we are told in the synagogues of Galilee. If so, he still taught before within a limited sphere, and a corresponding audience-but now he teaches in the open air, and an innumerable congregation. It is by no means certain whether this was not the very first instance of any such teaching, which had yet occurred—and, if that was the case, it would be, on all accounts, one of the most memorable incidents of its kind, and one of the most deserving to be placed on record.

VII. The brevity of the historical, compared with the fulness of the discursive, matter in St. Matthew is a clear proof that he was more anxious to relate our Lord's conversations than his actions: and, in this preference, he has shewn only a due regard to the more useful, and so far the more important, part of his narrative. The miracles of our Saviour were designed for unbelievers; his sermons for believers the latter might be wanted, and continue to be profitable, when the former had produced their effect; for miracles could convince only their sensible witnesses-discourses might instruct and edify at all times; the benefit of the former, then, would be partial and temporary—but the benefit of the latter, universal and perpetual. Now the compendious manner, in which he despatches the detail of events, from the beginning of the ministry of Christ, to the circuit of Galilee-and from that circuit, to the sermon on the mount-contrasted with the copious and minute account, which he has given of the sermon in particular, must be an internal evidence that the history of the sermon is what he chiefly had in view. He expedites every thing else, in order to arrive the sooner at this: but he arrives the sooner at this, not by antedating this, but by postponing other things: and when he is arrived at it, he dwells and dilates upon it, with an enlarged and comprehensive particularity, singularly opposed to the brief outline, the succinct and cursory notice, of every thing which precedes it.

VIII. The historical circumstances, which preceded or followed the two sermons, are of such a kind as to be decisive of their distinctness. Let us compare them together.

St. Matthew's sermon took place during, if not at the close of, a general circuit of Galilee-St. Luke's, during, if not at the close of, a partial circuit round the lake: St. Matthew's, before such an audience, as might have been collected by such a circuit-St. Luke's, before such an audience, as was more probably to have been collected by the other: St. Matthew's was produced by the presence and contemplation of the multitudes-St. Luke's, by the presence and contemplation of the newly-ordained Apostles: the moving cause in the former instance was a simple regard to the spiritual necessities of the people at any time-the moving cause in the latter was a specific regard to the event of the recent ordination: St. Matthew, who suppresses the fact of the previous ordination, could have no inducement to record the subsequent sermon-but St. Luke, who relates the former, for that reason only might naturally subjoin the latter: the disciples might be primarily addressed by both -but the multitudes, as well as the disciples, were addressed by the one-the disciples alone, and not the multitude, by the other.

St. Matthew's discourse was delivered on the mountainSt. Luke's was delivered on the plain: Jesus went up to the mountain, before the one-he came down from the mountain, before the other: he was on the plain, then, before St. Luke's-and he was on the mountain, before St. Matthew's. The use of the article, in speaking of this mountain, is natural and correct. There was, certainly, a hill in the vicinity of Capernaum, where two such discourses might have been pronounced; and this being both a single bill in itself, and the scene of a double, memorable, event, the use of the article, in alluding to it, would be not merely justifiable, but necessary. On the same principle, other mountains, which had been the localities of remarkable transactions-as the mountain where our Saviour twice fed the people the mountain on which he was transfigured— the mountain on which he appeared after the resurrection -are similarly alluded to as rò opos-the well-known, me

The attempt to reconcile these different statements by supposing that Jesus came down from the mountain, to the plain ground, at first, on purpose to heal the people, or perform his miracles, and afterwards retired up to the hill again, on purpose to teach them, or to deliver his sermon, like many other expedients invented to explain away similar differences, is altogether a gratuitous assumption, without a shadow of countenance from the text; and besides, it makes our Saviour do that at last, which, it is clear, he had no intention of doing at first-viz. retire from the people, as if he wished to avoid them, whom he had come down from the hill on purpose to get near to. In St. Matthew's account, he continues all the while on the mountain; and, when he has done speaking, he descends, followed by the people, to the plain-in St. Luke's, he continues where he was; on the level ground; and, when the sermon is over, it is from thence that he goes to Capernaum. In St. Matthew, he assumes the attitude of sitting before he begins to speakwhich was as good as to intimate that he was about to begin to teach-in St. Luke, he delivers his discourse standingwith his disciples and the people around him. Both attitudes are equally natural under the previous circumstances of the case-standing, on a level situation-sitting, upon a rising ground. In St. Matthew, he takes his seat first, and the disciples draw near to him afterwards-in St. Luke, he has them about him from the first: in the latter, it would seem as if the disciples and the people stood upon higher ground; for Jesus, when he began to address them, lifted his eyes to them in the former, they must have stood upon lower.

up

IX. The circumstances, which followed upon the sermon in either account, have been considered elsewhere, and their differences pointed out. All these conclusions, however, will be still further confirmed by the comparison of the two discourses themselves.

The sermon in St. Matthew contains one hundred and

▾ Vol. i. Diss. iii. 151–153.

There is,

seven verses-the sermon in St. Luke, thirty. consequently, an excess on the one hand, and a defect on the other, of seventy-seven verses-or more than two thirds of the whole. It would be difficult, however, to assign a reason why one Evangelist should have recited so much, and the other so little, of the same discourse-or why a part should have been omitted or recorded, and not the whole. Nor can it be replied that St. Luke has comprised, in thirty verses, the substance of one hundred and sevenor that his sermon is the epitome of St. Matthew's-for, on this principle, the outline in both the discourses ought to have been the same; the particulars only must have differed. But the state of the case is quite the reverse: the topics in St. Matthew are many, and various, and distinct -the topics in St. Luke are few, and simple, and closely connected. The discourse, in the latter, touches only here and there on the former-but, wherever it does so, instead of exhibiting the compressed and meagre features of an epitome, it dwells and dilates upon the subject under discussion with a richness, an emphasis, and an amplification, both of sentiments and of language, superior to the fulness of the supposed original; and preventing the discourse, with such a peculiarity of structure, from being confounded with even the idea of a selection out of St. Matthew's-much less with an abstract of it. For the same redundancy stands in the way of the former hypothesis, as much as of the latter.

It is a rule of St. Luke's-proving both the perfect knowledge of his subject which he possessed, and the consummate skill with which the course of his narrative was shaped from the first-to relate nothing twice in his own Gospel; however much may occur once there, which, taken in conjunction with St. Matthew or St. Mark, his own Gospel might shew to have been related twice. Such things happened more than once; and his rule of proceeding with respect to them is as follows-if they had been related, in the first instance of their occurrence, by his predecessors, he reserves his own account of them for their second-if they would have come twice over in his own account, he either

relates them once for all at first, or, if he omits any part of them then, he supplies the omission by relating it again at some other opportunity. On this principle, the rest of the discourse in Ft. Matthew, over and above his own, if both the discourses were one and the same, ought to be found somewhere else in his Gospel. But this is not the case. Twenty or thirty verses of it may, perhaps, occur-but more than forty, or almost one half of the whole, would still remain totally unaccounted for.

The apparent identity of the exordiums and the conclusions of the two sermons, respectively, is said to have mainly determined the judgment of Grotius in considering them the same. Let us see, however, how far the nature of these exordiums in particular ought to have led to such an inference.

Both the discourses begin with beatitudes, consecutively delivered-of which St. Matthew's exhibits nine, and St. Luke's four. Now nine cannot possibly be the same with four-and, if it can be shewn that St. Luke records only four beatitudes, because only four were actually pronounced, it will follow that the occasion, upon which he records these four, must have been totally different from that, upon which St. Matthew records the nine.

Now, besides recording certain beatitudes, St. Luke has recorded also certain woes-but St. Matthew no such thing; and as woes in general are the reverse of beatitudes in general, so these woes in particular are the reverse of those beatitudes in particular. The structure of St. Luke's exordium is singular, and a genuine specimen of Hebrew parallelism: he recounts four beatitudes, and he recounts four woes ; he recounts the beatitudes first, and the woes next; the order of the beatitudes is the counterpart of the order of the woes, and the particular subject of each beatitude is the avrirrougov of the opposite woe. I argue, then, that the number and order of the woes, which follow, are decisive as to the number and order of the beatitudes, which precede: each of them is a check upon the other, and a limitation of the other. There could have been only four beatitudes—