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Analysis of a Work by a Jewish Author, Mr. Bennett, on Sacrifices.

in which, amongst the grouuds of human salvation, the psalmist does not mention one word about sacrifices. King Solomon declared, that "To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to God than sacrifice." Isaiah, "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me, saith the Lord, &c.; Am I to be served with burnt-offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts, or with the blood of bullocks, of lambs and of he-goats-things of which I have no desire?" See also Isaiah viii. at large, where moral and philosophical principles are laid down, and no mention whatever is made of sacrifices. He also quotes Jer. vii. 22, Hosea vi. 6, Micah vi. 6, and alludes to many other prophetic passages pointing to the same object.

From these prophetical declarations, he adds, "we obtain in the plainest language the validity of my third assertion, that the whole of the commandments of sacrifices were neither absolute ones, nor essential to human salvation; for how could the prophets be in unison in exclaiming against absolute laws, enacted by a divine legislator as essential to salvation, and in declaring them null and void? Ei ther the declaration of the first prophets or of the latter ones must then be absolutely false. But it appears from what has been proved, that the primitive institution of sacrifices was not established as essential to the re

mission of sin, and that the shedding of animal blood was not in any wise indispensable to salvation-that the institution of them was not absolute, but merely ceremonial and temporal; and therefore the prophets did, with a truly philosophic air, justly exclaim against the infatuation of the vulgar practices and forms of false devotion, which sought to appease an offended Deity by a fat ram, a roasted bullock or a vessel of good wine, while the heart was corrupted and depraved, and destitute of all divine and moral principles. Throughout the Penta

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teuch we observe, that in the trespasses between man and man the first and chief thing required was retribution; the sacrifice was but an inferior matter and so with a transgression of a civil or moral nature, which was an offence against God."

Mr. Bennett then proceeds to produce some authorities from the most ancient rabbies, whom he calls the Links of Tradition; from whom he makes it appear that all commandments which relate to the productions of the land were applicable only to the land of Israel; that tithes, agricultural donations, sacrifices, &c. be. ing land productions, were not obligatory nor ever esteemed so, without the boundaries of Palestine. And he quotes a case, in which many of the dispersed Jews of Babylon, Mesopotamia, Syria, &c. countries adjoining Palestine, brought sacrifices to Jerusalem; and that the Doctors of the Temple would not accept them on this very ground that, They might not encourage the belief that the law of sacrifices was an absolute law; from which we obtain the assurance that they were local, temporary and cercmonial, by no means absolute and not essential to human salvation.

Another argument he adduces appears to be conclusive, that while all the other commandments of the Pentateuch, both of jurisprudence, criminal, conjugal, inheritant, &c. as well as the rites of the sabbath, public festivals, impure animals, circumcision, &c. were general and universal, given to the nation at large for all times and all places, of abode, the laws relative to sacrifices have these peculiar exceptions, they were limited to a class, the tribe of Levi; to place, the temple of Jerusalem; to time, while the commonwealth of Israel was in possession of their patriarchal inheritance (Palestine). Is it consistent with reason, and still more with divine justice, that sacrifices should be essential to human salvation, and yet that their observance should be conditional and confined to three things-class, place and time?†

Not so, alas! the mobile vulgus that fol-
low their faith!

+ One cannot help being struck with
the uncommon resemblance between the
corruptions of Judaism and those of Chris-
tianity; nor are we surprised to find that

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On the Divine Government. HERE are only two schemes of the divine government, either consistent in themselves, that I know of, or which have any pretensions to reason or the common apprehensions of mankind. The first is, that at the creation, the Divine Being, subjected all that he had made to fixed and invariable laws, that both matter and mind, whatever they be, are governed by such laws, that consequently every thing happens, as he has appointed it, every thing was to him foreseen and determined, all is an universal settled scheme of Providence; prophecies are possible, because nothing is contingent; and miracles are also possible, as they might be included in the first and general plan of the divine economy. Every being performs his part, and the final dispensations of Deity will follow his plea sure concerning all creatures.

The second scheme is, that God at the creation subjected matter to fixed laws, but gave a power to mind, of self-determination, so that man, the previous circumstances being the same, can perform the action A. and its contrary B. This scheme supposes, that whatever depends upon the determination of the human mind, was left loose, and could not be foreseen by the Creator, yet that pleasure and pain were fixed within

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certain limits, and that the divine Being will so regulate his final dispensations, that rewards and punishments shall be adapted to the actions done, and man's final state be determined according to his merit. Prophecies foretelling events dependent on the determinations of the mind of man, are impossible under this scheme as they involve a contradiction. And it is dangerous to say, that human reason is so weak, that that may yet be possible which implies a contradiction; because according to this mode of reasoning, all our conclusions concerning religion would be equally uncertain, nor could we deduce the being of a God from any apparent contradiction that the supposition that there is no such being involves. Miracles according to this scheme are possible, as well as in the former scheme.

That God has given to the human mind such a power as this second scheme supposes, appears to be agreeable to the common apprehensions of mankind, who seem generally to imagine that at any given time of action, they had it in their power to do this or its contrary. Both schemes seem to provide for the divine government; for although the latter admits, that when God created man he knew nothing what, in this world, would be the result of his conduct; yet having, by the fixed laws of matter, limited the power of mischief, his ultimate dispensations can adjudicate all things according to perfect equity.

I know of no other scheme of the divine government consistent with itself; and if any of your correspondents choose to advert to them, it will gratify your humble servant.

AN INQUIRER.

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Mr. Marsom on the Pre-existence of Jesus Christ.

life. I hope," he adds, “I shall not give offence by requesting your highly respected friend to point out the path in which he has recently trodden in order to attain his present view of things." And further, he requests that he would favour the readers of your interesting Miscellany with an illustration of certain passages of scripture which he particularly mentions. The circumstances of the case, I admit, sufficiently warrant such a request. I have appeared in the above mentioned volume as the advocate of the doctrine alluded to by your correspondent, and it was natural for one who" candidly acknowledges that be felt the force of my reasoning," to wish to be informed of the means by which I was led to renounce a sentiment which I had so strenuously laboured to defend; and it is but right, that I should endeavour to shew, that I have not adopted my present views without such reasons as were fully sufficient to carry conviction to my mind. I cannot, however, admit that I have been either recently or instantaneously converted to the Unitarian faith; because I have been an Unitarian, (in the proper sense of that term, as much so as I am at present) more than fifty years, nor have my views undergone any material alteration either respecting the unity of God, or the nature of the person of Christ du ring that period. My recent change of sentiment has no relation to the nature of Jesus Christ, but simply to the time when he began to exist: whether that existence commenced when he came in the flesh, or whether he existed from the foundation of the world.

As to the "almost instantaneous" nature of my conversion, your correspondent should recollect that it is now seven years since my replies to Mr. Belsham appeared in the Repository. There is a certain process which takes place in the mind in order to a conviction of the truth or falsehood of any doctrine; that process may be long or short; it may be attended with many difficulties and struggles arising from a variety of causes; but a change of sentiment, the result of that process by which the mind is made up upon the subject, is probably almost always instantaneous. But what adds to the surprise of your correspondent is, that such a change

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should have taken place "so late in life." I reply that I never made any pretensions to infallibility; I have often changed my opinions, and I dare not say that I am now in possession of all truth, or that I shall not undergo some future change of mind with respect to religious truth: I hope I shall never be too old to learn, or unwilling to attend to any evidence that shall be presented to me.

Before I proceed to give an account of the steps that led to my recent change of sentiment it may be proper to state what were my former views. In defending the pre-existence of Jesus Christ I never supposed that in his pre-existent state, or in any stage of his existeuce he was any more than a man. That he was a divine person truly and properly God, and became man; that he was a superangelic being and took upon him human nature; or that he pre-cxisted as a human soul or spirit which in the fulness of time assumed a human body in the womb of the virgin, and so became a proper man; neither of these ideas formed any part of my creed; I considered them all as unscriptural and indefensible. In my letters in reply to Mr. Belsham I have not, in any instance, adverted to the nature of Christ's pre-existence, to what he was in that state, or to the nature of the change which took place in him in his humiliation; but have confined myself to the plain matter of fact, whether or not the pre-existence of Jesus Christ is a doctrine contained in the scriptures. Those who wish to see what my views were on those subjects may see them fully stated in the third volume of the Protestant Dissenters' Magazine for 1796, pp. 130-135, and 172-177. With respect to the steps that have led to my present views, I observe,

First, that Mr. Belsham's arguments, in his Letters to Mr. Carpenter, on my first perusal, appeared to me to possess considerable weight, and for some time made a deep impression on my mind, which led me to re-consider them with close attention; upon doing so, I discovered (at least I thought I discovered that in some instances he had made use of declamation instead of argument; that in other instances his arguments were inconclusive; that he had laid himself open to considerable animadversion,

and that much of his declamation and argument derived their whole force from the supposition that the doctrine of the pre-existence of Jesus Christ necessarily included in it that of his possessing a super-human or super-angelic nature; that he was a being of extraordinary powers, a subordinate Jehovah, a delegated Creator, under God the maker and upholder of all things. Upon the discovery of such "amazing facts," "Would not the mind of a Jew," exclaims Mr. Belsham, "who had never heard of delegated Creators and subordinate Jehovahs, have been overwhelmed with astonishment when this new and strange doctrine was first discovered to him?" These ideas opened to him a wide field for declamation, but to me, believing they had no foundation in scripture or any connexion with the pre-existence of Jesus Christ, they furnished strong objections to his hypothesis, and laid him open to much animadversion, and this gave rise to the following interrogations in my first letter, M. Rep. Vol. iii. p. 381:-" Is not Mr. B. guilty of the same fault which he would be ready enough to charge on the opposers of Christianity, that they attack its corruptions and not Christianity itself as left in the New Testament? Will he say in reply, that he finds this new and strange doctrine maintained as a doctrine of scripture by his learned friend to whom he is writing? So may they say, that these corruptions, as we call them, are maintained as Christianity by its advocates."

These considerations determined me, by a reply to Mr. Belsham, to bring the subject before the public in order to obtain some further light upon it, and to settle my own mind which had been in a measure unsettled by Mr. B.'s Letters.

Mr. Belsham, however, for reasons best known to himself, did not think proper to take any notice of my arguments in reply to him, leaving me in possession of the field. He probably thought my arguments too contemptible to merit any notice, and his own so perfectly clear, conclusive and convincing as to stand in no need of correction, explanation or defence.

Secondly. I considered the doctrine of Christ's pre-existence as necessarily involving in it that of his

miraculous conception, although his miraculous conception does not necessarily imply his pre-existence; because had he pre-existed his conceptiou must have been preternatural; but it might have been preternatural if he had not existed before; as was the case respecting Isaac and Samuel. If then it should appear that his conception was not miraculous, I was fully convinced that the doctrine of his pre-existence must necessarily be given up. Under these impressions a work published in 1813,* fell into my hands, in which, I think, the author has proved that the accounts of the miraculous conception, as they now stand in the beginning of Matthew and Luke, are spurious; and he has stated some facts as taking place, not at Bethlehem, but at Rome, from which the stories, recorded in the two first chapters of Matthew and Luke, probably originated. These circumstances, together with the improbability of their truth which appears upon the face of the accounts themselves, led me to conclude that they were not the genuine productions of those Evangelists to whom they are ascribed.

Thirdly. The inconsistency of those accounts with each other-with historical fact-and with the current language of the New Testament, furnish additional evidence that those accounts were not written by Matthew and Luke. With respect to their inconsistency I shall mention but one circumstance. The flight into Egypt recorded by Matthew, is not only unnoticed by Luke, but his account evidently, as I conceive, contradicts it. He tells us, ch. ii. 22, that, " When the days of her (i. e. Mary's) purification according to the law of Moses, were accomplished (that is when Jesus was forty days old) they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord." And after relating what passed in the temple, he says, 39th and following verses, "And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee to their own city," not Bethlehem, but “Nazareth. And the child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom and the grace of God, was upon him. Now

* Jones's Sequel to his Ecclesiastical Researches.

Mr. Marsom on the Pre-existence of Jesus Christ.

his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover; and when he was twelve years old they went up to Jerusalem, after the custom of the feast.' The writer here represents Jesus when he was forty days old as being carried by his parents from Nazareth, their own city, up to Jerusalem, and returning to Nazareth, and from thence, annually, for twelve successive years, going up to Jerusalem to the passover; and in chap. iv. 14, 16, Luke tells us that Jesus returned from the wilderness into Galilee," and he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up." We have here therefore, the whole of the life of Jesus, for the first twelve years, accounted for as spent with his parents at Nazareth, leaving no possible period for the flight into Egypt; whereas the writer of the story in Matthew states, that he was born at Bethlehem, that from thence they went into Egypt, and continued there till after the death of Herod, who sought his life. Now two stories, so inconsistent with each other, cannot possibly be, both of them, true.

I might add, that if the massacre of the children of Bethlehem by the direction of Herod had been a fact, it is extremely improbable that neither Josephus, who wrote the Life of Herod, nor any other contemporary writer should mention so remarkable a circumstance.

With respect to historic fact. If it be sufficiently ascertained, as I think it is, by incontrovertible testimony, that Jesus was not born till after the death of Herod, then the whole of the stories related in the two first chapters of Matthew must be false and spurious.

Again, the birth of Jesus with the circumstances attending it, as recorded in the beginning of Matthew's Gospel, are inconsistent with the language of the New Testament, which represents Jesus as being of Nazareth, but never of Bethlehem. He is called Jesus of Nazareth about twenty times in the New Testament. Peter on the day of Pentecost, speaking as the Holy Spirit gave him utterance, calls him Jesus of Nazareth. The angels at his sepulchre call him Jesus of Nazareth. He calls himself so when he appeared to Paul as he was going to Damascus; and his apostles wrought their miracles in the name of Jesus of

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Nazareth. Had Jesus been indeed born at Bethlehem is it possible that the sacred writers should so invariably speak of him as being of Nazareth? From any thing recorded in the New Testament it does not appear that Jesus himself, his apostles, or his historians knew any thing of his miraculous conception and birth at Bethlehem there is not any where in the preaching or letters of the apostles the most distant allusion to them; and this is the more extraordinary if they were attended with such singular circumstances, and were the fulfilment of prophecies respecting him, as they are said to be by the writer of the two first chapters of Matthew's Gospel.

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It is true, the Jews seem to have had a tradition amongst them, that the Christ was to come out of Bethlehem, and his enemies, who disputed his claims, are represented as saying, John vii. 41, 42, "Shall Christ come out of Galilee ? Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem where David was?'" And in another place, "Out of Galilee ariseth no prophetCan any good thing come out of Nazareth?" Is it not strange, if Jesus and his historians knew that he was born at Bethlehem, that they should in no instance have corrected this mistaken idea, that he was a Galilean, and refuted the argument founded on it to prove that he could not be the Christ, by stating, that in fact he was not of Nazareth in Galilee; but that he did indeed come out of Bethlehem? On the contrary, they every where assert, that he was of Nazareth.

The above passage, I believe, is the only one in the New Testament in which Bethlehem is so much as mentioned, excepting those in the begin ning of Matthew and Luke where it repeatedly occurs. But

Fourthly. This matter is put beyond all possible doubt, if Mr. Jones is right (as I think he is), in his translation of Luke iii. 23,-" And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (really) as he was thought to be, the son of Joseph." I shall not transcribe his criticisms on the construction of the Greek of this passage, but only the conclusion he draws from them. "It is therefore a

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