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    exceptions to the proof . I for one , however , firmly believe that Mary the mother of Jesus was a woman of a strictly virtuous and most excellent character ; nor can I ever be induced

    to admit , without evidence much * superior to any which has hitherto been produced , that-she was with child when she was married to Joseph , and that she made her good-natured husband believe that the father of the

    child was the Holy Spirit , or as we are taught by a learned divine of the Established Church , the angel Gabriel . * Neither could the evangelist Matthew believe any such thing , -when he states as his reason for

    introducing the genealogy , that Jesus Christ was the son of David , the son of Abraham : which he must have known that he certainly was not , if Joseph was not his father . " But / ' says the reverend gentleman , the generality of commentators

    believe , and with reason , that Matthew had no such design in his genealogy as they , " the Editors , " ascribe to him . *' I have , I think , sufficiently shewn that they < 3 o not believe with reason : and as to the rest , if they like to believe , let them believe on . "

    4 . Dr . Lardner has proved to the satisfaction of the learned , that the death of Herod happened seventeen or eighteen years before that of Augustus ; and Luke relates that Jesus was thirty years of age in the fifteenth

    year of Tiberius . It is evident , therefore , that the birth of Christ happened two or three years after the death of Herod . Dates are stubborn things , and will not yield to passion and prejudice : and these dates completely overset the whole fable of the miraculous conception . The Editors of

    * The angel Gabriel is the Holy Ghost . See this doctrine most learnedly and elaborately argued by the Rev . Reginald Ileber , in the fourth of his Bampton

    Lectures , Such is modern Oxonian divinity . What would Dr . Waliis and his contemporaries have thought of this doctrine ? What does Bishop Burgess even now think of it ? Will he allow that the a no-el

    Gabriel is a person but not a being ? And that this nonentity was the father of Jesus Christ ? What is Dr . Moysey ' s opinion ? Does he believe that the angei Gabriel includes the-whole idea of God and something * more ? #

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    the Improved Version have referred to Lardner ' s account of the death of Herod ; and their opponents falsely charge them with appealing to Lardner as agreeing with them in the

    rejection of the miraculous conception . This writer , as usual , joins in the cry of the pack , and with great simplicity he produces Lardner ' s words as a confutation of the assertion

    of the Editors , p . 44 : " When St . Luke says , * Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius , ' & , c , he may intend some computation of the reign of Tiberius different from that of his sole empire after the death of Augustus . " He may intend . What ! is a direct assertion of the sacred historian

    to be set aside by a conjecture even of Dr . Lardner ? Who ever dreamed of a double computation of TiberiuVs reign , except for the sole purpose of cobbling up this great chronological difficulty ? This distinction was indeed very common in the Lower

    Empire , but was not known in the reign of Augustus , and could never be applied to Tiberius , who , it is plain from Tacitus , was far from being confident of an undisputed succession . Let this reverend gentleman now surmount this ** mighty chronological argument , " and " wing his little way 11

    over this lofty mountainas best he may . 5 . This author , though no great friend to argument , bows with the most profound veneration to popular authority .

    It is stated by the Editors of the Improved Version , that " if the account of the miraculous conception of Jesus be true , he could not be the offspring of David and Abraham . " How does the author of the

    Trinitarian ' s Appeal , &c , reply to this plain fact ? " To me" says he , p . 49 , "it appears sufficient to reply , the Christian world in general believed and do believe , that Jesus was miraculously

    conceived , arid that he was the offspring of David and A braham , " This is an easy way of getting over a difficulty . The evangelists give the pedigree of Joseph to prove that our Lord was descended from Abraham and

    David y but the Christian world it seems supersede the authority of the evangelists : they believe the contrary ; they deny that Jqsus was the son of Joseph j they maintain thit Christ

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    48 $ On the Rev * Samuel Newton ' s Objections to the Improved Versicn .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1819, page 482, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1775/page/22/