were the visits to Cana, to Nazareth, and to Capernaum, respectively; all which might have followed upon the return, and upon each other, within fourteen days' time. The visit to Nazareth was prior to a sabbath; and the visit to Capernaum was prior to a sabbath also: but still there is no reason why these sabbaths might not have been successive, or the teaching in the one place only a week, or at the utmost a fortnight, prior to the teaching in the other: for our Saviour might have gone down directly from Nazareth to Capernaum, (the distance between which was not more than one day's journey,) as soon as the expiration of the sabbath would permit of it; and, after what had happened in Nazareth, it is not likely he would make any longer stay there; while St. Luke, from his manner of relating the two facts in conjunction, may be considered to imply that he left Nazareth, and went to Capernaum, even without delay.

The question, therefore, which we have still to propose here, is, whether the visit to Nazareth, followed by the teaching there, and the visit to Capernaum, followed by the teaching there also, supposing them to have been only one or two weeks asunder, were both prior, or both posterior, or the one prior, and the other posterior, to the day of Pentecost? I consider it probable myself that the day of Pentecost fell between the two, and, consequently, that the visit to Nazareth might be prior to this day, but the visit to Capernaum, or the teaching there, was posterior to it: and that this was a possible event, may be shewn as follows.

The day of Pentecost, as being the fiftieth in order from the sixteenth of Nisan, reckoned as the first-or the first day of the eighth week, as that was of the first, between the Passover and Pentecost-would necessarily fall on the same day of the week in every year as that: and A.U. 780. A. D. 27. in the first year of our Saviour's ministry, the sixteenth of Nisan coincided with April 11. and both with the first day of the week!. The same thing, therefore, must

1 Vol. i. Diss. v. and x.

have held good of the day of the ensuing Pentecost, May 30. Now, it might have been, even a priori, conjectured that one of the days, which were spent by our Saviour at Sycharm, was very probably spent there because it coincided with a sabbath: and if he came there on the evening of the thirteenth of May, and departed thence again, on the morning of the sixteenth, this was actually the case; for May 13. A. U. 780. was Thursday, and May 16. was Sunday.

Upon this supposition, Jesus would proceed to Cana at the beginning of the week; and we may suppose would arrive there also at the beginning of the same. The miracle on the sick person in Capernaum might be performed soon after his arrival: and it is some confirmation of this conclusion, that the miracle, which was so performed in Cana, could not have been performed either on the sabbath, or on the day before the sabbath, at least; for the nobleman would neither have invited our Lord to come down to Capernaum upon the sabbath, nor have travelled back thither himself on that day.

It might, therefore, have been performed on the third or the fourth day of the week, and yet the fact of the performance be already known in Nazareth, or in any place no more remote from Capernaum than Nazareth, before the sixth or the seventh. In this case, the sabbath, which was passed in Nazareth, might be the sabbath next but one before the day of Pentecost, May 22; and that it was some sabbath either two or three days at least before, or two or three days at least after, that day, though we had no other data to reason from, might safely be concluded from the fact that the inhabitants of Nazareth, the male part of them especially, were still in the place"; that is, they were either not yet gone up to the feast, or already returned from it—to each of which things, besides the one day taken up by the observance of the feast, two or three days' journey would be absolutely necessary.

m John iv. 40. Jos. B. Jud. ii. xix. 1.

" Exod. xxiii. 14-17. xxiv. 23. Deut. xvi. 16.

At the same time, after this visit, when the people of Nazareth might be preparing to set out to Jerusalem, our Lord might depart to Capernaum: for, though we cannot suppose that he also, like the rest of the people of Galilee, would return to Judæa, (which he had so recently left,) for the sake of attending the feast in common with them, yet neither can we suppose that, after what had just befallen him, he would stay much longer in Nazareth. The day of Pentecost, then, May 30. would be spent by him in Galilee, and probably in Capernaum: the next sabbath day, after the day of Pentecost, June 5. would be the sabbath on which his ministry in that place was first formally begun; and the first Sunday after the same date, June 6. would be ascertained by the narrative itself as the very day, on which he set out upon the first circuit of Galilee.

One week, at least, of his history, it is true, would continue, even on this supposition, unaccounted for; but it would be a week transacted in Capernaum, where the inactive periods of his ministry in general, by which I mean the intervals between his journeyings abroad, appear in other instances so to have been transacted; and, if the day of Pentecost fell sometime within it, or at its very commencement, it would be a week of inaction not altogether unnecessary. For, though our Lord himself might not have gone up to Jerusalem, to the approaching feast, the rest of the nation would go; by whose going and returning to their homes, which would be requisite before he could enter on his ministry among them, six or seven days would be taken up°.

This point, then, being presumptively established, the first event, posterior to the choice of Capernaum, and distinctly on record, is the call of the four disciples, Simon and Andrew, James and John; the particulars of which are given by St. Matthew and by St. Mark P, but, for rea

1 Macc. x. 34. Jos. Ant. Jud. xiii. ii. 3. Mark i. 16-20.

P Matt. iv. 18-22.

sons which will appear elsewhere, are omitted by St. Luke; who yet, by shewing at a subsequent point of time, that Simon, and others with Simon, his acquaintances, were already attached to, and already disciples of, our Lord, recognizes implicitly the fact of their previous call. The scene of this transaction being laid by each of the Evangelists in the neighbourhood of the lake of Tiberias, and the call being followed by the entering of all the parties together into Capernaum, we cannot doubt that the transaction took place in the vicinity of Capernaum, and not on some other quarter of the lake. Capernaum was the residence, and, probably, the native place, of Simon and Andrew, two out of the four; and the residence of James and John, the other two, also; each of whom was a partner with the rest in the same occupation of fishermen. Now the call is related by St. Matthew, after he had said that Jesus came to Capernaum, and settled there; which may be thought to imply that he had been sometime, longer or shorter, at Capernaum before it: nor would this be at variance with St. Mark', unless the entering into Capernaum, there spoken of, after the call, were also affirmed to be the first instance of the kind, since our Saviour came thither. It is a more critical assertion that they are said, immediately after, to have gone into the synagogue on the sabbath; for this would imply that the call could not long have preceded the sabbath; and St. Luke, by making the beginning to teach, in this same synagogue, the very next thing apparently to the coming down to Capernaum, leads to the same inferences.

Laying all these intimations together, we may conjecture that Jesus had been at Capernaum about a week before he began to teach, and that he called the four disciples the day before that event itself: a conjecture perfectly in unison with the conclusions already established, and in fact borne out by them. The instance of teaching, which followed, we may justly conclude was the first instance of the kind which

had yet occurred, if for no other reason, at least for thisthat, in both St. Mark and St. Luke, the specific observation upon the characteristic of his manner of teaching, that it was with authority, is found subjoined to it here, once for all the nature of which argument I shall have occasion to explain more at large elsewhere.

The call of these disciples now is a proof that they had never been called as yet; the readiness, with which they obey the call even now is a proof that they must have been prepared to receive it before: and such a preparation would imply both a previous acquaintance with our Saviour, and a previous disposition to believe in him; the fact, and the reasons of which, though they do not appear in the account of the three first Evangelists, are yet satisfactorily ascertained by St. Johnt.

For it is seen, from this narrative, that all these four persons were either disciples of John the Baptist, or at least believers in his divine legation, before they could have acquired either of these relations to Jesus Christ. Two of them, (Andrew, and as there is every reason to suppose, the Evangelist St. John,) are specified by name as such; and as the other two were brothers of these respectively, and all four connected by a common acquaintance with each other, and a partnership of trade, it is reasonable that we should conclude the same thing also of them. Simon, one of them, was present at Bethabara, as well as Andrew and John, attending on the Baptist; and though James might not have been there exactly at this time, he might still have been a disciple of the Baptist; or his name in particular may be suppressed by the Evangelist, on the same principle for which he suppresses his own; because it was the name of a brother. Besides these four, Philip and Nathanael also must have been believers in John.

Now the act of the Baptist, by which he pointed out Jesus, as he was walking, to Andrew and John, under the emblem of the Lamb of God", who should take away, or rather should carry, the sin of the world, (for on this point i. 35. to the end. " i. 36.