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There is likewise a Zacharias, the fon of Baruch, related by Jofephus to have been flain in the temple a few years before the deftruction of Jerufalem. It has been infinuated, that the words put into our Sayiour's mouth contain a reference to this tranfaction, and were compofed by fome writer, who either confounded the time of the transaction with our Saviour's age, or inadvertently overlooked the anachronism.

Now fuppofe it to have been fo; fuppofe thefe words to have been fuggefted by the transaction related in Jofephus, and to have been falfely afcribed to Chrift; and observe what extraordinary coincidences (accidentally, as it must in that cafe have been) attend the forger's mistake.

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Firft, That we have a Zacharias in the book of Chronicles, whofe death, and the manner of it, correfponds with the allufion.

Secondly, that although the name of this perfon's father be erroneously put down in VOL. II.

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the gofpel, yet we have a way of accounting for the error, by fhewing another Zacharias in the Jewish fcriptures, much better known than the former, whofe patronymic was actually that which appears in the text.

Every one who thinks upon the subject, will find these to be circumftances which could not have met together in a miftake, which did not proceed from the circumftances themselves.

I have noticed, I think, all the difficulties of this kind. They are few; fome of them admit of a clear, others of a probable folution. The reader will compare them with the number, the variety, the clofeness, and the fatisfactorinefs, of the inftances which are to be fet against them; and he will remember the scantinefs, in many cases, of our intelligence, and that difficulties always attend imperfect information.

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BETWEEN the letters which bear the

name of St. Paul in our collection, and his history in the Acts of the Apoftles, there exift many notes of correfpondency. The fimple perusal of the writings is fufficient to prove, that neither the hiftory was taken from the letters, nor the letters from the hiftory. And the undefignedness of the agreements (which undefignedness is gathered from their latency, their minuteness, their obliquity, the fuitableness of the circumftances in which they confift, to the places in which thofe circumftances occur, and the circuitous references by which they are traced out) demonftrates that they have not been produced by meditation, or by any fraudulent contrivance. But coincidences, from which thefe caufes are excluded, and which

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which are too clofe and numerous to be accounted for by accidental concurrences of fiction, muft neceffarily have truth for their foundation.

This argument appeared to my mind of fo much value (especially for its affuming nothing befide the exiftence of the books), that I have pursued it through St. Paul's thirteen epiftles, in a work published by me four years ago under the title of Hora Paulinæ. I am fenfible how feebly any argument, which depends upon an induction of particulars, is reprefented without examples. On which account, I wished to have abridged my own volume, in the manner in which I have treated Dr. Lardner's in the preceding chapter. But, upon making the attempt, I did not find it in my power to render the articles intelligible by fewer words than I have there used. I must be content, therefore, to refer the reader to the work itself. And I would particularly invite his attention to the obfervations which are made in it upon the three first epiftles.

I persuade myself that he will find the proofs, both of agreement and undefignednefs, fupplied by these epiftles, fufficient to fupport the conclufion which is there maintained, in favour both of the genuineness of the writings, and the truth of the narrative.

It remains only, in this place, to point out how the argument argument bears upon the gene ral question of the Christian history.

First, St. Paul in these letters affirms, in unequivocal terms, his own performance of miracles, and, what ought particularly to be remembered, "That miracles were the figns of an apoftle*" If this teftimony.come from St. Paul's own hand, it is invaluable. And that it does fo, the argument before us fixes in my mind a firm affurance.

Secondly, it fhows that the series of action, reprefented in the epiftles of St. Paul, was real; which alone lays a foundation

* Rom. xv. 18, 19.

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2 Cor. xii. 12.

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