mong the Jews it was, and is,
customary to prepare, and set out, in the afternoon of the Friday,
all the food and necessaries for every family during the Sabbath
day. Because they were forbidden to light a fire, or do any servile
work, on that day; and therefore Friday was very properly called
"the day of preparation." But it appears to me next to impossible,
that any Jew would call the sabbath "the day that followeth the day
of the preparation." Yet this singular historian so denominates it,
and moreover, goes on to inform us, that the chief priests, and
Pharisees went to Pilate to ask for a guard to place round the
sepulchre, till the third day, to prevent his disciples from stealing
away his body, and then saying, that he was risen from the dead;
and that after obtaining the governor's permission, "they, went,
and secured the sepulchre by sealing the stone that was rolled
against it; and setting a watch." Though there appears nothing very
strange in this account to a Christian, yet, I assure my reader, that
to the Jews, it ever did, and must appear utterly incredible. For it is
wonderful! that the Jewish rulers, and the rigorous Pharisees
should in so public a manner thus violate the precept for observing
the Sabbath day; for the penalty of this action of theirs was no less
than death! More wonderful still is it that they should have so
much better attended to, and comprehended the meaning of the
prediction of Jesus to his disciples, than his own disciples did; and
most wonderful of all, that a Roman Proconsul should consent to
let his troops keep watch round a tomb, for fear it should be
thought that a dead man was come to life again.

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