"nation assigned to him by the Most High," as the portion of his inheritance; which proposition is by the Essay-writer held in the affirmative", and a great part of his work rests upon the supposed truth of it.

But if Christ, as the guide and protector of the children of Israel, was himself the Most High, it must carry with it a contradiction to say, that he had the care of that people assigned to him, as the portion of his inheritance, by the Most High. St. Paul observes, that some of the Israelites were destroyed in the wilderness, because they tempted CHRIST", which the divinely inspired Psalmist expresses by saying, that they tempted the MOST HIGH GOD°.

And again, it is certain that the kingdom of Israel was not, according to the author's sense of the thing, assigned to Christ, the second person of the Trinity, as to its guardian angel, because this very same kingdom is also appropriated to the Holy Spirit: for the prophet David, in his last prophetic words, thus describes or entitles the divine Person, to whom he owed his inspiration-The SPIRIT

m See Essay, P. 34, 45, 47, 48.

• Psal. lxxviii, 56. conf. Exod. xvii, 2, 7..

I Cor. X. 9.

От

OF THE LORD spake by me-the GOD OF ISRAEL said, &c.

We have now gone through all the arguments by which this angelic system of government, invented purely for the sake of inserting Jesus Christ into the class of created angels, is supported. The author of them thinks they have given him a sufficient warrant for -setting down the following conclusion-" It "is manifest, that, according to the Scrip"tures of the Old Testament," (he should have added, " and of the New," since two of his arguments out of five are taken from it) "angels were appointed to preside over peo

ple and nations upon earth." Not quite so manifest, I think, from the foregoing premises; the first of which is, a version of the LXX, which strongly savours of traditional Judaism, and contradicts the Hebrew text. 2. A quotation from an apocryphal book, wherein the word nyap is translated, governing angel. 3. An expression of St. Paul, relating to the other world. 4. The fall of angels before the world, alluded to by St. Jude. 5. The mention made of human princes by the prophet Daniel.

P P. 47.

4

CHAP.

CHAP. III.

His Objections against the Divinity of Christ answered.

IT is high time for me to inform my reader,

that I have hitherto omitted to take notice of the Jewish evidence, alledged every now and then by the author in support of his opinions; and evidence in plenty he might have collected from Jewish writers, if it were possible for his opinions to be ten times worse than they really are. If their testimony were of any avail against the truth, Dr. Middleton would have stood a much fairer chance than he did, for shewing that the whole law of Moses was a mere human fiction, artfully framed by a cunning fellow, well versed in the wisdom of Egypt, to keep a superstitious and silly people under proper regulations.

Our author "chuses to lay before his reader "the opinion of the most sensible and learned among the ancient Jews, as he finds it very judiciously collected by Eusebius, bishop of

66

See his quotations from Josephus cont. App. and Philo de exitu-in his Defence of the Letter, &c. p. 27, 41.

VOL. II.

L

"Cæsarea

"Cæsarea in Palestine, who must be allowed "to be a tolerable judge, because he lived amongst them in the land of Judæa." What is it, that we must allow him to be a tolerable judge of? that the opinions he hath collected were really Jewish? nobody denies it. But as Eusebius did not flourish till towards the beginning of the fourth century, when the Jews had been for three hundred years employed in evading the true sense of the Scriptures, in order to baffle and confound the followers of Jesus; how can it be expected that their impure comments should breathe the uncorrupt spirit of christianity? These are the men, whom he gravely dignifies, in his title-page, with the appellation of ancient Hebrews, that is, modern Jews, who had endeavoured to their utmost so to infect that air the Christians were to breathe in, as to breed a pestilence amongst them. Nay, the author himself, to the utter ruin of his whole scheme, so far as the Jews are concerned in it, confesses that ever since the coming of our "Saviour, not being willing to abide by the expositions given to the Old Testament, they ran into numberless absurd contriv

• P. 40.

ances

ances of expounding the Scriptures accord

ing to hidden and cabalistical meanings."

But these, he observes, were the more modern Jews; that is, to use his own words, all the Jews who lived "since the coming of our "Saviour" were modern; and pray then, what sort of Jews must those have been, amongst which Eusebius lived? for if they commenced absurd and modern upon our Saviour's coming, how is it possible for them to be sensible and ancient three hundred years after it?

At page 41, we find a quotation from Eusebius, which extends nearly throughout three pages, the conclusion of which runs thus"All the Hebrew divines, after that God, "who is over all, and after his first born "Wisdom, pay divine worship to the third "and holy power, which they call the Holy

Spirit." But surely these Hebrew divines have no authority for saying, that adoration is to be paid to the first-born Wisdom, AFTER that God who is over all; when a little backwarder, in the same quotation, they confess, that this first-begotten of the Father far exceeds all created Beings? The plain alternative is this: he is either a created being, or the