unity, love and peace, and thereby most effectually baften the coming of that glorious day of God, 2 Pet. iii. 12. when, according to our Lord's moft fure promise, and that of the Father also, we look for new heavens and a new earth; a new and better state of the church here on earth; wherein righteoufnefs will dwell, ver. 13. till it end in the glorious Millennium, the kingdom of our Lord, advanced to its highest perfection, and spread over the face of the whole world, till the confummation of all things.

July 2, 1749.

WILL. WHISTON.

ADDENDA

ADDENDA & EMENDANDA,

To the Sacred History of the Old Testament,

PA

AG. 33. Line 18 add, N. B. This Rock is mentioned by the oldest travellers, as there when they travelled, as well as it is there now, as Dr. Shaw informed me, It is alfo too large to be brought thither by any mechanical contrivance, either then, or now known in the world; it being near a cube of 18 feet, or almoft of 500 ton weight. It is alfo of that prodigious hardness, as almost intirely to defy the chiffel; infomuch that Dr. Shaw believes the Monks there, to whom some have been willing to afcribe them, could not make one large and deep hole in it with a chiffel in a hundred years. See my Note on Jofephus Antiq. x. 11. 7. This rock, as the Doctor alfo informed me, lies at no more diftance from the main rock or Mount Horeb itfelf, than eight or ten yards. Now the difficulty that appears upon comparing this fmaller rock, with Mofes's account, [See Dr. Shaw, pag. 350, 352.] is this, that it is separate from the main rock; while that which was fmitten by Mofes, seems to have been united to it, or a part of it, and not a feparate rock as this is. Now this difficulty is taken away by the hiftory of the prophet Elijah, 1 Kings xix. 7, &c. where he, after travelling in the strength of one double meal, forty days and forty nights, came to this Horeb the Mount of God;-and where the Lord passed by, and a great

and

and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord: - and after the wind an earthquake. Now it feems to me highly probable, that at this very wind and earthquake, this leffer rock was fevered from the greater, as it appears to have been some time or other, and thence it is that it lies no farther from it. Nor is it any wonder that thofe that fee it, as the Doctor fays, are fo greatly affected at the fight of it, as of an illuftrious and undeniable teftimony of the truth, of fo very ancient and wonderful a miracle, related in the Pentateuch, at this day.

To the Sacred Hiftory of the New Testament, pag. 178. line 34. add,

N. B. What Paul fays to the Jewish converts in his epistle to the Romans, about original fin; about the prevalency of that original fin or corruption in himself, at leaft while he was unregenerate; and about election and reprobation, in his fifth, feventh, and ninth chapters, seem to have been no part of Chrift's revelation to him; but rather certain reasonings of his own, accommodated to the weak Roman Jews, at that time only. My reasons follow:

(1.) Paul himfelf confeffes, 1 Cor. ix. 20, 22. that, To the Jews, he became as a few, that he might gain the Jews: To them that are under the law, as under the law, that he might gain them that are under the law, and that directly. To the weak he became as weak, that he might gain the weak.

These

teftimonies of his own give us the greatest reason to expect fuch condefcenfion and accommodation fometimes in his writings to the Jews as thefe before us; and which we meet with chiefly in him, and his companion Barnabas, and that with relation to Jews, and them only. Nor if we compare Paul's admirable and moft rational fpeech to the

learned

1

learned Athenian philofophers, Acts xvii. 22—31, with these strange and weak reasonings, to weak Jews at Rome, in thefe chapters before us, fhall we be difpofed to believe otherwife of their author, than of a very great and wife teacher, treating these very different people, in a very different manner; and accommodating himself to their different capacities and notions; but still for their own edification and falvation.

(2.) Paul might do this the rather, because he never appears to have defigned fuch occafional epiftles as this to the Romans for fystems, or ftandards of Chriftianity to the churches; which indeed had been long before fettled upon furer foundations, and fuller inftructions; as they stand in the only authentic fyftem of Christianity, the Apoftolical Conftitutions: How weakly foever the later ages have laid them in great measure afide, and drawn moft of their darling opinions from their own interpretation of Paul's epiftles, and principally of this his very obfcure epiftle to the Romans.

(3.) The original compleat catalogues of the fundamental doctrines of Chriftianity; near to which fuch as thefe have been long fuppofed to be, I mean those delivered to the twelve Apostles by our Saviour himself, in the forty days after his refurrection, in the Catholic Didafcaly of the fixth, and contained also in the Baptifmal Creed of the seventh book of those Constitutions; while Paul himself informs us, that what he received from Chrift afterward in all things agreed with them, Gal. ii. 1-9, have not a fyllable of these notions, but rather the contrary; I mean they contain the rational doctrines of the freedom of human actions; and of God's dealing with men according to their works only, and not according to election and reprobation.

(4.) Paul

(4.) Paul himself, in all the rest of his epiftles, thirteen in number, feems to have no fuch opinions; but still to deliver very different doctrines; as the freedom of human actions, and of God's dealing with men according to their works only, without regard to election and reprobation, as is very evident on their perufal. So that there must have been fome particular occafion for these particular reasonings in this epiftle to the Romans, which had no place in his other epiftles.

(5.) Paul ever difclaims all authority in himfelf, as well as in the other Apostles, for delivering Chrift's religion any otherwife than they received it from Chrift himself; which authority he does not in the least pretend to in any of these chapters. He blames the Corinthians for following either himself, or Apollos, or Cephas, i. e. Peter, in any fuch separate manner; and affures them they ought to follow Christ only, 1 Cor. i. 12, &c. and iii. 4, 5. He alfo, more diftinctly than any of the reft, observes what he had from Chrift, and what were his own opinions or directions, 1 Cor. vii. 10, 12, 25, 40. The former of which he infifts on as intirely obligatory to every Christian; but the latter as not fo.

(6.) None of Paul's companions, Luke or Timothy, or Barnabas, or Clement, or Hermas, remains of every one of which are ftill extant, have any doctrines of this nature, but rather the contrary every where; as is obvious on their pe

rufal also.

(7.) Peter himself, in the Recognitions of Clement I. 17. II. 33, 34. (a work of the firft century. See Sacred Hiftory of the New Testament, pag. 373.) fuppofes that he might be fometimes overcome in difputation with Simon Magus, yet ftill without any impeachment of the truth of Chrift's religion, of which he was a preacher.

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