abraham, the friend of God (Isa. xli. 8), who are ever found to have had an entire certainty of those their revelations; and what evidently shows they were not deceived, is this, that the events and consequences of things afterwards always corresponded, and secured them of the truth of such divine revelations. Thus the first miraculous voice from heaven (Gen. xxii. 11, 12), calling to Abraham not to execute this command, and the performance of those eminent promises made by the second voice (Gen. xxii. 17, 18), on account of his obedience to that command, are demonstrations that Abraham's commission for what he did was truly divine, and are an entire justification of his conduct in this matter. The words of the first voice from heaven will come hereafter to be set down in a fitter place; but the glorious promises made to Abraham's obedience by the second voice, must here be produced from verse 15-18. "And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, and said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord; for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me, that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice." Every one of which promises have been eminently fulfilled; and, what is chiefly remarkable, the last and principal of them, that in Abraham's SEED all the nations of the earth should be blessed, was never promised till this time. It had been twice promised him (chap. xii. 3; and xviii. 18), that in himself should all the families of the earth be blessed; but that this blessing was to belong to future times, and to be bestowed by the means of one of his late posterity, the Messias, that great son and seed of Abraham only, was never revealed before, but on such an amazing instance of his faith and obedience as was this his readiness to offer up his only-begotten son Isaac, was now first promised, and has been long ago performed in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the son of David, the son of Abraham (Matt. i. 1), which highly deserves our observation in this place; nor can we suppose that any thing else than clear conviction that this command came from God could induce so good a man and so tender a father as Abraham was, to sacrifice his own beloved son, and to lose thereby all the comfort he received from him at present, and all the expectation he had of a numerous and happy posterity from him hereafter. 4. That long before the days of Abraham, the demons or heathen gods had required and received human sacrifices, and particularly that of the offerer's own children, and this both before and after the Deluge. This prac tice had been indeed so long left off in Egypt, and the custom of sacrificing animals there was confined to so few kinds in the days of Herodotus, that he would not believe they had ever offered human sacrifices at all; for he says,* that "the fable, as if Hercules was sacrificed to Jupiter in Egypt, was feigned by the Greeks, who were entirely unacquainted with the nature of the Egyptians and their laws; for how should they sacrifice men, with whom it is unlawful to sacrifice any brute beast, boars and bulls, and pure calves and ganders only excepted?" However, it is evident, from Sanchoniatho, Manetho, Pausanias, Diodorus Siculus, Philo, Plutarch, and Porphyry, that such sacrifices were frequent both in Phoenicia and Egypt, and that long before the days of Abraham, as Sir John Marsham and Bishop Cumberland have fully proved; nay, that in other places (though not in Egypt) this cruel practice continued long after Abraham, and this till the very third, if not also to the fifth century of Christianity, before it was quite abolished. Take the words of the original authors in English, as most of them occur in their originals, in Sir John Marsham's Chronicon, p. 76-78, 300-304. "Chronus offered up his only-begotten son as a burnt-offering to his father Uranus, when there was a famine and a pestilence."† "Chronus, whom the Phoenicians name Israel [it should be ], and who was, after his death, consecrated into the star Saturn, when he was king of the country, and had, by a nymph of that country, named Anobret, an only-begotten son, whom, on that account, they called Jeud (the Phoenicians to this day calling an only-begotten son by that name), he in his dread of very great dangers that lay upon the country from war, adorned his son with royal apparel, and built an altar, and offered him in sacrifice." "The Phoenicians, when they were in great dangers by war, by famine, or by pestilence, sacrificed to Saturn one of the dearest of their people, whom they chose by public suffrage for that purpose; and Sanchoniatho's Phoenician history is full of such sacrifices." [These hitherto I take to have been before the Flood.]§ "In Arabia, the Dumatii sacrificed a child every year."|| "They relate, that of old the [Egyptian] kings sacrificed such men as were of the same colour with Typho, at the sepulchre of Osiris."T "Manetho relates, that they burnt Typhonean men alive in the city Idithyia [or Ilithyia], and scattered their ashes like chaff that is winnowed; and this was done Apud Marsh. Chron. p. 303. publicly, and at an appointed season in the | snared by following the nations, after that dog-days.' "The barbarous nations did a long time admit of the slaughter of children, as of a holy practice, and acceptable to the gods; and this thing, both private persons, and kings, and entire nations, practise at proper seasons."† they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods, even Thou shalt not do so so will I do likewise. unto the Lord thy God; for every abomination of the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons "The human sacrifices that were enjoined and their daughters have they burnt in the by the Dodonean oracle, mentioned in Pau-fire to their gods." (Deut. xii. 30, 31. See sanias's Achaics, in the tragical story of chap. xviii. 10, and 2 Kings xvii. 17.) Coresus and Callirrhoe, sufficiently intimate that the Phoenician and Egyptian priests had set up this Dodonean oracle before the time of Amosis, who destroyed that barbarous practice in Egypt."‡ These bloody sacrifices were, for certain, instances of the greatest degree of impiety, tyranny, and cruelty in the world: that either wicked demons or wicked men, who neither made nor preserved mankind, who had therefore no right over them, nor were they able to make them amends in the next world for what they thus lost or suffered in this, should, after so inhuman a manner, command the taking away the lives of men, and particularly of the offerer's own children, without the commission of any crime; this was, I think, an abomination derived from him who was a murderer from the beginning (John viii. 44); a crime truly and properly diabolical. 5. That, accordingly, Almighty God himself, under the Jewish dispensation, vehemently condemned the Pagans, and sometimes the Jews themselves, for this crime; and for this, among other heinous sins, cast the idolatrous nations (nay, sometimes the Jews too) out of Palestine. Take the principal texts hereto relating, as they lie in order in the Old Testament: "Thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech. Defile not yourselves in any of these things, for in all these the nations are defiled, which I cast out before you," &c. (Lev. xviii. 21.) "Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech, he shall surely be put to death; the people of the land shall stone him with stones." (Lev. xx. 2.) "Take heed to thyself, that thou be not • Plutarch, p. 78. + Nonnulli apud Phil. p. 76. Cumberl. Sanchon. p. 378. "And Ahaz made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out before the children of Israel." (2 Kings xvi. 3.) "Moreover, Ahaz burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children (his son, in Josephus) in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel." (2 Chron. xxviii. 3.) "And the Sepharvites burnt their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anamelech, the gods of Sepharvaim," &c. (2 Kings xvii. 31.) And Josiah defiled Tophet, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire unto Molech." (2 Kings xxiii. 10.) 'Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto demons; and shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with blood." (Psal. cvi. 37, 38. See Isa. lvii. 5.) "The children of Judah have done evil in my sight, saith the Lord; they have set their abominations in the house which is called by my name to pollute it; and they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I commanded them not, nor came it into my heart." (Jer. vii. 30—32.) "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, Behold I will bring evil upon this place, the which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle, because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burnt incense unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents. They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt-offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind," &c. (Jer. xix. 3-5.) "They built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech, which I commanded them not, neither came it into my |