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damped by an occasional levity , at least by the want of that seriousness which the subject required , yet , on the whole , the general result was favourable . " — " With respect to religion , we find nothing like a settled enmity to it , or a settled conviction that it was an imposture . "— " He was , in fact , what he represented himself to be when I saw him , unsettled in his religious opinions . He rejected the appellation of infidel ; he said it was a cold and chilling word . He confessed he was not happy ; lie said he wished to be convinced of the truth of religion . "
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These two useful and neatly executed volumes contain an application of the argument of Paley in the Horse Paulinse to the Gospels and the Pentateuch . They are intended as a slight supplement to the great works of Lardner and of Paley , to shew from undesigned and hitherto unobserved coincidences the genuineness and credibility of these parts of the Sacred Volume . If the argument has not in Mr . Blunt ' s hands the force which it possesses when
wielded by his great exemplar , if the coincidences which he adduces are less convincing , it is to be considered that the ground upon which he treads is far Jess favourable for the application o ^ suc h an ar g nt , than a comparison of the history of St . Luke , in which St . Paul is the hero , and the Epistles , of which St . Paul is the author , must necessarily be . In the gospels the principal materials have been pre-occupied ; and in the five books of Moses , its application , owing ; to the antiquity and the brevity of the narrative and the entire absence of other writings , with which to compare it ,
becomes much more difficult . But Mr . Blunt does not challenge a comparison with more elaborate writers on the evidences . It would be doing him injustice to judge his " unpretending volumes" by a standard borrowed from their merits . Nevertheless we cannot help observing that Mr . Blunt's works are to those of his predecessors precisely what in pictures a copy is to an original , having something of the weakness and imperfections of imitation , instead of the power and brightness of an original conception .
They are the strained efforts of a man on the watch for whatever may be plausibly turned to his advantage , rather than the spontaneous growth of unbiassed observation ; and hence it appears to us that his remarks are more fitted to charm and confirm one who already holds the Scriptures sacred , than to make a deep impression on the sceptic . We should rather say of his instances , of coincidence , that discrepancy , inconsistency , in such particulars would at once invalidate the narrative , than that in themselves they furnish arguments for its veracity .
Paley demonstrates more than the consistency of St . Paul either with himself or with St Luke . His argument proves the impossibility of forgery . The coincidences he adduces are such as it is in the highest degree improbable and incredible that a forger would have or could have contrived . On the other hand , Mr . Blunt ' s examples of consistency are often such as
* The Veracity of the Evangelists and Acts of the Apostles , &c . Pp . 187 . 1828 . And The Veracity of the Five Books of Moses argued from Undesigned Coincidences . By the Rev . J . J . Blunt . Pi > . 214 . 1830 .
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The rerae \ ty of the Evangelists , fyc . 613
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UNDESIGNED COINCIDENCES IN SCRIPTURE . *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1830, page 613, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2588/page/29/
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