Azaria, the Song of the Three Children in the Furnace, and of the History of Susanna, he looks upon them as written by some Hellenist Jew.

So the additions to the Book of Esther, he judges to be the work of some Hellenist, who invented the story, which were afterwards admitted among the holy writings, because they were pious, and had nothing which could be looked upon as contrary to the Jewish religion.

Grotius saith nothing of the third and fourth of Esdras, and hath not judged them fit to be commented, probably because they are not in the Canon of the Church of Rome. And indeed the fourth is only extant in Latin. But after all, a man must have viewed the third with very little judgment, who cannot perceive, first, that it is certainly the work of an ancient Jew before Jesus Christ's time; secondly, that it was among the Jews as a book of great authority: Josephus, p. 362. follows the authority of that third Book of Esdras, in the history of Zorobabel.

We have no ancienter writers than Clemens Alexandrinus, St. Cyprian, and St. Ambrose, who have quoted the fourth Book of Esdras, so I am resolved not to make any use of it.

The antiquity and the Jewish origin of all these books that we call apocryphal, being so settled, there remains nothing to be done but to consider what is the ground of the conjecture of Grotius, who pronounces boldly in his Preface to the Book of Wisdom: Eum librum nactus Christianus aliquis Grace non indoctus in Græcum vertit, libero nec ineleganti dicendi genere, et Christiana quædam commodis locis addidit, quod et libro Syracida quem dixi evenit, sed in Latino huic magis quam in Greco, non quod nesciam post Esdram explicatius proponi cœpisse patientiam piorum, judicium universale, vitam æter

dam magis Evangelium sapiunt quam vetustiora tempora.

But to speak my mind plainly, this conjecture of Grotius is absolutely false, and without any ground. 1. Whence had he this particular account of the Jewish faith and religion in the time of Esdras, so as to be able to judge by it, whether a book had or had not been written long after Esdras, and to shew that the notions of these books are clearer than the ideas which were among the Jews before Jesus Christ? He goes only upon this principle, that the Jews since they were under the Greek empire, began to be more acquainted with the ideas of eternal life, and of eternal punishment, and of the last judgment, than they were before, which is the principle of Socinus and of his followers, but that Christians had much clearer ideas of those notions than the Jews had since Esdras's time.

2dly. Is it not an intolerable boldness to accuse those books of having been so interpolated, without giving any proof of it, but his mere conjecture? I confess there are several various readings in those books, as there are in books which, having been of a general use, were transcribed many times by copyists of different industry, one more exact and more learned than the other. But to say that a Christian hath interpolated them designedly, is a thing which can no more be admitted, than to suppose that they have corrupted the Greek version of the books of the Old Testament, to which those books were joined in the Greek Bible as soon as it came into the hands of the Christians.

3dly. To suppose that a Christian hath been the author of the translation of some of those books, is a thing advanced with great absurdity, since there was a translation of these books quoted by Philo and by St. Paul in his Epistles. Now I would ask Grotius how he can prove that there was a second

1

version of the Book of Wisdom made by a Christian after Jesus Christ? what was the need of it, since there was one before Jesus Christ? And if any Christian did undertake such a new one without necessity, how came it to pass that it was received instead of the version which was in use amongst the Jews, and was added to the books of Scripture, and of the copies which were in the hands of the Christians?

I need not urge many other absurdities against Grotius's conjecture. I take notice only, 1. That Grotius was far from ridiculing the Book of Wisdom, as the Socinian author of the book against Dr. Bull hath done in his judgment of the Fathers.

2dly. That the ridiculing of such an author as the Book of Wisdom sheweth very little judgment in Mr. N. He had better have made use of the glosses of Grotius, than to venture upon such rough handling of an author quoted by St. Paul, whose quoting him giveth him more credit than he can lose by a thousand censures of a man who writes so injudiciously.

3dly. That the very place which Mr. N. ridicules is so manifestly taken from the Psalm xix. which contains a prophecy touching the Messias, and from the song of Isaiah, chap. v. that whosoever thinks seriously upon such a ridiculing of the Book of Wisdom made by Mr. N. cannot but have a mean notion of his sense of religion.

After all, let Mr. N. do what he can with the conjecture of Grotius, I am very little concerned in his judgment; 1st, Because the matter which we are to handle is not the matter which Grotius suspects to have been foisted in by some Christian interpreter. 2dly, Because I am resolved to make use in this controversy only of those places of the apocryphal books in which they express the sense of the old synagogue before Jesus Christ, as I shall

synagogue after Jesus Christ; and nobody can suspect with any probability of the old synagogue that they have borrowed the ideas of the Christians, and have inserted them in their ancient books, written so long a time before Jesus Christ's nativity.

CHAP. VI.

That the works which go under the name of Philo the Jew are truly his; and that he writ them a long while before the time of Christ's preaching the Gospel; and that it does not appear any of his works that he had ever heard of Christ, or of the Christian religion.

in

To shew the judgment of the ancient synagogue in the points controverted between us and the Unitarians, we make great use of the writings of Philo the Jew; which if they are his, it cannot be denied but that they do put this matter out of question. Our adversaries therefore, as it greatly concerns them, do deny that those works which bear his name, were ever written by Philo the Jew.

By whom then were they written? They say by another Philo a Christian, who lived toward the end of the second century, and who, as Mr. N. saith, counterfeited the writings of the famous Philo of Alexandria, who was sent ambassador to Caligula by those of his own nation in the year of Christ 40.

It is easy to refute this suggestion of theirs. And yet I cannot but acknowledge it has some kind of colour, from that which we read in Eusebius and Jerome, who tell us, that Philo has given a character of the apostolic Christians in his book de Therapeutis: to which some have added, that at his second coming to Rome under Claudius, to be am

bassador at his court, as he was before at Caligula's, he then became acquainted with St. Peter the Apostle of Christ.

I am therefore to prove these propositions :

1. That those books we have under the name of Philo are the works of a Jew, of whom there is not the least appearance in his writings that he knew any thing of Christianity, nor that he ever heard of Jesus Christ or his Apostles.

2. That it appears by the books themselves that they were written before Jesus Christ began to preach.

3. That there is no foundation for what Eusebius says, and also St. Jerome, who copied from Eusebius, concerning Philo's account of a sort of Christians, whom he describes under the name of Therapéutæ.

4. That the history of the conversation between St. Peter and Philo is a ridiculous fable, which Eusebius took upon hearsay, from he knew not whom, or from an author whom he did not think fit to name, for fear it should give no credit to his story.

The first proposition, namely, that these pieces were written by one that was a Jew by religion, is such that one cannot doubt of it, if he do but consider these following observations:

1. That in all these pieces of Philo, wherever he has occasion to make use of authority, he fetches it only out of the Jewish Scriptures. And those are. the only Scriptures that he takes upon him to explain. He quotes Moses, (whom he usually calls the lawgiver,) as we do the sayings of our Lord Jesus Christ. And sometimes, though very rarely, he quotes other writings of the Old Testament. But I. dare affirm, that in all his treatises he cites not one passage from the New Testament, which thing alone is sufficient to prove that he was no Christian. For the first Christians used to cite the New Testa→