Under the general head of "undeniable mistakes" (for infidels must not be expected to fail in hardihood of assertion) we have, "The slaughter of the infants by Herod, if true, must, I thought, [how easy to think a doubt and find the thing doubted an undeniable mistake!) needs have been recorded by the same historian." (Ib. p. 139.) Why? Is it so very likely that a Jewish infidel historian should have recorded a particular act of local cruelty, which would have been the strongest testimony possible that Jesus was the Messiah? He must have given some reason for such a very peculiar and specific act of cruelty out of Herod's family, where he was cruel enough, and for which no conceivable reason could have existed, but some extraordinary testimony that the Christ was born in David's city. This would have been too much for Josephus's history and his heart. Indeed the omission of one local cruelty in a village is nothing extraordinary in an historian. The killing a few children was nothing to the hardheartedness of Josephus and Herod, if there was no particular reason. If there was, it was the last thing Josephus would mention. It was not his affair to give proofs that the Christ was come. But that the cruelties of Herod at this time referred to some pretensions of the coming Messiah, though the slaughter of the infants would have been inconveniently precise, is plain, from a passage of Josephus, which, though as obscure as a man avoiding the whole truth could make it, yet very distinctly shows these cruelties to refer to the hope of a miraculous king.
Further, the story in Matthew falls in perfectly with Herod's general character, both as to its cruelty and the jealousy of anything which affected his title and government, which habitually gave rise to this cruelty. The saying of Augustus is well known -that it was better to be Herod's hog than his children.
Further, this story of the slaughter of the infants, though confounded with other incidents, was believed by the heathen as a recognized fact in subsequent ages, as well as owned as such by those called fathers. Macrobius among the former, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and others, among the latter, are witnesses of this. It is the merest unfounded assumption that there is any mistake whatever here, and only proves the disposition of the one who makes, or rather renews, this old objection.