reward is with me, to " give every man according as his work shall be.

13 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

14 ' Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to1 the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.

d

15 For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.

16 I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.

there may be a privilege to them in. Pu. the unchaste. Rh. concerning. Ham.

with him. do. Ixii. 11: Behold, the LORD hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh ; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.

" See on MAT. xvi. 17. * See on REV. i. 8.

Y DAN. xii. 12: Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days. Luxe, xii, 37, 38: Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants. 1 JOHN, iii. 24: And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.

z See on REV. ii. 7.

a REV. xxi. 12, 27.

b See on 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10.

© PHI. iii. 2: Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision.

d See on 1 Cor. x. 20.

e See on ver. 6.

f See on REV. v. 5.

See on 2 PET. I. 19.

17 And the Spirit and 1 the bride say, 1 Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is kathirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, 1 If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:

m

19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

20 He which testifieth these things saith,

Surely I come quickly; Amen. 4 Even so,

come, Lord Jesus.

r

21 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

all.

h REV. xxi. 2, 9.

7 from the tree of life. A. V.

i ISA. ii. 5: 0 house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD.

P St. John ends his Gospel with Amen.

92 TIM. iv. 8: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing. HEB. ix. 28: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. * See on ROм. xvi. 20, 24.

THE END.

OR,

Seeming Contradictions reconciled.

THE following remarks on the discrepancies between the several Gospels, from the inimitable pen of Dr. Paley, may not improperly introduce this part of the work :

"I know not a more rash or unphilosophical conduct of the understanding than to reject the substance of a story, by reason of some diversity in the circumstances with which it is related. The usual character of human testimony is substantial truth under circumstantial variety. This is what the daily experience of courts of justice teaches. When accounts of transactions come from the mouths of different witnesses, it is seldom that it is not possible to pick out apparent or real inconsistencies between them. These inconsistencies are studiously displayed by an adverse pleader, but oftentimes with little impression upon the minds of the judges; on the contrary, a close and minute agreement induces the suspicion of confederacy and fraud. When written histories touch upon the same scenes of action, the comparison almost always affords ground for a like reflection. Numerous, and sometimes important, variations present themselves; not seldom, also, absolute and final contradictions; yet neither one nor the other are deemed sufficient to shake the credibility of the main fact. The embassy of the Jews to deprecate the execution of Claudian's order to place his statue in their temple, Philo places in harvest, Josephus in seed-time; both contemporary writers. No reader is led by this inconsistency to doubt whether such an embassy was sent, or whether such an order was given. Our own history supplies examples of the same kind. In the account of the Marquis of Argyle's death, in the reign of Charles the Second, we have a very remarkable contradiction. Lord Clarendon relates that he was condemned to be hanged, which was performed the same day: on the contrary, Burnet, Woodrow, Heath, Echard, concur in stating that he was beheaded; and that he was condemned upon the Saturday, and executed upon the Monday. Was any reader of English history ever sceptic enough to raise from hence a question, whether the Marquis of Argyle was executed or not? Yet this ought to be left in uncertainty, according to the principles upon which the Christian history has sometimes been attacked. Dr. Middleton contended, that the different

hours of the day assigned to the crucifixion of Christ, by John and by the other evangelists, did not admit of the reconcilement which learned men had proposed; and then concludes the discussion with this hard remark :-'We must be forced, with several of the critics, to leave the difficulty just as we found it, chargeable with all the consequences of manifest inconsistency.' But what are these consequences? Bv no means the discrediting of the history as to the principal fact, by a repugnancy (even supposing that repugnancy not to be resolvable into different modes of computation) in the time of the day in which it is said to have taken place.

"A great deal of the discrepancy, observable in the Gospels, arises from omission; from a fact or a passage of Christ's life being noticed by one writer, which is unnoticed by another. Now omission is, at all times, a very uncertain ground of objection. We perceive it, not only in the comparison of different writers, but even in the same writer, when compared with himself. There are a great many particulars, and some of them of importance, mentioned by Josephus in his Antiquities,' which, as we should have supposed, ought to have been put down by him in their place in the Jewish Wars.' Suetonius, Tacitus, Dio Cassius, have, all three, written of the reign of Tiberius. Each has mentioned many things omitted by the rest, yet no objection is from thence taken to the respective credit of their histories. We have in our own times, if there were not something indecorous in the comparison, the life of an eminent person, written by three of his friends, in which there is very great variety in the incidents selected by them; some apparent, and perhaps some real contradictions; yet without any impeachment of the substantial truth of their accounts, of the authenticity of the books, of the competent information or general fidelity of the writers.

"But these discrepancies will be still more numerous when men do not write histories, but memoirs; which is perhaps the true name and proper description of our Gospels: that is, when they do not undertake, or ever meant to deliver, in order of time, a regular and complete account of all the things of importance, which the person, who is the subject of their history, did or said; but only, out of many similar ones, to give such passages, or such actions and discourses, as offered themselves more immediately to their attention, came in the way of their inquiries, occurred to their recollection, or were suggested by their particular design at the time of writing.

66

This particular design may appear sometimes, but not always, nor often. Thus I think that the particular design which St. Matthew had in view, whilst he was writing the history of the resurrection, was to attest the faithful performance of Christ's promise to his disciples to go before them

into Galilee; because he alone, except Mark, who seems to have taken it from him, has recorded this promise, and he alone has confined his narrative to that single appearance to the disciples which fulfilled it. It was the preconcerted, the great and most public manifestation of our Lord's person. It was the thing which dwelt upon St. Matthew's mind, and he adapted his narrative to it. But that there is nothing in St. Matthew's language which negatives other appearances, or which imports that this his appearance to his disciples in Galilee, in pursuance of his promise, was his first or only appearance, is made pretty evident by St. Mark's Gospel, which uses the same terms concerning the appearance in Galilee as St. Matthew uses, yet itself records two other appearances prior to this: 'Go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: then shall ye see him, as he said unto you.' (xvi. 7.) We might be apt to infer from these words, that this was the first time they were to see him: at least, we might infer it, with as much reason as we draw the inference from the same words in Matthew: yet the historian himself did not perceive that he was leading his readers to any such conclusion; for, in the twelfth and two following verses of this chapter, he informs us of two appearances, which, by comparing the order of events, are shown to have been prior to the appearance in Galilee. He appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country. And they went and told it unto the residue : neither believed they them. Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen.'

"Probably the same observation, concerning the particular design which guided the historian, may be of use in comparing many other passages of the Gospels."

MAT. i. 16.

Jacob begat Joseph the husband

of Mary.

1.

Luke, iii. 23.
Joseph, the son of Hei

The first passage respects his natural, the other bis Legal father.

Joseph and Mary were both of one house and family before the captivity of Babylon, after which they were divided in the posterity of Zorobabel into two several families; whereof one was the kingly race, of which lineage was Joseph, which Matthew follows. The other family Luke follows, wwoof Mary was, whom Joseph married, and by that means he is called the son of her father Eli.