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SECTION III.

Of the Promise of the Seed of the Woman; with a Refutation of Dr. Middleton's Observations against the Evangelical Account of the Genealogy of our blessed Lord.

BUT, if I should rest this matter here, and suppose, that Moses' history of the Creation and Fall had no greater authority, than what can be given from its being reasonable to believe he might write it merely from the records of his fathers, I should most egregiously trifle. Let the conduct of Moses, what he said, what he wrote, and what he did, be only considerately examined; and it will appear beyond a possibility of contradiction, that God himself was, in many things, his infallible director." And if God was his director in other parts of his writings, what reason can we have to think he

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was not so from the beginning? In the history of the Fall, Moses writes so emphatically, that one person should be descended from the woman, to be the capital subduer of the great enemy of mankind; he limited this person to be of the seed of Abraham," of Isaac, and of the tribe of Judah. Surely flesh and blood could not have assured him, 1500 years before-hand, that thus it should be; yet the things which he thus foretold were accomplished in a miraculous manner, when the fulness of their time was come; and thus the prediction, and the fulfilling it, bear an undeniable testimony to each other. Nothing but the immediate power of God could have brought to pass the things foretold, in the manner in which they were accomplished; so that the particular accomplishment of them could be none other than the work of God. And as no one could foresee what God would thus

Sce Connect. vol. iii. b. xii. See also Gen. xxii. 18.

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do, but the spirit of God; so no man beforehand could say of these things, that they should so be, unless it had been revealed from God.

Contrary to what the scriptures inform us, and which I have had occasion to mention, that our Saviour was a descendant from David, Dr. Middleton would seem to argue that he was not really of the tribe of Judah; but rather of the tribe of Levi. I nced not go through a long detail of what he offers, the whole of which may be comprised in a few particulars. 1. He observes, that Joseph, the husband of Mary the mother of Jesus, was only the reputed father of our Saviour; he says our Saviour had really no share or participation of his blood." And yet, 2. That the Evangelists, whenever they deduce his pedigree, shew that he was the son of David, by a line up from Joseph only. That they never say, that Mary, the

1 Cor. ii. 11.

Remarks on the Variations in the Evangelists, p. 29.
Ibid.

mother of Jesus, through whom alone his real genealogy could come from David, was descended of David. 4. That their silence herein, seems to make it probable that Mary was not of such descent. 5. That Mary is observed to be the cousin of Elizabeth, and that Elizabeth being of the daughters of Aaron,' Mary, her cousin, was most probably of the same tribe, namely, of the tribe of Levi, and not of the tribe of Judah."

The answer to this is, 1. The Evangelists are particularly careful to observe, that Jesus was not descended from Joseph his reputed father. 2. Their deducing Joseph's pedigree from David, was merely to remove the prejudices of the Jews; for they at first would look no further than to consider Jesus as the carpenter's son, and were scandalized

I Remarks on the Variations in the Evangelists, p. 30. * Luke i. 36. 1 Luke i. 5. m It needs not be remarked that David was of the tribe of Judah.

" See Matth. i. 18....25. Luke i..35. iii. 23.

• Matth. xiii. 55.

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at the meanness of his birth;" thought him a fellow of so low an extraction, that there was no saying whence he was.' Contrary to these, their prevailing sentiments, the Evangelists, at the same time not concealing or disguising the truth, that Jesus really was of God; that Joseph was only his supposed father; nevertheless took care to shew, that were his genealogy, as they imagined, to be reckoned by or through Joseph; even thus, also, he would have been the son of David. This would have been the case, either of the two ways in which the Jews counted their pedigrees; in one of which they reckoned the son to belong to the parent who begat him; in the other, where a man died without issue, and his brother, or next of kin, married the widów, and raised up sced to the deceased, the seed raised up was counted not to the real father who begat him, but to the deceased who died without issue."

P Matth. xiii. 55.

Vide quæ sup.
Ibid. ver. 6.

* John ix. 29.

• Deut. xxv. 5.

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