of the kingdom of heaven or of God was begun to be preached, and even before his disciples comprehended its nature and intent, any men could have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of it."*

This, surely, requires no animadversion. Besides, if the Gospel of Matthew had not been written till the doctrine of the Encratites (the founder of which was Tatian, the disciple of Justin Martyr†) sprung up, it would have been absolutely impossible that it should have been received as the production of Matthew.

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7. Mr. Evanson is displeased with the parable of the householder (Matt. xx.), who gave the same wages to those who had worked only one hour, and to those who had worked all the day. If," says he," by working in the vineyard is meant men's performing the moral duties of the gospel; and by their payment in the evening is to be understood the rewards of that future life which God has promised to all faithful and true Christians; there is not the least resemblance of any kind between the circumstances of the gospel covenant and those of the bargain made with the labourers in the parable: for, ever since the gospel has been preached to the world, wheresoever it is known, the labourers in the Christian vineyard are invited all together to enter into it; and the same covenanted terms are proposed to all, without any partial choice or predilection, viz. an eternal life of happiness in heaven. Now, in this parable, though the labourers who had wrought the entire day, having received the bare payment they had earned, had certainly no right to complain of injustice in the householder, nor to controul his generosity towards the others in giving them more than they had earned; yet surely they must feel the great difference between his mere justice to themselves and his extraordinary liberality to those who had wrought but one hour; and we cannot wonder that they murmured at so seemingly unreasonable a preference and partiality in the distribution of his bounty."+

But Mr. Evanson should have considered that they who had worked but one hour had been waiting with a view to being hired all the day, so that they had shewn the best disposition to labour, and only wanted opportunity.

Dissonance, pp. 167-169. (P.) Ed. 2, pp. 206-208.

† Mr. Evanson objects, that "Eusebius says, (Hist. Eccles. L. iv. C. xxix.,) that sect proceeded from Saturninus and Marcion, who both preceded Justin." Letter, p. 65. Yet Jerome calls Tatian "Encratitarum patriarches." Lardner, II. p. 140, Note g. See ibid. pp. 136, 137.

↑ Dissonance, pp. 169, 170." (P.) Ed. 2, pp. 210, 211.

8. An inattention to the meaning of the word which we render everlasting, (for I cannot call it ignorance,) is the ground of another most unreasonable cavil of Mr. Evanson's, at the conclusion of our Lord's fine description of the proceedings of the last day. [Matt. xxv. 31-46.] "The latter part of this chapter," he says, "is a description of the day of judgment, and expressly teaches, not only that the righteous will then be rewarded with eternal life in heaven, but also, that the wicked will suffer everlasting punishment. There is such palpable injustice ascribed to the righteous Lord of heaven and earth by all those who represent him as inflicting infinite punishment for the definite, momentary offences of finite creatures, that such a doctrine would make me strongly suspect the authenticity of any scripture in which I found it; and it is with great satisfaction I can remark, that this doctrine is peculiar to this spurious evangelical history, and as repugnant to the positive declaration of the other scriptures of the New Testament, as it is to strict justice and the voice of reason: for they assure us, that, not an endless life of torment, but utter destruction and a second death await the unreformed wicked."t

Mr. Evanson cannot well be ignorant that the word alwvios, and the corresponding term in Hebrew, are frequently used to express an indefinite long period. So he himself would understand it when it is predicated of the priesthood of Aaron, and the kingship in the family of

David.

I have now discussed, and I hope with candour, every thing that Mr. Evanson has objected to the Gospel of Matthew; § and if you have hitherto been at all impressed by his representations, I hope you will be satisfied that it has been without sufficient reason.

I am, &c.

"See 2 Thess. i. 9; Apoc. xx. 6." Dissonance, p. 181. Ed. 2, p. 222. + Ibid. pp. 180, 181. (P.)

See Vol. XIII. p. 302. $ Which has been thus characterized by Wakefield: 66 —a piece of history, it must be acknowledged, the most singular in its composition, the most wonderful in its contents, and the most important in its object, that was ever exhibited to the notice of mankind. For simplicity of narrative, and an artless relation of facts, without any applause, or censure, or digressive remarks, on the part of the historian, upon the characters introduced in it; without any intermixture of his own opinion upon any subject whatsoever; and for a multiplicity of internal marks of credibility, this Gospel certainly has no parallel amongst human productions, if we except only the corresponding books of the New Testament.

"With respect to what is called the style of this Gospel, it is most evidently formed upon the Hebrew idiom. The words themselves are, for the most part, classical and well chosen : and the composition differs from the purest authors of Greece, only in the collocation of the words, and the inartificial and idiomatic construction of the periods: niceties, to which the evangelical writers paid no atten ion." St. Matthew, pp. 415, 416.

LETTER VIII.

Of Mr. Evanson's Objections to the Gospel of Mark.

DEAR SIR,

MR. EVANSON has not bestowed so much pains on the Gospel of Mark as he has done on that of Matthew, otherwise, I have no doubt but he would have found as much to object to in it; as if, by any accident, he had happened to prefer the Gospel of Mark, he would have found as much to object to that of Luke.

1. With respect to this Gospel, Mr. Evanson says, “The author himself no where pretends to be St. Mark; and nothing can be slighter or less satisfactory than the external testimony or historic evidence in its favour: as every candid inquirer will be convinced who attentively peruses the collection of those testimonies prefixed to the best editions of this Gospel, the chief of which, respecting a revelation to St. Peter of Mark's having written it, &c., are manifestly fabulous."* Now the testimony of Mark being the writer of this Gospel is as early and as strong as that of Luke being the author of his, the same writers always mentioning the four Gospels as of equal authority.

2. As if he had been present at the time, and in the secret, Mr. Evanson gives the following curious account of the composition of this Gospel: "It seems impossible to consider the unknown author of this Gospel in any other light than as the first person who attempted to harmonize the two contradictory Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and by extracting from each what he thought the most material passages, to compose of them one regular, consistent history of the public ministry of our Saviour. With this view, finding it absolutely impracticable to reconcile the two genealogies and accounts of the nativity and infancy of Jesus, like many later commentators, when they find themselves unable to elucidate the text, he has entirely omitted those parts of the two histories; and begins where the original writing of St. Luke certainly began, with the preaching and baptism of John. For the same reason, as it is impossible to make the conclusions of those two Gospels harmonize together, this compiler abruptly broke off his history at the eighth verse of the last chapter; and the twelve

• Dissonance, p. 212. (P.) Ed. 2, p. 256.

following verses, which are compiled partly from Luke and Matthew, and still more from the Gospel attributed to St. John, not being found in the oldest and best copies of this work, are undoubtedly the addition of some still later hand, who has betrayed himself by inadvertently making his addition expressly contradict the author whom he personated."* To this it is only necessary to say, that such another harmonizer and abridger as Mr. Evanson makes Mark to be of the other Gospels, we shall not easily find; and that, on equally plausible ground, he might have made Matthew the harmonizer and abridger of Mark, Luke and John, and Luke the harmonizer and abridger of John, Matthew and Mark.

3. As Mr. Evanson censures Matthew for making the sign of the prophet Jonah to be different from that of Luke,† he censures Mark for contradicting them both. "In the eighth chapter, ver. 12, the author, unable to reconcile his mind to what the pretended Matthew has said of the sign of the prophet Jonas, though he was actually copying from him, has thought proper flatly to contradict both him and St. Luke, and to make our Saviour declare, that no sign at all should be given to that generation." +

What an unreasonable and obstinate man must this Mark, or whoever he was, have been, to have both the Gospels of Matthew and Luke before him to copy after, and yet, though he had no knowledge of his own, choose to follow neither of them! He must have known too, that his blunder would be exposed by the first person who would take the trouble to compare them. A very little candour, however, might have led Mr. Evanson to see that by no sign at all, this writer meant no such sign as the Pharisees required, viz. a sign from heaven.

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4. A very great proportion of what Mr. Evanson objects to the Gospel of Mark relates to his representing Jesus as having seemed to use some natural means of cure, when he worked some of his miracles of a beneficent nature. the sixth chapter, verse 13, this writer tells us, without the least warrant from his originals, Luke and Matthew, that when our Lord sent out the twelve apostles with miraculous power to cure diseases, they anointed the sick they healed with oil. Now since the very intent of these miraculous cures was to convince the Jews who beheld them, in a way

* Dissonance, pp. 213, 214. (P.) Ed. 2, pp. 257, 258. + Supra, pp. 417, 418.

Dissonance, p. 217. (P.) Ed. 3, p. 263.

peculiarly adapted to the kind, benevolent genius of the gospel, of the supernatural interposition of the Deity in favour of the new religion they announced; every application, though of the most simple kind, must necessarily tend to counteract the belief of the miracle, and afford ground for suspicion, that the cure was effected by some medical virtue of the oil they used, not by the immediate power of God; and, therefore, as no such application is ever said to have been used by our Saviour or any of his disciples in either of St. Luke's histories, it is in the highest degree improbable that any such unction was ever used by them; and the very mention of such a circumstance in this Gospel and in the Epistle attributed to St. James, affords a very strong presumptive proof that neither of the writers lived in the apostolic age; but that they both wrote in the second century, when the preachers of Christianity no longer having the miraculous gift of healing, yet pretending to possess it, conscious that no effect would be produced upon the patient by their word or touch, introduced the formal ceremony of anointing with oil, accompanied by the united prayer of the Presbytery; and if, as, no doubt, sometimes happened, the sick person recovered, the cure was attributed to the miraculous efficacy of the pious, greasy ritual, which, that it might not be deemed, in any case, absolutely ineffectual, whenever the patient died, was transferred to the next world, to secure his eternal salvation there; for which purpose alone, under the title of extreme unction, it is still used by the most perfectly and most consistently orthodox church in Christendom.

"The seventh chapter, verse 33, contains an account of our Lord's curing a deaf and dumb person, with such ridiculous gesticulations as are very unworthy the character of the messenger of almighty God, putting his fingers into his ears, and touching his tongue with his spittle." He adds, "At the twenty-third verse, this writer again represents our Saviour, with the airs of a mountebank, applying his spittle to the eyes of a blind man in order to give him sight; and as if one interposition of almighty power were not sufficient to accomplish a perfect cure, the man's sight is not completely acquired till he has applied his hands a second time to the eyes." †

If Mr. Evanson can suppose the Gospel of Mark and the Epistle of James to have been written in an age in which he can prove that Christians had adopted the super

Altered to "in a very unbecoming manner," in ed. 2. + Dissonance, pp. 215-218. (P.) Ed. 2, pp. 261–263.