May not

his writing supply the loss of his presence." * what he delivered to them have been the notes containing the substance of what they had so often heard him preach? I am inclined to think likewise, that the Gospel by St Mark contains little more than similar notes or memorandums which had been made by St Peter, which will sufficiently account for so many of the ancients calling it St Peter's Gospel. That St Mark was with that Apostle at Rome when he suffered martyrdom cannot reasonably be called in question. If he received the notes or memorandums in time to permit him to digest them into order before St Peter suffered, it is natural to suppose that the Apostle revised the digest; and supposing them not to have come into the evangelist's hands till after St Peter's death, St Mark's Gospel will still be stamped with apostolical authority.

These, however, are discussions of comparatively little importance; but if I have contributed in any degree to prove, that St Luke knew nothing of St Matthew's or St Mark's Gospel when he wrote his own; that the several evangelists did not transcribe from each other; and that there is no necessity to call in the aid of a common document to account either for the harmony or the discrepancies which prevail in the three first Gospels, this long Dissertation will not have been written in vain.

* Ματθαῖος μὲν γὰρ πρότερον Ἑβραίοις κηρύξας ὡς ἔμελλε καὶ ἐφ' ἑτέ ρους ἰέναι, πατρίῳ γλώττη γράφῆ παραδοὺς τὸ κατ' αὐτὸν ἐυαγγέλλιον, τὸ λεῖπον τῇ (al. τῆς) αὐτοῦ παρουσία (al. παρουσίας) τούτοις ἀφ ̓ ὧν ἐστέλλετο δια τῆς γραφῆς ἀπεπλήβου.—Eccles. Hist. Lib. 3. Cap. 24.

has been so long agitated; whether St Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew or in Greek? The early fathers of the - church declare so unanimously that he wrote in Hebrew, that it is difficult to suppose that they had not some foundation for what they say; and yet his Greek Gospel has to me so much the appearance of an original composition, that all the weight of Michaelis's authority cannot induce me to believe it a translation. I would, therefore, with Dr Townson, rather receive both his Gospels, if he really wrote in Hebrew, as originals, than suppose either of them to be a translation by some unknown hand; though I am decidedly of opinion, that, had not the Greek Gospel been a more perfect composition than the other, the Hebrew Gospel could not have been so little known, as it appears to have been to men so learned as were Origen and Jerome. I am therefore strongly inclined to believe, that St Matthew wrote his Greek Gospel long after the Apostles had left Jerusalem, and dispersed themselves in the discharge of the duties of their office; but that he left, at his departure, with the church of Jerusalem, or at least with some of its members, the Hebrew or Syriac memorandums of our Lord's doctrines and miracles, which he had made for his own use, at the time when those doctrines were taught and those miracles performed. This, I confess, is a mere conjecture respecting a point of comparatively little importance; but I think, as framers of conjectures always flatter themselves, that it receives some countenance from the terms in which Eusebius, when giving his own opinion, mentions St Matthew's Hebrew Gospel. " Matthew," says that historian, "having first preached to the Hebrews, delivered to them, when he was preparing to depart to other countries, his Gospel, composed in their native language, that to those from whom he was sent away, he might by

his writing supply the loss of his presence." May not what he delivered to them have been the notes containing the substance of what they had so often heard him preach? I am inclined to think likewise, that the Gospel by St Mark contains little more than similar notes or memorandums which had been made by St Peter, which will sufficiently account for so many of the ancients calling it St Peter's Gospel. That St Mark was with that Apostle at Rome when he suffered martyrdom cannot reasonably be called in question. If he received the notes or memorandums in time to permit him to digest them into order before St Peter suffered, it is natural to suppose that the Apostle revised the digest; and supposing them not to have come into the evangelist's hands till after St Peter's death, St Mark's Gospel will still be stamped with apostolical authority.

These, however, are discussions of comparatively little importance; but if I have contributed in any degree to prove, that St Luke knew nothing of St Matthew's or St Mark's Gospel when he wrote his own; that the several evangelists did not transcribe from each other; and that there is no necessity to call in the aid of a common document to account either for the harmony or the discrepancies which prevail in the three first Gospels, this long Dissertation will not have been written in vain.

* Ματθαῖος μὲν γὰρ πρότερον Εβραίοις κηρύξας ὡς ἔμελλε καὶ ἐφ' ἑτέ ρους ιέναι, πατρίῳ γλώττη γράφῆ παραδοὺς τὸ κατ' αὐτὸν ἐυαγγέλλιον, τὸ λεῖπον τῇ (al. τῆς) αὐτοῦ παρουσία (al. παρουσίας) τούτοις ἀφ ̓ ὧν ἐστέλλετο δια τῆς γραφῆς ἀπεπλήρου.—Eccles. Hist. Lib. 3. Cap. 24.

No. III.

ON THE DOCTRINE OF ORIGINAL SIN.

In the eighth of the preceding Letters I declined to enter into any critical discussion of the consequences of the fall of our first parents, because he to whom the Letters were addressed was well acquainted with my notions of these consequences, as they are stated at some length in my edition of Stackhouse's History of the Bible. Every reader, however, of this small volume may not have ready access to that work; and as it is impossible to know what we have gained by Christ, without having some knowledge of what we lost by the fall of Adam, I shall here insert an abstract of what I formerly published on the subject.

When God introduced our first parents into the garden of Eden," He commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” To suppose these words either to be ambiguous, or to have any secret meaning, which the most illiterate of the people of Israel could not perceive at once, would be to accuse the historian of Providence, and even the Spirit, by which he wrote, of wilfully perplexing the whole human race about the meaning of one of the most important details that have

ever been submitted to their consideration; for the words "Thou shalt surely die" unquestionably comprehend all that we have lost by the fall of our first parents. But to ascertain the precise meaning of the death with which they were thus threatened, and of course the extent of our loss, nothing more seems to be necessary than to inquire in what sense the words in are used elsewhere in the books of Moses. Now this reduplication of the word occurs at least twenty-nine times in these books, as the reader may easily satisfy himself by consulting his Hebrew Bible at the verses referred to at the bottom of the page; * but surely no man-however attached to this or that system-will contend that the words imply any thing more, in twentyseven of these verses, than that death to which men and the inferior animals are equally liable; for they are employed in threatenings of death issued by those who are not able to kill the soul, and are applied to beasts who have no rational souls to be killed. It is God, indeed, that, in the third of the verses referred to, threatens in these strong terms Abimelech, and all that were his, with death, if he did not restore to Abraham his wife; but we cannot, without blasphemy, suppose that the equal Lord of all, would punish a whole people with what is, in the New Testament, called the second death, for the sin of their prince-a sin, too, which, as they appear not to have incited him to it, they probably would not have been able to prevent, had he been-what he certainly was not—an obstinate and incorrigible tyrant.

But it is not God only who denounces death in these strong terms. Another Abimelech, king likewise of Gerar, and probably the son of the former, having taken the wife

• Gen. ii. 17.—iii. 4.—xx. 7.—xxvi. 11. Exod. xix. 12, 13.—xxi. 12, 15, 16, 17.-xxii. 19.-xxxi 14, 15. Levit. xx. 2, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 27. -xxiv. 16, 17.-xxvii. 29. Numb. xv. 35.—xxvi. 65 —xxxv. 17, 21, 31.