man can form no idea, a God, whose essence renders him incapable of commiting sin, is loaded with the iniquities of man, and must expiate them in order to disarm the indignation of a father he has not offended. Such are the inconceivable principles which serve for the basis of the Christian theology.*

Our doctors add-It was the will of God that the birth of his Son should be accompanied with the same accidents as that of other men, to console the latter for the misfortunes attendant on their existence. Man, say they, is guilty before he is born, because all children are bound to pay the debts of their fathers :thus man suffers justly as a sinner himself, and as charged with the sin of his first father. Granting this, what more consolatory to us than seeing a God, innocence and holiness itself, suffering in a stable all the evils attached to indigence! That consolation would have been wanting to men, if God had ordained that his

like unto himself-and God sent a deep sleep upon Adam, and when he had slept, God took one of his ribs, and filled up the flesh for it." Of this rib a companion was made for Adam, which, of himself, he called a woman. These two distinct creations prove fatal to the dogma, that Christ died for all men. His death cannot be beneficial to those who are not the descendants of Adam, because, unless he is acknowledged the father of all mankind, his transgression cannot be imputed to the whole human race. It must therefore be confined to the Jews only, which clears the Gentiles of the sin of Adam, and also of the necessity of an atonement for guilt, in which they could not possibly participate. We are at a loss to know, by what ingenuity our Christian doctors will attempt to get rid of this difficulty.

*The sacrifice of the Son of God is mentioned as a proof of his benevolence. Is it not rather a proof of his ferocity, cruelty, and implacable vengeance? A good Christian on his death bed said, "he had never been able to conceive how a good God could put an innocent God to death to appease a just God."

Son should be born in splendour, and an abundance of the comforts of life. If the innocent Jesus had not suffered, mankind, incapable of extinguishing a debt contracted by Adam, would have been for ever excluded from Paradise. As to the painful journey Mary was obliged to undertake in such critical circumstances, this occurrence had been foreseen by eternal wisdom, which had resolved, that Christ should be born at Bethlehem, and not at Nazareth. It was necessary→→→ having been foretold, it behoved to be accomplished.

However solid these answers may appear to the faithful, they are not capable of convincing the incredulous. Unbelievers exclaim against the injustice of making a most innocent God suffer, and loading him with the iniquities of the earth; neither can they conceive, by what principle of equity the Supreme Being could make the human race responsible for a fault committed by their first parents, without their knowledge and participation? They maintain, that, in fair justice, children have a right to renounce the succession of their parents, when they have to pay out of the estate debts which the latter have contracted. The incredulous remark, that the conduct attributed to God by the Christian mythology, is injurious to him, in so far as it represents him as the most implacable, the most cruel, and the most unjust of tyrants.* Finally, they contend that it would have been wiser to have hindered man from committing sin than to permit him to sin, and make his own Son die to expiate man's iniquity.

With respect to the journey to Bethlehem, we cannot discover the necessity of it. The place where the Saviour of the world was to be born, seems a circumstance perfectly indifferent to the salvation of man

See Appendix, No. I.

kind. As for the prophecy announcing the glory of Bethlehem, in having given existence to the "Leader of Israel"-it does not appear to agree with Jesus, who was born there in a stable, and who was rejected by the people whose leader he was to be. It is only a pious straining that can make this prediction apply to Christ. We are indeed assured, that it had been foretold Jesus was to be born in poverty; while, on the other hand, the Messiah of the Jews is generally announced by the prophets as a prince, a hero, and a conqueror. It is necessary then to know which of these prophecies we ought to adopt. Our doctors, will not fail to tell us, "the predictions announcing that Jesus would be born and live in indigence and meanness, ought to be taken literally, and those which announce his power and glory ought to be taken allegorically." But this solution will not satisfy the incredulous; they will affirm, that employing this manner of explanation, they will always find in the sacred writings whatever they may think they stand in need of. They will conclude, that the scripture is to Christians what the clouds are to the man, who imagines he perceives in them whatever figures he pleases.*

The proto-gospel, ascribed to St. James, relates some curious and ridiculous circumstances, on which none of our four canonical evangelists have wished to rely; yet they have nothing revolting to persons who possess faith enough. This proto-gospel informs us, for example, of the ill humour. of Joseph on seeing his wife pregnant, and the reproaches he loaded her with on account of her lewdness, unworthy, according to it, of a virgin reared under the eyes of priests. Mary excuses herself with tears; she protests her innocence, and "swears in the name of the living God, that she is ignorant

from whence the child has come to her." It appears, that in her distress, she had forgot the adventure of Gabriel :--that angel came the night following to encourage by a dream poor Joseph, who, on his part, was on the point of having an affair with the priests, who accused him of having palmed this child, to the prejudice of Mary's vow of virginity. On this the priests made the two spouses drink of the waters of jealousy, that is, of a potion, which, by a miracle, did them no injury; the high priest, therefore, declared them most innocent.

It is likewise related in the same gospel, that after Mary had been delivered, Salome, refusing to credit the midwife who as sured her that the delivered was still a virgin, laid her hand on Mary in order to satisfy herself of the fact. Immediately this rash hand felt itself on fire; but she was cured on taking the little Jesus in her arms. See Codex Apocr. N. T. tome i. p. 95-113.

CHAPTER III.

ADORATION OF THE MAGI AND SHEPHERDS-MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS-AND OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES,

WHICH FOLLOWED THE BIRTH OF

JESUS CHRIST,

OF the four historians of Jesus adopted by the church, two are wholly silent on the facts we are to relate in this chapter; and St. Matthew and St. Luke who have transmitted them, are not at all unanimous in particulars. So discordant indeed are their relations, that the ablest commentators do not know how reconcile them. These differences, it is true, are less perceptible when the Evangelists are read the one after the other, or without reflection; but they become particularly striking, when we take the trouble of comparing them. This is undoubtedly the reason why we have hitherto had no concordance of the gospels, which received the general approbation of the church. Even those which have been printed, have not been universally adopted, though it must be acknowledged that they contain nothing contrary to faith. It is perhaps from judicious policy, that the heads of the church have not approved of any system on this point; they have probably felt the impossibility of reconciling narratives so discordant as those of the four Evangelists; for the