which of the two taxings he meant. In fayour of thi^ view, it must be remembered that St Luke was infinitely more likely to be correct about a matter of fact, than any uninspired historians, and that we haye no right to assume, where he differs from them, that they are correct, and he incorrect Moreover, it is a striking fact, that Justin Martyr, who lived in the second century, distinctly asserts three times that Christ was bom under Gyrenius. Wordsworth says that "the researches of Zumpt have enhanced the probability that Quirinius, who was governor of Cilicia, was also governor oi Syria at the time of the nativity."
3. — [All went to he taoeed.] Quesnel remarks, " Augustus imagines that he is busied in advancing the glory of his name, and the lustre of his reign. And yet his orders, by means of others more powerful and absolute than his, become subservient to the accomplishment of prophecies, of which he is altogether ignorant, — ^to the birth of a king whom he will never know, — and to the establishment of a monarchy, which will subject his and all others to itself. This is what happens in all ages, and men take no notice of it.'*
On this taxing being a fulfilment of Genesis xlix. 10, Watson observes, "Nothing can be more strikingly in proof, that the sceptre was departing from Judah, and the government of Herod was rather nominal than real. Julian the apostate objected to Christ's claim, that He was by virtue of this very enrolment bom one of CsBsar's subjects, not knowing how truly this illustrated the ancient prophecy of Jacob, that his birth and the departing of the sceptre frx)m Judah should be coincident"
4. — [Lineage.'] The word so translated is rendered in the only other places where it is used, "kindred," or "family." Acts lii. 25. Ephes. iii. 15.
7. — [Her fint'hom 8on!\ The words so translated are more em- phatic in the Greek language. They would be rendered more literally, " her Son, the first-born one."
[Wrapped Him in etoaddling clothes.'] On this expression, the Fathers, and most Romish writers, have built the idea that our Lord's birth was a childbirth without labour or pain. Such an idea is, to say the least an unprofitable conjecture. There is nothing mentioned here which a mother, in Mary's position, in an Eastern climate, might not have done for heiself without aid. There is no need of imagining and inventing miraculous cir- cumstances in our Lord's incarnation, beside those which are fully revealed.
[A manger.] The word so translated is rendered, " a stall," in
the only other place where it is used in the New Testament Luke
xiL 15. It admits of considerable doubt whether the common idea
, that our Lord was laid in the trough out of which cattle feed, is