admitted, I am now to shew how they confirm the transactions at our Saviour's birth and presentation; and prove the taxing of St. Luke to be the same in point of fact with the oath of Josephus.

The leading observation which the transaction suggests is, the very different measure of punishment which was dealt out to these prophesying Pharisees, and to those who refused to take the prescribed oath. The latter were fined only, though resisting an oath of allegiance to Herod, as the then king of the Jews,—the former were put to death neither for seditious actions nor seditious words, but for idle and absurd predictions of evil. Why the former were treated with such lenity we have already seen. That this gentleness should have now been changed into such extreme and unrelenting severity, can be attributed, I think, only to some intermediate occurrence which had rendered Herod peculiarly sensible to any allusion to the expected and triumphant King who should rule over his own kingdom of Judea or Israel. Now there is no circumstance whatever upon record, which could or did produce such effects upon Herod's mind, except the arrival of the Magi,—none which was so likely to suggest such predictions to the imagination of the Pharisees,none which was so likely to make those predic

tions of serious and dangerous consequence,→ none by which Herod's jealousy was so effectually roused. Suppose then that the Magi arrived after the taking of the oath, and that the Pharisees uttered these predictions shortly after their abrupt departure and the declarations of Simeon and Anna, and consequently during that period of Herod's life in which he is described by the Evangelist as seeking the life of the child Jesus, and all the importance which he attributed to the marvellous declarations of the Pharisees about the future King and Bagoas, and all the severity with which he avenged their ravings, are easily accounted for. They drew the substance of their prophecies from the questions of the Magi, and the words of Simeon and Anna, knowing that at that moment every thing connected with that subject would be greedily listened to; and this accounts for the similarity between the two predictions. Herod punished them with death, because his recent disappointment made him tremblingly alive to any new alarms of a prophetic nature upon that subject; and this accounts for the faint resemblance which these executions bear to the massacre of Bethlehem. Hence I conceive that the visit of the Magi had intervened between the oath and the predictions and punishment of the Pharisees, and thus we gain another very strong presumptive proof of the identity

of the taxing of St. Luke and the oath of Josephus.

The whole argument in favour of their identity may be briefly summed up in the following

terms:

༤.

In every leading point, the oath mentioned by Josephus very strongly resembles the droуpapn mentioned by St. Luke.

2. There is not one single circumstance in which they can be said to be absolutely and irreconcileably dissimilar.

It would therefore seem to be by no means improbable to suppose that they might be the

same.

3. ἀπογραφὴ The άroypapn mentioned by St. Luke, and the massacre of Bethlehem, were events which followed very closely upon one another.

The oath mentioned by Josephus, and the execution of the Pharisees, &c. were also events which followed very closely upon one another.

4. The visit of the Magi intervened between the άoypan mentioned by St. Luke, and the massacre of Bethlehem.

The visit of the Magi appears also to have intervened between the oath mentioned by Josephus, and the execution of the Pharisees &c.

Hence it would seem highly probable that the oath mentioned by Josephus, and the άroypapn mentioned by St. Luke were the same.

The massacre of Bethlehem and the execution of the Pharisees, &c. might also, by a similar process of reasoning, have been concluded to be the same, had not the subjects of the two been absolutely dissimilar. In time they probably corresponded very nearly to each other, but the persons put to death in each were different,-innocent infants in the one case; Bagoas, Carus, the Pharisees, and the guilty part of Herod's own family in the other.

SECTION III.

The Date of the Taxing to which St. Luke, ch. ii. v. 2, probably alludes.

FORTIFIED by the various negative and positive arguments, which form the substance of the preceding section, I feel myself authorized to regard Josephus as speaking under the term oath of the same transaction as that of which the Evangelist speaks under the term ȧroypapn. Now it was during this άoypapn or oath that our Saviour was born. Our next effort must therefore be directed to gather from the pages of the Jewish historian the date of the oath or άoypan, and by that date either refute or confirm the conclusion of the last chapter with regard to the date of our Lord's nativity.

It has been observed that the taking of the oath, like the birth of Jesus, occurred towards the end of Herod's life and reign; but this is not sufficient; we want something more precise. Now the execution of the Rabbies on the 13th of March,