will not be understood to imply any countenancing of certain extraordinary pretences to a new translation of the Scriptures, by which learning, taste, and religion, have been equally offended. A judicious and temperate revision of the established version, he cannot but think to be a most desirable work: but, were this object realized, he is far from supposing that it would be proper to use the explicatory and sometimes paraphrastic mode of expression, which has appeared to him necessary for the purposes of a theological discussion.

The price of these volumes has been a subject of sincere concern to both the author and the publisher. It was occasioned by the heavy amount of the extra charges of printing, for so large a body of notes and the numerous Latin and Greek citations. But this dearness, in comparison with books printed on a uniform type and plain page, is rather in appearance than in reality; especially with respect to the second volume, which is executed in so compressed and economical a mode of printing, as to contain a

quantity of matter at least double to that of the first, while the price is proportionably much lower.

Should any person think proper to honour this work by any animadversions, the author does not anticipate the obligation of a reply. His endeavour has been to give a dispassionate statement of reasons and arguments. The comparison of these with what may be advanced on the contrary part, will be the province of serious and impartial readers, whose judgment will not require aid from him. He is also bound to bear in mind that his immediate duties, allow him no disposable leisure; and that, to retrieve the detriment which they may have sustained, by being imperfectly discharged during the composition of this work, will require an absolute appropriation of his future time and exertions.

THE

SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY

TO THE

MESSIAH.

ON

THE

INFORMATION

BOOK III.

то BE OBTAINED CONCERNING THE PERSON OF THE CHRIST, FROM THE NARRATIVES OF THE EVANGELICAL HISTORY, AND FROM OUR LORD'S OWN ASSERTIONS AND INTIMATIONS.

Jesus the Messiah.-To him, therefore all the attributes of the Messiah must attach. The testimony of the Christian Scriptures must coincide with that of the Jewish.-The real humanity of Jesus no objection to the existence of a superior nature.-Proposed method of the Inquiry.

IN the preceding part of this inquiry we have endeavoured, with caution and scrupulosity, to collect the characters of the Messiah from the descriptions of ancient prophecy. We have carefully analysed these descriptions, through the series of the Patriarchal and the Israelitish revelations; and the result is before the Reader. Whomsoever we may find to be the Messiah, to him we are assured that all those characters must belong; and that, in some way to us unknown and mysterious, he is at once a man

of sorrows, the descendant of Adam and Abraham, and David, and yet possessed of the high attributes of the Lord God, the Eternal and Unchangeable Jehovah.

All Christians believe that JESUS of Nazareth is the One and Only Messiah; and that to him, and to no other, all the characters of the Messiah belong, in their absolute reality and their broadest extent. Here, then, we might not unfairly close our case, and rise from the search satisfied that the Author of our Religion is the Root as well as the Offspring of David, the Mighty God as well as the Son given to us.

But we have Christian Scriptures, the sequel and completion of the Jewish; the writings of the attendants and disciples of the Messiah, in addition to those of the Prophets who before testified of his sufferings and glories. If our conclusions are justly drawn from the Old Testament, they will certainly be confirmed by the declarations of the New. To the doctrine of the New Testament, therefore, we direct our attention as a new, but not an independent, branch of evidence.

That Jesus Christ was and is really and properly a man, is maintained by the orthodox as strenuously as by the Unitarians. To bring evidence in proof of this point is, on either side, unnecessary; unless it were conceded that proper humanity implies necessarily a mere humanity; or, in other words, that it is impossible for the Deity to assume the human nature into an indis

soluble union with himself. Such an union, let it be carefully remembered, is not a transmutation of either nature into the other; nor a destruction of the essential properties of either; nor a confusion of the one with the other. The question of such an union is a question of fact: and its proper, its only evidence, is Divine Revelation. Though, for the reason just intimated it might not be strictly requisite to institute a detailed examination of any other parts of the Christian Scriptures, than those which are apprehended to contain evidence of the existence of a superior nature in the Person of Christ; yet it will conduce to the completeness of the argument and the increase of satisfaction, to examine, with equal care, the leading testimonies to our Lord's humanity, particularly those which are supposed by Unitarians to involve the idea of a sole and exclusive humanity.

We are now arrived at what might be called a position parallel to the commencement of Mr. Belsham's Calm Inquiry into the Scripture Doctrine concerning the Person of Christ. It would be the easiest plan for me to follow that writer, page by page, in the arrangement of passages which he has adopted; and, if an exposure of his criticisms and interpretations, and a refutation of his arguments, had been the principal objects of this work, such a method would probably have been preferred. But I presume to aim at a more independent and permanent order of usefulness, the exhibition of a complete state