ACCOUNT OF BOOKS. 



451 



another. The writers certainly 

 knew something of what they were 

 writing about, for they manifest an 

 acquaintance with local circum- 

 stances, with the history and usages 

 of the times, which could only be- 

 long to an inhabitant of that coun- 

 try, living in that age. In every 

 narrative we perceive simplicity and 

 undesignedness; the air and the 

 language of reality. When we 

 compare the different narratives to- 

 gether, we find them so varying as 

 to repel all suspicion of confederacy ; 

 so agreeing under this variety, as 

 to shew that the accounts had one 

 real transaction for their common 

 foundation ; often attributin"; diffe- 

 rent actions and discourses to the 

 person whose history, or rather me- 

 moirs of whose history, they profess 

 to relate; yet actions and discourses 

 so similar, as very much to bespeak 

 the same character ; which is a co- 

 incidence, that, in such writers as 

 they were, could only be the con- 

 sequence of their writing from fact, 

 and not from imagination." 



After the account we have given, 

 it is hardly necessary to say, that we 



strongly recommend this work to ge« 

 neral perusal. We think the author 

 has very happily executed what he 

 professes to have been his design. 

 *' To preserve the separation be- 

 tween evidences and doctrines as in- 

 violable as he Could: to remove 

 from the primary question all consi- 

 derations which have been unne- 

 cessarily joined with it; and to offer 

 a defence of Christianity, which 

 every Christian might read, without 

 seeing the tenets in which he had 

 been brought up attacked or de- 

 cried :" he adds, " It always afford- 

 ed a satisfaction to my mind, to ob- 

 serve that this was practicable; that 

 few or none of out many controver- 

 sies with one another affect or relate 

 to the proofs of our religion ; that 

 tlie rent never descends to the foun- 

 dation." To this book then let the 

 doubter or the deist have recourse ; 

 and when he has satisfied himself, as 

 here abundantly he may, of the ir- 

 refragable evidence of the whole, 

 let him carefully consider the sacred 

 books themselves, and adopt as 

 doctrines whatever he finds there 

 delivered. 



THE 



