41 Mattatha
42 Nathan
43 David

[NOTE: * From the birth of David to the birth of Christ is upwards of
1080 years; and as the life-time of Christ is not included, there are
but 27 full generations. To find therefore the average age of each
person mentioned in the list, at the time his first son was born, it
is only necessary to divide 1080 by 27, which gives 40 years for each
person. As the life-time of man was then but of the same extent it is
now, it is an absurdity to suppose, that 27 following generations should
all be old bachelors, before they married; and the more so, when we are
told that Solomon, the next in succession to David, had a house full of
wives and mistresses before he was twenty-one years of age. So far from
this genealogy being a solemn truth, it is not even a reasonable lie.
The list of Luke gives about twenty-six years for the average age, and
this is too much.--Author.]

Now, if these men, Matthew and Luke, set out with a falsehood between
them (as these two accounts show they do) in the very commencement of
their history of Jesus Christ, and of who, and of what he was, what
authority (as I have before asked) is there left for believing the
strange things they tell us afterwards? If they cannot be believed in
their account of his natural genealogy, how are we to believe them when
they tell us he was the son of God, begotten by a ghost; and that
an angel announced this in secret to his mother? If they lied in one
genealogy, why are we to believe them in the other? If his natural
genealogy be manufactured, which it certainly is, why are we not to
suppose that his celestial genealogy is manufactured also, and that the
whole is fabulous? Can any man of serious reflection hazard his future
happiness upon the belief of a story naturally impossible, repugnant
to every idea of decency, and related by persons already detected of
falsehood? Is it not more safe that we stop ourselves at the plain,
pure, and unmixed belief of one God, which is deism, than that we
commit ourselves on an ocean of improbable, irrational, indecent, and
contradictory tales?

The first question, however, upon the books of the New Testament, as
upon those of the Old, is, Are they genuine? were they written by the
persons to whom they are ascribed? For it is upon this ground only that
the strange things related