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A

LARGER DISCOURSE,

BY WAY OF

COMMENTARY,

ON

THAT REMARKABLE PART

OF

THE GOSPEL-HISTORY,

IN WHICH

JESUS IS REPRESENTED,

AS DRIVING THE BUYERS AND SELLERS OUT OF THE TEMPLE.

A

DISCOURSE

ON

CHRIST'S DRIVING THE BUYERS AND SELLERS OUT OF THE TEMPLE.

I PROPOSE, in this discourse, to take into consideration a very remarkable part of the Gospel-history; in which Jesus is supposed to have exercised an act of authority on some persons, whom the Jews permitted to carry on a certain traffic within the walls of the Temple.

I shall, FIRST, recite the several accounts, which the sacred historians have given of this transaction; and shall, THEN, hazard some

a The substance of this Discourse was delivered in a Sermon at Lincoln's-Inn, May 15, 1768.

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observations, which will, perhaps, be found to lessen, or to remove, the objections commonly made to it.

I begin with St. John's account of it, which is delivered in these words:

Ch. ii. 13-17.

"And the Jews passover was "at hand, and Jesus went up to "Jerusalem, and found in the "temple those that sold oxen, "and sheep, and doves, and the changers of money, sitting; "And when he had made a

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scourge of small cords, he

" drove them all out of the tem

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ple, and the sheep and the oxen; and and poured out the "changers money, and over"threw the tables; and said "unto them that sold doves, "Take these things hence; make "not my Father's house an house "of merchandize. And his dis

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ciples remembered that it was "written, The zeal of thine "house hath eaten me up."

Thus far the Evangelist, St. John: And the

order of the history shews, that this was done

at the first Passover which Jesus attended, after he had taken upon himself his prophetic office.

The other Evangelists relate a similar transaction, which had happened at the Passover, immediately preceding his crucifixion. Some have imagined that, on this last occasion, the same act was repeated by him, on two several days; but I see no sufficient ground for that supposition. St. Mark is easily reconciled with St. Matthew and St. Luke by only admitting, what is very usual in the sacred writers, some little neglect of method in the narration of one or other of those historians.

Mat. xxi. 12, 13.

Mark xi. 15-17.

"And Jesus went into the "temple of God, and cast out "all them that sold and bought "in the temple, and overthrew "the tables of the money-chan

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gers, and the seats of them "that sold doves, and said unto "them, it is written, My house "shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a "den of thieves."

"And they come to Jerusalem: "And Jesus went into the tem

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