the third, it is equally reasonable to conclude, was the expectation of a temporal Messias.

V. The immediate purpose of each temptation is purely tentative: but the object of the two first is to discover whether Christ was the Son of God; the object of the last is to discover whether he was the true, or a false, Christ. If so, the last temptation in St. Matthew, besides being actually the last in the order of succession, would appear the strongest also in the eyes of a Jew; because it was directly a temptation that our Saviour should avow himself the Messias, which the Jews expected. For, that to fall down and worship Satan, in the hope of worldly pomp and grandeur, was to renounce the character of the true Christ, and to assume the character of the false, is too obvious to require any proof. If St. Matthew, then, wrote for the Jews, his account of this temptation, besides being more agreeable to the order of the event, would make it appear the strongest also: for the last temptation was one, which the true Christ only could have withstood, and which the false Christs, who came successively after the true, never were able to withstand.

VI. This presumption, however, in favour of the last temptation, is ultimately reducible to the national prejudice in behalf of a temporal Messias; and, consequently, must have been confined to the Jews. The Gentiles, who partook in no such prejudice, could not, a priori, have been prepared (on these grounds at least) so to appreciate its force. To them it would appear in the light of a temptation, simply addressed to the desire of honour, wealth, or power; and, therefore, of inferior strength to the second. For the history of their own philosophers could furnish instances of persons, whom their natural strength had enabled to surmount the former; but few, or none, of such as, unassisted by the grace of God, had not fallen victims to the latter. Hence, if St. Luke wrote for the Gentile Christians, as St. Matthew had written for the Jewish, he would as naturally place the second temptation last, as St. Mat

VII. This view of the principle of St. Luke's arrangement is further confirmed by that classification of impure desires, which is given by St. John; and, as it would seem, in reference to this account of our Lord's temptation itself —Ἡ ἐπιθυμία τῆς σαρκός—καὶ ἡ ἐπιθυμία τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν—καὶ ἡ ἀλαζονεία τοῦ βίου. The desire of the flesh is a description of temptations of the first class; the desire of the eyes, (which are captivated by external pomp and splendour,) of temptations like the second; and the pride of life, or, as it should rather be rendered, the vain-glory of life, of temptations like the third; and of each as they stand in St. Luke. This sense of aλaloveía is determined by classical usage. It is specified by Aristotle b, as the extreme of excess opposed to the mean habit, which he denominates aλia; the nature of which being to make its possessor habitually appear what he is, and neither better, nor worse, compared with others, than the truth of his character will warrant, the vice of excess, opposed to it, is that which makes him habitually studious of appearing other than he is, in a sense beyond, and not below, the truth. In a word, it is the habit of arrogance, boastfulness, ostentation-without the foundation of superior excellence, or real desert, of any kind—a description of failing to which the professors of philosophy, anciently, and especially in our Saviour's time, were notoriously liable.

DISSERTATION VII.

On the hiatus in the three first Gospels between the time of the baptism of our Saviour, and the commencement of his ministry in Galilee, and on its supplement by the Gospel of St. John.

THE assertion, that the Gospel of St. John is supplementary to the rest, requires it to be proved that, in all those parts, where the former narratives were evidently not continuous, the narrative of St. John comes in critically to connect them, and to fill them up; and, as this proof is capable of a high degree of precision, I propose to establish it at present in the first, and not the least complete and satisfactory, instance of its kind, with regard to the substance of the sections included between the first and the fourth chapters of St. John.

The former Gospels, after beginning their accounts with the public ministry of John the Baptist, and bringing them down to the time of the baptism of Christ, are altogether silent, if we except the single fact of the fasting and the temptation, upon any intermediate events between the time of the baptism, and the time of that return to Galilee, with which they all concur in representing our Lord's ministry there to have been begun. Unless, then, it could be demonstrated that this return followed immediately on the fasting and temptation, as the fasting and temptation might have followed on the baptism, there will necessarily be some hiatus in the continuity of their accounts; the measure of which must be the interval between the close of the forty days' fast, and the time of the return into Galilee; an hiatus which will, consequently, be greater or less as this interval is greater or less; but will be nothing at all solely on the supposition that this interval is so too; or that the return into Galilee took place, without loss of time, after the forty

may be proved by the testimony of St. John's Gospel, as follows.

The strictly historical part of this Gospel does not begin, nor proceed, except from the nineteenth verse of chapter the first the verses before that are all the substance of reflections, premised by the Evangelist in his own person; and serving as an introduction or prooem to the whole work, but no portion of its historical matter whatever. It cannot be considered to begin even at the fifteenth verse; first, because the words, there recited, as the words of some testimony of John, are clearly an Anticipation, and clearly referred to, as such; an Anticipation which the course of the narrative, but only from verse nineteenth, and thenceforwards, goes on to explain and to apply: for this peculiar declaration, ὁ ὀπίσω μου ἐρχόμενος, ἔμπροσθέν μου γέγονε, was first made by John in his answer to the Sanhedrim; and the first personal application of it to our Lord took place on the following day: secondly, because the reference to the Baptist is plainly to be restricted to this one verse, and what follows, from thence to the eighteenth, is subjoined by the Evangelist himself, in the same spirit, and to the same effect, with the rest of the chapter from the first verse to the fourteenth. The mention of John, then, here is no more historical, than the same mention, in verses six, seven, eight, before; all which relate, indeed, to him, but evidently in some general and proleptical sense.

Now at the nineteenth verse of chapter the first, we have the account of a fact which could not have been prior, at the earliest, to the baptism of Jesus; nor, consequently, to the beginning of the forty days' fast; but must have been sometime, either more or less, posterior to both. And we may go further than this; the fact in question, we may contend, was not only by some time, either more or less, posterior to the baptism, and to the beginning of the forty days' fast, but cannot, on any principle, be placed earlier than on the very last day of the forty days' fast itself. For, on the day after this fact, John, says the Evangelista, saw

i. 29.

Jesus walking towards him; and, from the testimony which he immediately bears to him, it is clear that Jesus had been already baptized; for he had seen the Holy Ghost descending and abiding upon him. This appearance, then, of Jesus to John was necessarily posterior to the baptism; and if it could not be shewn to have happened between the baptism, and the temptation, it must have been posterior also to the temptation.

Now the testimony of each of the Evangelists, who record the temptation, is express to the point that Jesus was led, or impelled, by the Spirit, without any perceptible delay, from the scene of his baptism, to the scene of his fasting and temptation; and the testimony of St. John, who alone records this appearance, is not less express to the point that in two days after itb, Jesus was proposing to return into Galilee, and in five days after itb, was actually in Cana of Galilee. It would be the height of extravagance to suppose that all this could have happened between the time of the baptism, and the beginning of the forty days' fast; which being the case, the appearance of Jesus to John, and, consequently, the deputation from the Sanhedrim, to interrogate John, which had its conference with him the day before, both of them later than the baptism, were both of them later than the fast-or, could not have happened, at the earliest, the former before the day after, and the latter before the very day of, Jesus' return from the wilderness, when the forty days' fast was over.

After the account of this fast, and of one return into Galilee, subsequent to it, there is an account of a Passover, attended by Jesus at Jerusalem; and, after this Passover, of a residence, longer or shorter, in the land of Judæac : and after this residence, of another return into Galilee; prior to none of which events, except, perhaps, the last, and that only after our Lord was departed from Samaria, is it capable of proof that John had yet been cast into prison. It is evident, then, upon the whole, that between John i.