The winter following John was imprisoned; and now his course being at an end, Christ entered upon his proper office of preaching in the cities.  In the beginning of his preaching he completed the number of the twelve Apostles, and instructed them all the first year in order to send them abroad.  Before the end of this year, his fame by his preaching and miracles was so far spread abroad, that the Jews at the Passover following consulted how to kill him.  In the second year of his preaching, it being no longer safe for him to converse openly in Judea, he sent the twelve to preach in all their cities:  and in the end of the year they returned to him, and told him all they had done.  All the last year the twelve continued with him to be instructed more perfectly, in order to their preaching to all nations after his death.  And upon the news of John’s death, being afraid of Herod as well as of the Jews, he walked this year more secretly than before; frequenting desarts, and spending the last half of the year in Judea, without the dominions of Herod.

Thus have we in the Gospels of Matthew and John all things told in due order, from the beginning of John’s preaching to the death of Christ, and the years distinguished from one another by such essential characters that they cannot be mistaken.  The second Passover is distinguished from the first, by the interposition of John’s imprisonment.  The third is distinguished from the second, by a double character:  first, by the interposition of the feast to which Christ went up, Mat. viii. 19. Luke ix. 57. and secondly, by the distance of time from the beginning of Christ’s preaching:  for the second was in the beginning of his preaching, and the third so long after, that before it came Christ said, from the days of John_ the Baptist until now_, &c. and upbraided the cities of Galilee for their not repenting at his preaching, and mighty works done in all that time.  The fourth is distinguished from the third, by the mission of the twelve from Christ to preach in the cities of Judea in all the interval.  The fifth is distinguished from all the former by the twelve’s being returned from preaching, and continuing with Christ during all the interval, between the fourth and fifth, and by the passion and other infallible characters.

Now since the first summer of John’s baptizing fell in the fifteenth year of the Emperor Tiberius, and by consequence the first of these five Passovers in his sixteenth year; the last of them, in which Jesus suffered, will fall on the twentieth year of the same Emperor; and by consequence in the Consulship of Fabius and Vitellius, in the 79th Julian year, and year of Christ 34, which was the sabbatical year of the Jews.  And that it did so, I further confirm by these arguments.