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Untitled Article
The Reviewer denies that the writer of the narrative reasons from the Old Testament ; but I believe no reader of plain understanding would doubt of tins , who had not a hypothesis to maintain , and who did not find himself
under a necessity of unravelling difficulties as he could /* I trust that enough has been advanced lo vindicate the Editors of the Improved Version , for having distinctly marked the prefatory chanters in Matthew and in J ^ ijke
as of doubtful authority / and lor having stated their reasons for it , calmly and fairly at the foot of the page , without any harsh reflection upon those who might hold a different opinion , and mioht receive these narratives as
genuine . Whether their unprovoked assailant , the Quarterly Reviewer , has been equally temperate and impartial the public will judge ; and also of his qualifications for the office which he has assumed , of being the umpire of theological
controversy * When the objections to the miraculous conception of Jesus Christy and to the genuineness of the disputed chapters ^ were first
brought forward by Dr . Priestley r upwards of twenty years ago , my prejudices were shocked , 1 ke those of my orthodox neighbours ; but I have now no hesitation to
acknowledge , that after the severe discussion which the subject hats -undergone , there is no fact in history with which I am better satisfied , than that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary , and that the narratives of his miraculous
jsonctption are spurious and false . It is * nt indeed easy to account fQX * fr origin of this forgery , and for its very general reception , ir *
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the gentile churches . But Wfc know that from the earliest times , even in the very age of the apos , ties , writings were forced and circulated under their names : and
a forgery of this nature would be \ ery iavourauJy received , as it would tend / to efia . ee tho stigma every where cast upon the christhins , frorn the mean and ignomi ^ niovjs birth and station of the
iounqer ot their religion . The circulation or writings was not so rapid , nor could forgeries be so easily detected as \\\ modern times * since the invention of the art of
printing . It is likewise 3 . most suspicious circumstance , that the fact was lc&st credited in the place where it is said to have happened * Had Mat ? hew written the nar ^
rative of the miraculous concept tion of Jesus , there is no reason wh y the Jewish Christians , who were as solicitous as the gentiles to exalt the condition oKtheir master , should not have received it . But in the time of Justin ,
witq the exception of the invisible orthodox church , founded Upon St . Barnabas , and discovered by our Reviewer , the Jewish chiistians appear universally to have discredited it * Probably most of them had never heard of it : for
Justin says . that to them his doctrine of an incarnation and a miraculous birth must needs appear very extravagant , and as Trypho adds , very silly . But it is highly incredible- if the fact was true ,
that it should have been totally forgotten in the country where it happened 7 and only known and believed by persons at a distance , who had no opportunity to enquire . This is directly the reverse of the eviclen 9 e for the resur , rcction of Jesus . That event was
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428 The Quarterly Review and the Improved Version ; j
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1809, page 428, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1739/page/14/
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