n instead of to Joseph; we hear
nothing of the shepherds and the glory of the Lord round the chanting
angels; Jesus is uncomely, and works making ploughs and yokes, of which,
we hear nothing in the Gospels; the fire at the baptism is not mentioned
in the Gospels, and the voice from heaven speaks in words not found in
them; he is called a magician, of which accusation we know nothing from
the four; the colt of the ass is tied to a vine, a circumstance omitted
in the canonical writings; it is no where said in the New Testament that
the bread at the Lord's supper is given in remembrance of _the
incarnation_, but, on the contrary, it is in remembrance of _the death_
of Christ; the crucifixion is not stated to have taken place during the
Passover, but on the contrary the Fourth Gospel places it before, the
others after, the Passover; we hear nothing of Christ set on the
judgment seat in the Gospels: the _vesture_ is not divided according to
John, who draws a distinction between the _vesture_ and the _raiment_
which is not recognised by Justin; the taunts of the crowd are
different; the denial of Christ by all the Apostles is uncanonical, as
is also their forsaking him _after_ the crucifixion; we do not hear of
the "day of the Sun" in our Gospels, nor of the rulers of heaven and
their reception of Christ. In fact, there are more points of divergence
than of coincidence between the details of the story of Jesus given by
Justin and that given in the Four Gospels, and yet Paley says that: "all
the references in Justin are made without mentioning the author; which
proves that these books were perfectly notorious, and that there were no
other accounts of Christ then extant, or, at least, no others so
received and credited, as to make it necessary to distinguish these from
the rest" ("Evidences," p. 123). And Paley has actually the hardihood to
state that what "seems extremely to be observed is, that in all Justin's
works, from which might be extracted almost a complete life of Christ,
there are but two instances in which he refers to anything as said or
done by Christ, which is not related concerning him in our present
Gospels; which shows that these Gospels, and these, we may say, alone,
were the authorities from which the Christians of that day drew the
information upon which they depended" (Ibid pp. 122, 123). Paley,
probably, never intended that a life of Christ should "be extracted"
from "all Justin's works." It is done above,