^©^^p®' .Vavt oUhe ^ 01 MESSRS. R. 1. ^'^'^ A- S^^"'' __,X 2 ;;;;;::'b5^o|" Booh-. Mo,^..:, I) / :r ; UIDESIGNED COINCIDENCES IN THE WRITINGS BOTH OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT, AN ARGUMENT OF THEIR VERACITY AN APPENDIX, CONTAINING UNDESIGNED COINCIDENCES BETWEEN THE GOSPELS, AND ACTS, AND JOSEPHUS. BY THE REV. J. J.'^iBLUNT. B. D. MARGARET PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY. FIRST AMERICAN FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION. NEW YORK: ROBERT CARTER, CANAL STREET; 58 AND PITTSBURG, 56 MARKET STREET. 1847. : PREFACE. The present Volume is a republication, with corrections and large additions, ofseveral shortWorks whichI printed a few years ago separately; and which, having passed through more or fewer editions, have become out of print I havethus been furnished with an opportunity ofrevising and consolidating them. These works were: "The Ve- racity of the Books ofMoses;" " The Veracity ofthe His- torical Scriptures of the Old Testament ;" and " The Ve- racity of the Gospels and Acts," argued from undesigned coincidences to be found in them when compared in their several parts and in the last instance, when compared ; also with the Writings of Josephus. They were all of themoriginally the substance of Sermons delivered before the University, some in a Course of Hulsean Lectures, others on various occasions. And though two of them, the Veracity of the Books of Moses, and the Veracity of the Gospels and Acts, were divested of the form of Ser- mons before publication the third. The Veracity of the ; Historical Scriptures of the Old Testament (whichconsti- tuted the Hulsean Lectures) still retained it. I have thought that by reducing this to the same shape as the rest, and combining it with them, thewholewould present a continued argument, or rather a continued series of in- 1* ' IV PREFACE. dependent arguments, for the Veracity of the Scriptures, of which the effect would be greater than that of the separate works could be, which might be read perhaps out of the natural order, and which were not altogether uni- form in their plan. But as this test of veracity proved ap- plicable, though in a less degree, for reasons I have as- signed elsewhere, to the Prophetical Scriptures also, Ihave introduced into the present Volume in its proper place, evi- dence of the same kind which had been long lying by me, for the Veracity of some of those Writings thus employ- ; ing one and the same touchstone of truth, to verify suc- cessively the Books of Moses, the Historical Scriptures of the Old Testament, the Prophetical, and the Gospels and Acts, in their order. The argument, as my readers will of course be aware, is an extension of that of the Horcc PaulincB, and which originated, as was generally supposed, with Dr. Paley. But Dr. Turton,' the present bishop of Ely, has rendered the claims of Dr. Paley to the first conception of it doubt- ful, by producing a passage from the conclusion of Dr. Doddridge's Introduction to his Paraphrase and Notes on the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, to the following effect. " Whoever reads over St. Paul's Epistles with atten- tion will discern such intrinsic characters in their genuine- ness, and the divine authority of tbe doctrines they con- 1 Inhis"NaturalTheologyconsideredwithreferencetoLordBrougham's Discourse,"&c.p.23.