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well we might expect agreement between truth and falsehood, between the Evangelist and David Levi, as between two passages of such opposite characters. Is this the man who is to confute the Holy Scriptures? Weak champion of an unworthy cause!

What he means by an inconsistency between Luke i. 34, 35, and Luke xiv. 22, I cannot understand, and conclude there must be an error of the press, of which I think no author can have less reason to complain than David Levi.

These two unprosperous attacks being the whole of what he attempts upon the inconsistency of the sacred historians with themselves, I shall no longer detain my readers than whilst I notice one more cavil, which this author points against the divine mission of Christ, as compared with that of Moses, viz. That God speaking with Moses face to face in the presence of six hundred thousand men, besides women and children, as mentioned in Exod. xix. 9, was such an essential proof of the divine mission of Moses, as is wanting on the part of Jesus;' and therefore he concludes, that taking the miracles of Moses and this colloquy with the Supreme Being together, the evidences for him are much stronger than for Christ.

A man, who does not instantly discern the futility of this argument, must forget all the several incidents in the history of Christ, where the voice of God audibly testifies to his divine mission: for instance, Matt. iii. 16, 17: And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water, and lo! the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a 'dove, and lighting upon him; and lo! a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' The same is repeated by Mark, i. 10, 11; again by Luke, iii. 21, 22; again by John, i. 32, 33, 34.

If these supernatural signs and declarations do not evince the superiority of Christ's mission above that of Moses; if Christ, to whom angels ministered, when the devil in despair departed from him, Christ, who was transfigured before his disciples, and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light, and behold! there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him: Christ, at whose death the vail of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and the graves were opened, and many bodies of saints, which slept, arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many:' in conclusion, if Christ, whose resurrection was declared by angels, seen and acknowledged by many witnesses, and whose ascension into heaven crowned and completed the irrefragable evidence of his divine mission; if Christ, whose prophecies of his own death and resurrection, of the destruction of Jerusalem and the subsequent dispersion of the Jews, have been and are now so fully verified, cannot, as our caviller asserts, meet the comparison with Moses, then is the Redeemer of lost mankind a less sublime and important character than the legislator of the Jews.

I have now attempted in the first place to discover how far the world was illuminated by right reason before the revelation of Christ took place; for had men's belief been such, and their practice also such as Christianity teaches, the world had not stood in need of a Redeemer.

The result of this inquiry was, that certain persons have expressed themselves well and justly upon the subject of God and religion in times antecedent to the Christian era, and in countries where idolatry was the established worship.

That the nation of the Jews was a peculiar nation,

and preserved the worship of the true and only God, revealed in very early time to their fathers, but that this worship, from various circumstances and events, in which they themselves were highly criminal, had not been propagated beyond the limits of a small tract, and that the temple of Jerusalem was the only church in the world, where God was worshipped, when Christ came upon earth:

That from the almost universal diffusion of idolatry, from the unworthy ideas men had of God and religion, and the few faint notions entertained amongst them of a future state of rewards and punishments, the world was in such deplorable error, and in such universal need of an instructor and redeemer, that the coming of Christ was most seasonable and necessary to salvation:

That there were a number of concurrent prophecies of an authentic character in actual existence, which promised this salvation to the world, and depicted the person of the Messias, who was to perform this mediatorial office in so striking a manner, that it cannot be doubted but that all those characteristics meet and are fulfilled in the person of Christ:

That his birth, doctrines, miracles, prophecies, death, and passion, with other evidences, are so satisfactory for the confirmation of our belief in his divine mission, that our faith as Christians is grounded upon irrefragable proofs:

Lastly, that the vague opinions of our own dissenting brethren, and the futile cavils of a recent publication by a distinguished writer of the Jewish nation, are such weak and impotent assaults upon our religion, as only serve to confirm us in it the

more.

If I have effected this to the satisfaction of the serious reader, I shall be most happy; and as for

those who seek nothing better than amusement-in these volumes, I will apply myself without delay to the easier task of furnishing them with matter more suited to their taste.

NUMBER LXVII.

Musa dedit fidibus Divos, puerosque Deorum,
Et pugilem victorem, et equum certamine primum
Et juvenum curas, et libera vina referre.-HORAT.

In times of very remote antiquity, when men were not so lavish of their wit as they have since been, poetry could not furnish employment for more than three Muses; but as business grew upon their hands' and departments multiplied, it became necessary to enlarge the commission, and a board was constituted, consisting of nine in number, who had their several presidencies allotted to them, and every branch of the art poetic thenceforth had its peculiar patroness and superintendant.

As to the specific time when these three senior goddesses called in their six new assessors, it is matter of conjecture only; but if the poet Hesiod was, as we are told, the first who had the honour of announcing their names and characters to the world,' we may reasonably suppose this was done upon the immediate opening of their new commission, as they would hardly enter upon their offices without apprising all those, whom it might concern, of their accession.

Before this period, the three elder sisters condescended to be maids of all work; and if the work became more than they could turn their hands to, they

have nobody but themselves and their fellow-deities to complain of; for had they been content to have let the world go on in its natural course, mere mortal poets would not probably have overburdened either it or them; but when Apollo himself (who being their president should have had more consideration for their ease) begot the poet Linus in one of his terrestrial frolics, and endowed him with hereditary genius, he took a certain method to make work for the muses: accordingly, we find the chaste Calliope herself, the eldest of the sisterhood, and who should have set a better example to the family, could not hold out against this heavenly bastard, but in an unguarded moment yielded her virgin honours to Linus, and produced the poet Orpheus: such an instance of celestial incontinence could not fail to shake the morals of the most demure; and even the cold goddess Luna caught the flame, and smuggled a bantling into the world, whom, maliciously enough, she named Musæus, with a sly design no doubt of laying her child at the door of the Parnassian nunnery.

Three such high-blooded bards as Linus, Orpheus, and Musæus, so fathered and so mothered, were enough to people all Greece with poets and musicians; and in truth they were not idle in their generation, but like true patriarchs spread their families over all the shores of Ionia and the islands of the Archipelago: it is not therefore to be wondered at, if the three sister muses, who had enough to do to nurse their own children and descendants, were disposed to call in other helpmates to the task, and, whilst Greece was in its glory, it may well be supposed that all the nine sisters were fully employed in bestowing upon every votary a portion of their attention, and answering every call made upon them for aid and inspiration: much gratitude is due

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