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life , will appear , it is conceived , just and satisfactory . But they rjofc only justify the sacred historians , but shew them to be considerate and judicious writers . A credibility is by these jneans derived to their nar * rative . It is formed to answer a precise and definite end , that is , to exhibit Jesus iq his public character , and to give such specimens of his discourses and works , as were sufficient to illustrate , the nature of his doctrine , and to evince the truth of his mission . It was not their intention to gratify a vain curiosity , to raise an useless astonishment
in the minds of the reader , or to pour out lavish eulogiums on the subject of their history . Had they been governed b y a disposition to exaggerate , forge and invent ; would they have written in a strain so moderate and modest ? Would they have kept themselves within the limits of the public ministry of their master , or confined themselves
to those scenes , in the narrative of which , as being public , they were most open to detection , if they deviated from real facts ? This is very different from the tenor of the Apocryphal gosp e ls , very different from a fictitious fable , very different from the legends of popish saints , very different indeed , from those genuine histories , v-hich are meant to give a full delineation of a character , and to set off , toall possible advantage , 3 , distinguished and eminent personage . While my pen has been i » my band , I have met with a passage in the candid Lardner , so much to the purport of these remarks , that 1 am tempted to give it . 65
How simple and plain , how free from all pomp and ostentation , fa the beginping of every gospel . The writer enters immediately upon the matters of fact he has to relate , without any laboured introduction , without any attempt to raise the expectation , or engage the affections of the reader . If it had been an artificial story , invented and composed with design , we should have many other particulars in h than are now there . They have not sought out occasions to enhance their Master ' s honour . The former part of his life is almost entirely passed overh and , besides his miraculous birth , the obeisance paid him by the wise jnen , and some extraordinary circumstances at the purifica , tion of the virgin , scarce any notice of him from that time to his
public appearance at about the-age of thirty , excepting that one fact of his arguing with the doctors in the temple . Luke . ii . 46 . Had it been a story forged $ ind contrived , his infancy and youth had not beep thqs slightly passed over : we should have had many accounts of wonderful preservations , and a miraculous providence attending birn
all along , there would have been related divers omens and presages of the figure he was afterwards to make in the world ; numerous specimens of pregnant capacity and zeal : whereas the historians have aU rnost immediately entered upon his public appearance , which waSj what mankind was chiefly concerned in . " Lardn ^ r ' s Works , Vol . x . p . 552 , 553 .
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568 Crrotius en the Silence , Me ,
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1807, page 568, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2386/page/4/
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