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tion of the name than we actually find in the gospels, where one of the twelve apoftles 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 Christ.

IV. Matt. xxiii. 34.

"Wherefore, be

hold, I fend unto you prophets, and wife men, and fcribes and fome of them ye fhall kill and crucify; and fome of them fhall ye fcourge in your fynagogues, and perfecute them from city to city that upon you may come all the righteous blood fhed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, fon of Barachias, whom ye flew between the temple and the altar.”

There is a Zacharias, whofe death is related in the fecond book of Chronicles, in

*Luke vi. 16. Mark iii. 18.

+ Orig. con. Celf. p. 44.

a man

a manner which perfectly supports our Saviour's allufion *. But this Zacharias was the fon of Jehoiada.

There is alfo Zacharias the prophet; who was the son of Barachiah, and is fo defcribed 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 perfon fpoken of by our Saviour; and that the name of the father has been fince added, or changed, by fome one, who took it from the title of the prophecy, which happened to be better known to him than the history in the Chronicles.

"And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada the priest, which stood above the people, and faid unto them, Thus faith God, Why tranfgrefs ye the commandments of the Lord, that ye cannot profper? Because ye have forfaken the Lord, he hath also forfaken you. And they confpired against him, and ftoned him with ftones, at the commandment of the king, in the court of the house of the Lord." 2 Chron. xxiv. 20, 21.

There

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

Now fuppofe it to have been fo; fuppofe these words to have been fuggefted by the tranfaction related in Jofephus, and to have been falfely ascribed to Chrift; and obferve what extraordinary coincidences (accidentally, as it must in that case have been) attend the forger's mistake.

Firft, That we have a Zacharias in the book of Chronicles, whofe death, and the manner of it, correfponds with the allufion.

Secondly, that although the name of this perfon's father be erroneously put down in Q

VOL. II.

the

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

Every one, who thinks upon the subject, will find thefe to be circumftances which could not have met together in a mistake, which did not proceed from the circumftances 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 clofenefs, and the fatisfactoriness, of the inftances which are to be fet against them; and he will remember the fcantinefs, in many cases, of our intelligence, and that difficulties always attend imperfect information.

CHAP.

CHAP. VII.

Undefigned Coincidences.

BETWEEN the letters which bear the

name of St. Paul in our collection, and his history in the Acts of the Apostles, there exift many notes of correfpondency. The fimple perusal of the writings is fufficient to prove, that neither the hiftory was taken from the letters, nor the letters from the history. And the undefignedness of the agree ments (which undesignedness is gathered from their latency, their minuteness, their obliquity, the fuitableness 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) demonftrates 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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