In 1744 Mr. Chandler published an able tract entitled ‘The Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ re-examined, and their Testimony proved entirely consistent.’ In this piece he enumerates the various objections which have been from time to time advanced by sceptical writers against this narrative, and their attempts to place the real or apparent discrepancies between the accounts of the different evangelists in such a light as to discredit their testimony; and he shews much ability and acuteness in comparing and combining the different accounts, so as to make it appear that the variations on which the greatest stress is laid are capable of being reconciled;—that they are, in fact, only different parts of the same story, some of which have been more fully related by one evangelist, and others by another.
In the succeeding years of the ‘unnatural rebellion,’ as it is styled in many of the publications of the time, our author, like most of his brethren, exerted himself with zeal and activity in support of the existing order of things; and both from the pulpit and the press endeavoured to give a desirable direction to the expression of public feeling on the occasion, especially among the dissenting body. At this period, as well as in the former outbreak of 1715, the Dissenters universally came forward with vigour and effect to maintain the parliamentary throne. Their services, perhaps, were not acknowledged and requited to the extent which might reasonably have been expected;
