tians under heaven, and is also absolutely contradicted by the first three Evangelists, who all confine the duration of our Saviour's ministry within ten years instead of twenty by informing us that he was both baptized and crucified under the government of Pontius Pilate, who only remained ten years in Judea. If we reject it, it casts a reflection upon the understanding or the credibility of Irenæus, which I should be extremely unwilling to admit, and which is not justified by any similar instances in any other part of his writings. Perhaps the truest and most lenient conclusion we can draw is, to say that he was borne away by his zeal against the Valentinians, and ventured for once upon one of those unwarrantable assertions which are sometimes hazarded in the heat of controversy, and of which we have, even in the present enquiry, produced some glaring examples from Allix and from Mann in a later and more enlightened age.

I have now made all the observations which seem to me necessary upon this subject, and the conclusion I would draw is this-that there is very little reason to suppose that the feast in St. John, chap. v. 1, is to be considered as a Passover-no sufficient argument or authority for rejecting the Passover mentioned by him in chap. vi. 4-and no intimation or foundation whatever

in his Gospel to induce us to imagine that he omitted to record any of the Passovers which occurred in our Saviour's ministry. It therefore follows that as he has enumerated, as his Gospel now stands, only three Passovers, the most probable opinion is that which assigns to our Saviour's ministry a duration of two years and a half.

SECTION II.

Probable Year of our Saviour's Crucifixion.

If there be any force in those arguments by which we have endeavoured to shew that our Saviour was baptized in the month of November J. P. 4739, and any truth in the opinion we have expressed relative to the duration of his ministry, it is evident that, as according to that opinion he was crucified at the third Passover after his baptism, he was crucified at the Passover J. P. 4742. Now this conclusion has the peculiar advantage of corresponding with the most ancient and uniform tradition which exists upon the subject in the Church; for it fixes the death of our Lord to the consulship of the Gemini at Rome, and the fifteenth year of the sole empire of Tiberius, which is the date assigned to this event by every one of the Fathers of the first three centuries, who have made any mention at all of the

au.7

78:

period at which it occurred. In most other cases we have to estimate and compare the value of contending conclusions, sometimes built upon the same and sometimes upon different premises; but in the present instance, whoever has said any thing, has said the same thing, and the date stands uncontradicted by any existing Christian writer for more than three hundred years. Many of them indeed have been entirely silent about the year of the crucifixion, but no one who has spoken has differed from the statement of his brethren. Whether with Clement of Alexandria and the Valentinians they limited the duration of our Lord's ministry to a single year, or with Origen seemed to be of a doubtful judgment, or with Tertullian dated the commencement of his ministry from the twelfth of Tiberius, they yet all (with the exception of some Basilidians, who deferred it to the sixteenth) fixed the death of our Saviour to the fifteenth of that Emperor's reign. A few of the testimonies which bear out this assertion I will now produce.

a

b

Clemens of Alexandria, after observing that Jesus when baptized was about thirty years of age and that the word of the Lord came to John

* Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. i. p. 408.

↳ Ubi supra.

in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, and that our Saviour preached not more than one year, adds the following words: Πεντεκαιδεκάτῳ οὖν ἔτει Τιβε ρίου καὶ πεντεκαιδεκάτῳ Αυγούστου, οὕτω πληροῦνται τὰ τριάκοντα ἔτη ἕως οὗ ἔπαθεν. Αφ ̓ οὗ δὲ ἔπαθεν (ὁ Ἰησοῦς) ἕως τῆς καταστροφῆς Ιερουσαλὴμ γίγνονται Eτη μß. μñves y. From the former part of this ἔτη μῆνες passage it is quite plain that Clemens did not conceive our Saviour to have suffered before the commencement of the fifteenth year of Tiberius: he must therefore have been mistaken when he says, that from the date of our Saviour's crucifixion to the destruction of Jerusalem there elapsed a period of forty-two years and three months. Sept. J. P. 4783 (the date of the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus)-42 years and 3 months June J. P. 4741; which in point of years corresponds to the latter part of the fourteenth instead of the fifteenth of Tiberius, and in point of months cannot be made to correspond to the Passover of the Jews and the crucifixion of our Saviour in any year. To account for this difference we may suppose that Clemens computed the full and final KaTασTpoon of Jerusalem from the year subsequent to its being taken by Titus, that is, from J. P. 4784, in which Vespasian and his son enjoyed the honours of their triumph, and Cæsarea became the metropolis of Judea, which gave the last blow to the greatness and glory of the city of David. This will render