But though our author’s history of these extraordinary facts is neither consistent with reason, and probability, nor with the other histories of the same event; it proceeds in pretty strict conformity to the manner in which it sets out.  For to convince us still more fully that the author was totally ignorant of the mode of computing time in use among the Jews, and habituated to that in use among the Greeks and Romans?  He reckons the Sabbath to last till day light on Sunday morn, and says, (chapter xxviii.), “that in the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn, towards the first day of the week,” the two Marys before mentioned, came, (not as in Luke, to embalm the body, for, with a guard round the sepulchre, that would have been impracticable, but) to see the sepulchre.  “Whilst they were there, the author tells us, there was another great earthquake, and an angel descended, rolled away the stone, and sat upon it, at whose sight, the soldiers trembled, and were frighted to death.  But to prevent the like effect of his appearance upon the women, he said unto them, fear not ye, for I know that ye seek Jesus who was crucified.  That the women as well as the soldiers were present at the descent of this angel, appears not only from there being nobody else, by whom these uncommon circumstances could have been related, but also by the pronoun personal ye, inserted in the original Greek, which in that language is never done, unless it be emphatically to mark such a distinction, or antithesis, as there was on this occasion, between them and the Roman guard.  Here, however, the author is inadvertently inconsistent with himself, as well as with the other evangelists; and forgetting that the sole intent of rolling away the stone, was to open a passage, absolutely necessary to the body of Jesus to come forth out of the sepulchre; and that if he had risen and come forth after the angel had rolled it away, both the women and the soldiers must have seen him rise, he makes the angel bid them look into the sepulchre, to see—­that he was not there! and tell them that he was already risen; and that he was gone before them into Galilee, where they should see him!  In their way, the author adds, Jesus himself met the women, and said, “be not afraid, go tell my brethren to go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.”  He says that the eleven apostles went into Galilee, to an appointed mountain, and saw him there; notwithstanding that some of them were so incredulous, as not to believe even the testimony of their own senses.

In the interim, whilst the women were going to the apostles, the author tells us, “some of the watch;” some strictly disciplined Roman soldiers left their station to bring an account of what had passed, not to the Governor their General, nor to any of their own officers—­but to the chief priests of the Jews! that they assembled a council of the elders upon the occasion, and after deliberating what was to be done, induced the soldiers, by large