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which we render "the second sabbath after the first," your Lordship knows that commentators are by no means agreed about it, and therefore there can be no apparent difficulty in my placing the transaction of plucking the ears of corn, as I do, after the passover, and consequently after the oblation of the first-fruits, or while any corn may be supposed to have been standing in the fields.

Your Lordship thinks, "with many commentators, that by what we translate the second sabbath after the first, St. Luke means the first sabbath after the second day of the paschal feast." But to this I think there are several obvious objections. Considering that the feast of passover lasted eight days, the first sabbath after the second of those days might be the third day of the feast, and would generally fall before the expiration of it. Supposing what is most favourable to your Lordship, and against which there is just seven to one, that the sabbath preceding this should have been the very second day of the feast, this dEUTEgongwrog, or first sabbath after it, would be the first day after the complete expiration of the feast. And if our Lord continued at Jerusalem the whole eight days of the feast, (and whenever your Lordship thinks me straitened for time you do not allow me a single day in this case,) he could not have been in Galilee, the scene of this transaction, in time for it.

Besides, I cannot think that corn was in general ready to pluck and eat so soon after, or rather in the passover; the Jewish calendar being so adjusted, that the first corn in the country, generally, I believe, unripe, was presented at that time; the feast of pentecost, which was fifty days after the passover, being called the feast of harvest. By making this sabbath the fourth after the passover, or in the year I have pitched upon, on the first of April, I believe I have, without intending it, hit upon a day as proper for this transaction as any whatever; whereas your Lordship has been rather unfortunate in this respect.

IV. Of the Disciples of John.

In considering whether John the Baptist or our Lord made more disciples, which I shall not particularly discuss, your Lordship omits the circumstance on which, in my own mind, I laid the greatest stress, which is, that at the last passover, long after the death of John, our Lord silenced the Jewish doctors by asking them, whether "the baptism

*Reply, pp. 11. 12. (P.)

+ Ibid. p. 81. (P.)

of John" was "from heaven or of men ;" when it appeared that they did not venture to say openly that it was "of men," because they feared the people; all men holding "John as a prophet." Matt. xxi. 26; Mark xi. 32; Luke XX. 6.

THE CONCLUSION.

I HAVE NOW urged all that occurs to me for the present on the subject of our amicable debate, and I hope I shall soon have the pleasure of hearing from your Lordship again. And having now, I thank God, recovered in a great measure, my former health and spirits, and being at length completely settled in my new situation, I shall be able, if nothing unforeseen prevent me, to give a more speedy reply to your next Letter than I have done to the last, and so the controversy will sooner come to its proper termination.

"in

Your Lordship is pleased to speak of our differing some conclusions of greater importance" than those we are now controverting. Of this I am fully apprized; the arti cles of your Lordship's faith, as a member of the Church of England, being upon record, and mine being sufficiently known by my writings, as also the stress I lay upon them, as opposed to the tenets of all the established churches in the world. Yet, my Lord, it gives me more pleasure to reflect that, notwithstanding these very considerable differences, there are still greater things in which we both agree, and on which we both, I hope, lay still greater stress; and they are things in which all persons who call themselves Christians are agreed.

We both believe in a God, the intelligent Author of nature, in his constant over-ruling providence, and in his righteous moral government. We both believe in the divine origin of the Jewish and Christian revelations, that Christ was a teacher sent from God, that he is our master, lawgiver and judge, that God raised him from the dead, that he is now exalted at the right hand of God, that he will come again to raise all the dead, and sit in judgment upon them, and that he will then give to every one of us according to our works.

These, I need not tell your Lordship, are, properly speaking, the only great truths of religion, because they are

* Reply, p. 174. (P.)

those which have the greatest influence on our conduct; and to these not only the Church of England, and the Church of Scotland, but even the Church of Rome gives its assent. If we sufficiently attend to the importance of these great truths, and give ourselves up to the full influence of them, we shall all love as brethren, notwithstanding all lesser differences, and especially such as we are now discussing.

Whether our Lord preached one year or three years, three years or thirty years, we are perfectly agreed with respect. to the great object of his preaching, and the obligation we are under to regulate our lives according to it; and from the catalogue of proper Christian virtues, we can never exclude humility, benevolence, or candour. We must judge others as we would be judged ourselves, waiting for the final sentence of our great and common judge, Jesus Christ.*

The time is, in reality, not far distant, when both your Lordship and myself shall know, from the first authority, which of us, or whether either of us, is in the right, with respect to the subject of our present controversy; and I hope we shall both in this, and in all other respects, so conduct ourselves, as to have no reason to wish it were more distant; but that, when our Lord shall return, and take an account of his servants, and of the use we have made of the talents with which we have severally been entrusted, we shall not be ashamed before him at his coming.

With the greatest respect, I am,

My Lord,

Your Lordship's most obedient, humble servant,

Birmingham,

December 1, 1780.

J. PRIESTLEY.

* The four preceding paragraphs were quoted by Dr. Priestley in 1790, at the Conclusion of the Familiar Letters. See Vol. XIX. pp. SOS, 304.

201

A

THIRD LETTER TO DR. NEWCOME,

BISHOP OF WATERFORD.

[Birmingham, 1781.]

MY LORD,

I AM equally struck with the ingenuity and the candour of your Lordship's Reply to my last Letter, and I am satisfied that in no other hands could the hypothesis you have adopted have appeared to more advantage. Still, however, I cannot help thinking, after the most attentive consideration, that what you have urged is far from invalidating what I advanced, and that, in several respects, it even affords additional support to my argument. The observations which I have made to this purpose, your Lordship's candour encourages me to propose with the same freedom with which we have both proceeded hitherto, making a point of being as brief as possible, and leaving those passages of your Lordship's Letter, on which I make no animadversion, to make what impression they may on our common readers.

SECTION I.

Of the Testimony of the Christian Fathers. †

In order to be as little tiresome as possible, I shall say but little with respect to the testimony of the primitive Christians. Your Lordship acknowledges "the prevalence of my hypothesis" in the primitive times, "but not its universality;" and this prevalence (especially so early as the opinion of our Lord's ministry not having extended much beyond one year may be traced) cannot, I think, be

"A Reply to a Second Letter on the Duration of our Lord's Ministry from the Rev. Joseph Priestley, LL. D. F. R. S. By William Newcome, D. D. Bishop of Waterford." Dublin, 1781.

↑ Reply, pp. 4—29.

Ibid. p. 12. (P.)

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satisfactorily accounted for on the supposition of its having ever been the universal opinion, that he preached three and a half.

years Such an opinion as this last mentioned, could not have died away very suddenly. The apostles, and all those who conversed with our Lord, must have known how long he preached; and as their preaching consisted, probably, for the most part, in relating the history of Christ, notes of time would necessarily mix with it, and this would continue the original tradition much later, I should think, than the time when the opinion that I contend for, is known to have prevailed. A departure from this opinion in after times, is not very difficult to account for; but that, in a matter of history and tradition, the erroneous opinion should be the oldest that we can find, is, certainly, not natural.

Your Lordship grants, that "the opinion" I contend for "may be traced to about A. D. 150," and "that the Alogi held this doctrine as well as the Valentinians."* But the

origin of the Alogi seems to have been in the remotest Christian antiquity. Epiphanius, who gives a large account of them, does not pretend to give them any date; and as he found them without a name, it is most probable that in most respects, they were among the Gentiles what the Nazarenes were among the Jews, and the earliest converts to Christianity. Opinions, therefore, universally held by them were most probably handed down to them (especially as few of them were learned) from the first promulgation of our religion.

You say, "On a review of the passages quoted from Origen and Eusebius, I doubt whether there be that exact agreement between your system and theirs which you suppose. According to you, there was the precise interval of a year, between that passover, at which Jesus first exercised his prophetical office in Jerusalem, and that at which he was crucified, But we cannot discover what space of time elapsed, according to Origen and Eusebius, between the first passover and the imprisonment of John the Baptist."†

But, my Lord, as the ancients, in general, say that the three first evangelists relate the events of one year only, and they all mention the baptism of Jesus, which was some time before the first passover, if any other passover intervened between this and that on which he suffered, they

• Reply, p. 23. (P.)

↑ Ibid. p. 7. (P.)

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