With regard to the unfortunate people whose arguments have been brought forward in this volume, we have, reader, now gone over, and distinctly felt, the whole ground of the controversy between them and their persecutors, mentioned in the Preface.  And as they make use of the Old Testament as a foundation, admitted, and necessarily admitted by Christians, to be of divine authority, and are surrounded by the bulwarks they have raised out of the demolished entrenchments of their adversaries, I do not see but that “their castle’s strength may laugh a siege to scorn.”  And after reviewing, and revolving, over and over in my own mind the arguments on both sides, I am obliged to believe, that the stoutest Polemical Goliath who may venture to attack it, especially their strong hold—­their arguments about the Messiahship, will find to his cost, that when his weak point is but known, the mightiest Achilles must fall before the feeblest Paris, whose arrow is—­aimed at his heel.

The author hopes, and thinks he has a right to expect, that whoever may attempt to answer his book, will do it fairly, like a man of candour; without trying to evade the main question—­that of the Messiahship of Jesus.  He fears, that he shall see an answer precisely resembling the many others he has seen upon that subject.  Except two—­those of Sukes, and Jeffries. (who acknowledge that miracles have nothing to do with the question of the Messiahship, which can be decided by the Old Testament only;)—­ all that he has ever met with, evade this question, and slide over to the ground of miracles.  Such conduct in an answerer of this book would be very unfair, and also very absurd.  For the case is precisely resembling the following—­A father informs by letter his son in a foreign country, that he is about to send him a Tutor, whom he will know by the following marks; “He is learned in the mathematics, and the physical sciences; acquainted with the learned languages, and an excellent physician; of a dark complexion; six feet high, and with a voice loud, and commanding.”  By and by, a man comes to the young man, professing to be this tutor sent to him by his father.  On examining the man, and comparing him with the description in his father’s letter, he finds him totally unlike the person he had been taught to expect.  Instead of being acquainted with the sciences, therein mentioned, he knows nothing about them; instead of being “six feet high, of a dark complexion, and with a voice loud and commanding,” he is a diminutive creature of five feet, of a light complexion, with a voice like a woman’s.

The young man, with his father’s letter in his hand, tells the pretended tutor, that he certainly cannot be the person he has been told to expect.  The man persists, and appeals to certain “wonderful works” he performs in order to convince the young man, that he is acquainted with the sciences aforesaid, and that he is also six feet high; of a dark complexion; and talks like an Emperor!  The young man replies.