certainly would not, we believe, be received in a modern court of justice, to settle the fact about a debt of five dollars.  And if it be still urged, that such a story is unparalleled, and therefore respectable; we say that it is not unparalleled; as we have an account of a false Messiah, who applied the prophecies to himself, had a forerunner, and more than two hundred thousand followers, who publicly acknowledged him for the Messiah, raised contributions, and supported him magnificently.  He too, quoted the prophets as speaking concerning him, and was said to have worked divers miracles, and was ultimately put to death by the order of the Grand Seignor at Constantinople; yet nevertheless was said to have been, seen again by certain of his followers, who wrote books in favour of that fact, and of his Messiahship.  Many learned Rabbins enrolled themselves as his disciples, and wrote controversial works in his cause, as Paul did.  And to conclude, his party was not entirely extinct within a very few years.  Yet, notwithstanding all this, he was an impostor; and no man now believes the stories of his miracles, or his resurrection; notwithstanding that both are affirmed by more recent, more learned, and more respectable testimony than is, or can be, offered, in favour of the Messiahship of Jesus.  The name of this famous impostor was Shabathai Tzevi, and his history is given by Basnage, in his history of the Jews, [and by other writers of Jewish history.  See on this subject the Sepher Torath Hakenaoth, page 2.  The learned Mr. Zedner has extracted the life of Shabetai Tsebi from tins book, and published it, with a German translation, in his Auswahl historischer Stucke aus Hebraischen Schriftstellern, Berlin, 1840.—­D.]

I wish the Christian reader to peruse carefully, and cooly, that account; and if he then persists in believing the history given by the evangelists; with such faith as his, he certainly ought to be able to move mountains; and I have no doubt at all, that with such a good natured understanding as his, if he had found in his New Testament the story of Jonah misquoted, and and by a small transposition a la mode de Surenhusius, representing that “Jonah swallowed the whale!” this sturdy “confidence in things not seen,” would, I doubt not have enabled him without difficulty to swallow the prophet with the whale in his belly.

CHAPTER XVII.

Of the peculiar morality of the new testament,
as it affects individuals.