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Untitled Article
posed that , my worthy friend is so wholly uninstructed in the arts of controversy as not to know how much easier , and how much more effectual it often is , to calumniate an adversary , than to reply to his arguments .
My friend believes that they who reject the two first chap , ters of Matthew and Lu ^ e , reject th ^ m principally becaus e they contain an account of the miraculous conception ! And why does he believe it ? Would he contend jtltat the miraculous birth of Jesus is a proof of his pre-exlstence ? Then he must allo \ v ^ that Adam , and Eve , and Isaac , and Samson , and Samuel , and John the baptist , were all of them
pre-existent beings : for they all came into the world in a supernatural way . But if the conclusion is not admitted in these instances , neither is it to be allowed in the case of Jesus of Nazareth , And in fact the Unitarians have from
very early antiquity been divided upon this subject . It is indeed properly a critical and not a theological question . Upon the subject of the two first chapters of Matthew , the only argument my friend vouchsafes to produce in support of their authenticity is by an appeal to the testimony of Justin Martyr in favour of the first chapter , and to that of
Cerinthu ' s for the second . These testimonies he does not produce , nor even refer to : and they may justly be doubted : for in fapt Justin never mentions any one of the evangelists and only quotes from the memoirs of the apostles : and none of the works of Cerinthus are extant . But even
conceding what my friend has not proved , how does he account for the omission of-this extraordinary narrative in the copies of the Ebionites ^ or Hebrew Christians , for whom this gospel was originally written , in their native language , and in whose copies it was not found even so late as the tim «
of Jerome . This surely looks as if it was a story which would not bear to be told in the country where it is reported to have happened * ai > d in a language which the inhabitants could understand How does my friend account for it that a fact so extraordinary , and events of such public notoriety made no permanent impression , and excited no particular expectation ? How came it to pass that our X-ord was
con-» stantly called Jesus of Nazareth and not Jesus of Bethlehem 2 How is it to be accounted for that no notice is taken by Josephus and others of the visit of the Magi , or the massacre of the infants ? How comes it to pass that no
mention is made of these wonderful ev £ nt $ , nof thef least reference or appeal to them either by , Je 9 a $ ) uAMlf ' Htti .-ihe ^ ii ^
Untitled Article
368 Mr . Bclskaw ' s Strictures on Carpenter ' s Lectures *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1807, page 368, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2382/page/28/
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