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Untitled Article
reviving trust , and hope , and confidence , and fraudulent scheming , as havings been so momentary in their respective duration , and so rapid in their sequence , as to have allowed the whole plot to be conceived , matured , and carried into effect during Friday night , that is , within twelve hours of the crucifixion ! How should the
idea have even presented itself , when , according to the author , misinterpreting John ' s declaration that the disciples did not know , ( i . e ., did not understand , the prophecy ) they did not know that Jesus had declared he should rise again , and ' the inference is that no such prediction had been uttered ?* The men were incapable , during the few hours from Friday evening to Saturday morning , of entertaining such a scheme as they are said to have executed .
Peter , uo less than the rest . What is true of all is true of him ; and it is a mere assumption on the part of the author ( who is strangely mistaken in Peter ' s character when he gives him consummate prudence as well as zeal ) , to attribute to this apostle the devising and conducting of a scheme so unnatural to men oppressed with consternation at Christ ' s death , and ignorant of any expectation having been entertained by him of rising again .
The author must have forgotten his own theory of the stealing of the body on Friday night , when he goes on to discredit , with no little special pleading , the account of the stationing of a watch at the sepulchre on the Saturday (* the next day that followed the day of the preparation : ' Matt , xxvik 62 ) . He might have saved himself this trouble had he been self-consistent . He
goes on to argue that this part of the history is an * addition ' of Matthew ' s ; but that if the watch was set , it might consist not of Roman soldiers , but of * a Jewish civic guard , ' who might sleep on duty without fear of consequences , and that during their sleep the disciples might steal the body , which they had stolen once the night before . This he thinks the more likely , as so respectable a set of persons as the chief priests ' would endeavour to meet the
report of the apostles , concerning the bodily resurrection of their Lord , by a counter report calculated to gain credit , not by such a one as should startle belief by its improbability . '—( p . 131 . ) One improbability there is still in the report , even if the guards be allowed to have been a Jewish civic force , —which they were not , any more than the soldiers under the centurion at the crucifixion ; and even if it be allowed that they slept on guard , and could escape punishment without the intervention of the priests' pleading with
the governor ; this improbability still remains , that the apostles should have been able to calculate on their sleeping and on the exact time of night when their sleep would be soundest . With all Peter ' s energy , prudence , and cunning , to direct his own actions , he could not control other persons . He might have happened to come to the sepulchre at th $ right time , but he might have come too aoon or too late , and been apprehended , or he might have awaked the sleeping guards by the noise of removing the stone
Untitled Article
933 . Orthodoxy and Unbelief T
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1832, page 838, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1826/page/46/
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