you cannot prove John to have been under two years of age at the time of the massacre; and I could give many probable reasons to the contrary. Nor is it certain that John was, at that time, in that part of the country to which the edict of Herod extended. But there would be no end of answering, at length, all your little objections.

No two of the evangelists, you observe, agree in reciting, exactly in the same words, the written inscription which was put over Christ when he was crucified. I admit that there is an unessential verbal difference; and are you certain that there was not a verbal difference in the inscriptions themselves?-One was written in Hebrew, another in Greek, another in Latin; and, though they had all the same meaning, yet it is probable, that if two men had translated the Hebrew and the Latin into Greek, there would have been a verbal difference between their translations. You have rendered yourself famous by writing a book called-The rights of Man: had you been guillotined by Robespierre, with this title, written in French, English, and German, and affixed to the guillotineThomas Paine, of America, author of the Rights of Man-and had four persons, some of whom had seen the execution, and the rest had heard of it from witnesses, written short accounts of your life twenty years or more after your death, and one had said the inscription was-This is Thomas Paine, the author of the Rights of Man-another, The author of The Rights of Man-a third, This is the author of the Rights of Man-and a fourth, Thomas Paine, of America, the author of The rights of Man-would any man of common sense have doubted, on account of this disagreement, the veracity of the authors in writing your life?" The only one," you tell us, us," of the men called apostles, who appears to have been near the spot where Jesus was crucified, was Peter." This your assertion is not true-we do not know that Peter was present at the crucifixion; but we do know

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that John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was present; for Jesus spoke to him from the cross. You go on"But why should we believe Peter, convicted by their own account of perjury, in swearing that he knew not Jesus?" I will tell you why-because Peter sincerely repented of the wickedness into which he had been betrayed, through fear for his life, and suffered martyrdom in attestation of the truth of the Christian religion.

But the evangelists disagree, you say, not only as to the superscription on the cross, but as to the time of the crucifixion, "Mark saying it was at the third hour (nine in the morning), and John at the sixth hour (twelve, as you suppose, at noon)." Various solutions have been given of this difficulty, none of which satisfied Doctor Middleton, much less can it be expected that any of them should satisfy you; but there is a solution not noticed by him, in which many judicious men have acquiesced-That John, writing his Gospel in Asia, used the Roman method of computing time; which was the same as our own; so that by the sixth hour, when Jesus was condemned, we are to understand six o'clock in the morning; the intermediate time from six to nine, when he was crucified, being employed in preparing for the crucifixion. But if this difficulty should still be esteemed insuperable, it does not follow that it will always remain so; and, if it should, the main point, the crucifixion of Jesus, will not be affected thereby.

I cannot, in this place, omit remarking some circumstances attending the crucifixion, which are so natural, that we might have wondered if they had not occurred. Of all the disciples of Jesus, John was beloved by him with a peculiar degree of affection; and, as kindness produces kindness, there can be little doubt that the regard was reciprocal. Now, whom should we expect to be the attendants of Jesus in his last suffering? Whom but John, the friend of his heart?-Whom but his mother, whose soul was now pierced.

through by the sword of sorrow, which Simeon had foretold-Whom but those who had been attached to him through life; who, having been healed by him of their infirmities, were impelled by gratitude to minister to him of their substance, to be attentive to all his wants?These were the persons whom we should have expected to attend his execution; and these were there. To whom would an expiring son, of the best affections, recommend a poor, and, probably, a widowed mother, but to his warmest friend?—And this did Jesus.-Unmindful of the extremity of his own torture, and anxious to alleviate the burden of her sorrows, and to protect her old age from future want and misery, he said to his beloved disciple"Behold thy mother! and from that hour that disciple took her to his own home." I own to you, that such instances as these, of the conformity of events to our probable expectation, are to me genuine marks of the simplicity and truth of the Gospels, and far outweigh a thousand little objections, arising from our ignorance of manners, times, and circumstances, or from our incapacity to comprehend the means used by the Supreme Being in the moral government of his

creatures.

St. Matthew mentions several miracles which attended our Saviour's crucifixion-the darkness which overspread the land-the rending of the veil of the temple-an earthquake which rent the rocks-and the resurrection of many saints, and their going into the holy city. Such," you say, "is the account which this dashing writer of the book of Matthew gives, but in which he is not supported by the writers of the other books." This is not accurately expressed: Matthew is supported by Mark and Luke, with respect to two of the miracles--the darkness-and the rending of the veil:-and their omission of the others does not prove that they were either ignorant of them, or disbelieved them. I think it idle to pretend to say positively what influenced them to mention only two

miracles: : they probably thought them sufficient to convince any person, as they convinced the centurion, that Jesus was a righteous man"- "the Son of God." And these two miracles were better calculated to produce general conviction amongst the persons for whose benefit Mark and Luke wrote their Gospels, than either the earthquake or the resurrection of the saints. The earthquake was probably confined to a particular spot, and might, by an objector, have been called a natural phenomenon; and those to whom the saints appeared, might, at the time of writing the Gospels of Mark and Luke, have been dead; but the darkness must have been generally known and remembered; and the veil of the temple might still be pre

served at the time these authors wrote.-As to John not mentioning any of these miracles, it is well known that his Gospel was written as a kind of supplement to the other Gospels. He has therefore omitted many things which the other three evangelists had related, and he has added several things which they had not mentioned. In particular, he has added a circumstance of great importance: He tells us that he saw one of the soldiers pierce the side of Jesus with a spear, and that blood and water flowed through the wound; and lest any one should doubt of the fact, from its not being mentioned by the other evangelists, he asserts it with peculiar earnestness-" And he that saw it, bare record, and his record is true; and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe."-John saw blood and water flowing from the wound: the blood is easily accounted for; but whence came the water? The anatomists tell us that it came from the pericardium--so consistent is evangelical testimony with the most curious researches into natural science !-You amuse yourself with the account of what the scripture calls many saints, and you call an army of saints, and are angry with Matthew for not having told you a great many things about them.-It is very possible that Matthew might have known the fact of their re

surrection, without knowing every thing about them; but if he had gratified your curiosity in every particular, I am of opinion that you would not have believed a word of what he had told you. I have no curiosity on the subject; it is enough for me to know that "Christ was the first fruits of them that slept," and " that all that are in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth," as those holy men did, who heard the voice of the Son of God at his resurrection, and passed from death to life. If I durst indulge myself in being wise above what is written, I might be able to answer many of your inquiries relative to these saints; but I dare not touch the ark of the Lord, I dare not support the authority of scripture by the boldness of conjecture. Whatever difficulty there may be in accounting for the silence of the other evangelists, and of St. Paul also, on this subject, yet there is a greater difficulty in supposing that Matthew did not give a true narration of what had happened at the crucifixion. If there had been no supernatural darkness, no earthquake, no rending of the veil of the temple, no graves opened, no resurrection of holy men, no appearance of them unto many-if none of these things had been true, or rather if any one of them had been false, what motive could Matthew, writing to the Jews, have had for trumping up such wonderful stories? He wrote, as every man does, with an intention to be believed; and yet every Jew he met would have stared him in the face, and told him that he was a liar and an impostor. What author, who twenty years hence should address to the French nation an history of Louis XVI. would venture to affirm, that when he was beheaded there was darkness for three hours over all France? that there was an earthquake? that rocks were split? graves opened? and dead men brought to life, who appeared to many persons in Paris?-It is quite impossible to suppose, that any one would dare to publish such obvious lies; and I think it equally impossible to sup pose, that Matthew would have dared to publish his