blessed. Unto you first, God, having raised up (.e. brought into existence) his son Jesus, sent him to bless you, &c." The Gospel of Jesus belonged of right to the children of the covenant, and it was only upon their waiver and refusal of it that the Gentiles became entitled to receive it through a different channel. These are known things, and uncontrovertible. But the covenant, and the law in furtherance and execution of the covenant, were given to the twelve sons of Jacob, and not to any in particular. The disputes which arose among their posterity in the reign of Rehoboam did not affect the question. Because the subjects of Jeroboam, like those of the house of David, were doomed only to a corrective punishment, and were or are reserved for the redeeming mercies of God, who had promised to take the stick of Joseph which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and to be "gracious to the remnant of Joseph," and that he would teach Ephraim to say, What have I to do any more with idols? I have heard him, and observed him. I am like a green fir tree. From me is thy fruit sound." These things, again, are known and uncontrovertible. But there can be scarcely any reasonable doubt, that the tribes of the kingdom of Samaria were not restored by Zerubbabel under Cyrus. The restoration promised to them is as distinctly national, tribule, and territorial, as that of the sister commonwealth; and the liberty which was then afforded to individuals of going (for returning it was not) and crowding into Jerusalem and its district, would not support the veracity of the Lord's very explicit promises on that head. I have formerly made the important remark, that the contrary was a matter of notoriety+ among the Jews in Hadrian's time. Seeing, therefore, that Israel abode at a distance in the kingdoms of the East, and that Israel was as fully entitled to the refusal of Jesus, as the men of Judah to whom he was immediately sent, and that, before God could "turn to the Gentiles," it was " necessary that He should first have spoken to them," we are bound to suppose that He provided some adequate means of making to the banished seed of Abraham a legal tender of their covenanted rights. But we cannot collect that any offer of the Gospel revelation, previous to its publication to the Gentiles, was made to any people other than the Jews, except the Magi. The Israelites had been removed into "the cities of the Medes," and their situation was to the east of Palestine, which renders the words "from the sun-rising" as apt to them, as they are absurd when applied to Tartessus and Sheba. The religion of the Magi, worshippers of Oromazdes, Mithras, and Arimanes, prevailed under various slight modifications from Cappadocia and the Mount Taurus, eastward, to Bactriana and the Indus. There is every probability that the tribes of Samaria, who "feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen," at the time of their captivity, and had then been more than seven hundred years in exile, had long since been Magians when our Lord was born. Pru Acts iii. ult. + Brit. Mag. vol. ii. p. 150; 1 ; dentius does not hesitate to affirm that so it was in his days, and is an author who deserves the credit of not having spoken at random: "Who doubts, who knows not, of old Jacob's seed* That some are exiles yet, captives decreed In Persia's realms and fealty to remain, There would be a most revolting incongruity in holding that some one nation, out of the herd of gentiles, was invited to a premature knowledge of truths, which were to be gradually, by apostolical preaching, diffused among the different peoples of the earth. But the supposition that men of authority were summoned from the tribes of Israel, to see the infant Messiah, and announce him to their people under the sanction of their miraculous voyage and return, and went home to their dwellings crying in the wilderness of the east, "prepare ye the way of the Lord," is congruous and perfect in itself, while it makes perfect the inviolable word of Divine promise. They came not in the guise of Persians, Bactrians, or other heathens, asking, "Where is he that shall enlighten the nations," or save the world;" but with the purely national interrogation, "where is he that is born King of the Jews?" That attribute of the Messiah was not only the least interesting to the nations of all that could be ascribed to him; it even excited their jealousy, and does even to our days, in which all who regard it as more than a vague allegory, are looked upon with an unfavourable eye. But it was the very question of all others which the men of Israel, if invited at the end of the weeks to salute Messiah their Prince, would ask. I suspect that some inkling of these truths has formerly existed, although the vestiges of it are (so far as I know) faint. The Prester John of Abyssinia (says Fray Luist) never marries a wife who is not of the lineage of the three Magi Kings, because he esteems them alone to be worthy of the line of David. What? a Jew by descent (as he pretends) think a Gentile the only fit ancestor of his wife, and a Christian by faith think the same of a Pagan! No; this implies the reunion of Israelitish and Judaic blood. The following is from the Prophecies de Merlin" a man of the lineage of the Jews and Samaritans shall be present at the birth of the dragon of Babylon, and he shall see an enemy like the form of a dragon, and act the part of the star which led three kings to Bethlehem." I am mistaken if the Prester John (a being in some respects imaginary, and the anti Pope of the mystical* anti-Christians) be not here signified, and if the daughters of the Magi, mentioned by Fray Luis, be not the Samaritan part of his lineage. If the Magi were the messengers in the power of Elias, who were to prepare the tribes of Jeroboam for that which John had announced to those of Rehoboam, it follows of course that their mission was abortive, and bore no good fruit in the days of the preachers; for Israel has never known the Lord. But we have also reason to be convinced, that the party who were led to Bethlehem received into their hearts the seed of the gospel, and that it vegetated there, and afterwards increased unto their salvation. Because, it is an absurd and untenable doctrine, that God would ever elect unsuitable vessels for his own especial purposes, or send an unbeliever to implant 'faith in others. We may therefore be assured that the Fathers were rightly informed, or guessed aright, that they were in due season baptized by Thomas, or Bartholomew, or some apostle of the East. Nor is it improbable that the Romish legendaries also guessed aright, that they bore witness in death to the truths which they had announced to a hardened generation, upon whom there was blindness for a time. B &* ON ST. LUKE, xxi. 32. To the Editor of the British Magazine. SIR,-A writer in your Magazine (p. 54), concerning the Prophecy of Jesus, has made some observations upon a passage in the Remarks on Genesis, vol. ii. p. 261. Although we totally differ on the interpretation of that prophecy, yet I am willing to derive information from any quarter. The question at issue is, whether yɛveà, in St. Luke, xxi. 32, means, simply, that generation, or the Jewish nation. There are numerous and decided instances of its signifying a generation; are there any in which it as decidedly means a nation,-for instance, the Jewish nation, as distinguished from the Greek or Roman nation? As the Septuagint was translated by different hands, at different times, we cannot be surprised at occasionally finding a word used with various degrees of latitude, when it occupies only a subordinate place in a sentence; but when the word contains the leading idea, the translators were careful to use it with strict attention to its proper meaning. Thus, in the examples of yeveà brought from Schleusner, it does not mean the Jewish nation, Xaòs,t as distinguished from other nations, Ovn. The passages, Gen. xxxi. 3, Lev. xxv. 41, mean no more than returning to their friends; Lev. xx. 18, cut off from that generation; That is avowed by one of the most extraordinary of them, Wm. Postel. + I committed an error in saying, "that writers on the millennium strive hard to give to γενεά, the sense of ἔθνος, nation ;” I ought to have said λαός, people, for ἔθνος is applicable only to the Gentiles. and Jer. xviii. 3, refers to the tribe of Judah. There is no expression in the Septuagint so common as Aaos ouros, this people, the Jewish nation "Then the Egyptians shall hear it, for thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them." (Num. xiv. 13.) "What one nation in the earth is like thy people?" (2 Sam. vii. 23.) Where does † yevεà avrn occur in this sense? In the sense of the present existing generation, it may be found in Ex. i. 6, " And Joseph died, and all that generation;" in Num. xxxii. 13, and many other passages. The writer seems alarmed at the idea of seeing the expression," the Son of man coming in the clouds with power and glory," allegorized away, although he reduces it to a vision in Matt. xvi. 28; and probably he would not hesitate to allow the hard fate of its being allegorized to befal the immediately preceding expression, "the sun shall be darkened, and the stars shall fall from heaven." (Matt. xxiv. 29.) For my own part, I cannot but feel infinitely more alarm at the idea that St. Matthew said any thing "improperly" in his Gospel, or that he was liable, like uninspired men, to fall into mistakes from "inadvertency." Neither does it afford me any consolation to be assured that St. Mark or St. Luke wrote their Gospels afterwards, "in the earnest desire to rectify whatever was defective in that which went before;" for neither St. Mark nor St. Luke enjoyed the advantage of being an eye-witness, as St. Matthew did. Mahomet practised the very politic artifice of delivering his Koran piece-meal; and as his scheme gained strength and consistency, he dealt out its successive chapters to rectify, even to the plain contradiction of, the former ones. But the Author of our faith needed not to wait the gradual establishment of Christianity to correct and amend his gospel. St. John, indeed, records some discourses not mentioned by the other evangelists, but nowhere has he rectified the inadvertencies of his predecessors, The writer says, there is another scripture often coupled with Luke, xxi. 32, "Verily there be some standing here which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom." A nice distinction is then made between "till they see the Son of man coming," and "till he cometh." "The words, until they see,' are of a very different import (prophetic vision) as applied to those days of abundant inspiration. (If it was so abundant, how came St. Matthew not to be preserved from inadvertency?) John was not in his state of nature, but was in the spirit,' when God said to him, What thou seest, write in a book;' and he saw heaven opened, and beheld a white horse,' &c.; in like manner John did not taste of death before he had seen the kingdom of God." With this conclusion I agree, except its being in like manner. Jesus saith unto Peter, “ If I will that he tarry until I come, (not till he see me coming,) what is that to thee?" (John xxi. 22.) I cannot suppose that prophetic vision was meant here any more than in Matthew xxiv. 30, All the tribes of the earth shall see the Son of man coming." From the passages here quoted, the coming of the Son of man seems to intimate the conclusion of the Jewish polity. I have always considered it an uncontroverted point in scriptural criticism, that when two or more inspired writers omit or vary ex pressions in the narration of the same event, they do not contradict or correct each other. This easy method of cutting the Gordian knot would have saved at once the labours of West on the Resurrection, and other authors who have endeavoured to reconcile apparent discrepancies; and I have yet to learn the proof of the charge here brought against St. Matthew. The writer must allow that himself" has written down his discourse without duly weighing the force and position" of the sentence he controverts; for he makes me say, " that yɛved, in scriptural Greek, has only these two meanings, viz. (1) an account, (2) tradition, (3) genealogy, (4) a generation of contemporary men, (5) the manner of life in that generation. Of these five meanings, γενεὰ can lay claim only to the last two; γένεσις appropriates to itself the first and largest share. Now, after this proof of inadvertency in himself, he cannot be offended if I should require stronger proof than his bare assertion, to credit the charge of inadvertency which he has brought against St. Matthew. Bishop Newton, supported by some great names, faces the difficulties into which the writer fears that the literal translation, "this generation," would replunge the question. As Schleusner is the authority which he has brought against me, I cannot do better than conclude with the serious admonition of Bishop Jebb: "I would earnestly exhort those biblical students who may happen to use (as, with proper caution, all advanced students will find it their advantage to use) the Lexicons of Spohn and Schleusner for the New Testament, and those of Schleusner and Bretschneider for the Septuagint, to be particularly on their guard against alleged identity of meaning, in words whose ordinary acceptation is any thing but synonymous. I had selected many examples of erroneous, and, as I think, dangerous interpretation, from Schleusner and Bretschneider, &c. There is reason for serious apprehension, that, from those philological works which students are more and more taught to respect as guides to the critical knowledge of scripture, much confusion, much obscurity, repeated contradictions, and a fatal habit of explaining away the most pregnant truths of Christianity, may be superinduced upon, or rather substitu'ed for, our manly, sound, and unsophisticated English theology.”—Sacr. Literature, p. 51. 2nd edit. Keysoe Vicarage, Beds, Jan. 4th, 1833. W. B. WINNING. SOCINIAN TESTIMONY TO THE USEFULNESS OF AN ESTABLISHMENT. To the Editor of the British Magazine. SIR, I have much pleasure in extracting the following passage from a sermon preached and published by Mr. Charles Berry, a Socinian, or Humanitarian teacher, at Leicester. "It is often said, that, as a sect, we are dwindling away from the public observation, which is not true. We make progress in our own country, though it is but slow, because we have to contend against a |