baptized in the following November; and that after preaching about two years and a half, he was crucified at the third Passover in his ministry, in the consulship of the Gemini, in the year 4742, J. P. [782, R.] (pp. 293 and 336).

This date for the crucifixion, which places it in the 15th year of Tiberius, reckoned from the death of Augustus, Mr. Benson tells us, "has the peculiar advantage of corresponding with the most ancient and uniform tradition which exists upon the subject in the church" (p. 293). In page 214 he does not speak quite so confidently. There he only says, that "the Christian fathers from the earliest times, and almost with one consent declare" for it. Samuel Basnage, in his Annales Politico-Ecclesiastici, Rotterod. 1706, fol., holds the balance more evenly. In Vol I. p. 245, he states that "bene multi" and "complures" were for this date: but in p. 247 he adds, that "alii bene multi de non minorum gentium grege" were against it; and among the latter he ranks Irenæus, a more ancient name than any that Mr. Benson has produced in favour of the date. But even

takes no notice (iii. 1): "which hypothesis, for I can call it no better," (says Mr. Bowyer, Conject. N. T. note in p. xxiv. of Pref., ed. 1782, 4to.,) "Sir Isaac Newton did not intend to follow, as appears p. 165" of his Observat. on Daniel. One would think no person, who allowed himself a moment's reflection, could be so absurd as to follow it. While Augustus was living, no man would have dared to date in this way. No share of power that he could have conferred on Tiberius, nothing less than his own complete abdication, could have made it safe to use such a mode of reckoning. And after Augustus was dead, to date in this way, without expressly stating that the person who used it began the reign of Tiberius before the death of his predecessor, would have caused such confusion as would have rendered all dating useless, unless this mode of it had been so constantly practised and established as to prevent all ambiguity; which was so far from being the case, that not a single instance of it can be produced.

* At which time he would have been a year and a half older than the Evangelist Luke says he was at his baptism. (Ch. iii. 23.)

Basnage, who himself argues at length and with ability against this date, overstates the evidence in favour of it. In fact, the opinion was neither ancient nor uniform, nor were there many who asserted it. Mr. Benson enumerates eight writers who are supposed to have declared for it. Basnage has added a ninth. And where do we find a tenth? Nay, even of the nine, some, as Basnage observes, have been erroneously reckoned among the maintainers of this date. Then the antiquity of the works in which it is found has been much over-rated. They abound with interpolations. The par ticular passages are very suspicious; some of them scarcely intelligible, others quite vague and inexplicit, and others again so ambiguous, that it is not easy to say in what spirit they are written, whether in jest or in earnest. But, setting aside these drawbacks, what right has the voice of nine individuals to be considered as the uniform tradition of the church? Were it uncontradicted, it would be of no great weight in the scale.

But in the present case it is not only contradicted by the writers mentioned by Basnage, but by the united voice of the Christian Church in all ages, the voice which has always con33 of the vulgar æra, and with the nected the crucifixion with the year pascal limit of the 1st of April; than which no voice was ever more steady, more uniform, or more invariable.

That Jesus was crucified in this year is not a mere traditionary rumour that has floated loose and unconnected down the stream of time: it is a thread closely interwoven with, and running through the whole web of the Christian history: it is a position that has not only always been believed, but that has been uniformly acted upon, from the crucifixion to the present hour, by all associated bodies and communities of Christians in all parts of the world. All Christian Churches, whether Jewish or Gentile, Greek or Roman, Eastern or Western, Catholic or Protestant, Established or Non-established, have always maintained that the day of the crucifixion was to be regulated by the dominical letter that stands opposite to the year 33, in their tables, and the paschal full moon for that year by the

limit of the 1st of April. They have all agreed in carrying on and in registering, in one uninterrupted series, from year to year, the same succession of numbers for their solar and their lunar cycles, and for the corresponding years of the Christian æra. No disputes which have occasionally occurred about the proper time of celebrating their Easter; no supposed defect in the original Jewish and Christian lunar cycle, which Epiphanius and others after him have called a vicious cycle; no anticipation of the full moons, or of the æquinox, arising from a computation of the length of the month, or the year, not perfectly accurate; no correction of these inaccuracies by any alteration in the table of paschal limits, or by what is called the alteration of the stile; none of these things, nor any thing else, has ever disturbed the regularity of the succession, has ever broken a link in the chain, or ever prevailed upon any body of Christians (whatever a few individuals may have done) to deviate into any other year, or any other limit, either before or after in the succession, for the year of the crucifixion, than those I have mentioned.

I do not say that this year has always been called the year 33, or that the 1st of April has always been considered as the precise day of the limit: but I say, that however different the denominations of the year may have been, they have all referred to the same year of real, absolute, physical time; and that however the limit may have varied a day or two, the reference has always been to the same spot or place in the cycle, the ground or site, if I may so call it, on which the 1st of April stands in the original table of paschal limits, and to no other of the whole nineteen.

The early Christians might explain, and did explain, differently what Luke has said about the age of Jesus at his baptism. Some understood him as saying that Jesus had only begun, others that he had completed his thirtieth year, and others again contended that a greater latitude was included in the word "about." These, though they agreed in the year of the crucifixion, would all call it a different year of Christ. But the difference of time, as to the crucifixion, would be nomiVOL. XVII.

2 M

nal only, not real. As to the birth, it would be real. Indeed, it was the year of the birth that was always disputed; the year of the crucifixion never. They disputed about the former because they could never reconcile the spurious chronology, which makes Jesus to be born in the reign of Herod, with the gospel chronology, which makes him only begin to be thirty years of age some time after John had begun to baptize, in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Cæsar. And for this reason many of the early Christians, that they might avoid all ambiguity, all dispute and controversy, and give offence to nobody, chose to date their years of Christ, not from his birth, but from his crucifixion; about which there was no contest nor uncertainty.

Since the time of the Emperor Justinian and of Dionysius Exiguus, all Christian churches have invariably considered the year 33 as the year, and the 3d of April as the day of the crucifixion; because the table of Dominical letters, or solar cycle, points out that day, and not the 1st of April, for a Friday. Before this, the Roman Christians connected the crucifixion with a particular year of their æra taken from the building of their city, and whatever it was, invariably adhered to it: the Greek Christians, as invariably adhered to some particular year of their Olympiads; and the Jewish Christians to some year of their Jewish æra. And all these years, however differently denominated, pointed to the same real, absolute time. And that year was, in the sixth century, when the vulgar Christian æra was introduced, called the year 33, and has been so called by all Christian churches ever since. This year of the crucifixion was the hinge and pivot upon which the whole æra turned. For, as to the birth of Jesus, it was never pretended that the first year of this æra precisely and exactly corresponded with that: on the contrary, it was maintained that he was really born four years before the commencement of the vulgar æra; the first year of which was only the nominal, not the real year of his birth.

This was the last bungling result of many vain attempts to distort the chronology of the gospel, so as to make Jesus contemporary with Herod.

Not all the disturbing force of the hierarchy could ever succeed completely to its wishes: but it succeeded so far as to give us an erroneous instead of a true æra for the birth of Christ. It also disturbed some chronological dates more fanciful and of less importance. Before Herod was raised from the dead, to do a deed without a name, such a deed as none but a downright, absolute madman could ever think of doing, and none but one theologically mad could ever really believe to be done by any man in his senses, chronologers, who are very fond of round numbers, and almost as zealous for correspondences as a Swedenborgian, had by their calculations, assisted by imagination, made the world to be exactly 4000 years old at the birth of Jesus. But when Herod commanded Jesus to be born four years earlier, (a mere trifle, compared with what the pseudo-Matthew has ascribed to him 1) the chronologers, obedient to the mandate, made the world to be exactly 4000 years old at the new birth, and 4004 at the old. And that this new birth might not claim any nearer approach to Roman antiquity, but keep itself at a proper distance from the birth of the immortal city, the Romans, whose consular calendar would not easily admit of extending the duration of their republic, were kindly accommodated with four years in addition to the duration of their regal state, when there was as full and as free scope for invention as any chronologer could desire. And thus the 240 years which Sir Isaac Newton had the presumption to think were a vast deal too long for seven kings to reign in succession, were extended to 244. But the Jews, who were always a stiff-necked people, and always resisted the Holy Ghost, would have nothing to do, either with the new anpobusa, or even with the old superfluity of these uncircumcised Heathens, no portion of which they contended was sanctioned by their records, or could be freed from the suspicion of uncleanness even by the Heathens themselves. Accordingly, they would not superintend the printing of a Hebrew Bible for the Christians unless they were allowed to cut off 240 years from the Christian æra for the date of it; which any one may see exemplified

in the rabbinical dates annexed to Robert Stephens's, to Plantin's, and to most of the early-printed Hebrew Bibles.

The true year of the crucifixion, then, has been faithfully preserved by the Christian church in all ages. In every mode of computing time, the memory of it has been carefully handed down from year to year, and from cycle to cycle, in the way described. The year of the vulgar æra in which it happened is also regularly marked in the margins of our Gospels to this day. To this year the adherence has been invariable ever since the æra was adopted. To corresponding years in other æras the adherence was equally invariable, as long as those æras were in use. When they fell into disuse, the correspondence between the years of those æras and our own was lost. It has, therefore, now become a question of some difficulty among us, in what year of the Jews, the Greeks, or the Romans, though not in what year of our own æra, the crucifixion happened. There is also, from some cause or other, a difficulty in settling the precise day of it, so as to be free from all objection. Basnage says rightly, (Vol. I. p. 246, col. 1,) no day can be the true day, unless it be a Friday, and also the day of the full moon. I add, unless it stand on the site of the 1st of April in the original table of paschal limits; which table has been carefully preserved in all the service-books of the church ever since it was a church. And I further add, that no year can be the true year of the crucifixion, unless it correspond to the year 33 of our present vulgar æra.

Mr. Benson, therefore, cannot be right in placing the crucifixion in the year 4742 of the Julian period, which, ever since that period was invented by Joseph Scaliger, has been considered as coinciding with the year 29 of the vulgar æra, whose paschal limit, in the original table, is the 15th of April; but which Mr. B. (pp. 326-328) would allow any one that chooses it, to consider as the 18th of March, a day antecedent to the vernal æquinox, a thing unheard of, or even as the 25th of March, between which and the year 29 there is no correspondence whatever.

that we feel the weight of a large debt of gratitude for his disinterested and gratuitous ministrations among us during a period of nearly 13 years.

That, under the influence of these sentiments, we offer him our most respectful and sincere thanks, accompanied by our warmest wishes for his present welfare and future happiness.

That a copy of these Resolutions, attested by the Chairman and Secretary, be presented to Mr. Eddowes, and that Mr. William Hulings and Mr. Guy Bryan be a committee for that purpose.

True extract from the minutes.
(Signed) JOHN VAUGHAN,
Chairman.

WM. TURNER, Secretary.

In his reply, Mr. E. expressed his deep sense of the kindness of the Society in

passing these Resolutions, and his obligations for the politeness of the gentlemen who presented them; but that, being as little expected as merited, he had been prepared to find his only reward in the consciousness of having discharged the duty, however imperfectly, to the best of his ability.

Extract of a Letter from Phila

delphia.

"Dr. M― has retired from his ministerial office at New York, having been chosen President of Carlisle College, Pennsylvania. In his farewell Sermon to his flock, he took occasion to pour

forth a torrent of the most bitter invec

tives against the Unitarians, imprecating curses upon, and consigning them to damnation, although he said that their doctrine was too coarse and abominable

for hell itself. The Sermon being printed, came under review by Mr. Walsh, who publishes a daily paper in Philadelphia. He, though a Catholic, in an article headed Intolerance, warmly reprobated this unchristian and illiberal conduct of the Doctor's, and very handsomely did justice to the character of Unitarians as a body, mentioning an individual among them as the foremost in every plan of public benevolence and utility. The Sermon has been remarked upon by one of the New York Unitarian congregation, and Mr. Taylor has taken the occasion to defend the 'cause before a numerous audience at our regular evening service, so that we seem in a way more than ever to attract the 'public notice. Indeed, the Presbyterian clergy do all they can to help us; they cannot refrain from venting their spleen in sermons and publications. Dr. formerly of New York, but now of Princetou College, sore from the castigation

given him by Mr. Sparkes, in his little periodical publication, has been attacking us in a style of asperity worse (some say) than Dr. M. himself.

"There is a strong movement among the Catholics about the choice of a priest for St. Mary's--the clergy on one side and the people on the other contending for the right of appointment. Some personal violence has been used, and both parties are resorting to the law for the confirmation of their claims. These things seem to portend a revolution in favour of religious liberty, in the end no less successful than that which has given us the full enjoyment of our civil rights.”

SIR,

In

Ross, April 10, 1822. SEND you a few remarks on the Deut. xxxiv. 5, it is said, “So Moses supposed death of Moses. the servant of the Lord died," &c. : Dr. Geddes observes on this passage, (see Crit. Remarks, p. 473,) that "not only many Jews, but some good Christian fathers, think that he died not, but was snatched up to heaven alive." This, however, he says, “is not the common opinion of modern commentators;" himself amongst the rest, I should think from his manner of stating this opinion, and asking the question, who wrote the account of the death of Moses and of his burial? "It is clear, however," he adds, "that it must have been written after, and some considerable time after Moses, from this expression, unto this day no man knoweth aught of his sepulchre." Now, from the proneness of the Iraelitish nation to idolatry, of which Moses has given us many instances, it might be concluded, that deed took place, and the place of his this concealment of his death, if it inburial, was intended to prevent the Jews from deifying their great legislator, after the manner of the Heathen nations. And this might have been the case, had they known of his being translated alive to heaven, in their then circumstances.

Now the Scriptures of the New Testament have revealed this mystery to us Christians. The gospel, I say, informs us that Moses, as well as Elijah, was translated from earth to heaven without undergoing the law of our nature. Indeed, the historian infers as much when he informs us,