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Untitled Article
of the author , l > ut of those , who do not devote a sufficient portion of their time to the perusal and btucly of the most important and interesting book , which has ever been transmitted from generation to generation , and which if they were sincere in their professions , or considered the importance of
them , they would know to be the source of their most valuable knowledge , the basis of their most animating hopes , and the charter of their most glorious privileges . But . alas ! there are thousands ,
who would resent as an insult any suspicion of the sincerity of their Christian profession , who are very little acquainted with the historical records on which that profession is built , and still less acquainted with the genuine
meaning and design of the evangelical writers . It is , however , with pleasure , that we perceive an increasing spirit of free inquiry on religious subjects , and we hope the reception of the volume before us will a fiord an additional proof , that a sincere and well-directed
effort to promote the knowledge of the scriptures , and to recommend them to the attention of serious and candid inquirers , will not fail of exciting ' a suitable degree oi interest .
Those who are conversant with the works of commentators upon the N- T . need not be informed , that two circumstances have particularly arrested the attention ot l ho biblical student ; the disagree- ' ment oi the evangelical historians as to the time in which the facts dotuilc-d by them are said to have taken p ! a , cv , and their agreement in the frequent use of the same language and expressions in recording then ) . The learn * -d trans-
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lator of Michaelis has advanced 3 very elaborate hypothesis to account for this latter circumstance , which is clearly stated a , nd very successfully opposed by Mr . Jones , in an Appendix to , tl > e Illustrations . The ? fact had been noticed
in the beginning of the work , and the author had suggested a very simple and natural mode of accounting for the agreement and disagretment of the gospel histori - ans . The principle of association is offered as the ground of that diversity which appears in the writings nt * the four evangelists , as
to the order of the facts , in point of time ; and several instances are produced , in which the influence of association appears to be clearly and ingeniously established . " As the writers of the N . T . had never studied the systematic rales of
composition , * says our author , " they recorded things , not as they actually occurred , but as they occurred to their memories . Nor ought it to be forgotten , that these transactions were crowded within the
ministry pf the illustrious founder , which comparatively was of short duration ; that some years elapsed before even the first of his biographers committed them to writing ; that during the intervals of the occurrence and the written history
of those events , they were a thousand times repeated on different occasions , and in a different order ; that the original succession was destroyed by subsequent combinations , and it remained for them to adopt in most cases that order , which the law of association suggested . ' '
P- 4 , 5-'' But the evangelical writers not on If differ , but agree in a manner , that lias occasioned much perplexity .. The solution of * this difficulty is not a supposition , but a fact . The- memorialists had a
common model to copy , and each being ; fdhhfixl and like to the original , they are found in substance and in character * like to each other . It being a fact that they had the same standard to guidethem , the surprise is not how they caipe to agree > but how they came to d { ff er * and for this difference the law taf association will satisfactorily account . ' ' p . 7 > ° *
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3 $ 6 Review . —Jones ' s Illustration * of the Four Gospel * .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1809, page 396, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1738/page/42/
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