was suffered to dwell by himself, with a soldier that kept him." With which join ver. 20. "For the hope of Is. rael, I am bound with this chain."

"Quemadmodum eadem catena et custodiam et nilitem copulat; sic ista, quæ tam dissimilia sunt, pariter incedunt." Seneca, Ep. v.

"Proconsul æstimare solet, utrum in carcerem recipienda sit persona, an militi tradenda." Ulpian. 1. i. sect. De Custod. et Exhib. Reor.

In the confinement of Agrippa by the order of Tiberius, Antonia managed, that the centurion who presided over the gaurds, and the soldier to whom Agrippa was to be bound, might be men of mild character. (Joseph. Antiq. lib. xxiii. c. 7. sect. 5.) After the aceession of Caligula, Agrippa also, like Paul, was suffered to dwell, yet as a prisoner, in his own house.

XXXVI. [p. 531.] Acts xxvii. 1. "And when it was determined that we should sail into Italy, they delivered Paul, and certain other prisoners, unto ene named Julius." Since not only Paul, but certain other prisoners were sent by the same ship into Italy, the text must be considered as carrying with it an intimation, that the sending of persons from Judea to be tried at Rome, was an ordinary practice. That in truth it was so, is made out by a variety of examples which the writings of Josephus furnish; and, amongst others, by the following, which comes near both to the time and the subject of the instance in the Acts. "Felix, for some slight offence, bound and sent to Rome several priests of his acquaintance, and very good and honest men, to answer for themselves to Cæsar." Joseph. in Vit. sect. 3.

XXXVII. [p. 539.] Acts xi. 27. "And in these days came prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch; and there stood up one of them, named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be a great dearth throughout all the world (or all the country); which came to pass in the days of Claudius Cæsar."

Joseph. Antiq. 1. xx c. 4. sect. 2. "In their time (i. e. about the fifth or sixth year of Claudius) a great dearth happened in Judea."

XXXVIII. [p. 555.] Acts xviii. 1, 2. "Because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome."

Suet. Claud. c. xxv. "Judæos, impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes, Roma expulit."

XXXIX. [p. 664.] Acts v. 37. "After this man, rose up Judas of Galilee, in the days of the taxing, and drew away much people after him.” Joseph. de Bell. 1. vii. "He (viz. the person who in another place is called, by Josephus, Judas the Galilean or Judas of Galilee) persuaded not a few not to enrol themselves, when Cyrenius the censor was sent into Judea."

"Art not thou that

XL. [p. 942.] Acts xxi. 38. Egyptian which, before these days, madest an uproar, and leddest out into the wilderness, four thousand men that were murderers ?"

Joseph. de Bell. 1. ii. c. 13. sect. 6. "But the Egyptian false prophet brought a yet heavier disaster upon the Jews; for this impostor, coming into the country, and gaining the reputation of a prophet, gathered together thirty thousand men, who were deceived by him. Having brought them round out of the wlderness, up to the mount of Olives, he intended from thence to make his attack upon Jerusalem; but Felix, coming suddenly upon him with the Roman soldiers, prevented the attack."A great number, or (as it should rather be rendered) the greatest part, of those that were with him, were either slain or taken prisoners.

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In these two passages, the designation of this impostor, an Egyptian," without the proper name; "the wilderness;" his escape, though his followers were destroyed; the time of the transaction, in the presidentship of Felix, which could not be any long time before the words of Luke are supposed to have been spoken; are circumstances of close correspondency. There is one, and only one, point of disagreement, and that is, in the number of his followers, which in the Acts are called four thousand, and by Josephus thirty thousand but, beside that the names of numbers, more than any other words, are liable to the errors of transcribers, we are, in the present instance, under the less concern to reconcile the evangelist

with Josephus, as Josephus is not, in this point, consistent with himself. For whereas, in the pas sage here quoted, he calls the number thirty thousand, and tells us that the greatest part, or a great number (according as his words are rendered,) of those that were with him, were destroyed; in his Antiquities, he represents four hundred to have been killed upon this occason, and two hundred taken prisoners :* which certainly was not the greatest part," nor a great part," nor' a great number," out of thirty thousand. It is probable also, that Lysias and Josephus spoke of the ex pedition in its different stages: Lysias, of those who followed the Egyptian out of Jerusalem: Jo sephus, of all who were collected about him afterward, from different quarters.

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XLI. (Lardner's Jewish and Heathen Testimo nies, vol. iii. p. 21.) Acts xvii. 22. "Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars-hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious; for, as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare 1 unto you."

Diogenes Laertius, who wrote about the year 210, in the history of Epimenides, who is supposed to have flourished nearly six hundred years before Christ, relates of him the following story: that, being invited to Athens for the purpose, he delivered the city from a pestilence in this manner;-" Taking several sheep, some black, others white, he had them up to the Areopagus, and then let them go where they would, and gave orders to those who followed them, wherever any of them should lie down, to sacrifice it to the god to whom it belonged; and so the plague ceased.-Hence," says the historian," it has come to pass, that to this present time, may be found in the boroughs of the Athenians ANONYMOUS altars: a memorial of the expiation then made." These altars, it may be presumed, were called anonymous, because there was not the name of any particular deity inscribed upon them.

Pausanius, who wrote before the end of the seIn Epimenide, 1. i. segm. 110.

* Lib. 20. c. 7. sect. 6.

cond century, in his description of Athens, having mentioned an altar of Jupiter Olympius, adds, "And nigh unto it is an altar of unknown gods." And in another place, he speaks "of altars of gods called unknown."+

Philostratus, who wrote in the beginning of the third century, records it as an observation of Apollonius Tyanæus, that it was wise to speak well of all the gods, especially at Athens, where altars of unknown demons were erected."

The author of the dialogue Philopatris, by many supposed to have been Lucian, who wrote about the year 170, by others some anonymous Heathen writer of the fourth century, makes Critias swear by the unknown god of Athens; and, near the end of the dialogue, has these words, " But let us find out the unknown god at Athens, and, stretching our hands to heaven, offer to him our praises and thanksgivings."

This is a very curious and a very important coincidence. It appears beyond controversy, that altars with this inscription were existing at Athens, at the time when Saint Paul is alleged to have been there. It seems also (which is very worthy of observation) that this inscription was peculiar to the Athenians. There is no evidence that there were altars inscribed" to the unknown god" in any other country. Supposing the history of Saint Paul to have been a fable, how is it possible that such a writer as the author of the Acts of the Apostles was, should hit upon a circumstance so extraordinary, and introduce it by an allusion so suitable to Saint Paul's office and character?

The examples here collected will be sufficient, I hope, to satisfy us, that the writers of the Christian history knew something of what they were writing. about. The argument is also strengthened by the following considerations :

Paus. 1. v. p. 412.

Philos. Apoll. Tyan. 1. vi. c. 5.

Paus. 1. i. p. 3.

Luciam in Philopt tom, in Grær. p. 767. 780:

I. That these agreements appear, not only in articles of public history, but sometimes, in minute, recondite, and very peculiar circumstances, in which, of all others, a forger is most likely to have been found tripping.

II. That the destruction of Jerusalem, which took place forty years after the commencement of the Christian institution, produced such a change in the state of the country, and the condition of the Jews, that a writer who was unacquainted with the circumstances of the nation before that event, would find it difficult to avoid mistakes, in endeavouring to give detailed accounts of transactions connected with those circumstances, forasmuch as he could no longer have a living examplar to copy from.

III. That there appears, in the writers of the New Testament, a knowledge of the affairs of those times, which we do not find in authors of later ages. In particular, "many of the Christian writers of the second and third centuries, and of the following ages, had false notions concerning the state of Judea, between the nativity of Jesus and the destruction of Jerusalem." Therefore they could not have composed our histories.

Amidst so many conformities, we are not to wonder that we meet with some difficulties. The principal of these I will put down, together with the solutions which they have received. But in doing this, I must be contented with a brevity better suit. ed to the limits of my volume than to the nature of a controversial argument. For the historical proofs of my assertions, and for the Greek criticisms upon which some of them are founded, I refer the reader to the second volume of the first part of Dr. Lardner's large work.

I. The taxing during which Jesus was born, was "first made," as we read, according to our translation, in Saint Luke, "whilst Cyrenius was governor of Syria." Now it turns out that Cyrenius was not governor of Syria until twelve, or, at the soonest, ten years after the birth of Christ; and that a taxing, census, or assessment, was made in Judea in the beginning of his government. The Chap ii. ver. 2.

Lardner, part i. vok ik, p. 90.