2. Those who have brought forward with so much earnestness this popular rumour, have not, I conceive, paid due attention to the causes that might naturally have produced it, which were possibly these. There is in the Jewish prophets frequent mention of a great deliverer, and it is represented that he should appear in the time when the Jewish nation should be suffering under most grievous afflictions, and who should deliver them therefrom, Now was it not perfectly natural for the Jews, dispersed over Asia, to expect, and to circulate the notion of this deliverer when their own sufferings, inflicted by their enemies, were intolerable? If you will open Josephus, you will there read that about and after the time of the crucifixion of Jesus the Jews were dreadfully oppressed by the Romans, and were designedly driven to desperation, by Florus with the express purpose of exciting a rebellion, and thus prevent their accusing him of his crimes before the tribunal of Caesar. Was it at all unnatural therefore for the Jews thus oppressed, and reading in their sacred books, that they should be delivered from their oppressors by the appearance of their great deliverer when their sufferings were at the heighth; was it extraordinary that the Jews, writhing under the lash of tyrannical conquerors, and considering their then circumstances, to expect this deliverer at that time? And to conclude, does it, after all, appear that this rumour prevailed in the life time of Jesus, or not till about thirty years after his crucifixion? You add, "now this is a remarkable circumstance which distinguishes Jesus from the founders of all other religions." This was no doubt a slip of the memory, as so learned a man as Mr. Channing, no doubt knows that the Mahometans, who are the most numerous sect of religionists now in the world, affirm, that there was a very general expectation of their victorious prophet Mahomet, about the time of his birth grounded on tradition, and, as they say, originally on very many texts of the Old Testament, which texts, with divers more from the New Testament, are urged by the Mahometan Divines as to the same purpose: these texts, and their irrelevancy are collected and shown by Father Maracci in his first Dissertation prefixed to his edition of the Koran, printed at Padua 1698. Collins, in his answer to the Bishop of Litchfield, and Coventry, states this fact, and refers to "Addison's first state of Mahometanism" p. 35. "Life of Mahomet" before four treatises concerning the doctrine of the Mahometans, p. 9. Maracci's Appendix ad Prodromum primum.p. 36-46.