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    $ e ) Acts viiu 39- Here we have instances of persons , acting under an impulse of the Spirit . * not in vision , but corporeally and in person . * - Mr , F . however , still farther to defend the-conclusion , he draws from the language of the evangelists , that Christ was led or driven from Jordan by the Spirit in visim on , and not in person , asks U With , what propriety could it be said , that Jesus went into the wilderness in person , when he was there already ? " p . 52 . And again , * ' Does it not sound very harsh to speak of any one as going or being led to a place , where he is already ? " p . 55 .

    This harshness is not felt or noticed in our language , when a person , who lives in a town or city at some distance from the middle of it , says , I am going up or down or out into the town . or city , by which no one acquainted ivith the situation of his house understands him to mean that he is going from without into some part within its limits , but only from a

    less into a more central or frequented part of it . But passages occur in the New Testament , where persons are said to have gone to the place where they were , before they set out . u Then went out to him ( John the baptist ) Jerusalem and all Judca , and all the region round about Jordan /' Matt . iii . 5 . Now this region , jottt of which the inhabitants went to John in the wilderness , lay in that very wilderness according to Mr . F / s own confession , p . 54 , note . Jesus was at Jerusalem , when he held a , conversation w ^ th Kicodemus , ( John H . 23—25 . iii , i—21 ) after which it is said that he came apd hi& disciples into

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    the land of JuSea , ( ch . iii . v . 2 ? . ) though he was in that land while he was at Jerusalem . But it seems needless to produce more passages , since from what have been quoted it is sufficiently evi * . dent , that persons are sometimes said to go into tlie VQjy place where they are residing at the time , in consequence of their going to some other part of it more thinly or thickly inhabited , or distinguished from it by some other circumstance .

    Mr . F . aware , tliat the objection , started by himself against the supposition of Je 3 us * s being led or driven in person into the place where he . was already in person , might be urged against his Joeing led or driven thither in rim sion , and in order to support his hypothesis of a visionary removal of Jesus from Jordan , translates rijv fp 7 jju . ov in Matt * iv . 1 . a wilderness , quoting ( p . 58 . note ip ) an observation of Schmidius on Matt . iii . 1 . in defence of thai translation . \

    But were Schmidius allowed to have shown , that the prepositive article is sometimes used indefim nitety , and even that it may possibly be so used in Matt . iv . 1 . yet it is evident from the observa ^ tion itself , that he did not suppose the evangelist to speak of an ideal or visionary wilderness any more than of ideal or visionary fire or water in ch . xvii . v » 15 . which he adduces to prove the article to be sometimes used in an indefinite sense . Mr * F / s hypothesis , there , fore , derives no support from thin remark of Schmidius . But , though I have no move doubt than had apparently that author , that Matthew referred to some real wilderness , yet I humbly conceive froifc

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    ti Objections to Mr . Farmer ' * Hypothesis *

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1810, page 22, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2400/page/22/