Yet, notwithstanding all this, he was an impostor; and no man now believes the stories of his miracles, or his resurrection; notwithstanding that both are affirmed by more recent, more learned, and more respectable testimony than is, or can be, offered, in favour of the Messiahship of Jesus.

The name of this famous impostor was Shabathai Tzevi, and his history is given by Basnage, in his history of the Jews, [and by other writers of Jewish history.

See on this subject the Sepher Torath Hakenaoth, page 2.

The learned Mr.Zedner has extracted the life of Shabetai Tsebi from tins book, and published it, with a German translation, in his Auswahl historischer Stucke aus Hebraischen Schriftstellern, Berlin, 1840 .-- D.] I wish the Christian reader to peruse carefully, and cooly, that account; and if he then persists in believing the history given by the evangelists; with such faith as his, he certainly ought to be able to move mountains; and I have no doubt at all, that with such a good natured understanding as his, if he had found in his New Testament the story of Jonah misquoted, and and by a small transposition a la mode de Surenhusius, representing that "Jonah swallowed the whale!" this sturdy "confidence in things not seen," would, I doubt not have enabled him without difficulty to swallow the prophet with the whale in his belly..