8 Aug 1815

Jug True

1

Ch. Time of Penning

*2

§.2 Generation not past

§.2 In the instance of Luke, Matthew and Mark, reasons for thinking that the generation living at Jesus' death had not yet passed away.

The four historians in question what was the interval of time with relation to the facts respectively reported by them were they respectively penned?

Thick is the darkness in which this subject is enveloped: in no one instance on any sufficient ground can any answer with any precision in respect to absolute time be given to it with any the least degree of confidence.

In

Marginal note opposite this paragraph:

(p.126, 127, 128)

Luke xxi. 28 to 36

Matt. xxiv. 29 to 36

Mark xiii. 24 to 32

relation to three out of the four of them, viz. | | that at the time when one particular passage in each was penned, individuals were still living who were living at the close of the Jesus's career, is by the terms of that passage rendered altogether probable. This is where after a multitude of predictions of the most extravagant nature about the fall of the stars from heaven, and his own coming with power and great glory, he is represented as adding [‘]This generations shall not pass (or slip away) till (all things or) all these things shall be fulfilled (or shall be done): concluding with a caution never to overeat or overdrink themselves, lest the day on which these things will come to pass should find them unprepared. That generation passed away, and after that generation after generation—and to this hour none of all these have been fulfilled. While MS alt. ‘so long’. the human beings that were in existence at the time when these words were supposed to have been spoken continued alive, literary works in which this tissue of predictions were reported might continue to be uttered written and published without exhibiting to the truth of the narrative they respectively contain that counterproof which is afforded by so palpable an instance of a disfulfilment applied in the case of so plain and determinate a story of prediction. On the other hand, suppose that generation already passed away and the prediction then known to be disfulfilled, that any one writing harbouring in his mind any such truth as that the nature of Jesus, being commissioned from above should be taken for true, should in a history composed by himself make[?] any mention of a prediction of his by which when compared with the event the character of falsity was so plainly stamped upon it, should give mention to such a discourse seems scarcely reconcilable in the ordinary principle of the human mind.

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Time at what distance from the events work the four Evangelists. Answer—No sufficient ground for influence.

2

As to Luke, Matt. & Mark