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and of the Jewish religion; and this is every where vifible. The mode of relating their story, fo unaffected, and mixed with various fuperfluous phrafes, and trifling collateral circumstances; the numerous allufions to the religious ceremonies of the Jews; the fubject matter interwoven with words, phrases, and thoughts of the Old Teftament; the numerous parables and allegories; the variety of Hebraic words, conftructions, and phrafes in the Greek of the New Teftament, betray an author to whom the Jewish mode of thinking was quite natural.

They are faid to have lived in the first century of the Roman monarchy. This alfo is eafily and every where perceptible. The exact divifion of the Jewish ftate; its connection with the Romans; the internal transactions and fermentations which took place in it at the time of the firft Roman Emperors, are not fo properly related by the

the New Teftament.

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writer as prefuppofed as matters of fact, which were univerfally known at the time when he wrote. The little unimportant, foreign events of the first century, which in the books of the New Teftament, and especially in the historical, are touched on only casually and very flightly, in fo unftudied and unaffected a manner, evince a writer, to whofe memory these facts were still quite recent, and who prefuppofed that his contemporaries were as well acquainted with them as himself. I fhall give examples of this in the course of the work.

They are faid to have been immediate witnesses of their narratives, or to have themselves feen and heard what they relate. Even this circumftance is every where clearly discoverable. They relate with the confidence of men who are convinced that their readers already know that they themselves faw and experienced all, and that their affertions

may

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