to satisfy us the writers of the Christian history knew what they were writing about. The argument is also strengthened by the following considerations:

I. That these agreements appear, not only in articles of public history, but sometimes, in minute, recondite, and very peculiar circumstances, in which, of all others, a forger is most likely to have been found tripping.

II. That the destruction of Jerusalem, which took place forty years after the commencement of the Christian institution, produced such a change in the state of the country, and the condition of the Jews, that a writer who was unacquainted with the circumstances of the nation before that event, would find it difficult to avoid mistakes, in endeavouring to give detailed accounts of transactions connected with those circumstances, for asmuch as he could no longer have a living exemplar to copy from.

III. That there appears, in the writers of the New Testament, a knowledge of the affairs of those times, which we do not find in authors of later ages. In particular, "many of the Christian writers of the second and third centuries, and of the following ages, had false notions concerning the state of Judea, between the nativity of Jesus and the destruction of Jerusalem." Therefore, they could not have composed our histories."

* Lardner, part i. vol. ii. p. 960.

APOLOGY.

The Author's indisposition in his throat, from public speaking, under which he has laboured, and which has disabled him, without very great inconvenience, from writing or reading for ten minutes at a time, ever since this work was put into the printer's hands, as well as the fact, that only three months have elapsed, since even the propriety of such a work was first suggested to him, in Boston, by his friend, the Rev. E. T. Taylor, of that city, to the day it was put to press, will, it is hoped, be deemed by the public, a sufficient apology for the undigested manner in which his arguments have been committed to paper, as well as for any typographical errors therein contained.