tion of the name than we actually find in the gospels, where one of the twelve apostles is called by Luke, Judas; and by Mark, Thaddeus*. Origen, however he came at his information, appears to have believed that there was an impoftor of the name of Theudas before the nativity of Chrift †.

IV. Matt. xxiii. 34. "Wherefore, behold, I fend unto you prophets, and wife men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them fhall ye scourge in your synagogues, and perfecute them from city to city: that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, fon of Barachias, whom ye lew between the temple and the altar."

a manner which perfectly supports our Saviour's allusion *. But this Zacharias was

the son of Jehoiada.

There is also Zacharias the prophet; who was the son of Barachiah, and is so described in the superscription of his prophecy, but of whose death we have no ac

count.

I have little doubt, but that the first Zacharias was the person spoken of by our Saviour; and that the name of the father has been fince added, or changed, by some one, who took it from the title of the prophecy, which happened to be better known to him than the history in the Chronicles.

There is likewise a Zacharias, the fon of Baruch, related by Josephus to have been flain in the temple a few years before the destruction of Jerufalem. It has been infinuated, that the words put into our Saviour's mouth, contain a reference to this transaction, and were composed by fome writer, who either confounded the time of the transaction with our Saviour's age, or inadvertently overlooked the anachronism.

Now suppose it to have been so; suppose these words to have been suggested by the transaction related in Josephus, and to have been falsely ascribed to Christ; and observe what extraordinary coincidences (accidentally, as it must in that cafe have been) attend the forger's mistake.

First, That we have a Zacharias in the book of Chronicles, whose death, and the manner of it, corresponds with the allufion.

Secondly, that although the name of this person's father be erroneously put down in VOL. II.

the

the gospel, yet we have a way of accounting for the error, by shewing another Zacharias in the Jewish scriptures, much better known than the former, whose patronymic was actually that which appears in the text.

Every one, who thinks upon the subject, will find these to be circumstances which could not have met together in a mistake, which did not proceed from the circumstances themselves.

I have noticed, I think, all the difficulties of this kind. They are few; fome of them admit of a clear, others of a probable folution. The reader will compare them with the number, the variety, the closeness, and the fatisfactoriness, of the instances which are to be fet against them; and he will remember the scantinefs, in many cafes, of our intelligence, and that difficulties always attend imperfect information.

CHAP. CHAP. VII.

Undefigned Coincidences.

1

BETWEEN the letters which bear the

name of St. Paul in our collection, and his history in the Acts of the Apostles, there exist many notes of correspondency. The fimple perusal of the writings is sufficient to prove, that neither the history was taken from the letters, nor the letters from the history. And the undesignedness of the agree ments (which undesignedness is gathered from their latency, their minuteness, their obliquity, the suitableness of the circumstances in which they confift, to the places in which those circumstances occur, and the circuitous references by which they are traced out) demonstrates that they have not been produced by meditation, or by any fraudulent contrivance. But coincidences, from which these causes are excluded, and which

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