thor of wonderful works. This same Jesus is the Christ. The rulers condemned, and Pilate crucified him. Nevertheless, his followers still adhered to him; for he appeared to them again alive the third day, the prophets having foretold this and a thousand other things respecting him. In the midst of his sufferings and disgrace, he draws to himself many Jews and many of the Gentiles. To these he taught the truth: and the men who saw his works, heard his words, and recorded them in the memoirs of his public life, were such as took pleasure only in the truth. These great facts, thus explicitly attested by the Jewish historian, are the chief points on which the apostles insisted in preaching the gospel; and they form the peculiar and essential doctrines of christianity.

A testimony like this was imperiously demanded by the circumstances, in which the author wrote his Antiquities; and it is to be deemed doubly important, from the calumnies and objections which he intended to meet. Josephus has related the grounds of these calumnies; and that he might directly meet them, he places at the head of them the account which he gives of Christ.

It was very natural for the people of Rome to form their opinion of Christ and his apostles, from the character of some men who taught his

religion in that city. And as these were devoted to magic, and disgraced by immoralities and falsehoods, the enemies of christianity believed, or affected to believe, that its founder, and his immediate followers in Judea, were men of the same description. This was the chief circumstance, which appears to have led Josephus to insert in the Jewish Antiquities his testimony in favour of Christ: and that he might directly meet, and effectually repel, the charge of being magicians and impostors, hence urged again our Lord and his faithful disciples, he draws in a few words the character of these, and contrasts it with the conduct of those deceivers, who dis graced his name and his religion in Rome.--"And about this time existed Jesus, a wise man, if indeed he might be called a man: for he was the author of wonderful works, and the teacher of such men as delight in the truth. A Jew resided at Rome, who having been accused of transgressing the laws of Moses, fled from his country, to avoid the punishment due to his crimes. In every respect he was a wicked man. During his residence at Rome, he professed to unfold the wisdom of the Mosaic laws, in conjunction with three men, who in every view resembled himself," &c.

Justin Martyr, in his first Apology, addressed to the emperor and senate, has the following

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passage, which has occasioned great perplexity to modern critics." Simon, a Samaritan from the village of Gitton, in the reign of Claudius, by means of demons working in him, is in your royal city deemed a god, and is honoured as such with a statue from you, which statue had been raised by the river Tiber, between the two bridges, having upon it this inscription in Latin, 'Simoni Deo Sancto'." P. 38. ed. Thirl.

On this passage Middleton, a fine writer, but a superficial enquirer, thus remarks: “It is ma nifest, beyond all reasonable doubt, that Justin was led here into a gross blunder, by his usual want of judgment, and his ignorance of Roman affairs: and his preconceived notions of fabulous stories, which past current about this Simon amongst the first christians: for the statue and inscription, to which he appeals, were not dedicated to his countryman Simon Magus, of whose deification there is not the least hint in any Roman writer, but to a Sabine deity of ancient worship in Rome, and of similar name, Semoni Sanco, frequently mentioned by the old writers, as the inscription itself, dug up about two centuries ago from the ruins of that very place, which Justin describes, has clearly demonstrated.”

The true state of this matter seems to be the following. Among those idols which superstition had created in Rome, there were those dedicated

to Semo Sanco, the Sabine deity above mentioned. Simon, during his residence in that city, becoming acquainted with these idols, pretended, from the similarity of that name to his own, that he was the divinity meant by it. Of this pretension no proof was necessary with the enemies of the gospel: for the deep-rooted malice, which the Romans cherished towards the Jews in general, and towards Jesus and his disciples in particular, induced them to favour and to support every impostor who partook of their malice and hatred, and who was likely to be instrumental in checking the progress of the new faith. They therefore suffered either new statues, or some of the old statues, to be erected with the inscription, not as before of Semoni Sanco, but of Simoni Deo Sancto. The statue dug up since was doubtless one of the original idols dedicated to the Sabine deity, while that which the Roman senate, from envy and malice towards Christ, had raised in honour. Simon, has been lost in the common ruins. The error, therefore, lies with Middleton, and others of the same stamp, and not with Justin Martyr, who knew much more of the subject than they did. A few observations will, it is presumed, be sufficient to substantiate the truth of this statement.

1. The blunder here imputed to Justin, by men whose writings are full of blunders, is in the

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highest degree improbable. The transaction, which he has recorded, had taken place more than fifty years before the time in which he wrote. It was also a transaction of great notoriety, and of no inconsiderable importance, as connected with the affairs of the christians. must, therefore, have been a subject of frequent conversation with the believers in Rome and in Samaria, especially as they had to dispute with the followers and advocates of Simon, who were very numerous in that age. Justin, during the years he professed christianity, had frequent opportunities personally to witness the fact at Rome; and he must have conversed with many friends and adversaries, who would have set him right, had he been mistaken. Besides, he asserts the fact in the face of the emperor and senate: nor would he have exposed himself and his cause to ridicule and contempt, unless he felt fully convinced that it was incontrovertible.

2. Simon was a shameless and profligate impostor; and it is a fact, that wherever he went he pretended to be a god. His language to his followers was, "I can be adored as a god, and have divine honours bestowed upon me, so that men shall make me a statue, and shall worship and adore me as a god." To his impious pretensions, in this respect, we have the most authentic testimony; since we read in the Acts, that in