The person charging this material is re- sponsible for its return to the library from which it was withdrawn on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN It V: vm Kf * * Bw jvb j| £K|S j;Hj liSr’ '• 1 aW it 81 ™ X, • Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/discoursesonpropOOdavi DISCOURSES PROPHECY, IN WHICH ARE CONSIDERED ITS STRUCTURE, USE, AND INSPIRATION; BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF TWELVE SERMONS PREACHED IN THE CHAPEL OF LINCOLN’S INN, IN THE LECTURE FOUNDED BY THE RIGHT REVEREND WILLIAM WARBURTON, BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER. BY JOHN DAVISON, B.D., LATE FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD. Ov yap v ". t e/aov o'vvecKevao’fjiei'oi elcr\u ol \6yoi, ovde avOpooTrivy «€- Ka?i\coTri(Tfxei'OL‘ a\\a tovtovs Aaj8i5 fxev eiJ/aAAej/, ’Ha'a'tas 8e eurjyye\t^TO, Zax«/)/as 5e eKrjpv £e, Mcov' / CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. 1. Of the previous probability of a Divine Revelation. 2. Of the plan and course of inquiry pursued in the following Discourses, p. 1 — 9. DISCOURSE I. On the connexion of Prophecy with the other evidences of revealed Religion, p. 10 — 21. 2 Peter i. 21. For Prophecy came not in old time by the will of Man ; but holy Men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. DISCOURSE II. (' On the contents of the Prophetic Volume as distinguished from its Predictions, p. 25 — 38. Jeremiah xxv. 4. ^ And the Lord hath sent unto you all His servants the Prophets , rising ~~ early , and sending them ; but ye have not hearkened , nor inclined your ear i/7 to hear . Essential principles of Religion and Morals enforced by the Prophets. — Intermediate character of the prophetic Revelation between that of the Law and the Gospel.— Personal office of Z> the Prophets. PART II. Same Subject continued, p. 39—49. The doctrines of Providence and Repentance fully stated in a 2 IV CONTENTS. the Prophetic Volume. — Importance of those Doctrines. — Ge- neral observations on the Moral contents of Prophecy. — Utility of an authoritative rule of duty. DISCOURSES III. IV. V. VI. Structure of Prophecy in its several Periods. DISCOURSE III. On the state of Prophecy — in its earliest age — from the Fall to the Patriarchal times, p. 50 — 69. Genesis xvii. 7. And I will establish My covenant between Me and thee , and thy seed after thee , in their generations , for an everlasting covenant , to be a God unto thee , and to thy seed after thee . Objects of it, at the Fall ; after the Deluge ; in the Patri- archal Age. PART II. State of Prophecy in the Patriarchal Age more distinctly con- sidered. — Twofold promise to Abraham. — Partition of the sub- jects of Prophecy connected therewith. — Prophecy of Jacob. — Measure of illumination afforded to the Patriarchal Age. — Ana- logy in the use of Patriarchal and later Prophecy. — Difference between them. — Integrity of the Mosaic Records, p. 70 — 82. DISCOURSE IV. State of Prophecy contemporary with the promulgation of the Mosaic Law. Deuteronomy xviii. 15. The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee , of thy brethren , like unto me ; unto him ye shall hearken. Cessation of Prophecy from the Patriarchal Age to Moses. — A true idea of the Mosaic Law necessary to the elucidation of the state of Prophecy concurrent with it. — Institution of that Law. — Its genius. — Its Sanctions, temporal only. — Its Types, CONTENTS. v and whether understood in their mystical sense, when they were first appointed. — Moral use of them. — Prophecy of Balaam. — That of Moses concerning a future Prophet like to himself. — No clear or copious Prophecy concerning the Gospel given at this period. — The judgment of Michaelis concerning the prin- ciple of the Mosaic Law inadmissible, p, 83 — 118. PART II. Prophecy on the temporal subject concurrent with the pro- mulgation of the Law. — True relation between the entire state of Prophecy and the Law, deduced. — Remarks upon that rela- tion, p. 119 — 126. DISCOURSE Y. State of Prophecy from Samuel to Malachi. Acts iii. 24. Yea, and all the Prophets from Samuel , and those that follow after , as many as have spoken , have likewise foretold of these days. Cessation of Prophecy from Moses to Samuel. — Continuity of it from Samuel to Malachi : this its One Principal Age : various subjects of it.— Particular mission of Samuel. — His regulation of the commonwealth of Israel. — Prediction concerning David, p. 127—137. PART II. State of Prophecy in the reigns of David and Solomon. Enlarged revelation of it. — The Temporal and the Evangelical Prophecy united. — -Double sense vindicated. — David the pro- mulger of the chief Prophecies concerning Christ and the Gos- pel, in this age. — Prophetic Psalms. — Integrity of Prophecy. — Duration of the temporal kingdom in the family of David.— Instability of the reigning families in Samaria. — Termination of the temporal kingdom in the reign of Coniah. — Conspicuous Prophecy announcing it. — That kingdom never restored. — Con- siderations on the history of the Maccabees. — Temple of Solo- mon. — State of Prophecy respecting it. — One definite use of Prophecy to foreshew the suspension, or abolition, of the par- ticular ordinances of the first Covenant. — Accomplishment of Jacob’s prophecy concerning the pre-eminence of the tribe of Judah, p. 138 — 167. VI CONTENTS, DISCOURSE VI. State of Prophecy from the reign of Solomon to its final cessation, p. 168 — 255. Amos iii. 7. Surely , the Lord God will do nothing , hut He revealeth His secret unto Ilis servants the 'prophets. PART I. Temporal prophecy relating to the Hebrew people, from the time of Solomon to the restoration from Babylon. — Copiousness of it. — Division of the kingdom foreshewn. — Jeroboam’s idol- atry.— Divided custody and evidence of the older prophetic records. — The respective fortunes of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah foreshewn. — Extent and connexion of Isaiah’s pro- phecies on the temporal subject, p. 168 — 193. PART II. Prophecy concerning Christianity within the same period, viz., from the time of Solomon to the restoration from Babylon. — Intermission of such prophecy for some ages. — Revival of it traced in the books of the Prophetic Canon. — Amos, Hosea, Isaiah. — This revival subsequent to the mission of Elijah and Elisha. — Christian prophecy diffused through the Prophetic Canon. — Whether any of the prophetic books are entirely devoid of Christian prediction ? — Greatest increase of the pro- phetic information concerning the Gospel, when granted ? — Adaptation of it, p. 194 — 209. PART III. Prophecy on the Pagan subjects within that period. — Its moral uses, in demonstrating the providence of God, and the exclusive truth of His first revelation, and in foreshowing the sera of Christianity, p. 210 — 221. PART IV. Last age of ancient Prophecy, from the Captivity to its final Cessation. — Completion of former prophecy. — Second Temple. — Concluding communications of the prophetic oracles. — Their Christian import vindicated and explained. — Recapitulation, p. 222—255. CONTENTS. vii DISCOURSE VXL Of tlie Divine foreknowledge, and its union with the liberty of human action, p. 256 — 273. Isaiah xlvi. 10. Declaring the end from the beginning , and from ancient times the things that are not done , saying, Mg counsel shall stand , and I loill fulfil all My pleasure. DISCOURSES VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. On the Inspiration of Prophecy. DISCOURSE VIII. Criterion of Prophetic Inspiration. — Proof of it in the Predictions concerning Christianity, p. 274 — 295. Isaiah lx. 3. And the Gentiles shall come to Thy lights and kings to the brightness of Thy rising. DISCOURSE IX. Predictions concerning the Jewish people, p. 296 — 311. Deutehonomy xxviii. 59. Then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful , and the plagues of thy seedy even great plagues } and of long continuancey and sore sicknesses , and of long continuance . DISCOURSE X. Predictions concerning the great Apostasy, p. 312 — 331. Revelations xix. 10. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of Prophecy. CONTENTS. viii DISCOURSE XI. Predictions on the subject of Pagan kingdoms; Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre, and Egypt, p. 332 — 347. Isaiah xiii. 19, 20. And Babylon , the glory of kingdoms, the oeauty of the Chaldees' excel- lency , shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited , neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to genera- tion ; neither shall the Arabian 'pitch tent there ; neither shall the shep- herds make their fold there . DISCOURSE XII. Predictions concerning the descendants of Ishmael, and the succession of the four ancient Empires, p. 348 — 364. Daniel ii. 21, 22. And He changeth the times and the seasons: He removeth kings and setteth up kings; He giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding. He revealeth the deep and secret things: He knoweth what is in the darkness , and the light dwelleth with Him. INTRODUCTION, I. Of the previous Probability of a Divine Revelation. II. Of the Plan and Contents of the following Discourses. NTECEDENTLY to a consideration of the proper Evidences of Revealed Religion, it cannot be said with any show of reason, that it is a thing improbable in itself that a divine Revelation should be made. Nothing that we know of the Attributes of God, or of His Moral Govern- ment; nothing that we know of the Nature and Condition of Man, would make it appear unfit for God to bestow upon man an immediate communication of His Will. On the contrary, the most just and rational notions we can frame of the providential care of the Deity would lead us to consider it as entirely suitable to His Attributes and His Designs, that He should at times impart to His reasonable creatures, whose whole existence and destiny are dependent upon Him, supplies of knowledge and direction. And on the side of Man, it is too clear, on a sober review of his condition, that he is not so complete in his own natural resources as to be placed above the Benefit, or even the Need, of such supervening assistance. And so it has been, that the common Belief of the world has borne witness to the intrinsic Probability of a Revelation. Supposed Revelations, or Traditions of them, there always have been ; and often they have been such, as, having nothing of merit or excellence in their matter, nor any considerable inducement of evidence to recommend them, have yet obtained credit, and been received, solely, B 2 INTRODUCTION. it should seem, on this ground, of the great reason and likelihood which men have owned in the first supposal of a Revelation. And as the principle of Religion itself is proved to be natural to man, and truly conformable to his constitution and character, by the fact of his embracing it under forms exceedingly perverted ; so the gift of a Reve- lation is shewn to be highly probable, and adapted to his expectation and sense of things, by his reception of fictitious systems of it, which in many cases have had in them every thing to create a positive disbelief, excepting the one pre- sumption, which the judgment and feeling of Nature still cling to, that the Deity can and will somewhere reveal Himself to His creatures : a propensity of belief, which can be referred only to one or both of these two causes, — the absolute likelihood which men have seen in the hope of a Revelation, or the traditionary impressions of One actually given; a propensity, therefore, which attests either the Probability or the Pact. It is true, a different view of the matter has been at- tempted to be given. It has been contended, that a Revelation is improbable, because unnecessary; and un- necessary, because Natural Religion can do all that is wanted in the relation between God and man. But this notion, besides that it is opposed to the general Sense and Belief of Mankind, which Sense and Belief I have already adverted to ; and cannot be reconciled with the History of the World, which has exhibited the hopes and principles of Natural Religion, in its best day, labour- ing and crying aloud for aid to their support ; is, further, alleged ineffectually to the question. Por were it ever so true, that man could dispense with a revelation, as not strictly necessary to him, (which is only supposed, not conceded,) yet it may be expedient for his use, and highly beneficial to him ; and where is the improbability in sup- posing that God should improve, by confirming, or ex- tending in any degree, the discoveries which man may be able to make of the Nature and the Will of God, and of INTRODUCTION. 3 liis own Hopes and Duties under the divine Government? This is no more than to think that God may open the doors of heaven for a further communication with His rational creatures, to give them more light ; and that the State of Man may, in some important respects affecting his Moral Information, and consequently his Duties and his Happiness, he progressive : neither of them very hard or revolting suppositions. And if, in some future period of his existence, it be reasonable to think, as it plainly is, from the confessed disproportion between his present at- tainments and his capacities, that he may come to a more enlarged knowledge, both of God and himself, than he can now attain to; and come to this by an act of the divine favour, making the adequate change in his condition; there is the like reason to think that he may now begin to receive any intermediate accessions to his knowledge in the same way. It appears, therefore, that neither the sense of his natural ignorance and deficiency in himself, which are seen and felt to be great, nor his future pros- pects, so far as he can judge of them, can have any other effect than to favour the hope of some present interposi- tion of God for his better direction. If this statement be a fair one, the cause of Revealed Religion gains so much by it, as to stand clear of any previous imputation lying against it under the idea of all Revelation being unreasonable or unlikely. It follows, that its positive Evidences will have their force entire : whatever that force may be, it is not diminished or en- countered by any adverse objection striking at their root. Those Evidences are to be canvassed and applied; but, such as they are, their application is direct to the great question at issue. And it is material to bear in mind that they do apply in this manner. For if the proof of Religion had to overcome an improbability on the first entrance into the question, as well as to vindicate the par- ticular system of Revelation which rests upon it, no doubt a greater body of evidence, a more commanding proof, might be necessary to satisfy both those requisitions, than b 2 4 INTRODUCTION. is necessary for one of them alone. Whereas the claims of Revealed Religion, in respect of its Evidence, must be understood to stand on neutral ground, or rather to come before us with the presumption in their favour — a pre- sumption arising from the reasonableness of expecting a Revelation to be given : although, in point of fact, they are abundantly sufficient to command a reasonable assent, even without that previous concession. It will be said, The presumption operates equally in favour of all revelation, whether genuine or false . It can- not be otherwise ; for it is in the nature of things, that presumptions founded on a general view of what is likely to take place, shall be indifferent to, and equally serve, the true, and the pretended, instance of the event. But here comes in the use of the proper evidence, to ascertain directly the origin of the professed revelation, and dis- criminate, by decisive signatures, the True from the Ealse. And I think it may be concluded from the whole tenour of the attestation which God has given to that which we believe to be His revealed Truth, that the in- tention of the evidence with which He has surrounded it, is not so much to prove it against the improbability of any revelation at all, which improbability we have seen to be small or none, as to vindicate it from a very different kind of thing, the hazard of a mistake and confusion of its cha- racter, under the claims and pretences which lie in the way from the spurious religions set up in the world. With respect to the sufficiency of Natural Religion, as the topic is urged by those who would discredit the ex- pediency, or the necessity, of Revealed, we must take into the account that it is a paradox of modern invention, and the boast of it comes with an ill grace, and under great suspicions, so late in the day of trial. That the principles of Natural Religion have come to be so far understood and admitted as they are, may fairly be taken for one of the effects of the Gospel Revelation ; a proof of its actual in- fluence, on Opinions at least, instead of any disproof of its necessity, or use. It were easy to establish this point. INTRODUCTION. to the fullest conviction, by a comparison of the different success which has attended the efforts of human reason in working out the scheme of Religion, with or without the aid of those decisive notices which the introduction of the Gospel has supplied. For it is not to be imagined that men fail to profit by the light that has been shed upon them, though they have not always the integrity to own the source from which it comes; or may turn their back upon it, whilst it fills the atmosphere around them ; no, not even if in a higher strain of malice, they address the great luminary, only, as the apostate Spirit once did, “ to tell it how they hate its beams.” The fact is not to be denied; the Religion of Nature has had the opportunity of rekindling her faded taper by the Gospel light, whether furtively or unconsciously taken. Let her not dissemble the obligation and the conveyance, and make a boast of the splendour, as though it were originally her own, or had always in her hands been sufficient for the illumina- tion of the World. At the same time it ought to be understood, that when we venture to judge beforehand, by views of our own, con- cerning the probable conduct of the Deity in any instance, and to say what He may be expected to do, or not to do, as in the point of giving a Revelation, it is a question we are not equal to, for any very positive solution of it. Sobriety, and diffidence in the determination of our judg- ment, will here equally become the believer and the un- believer. For where the justice and the righteousness of His administration are not interested, all our first ideas of it must be few and uncertain. When, therefore, I have pressed the opinion, that it is consistent with reason to look for a divine Revelation, I mean it is consistent with the best reason we can discern, with the obvious appearances of Man’s condition, and the acknowledged ideas we hold of the Providence and Moral Government of God. But in each of these respects enough may be seen to convince us, that the opposite opinion, which objects to Revelation as a thing strange and incredible, is the wrong and untenable 6 INTRODUCTION. assumption. And herein is contained the view which I have wished to secure to the first consideration of Revealed Religion, viz., that its Evidences offer themselves to us unincumbered by any prejudice or suspicion, attaching to the bare idea of such a gift from God. If they are valid and legitimate Evidences, such as will bear the test in their proper character, they are adduced in an unexcep- tionable cause, and to a great end ; that end being to cement, or restore, by the medium of a well-authenticated religion, the union between man and his Creator — a pur- pose of such a kind, that I should place the desire and the hope of finding it had been accomplished, in other words, of finding Revealed Religion to be true, among the first elements of moral wisdom and virtue; though we must take another rule, and a more cool, dispassionate judgment along with us, when our object is to examine whether it has been. The following Discourses treat of one branch of the Evidences of Revelation, the argument of Prophecy. Some investigation is offered of the state of this argument, which forms what may be considered the more complex subject of the Evidences of Religion; belonging at once to the Jewish and the Christian Revelations; more than any other part of the proof, penetrating both ; and opening a wide field of discussion in various directions. Accordingly it has drawn to itself more of speculation and learned research, than the other topics which enter into the same comprehensive subject; not merely as to the interpretation of particular texts or portions of Pro- phecy; but as to the Use and Intent of the whole, the Principles by which it is to be interpreted, and the Mode in which it is to be applied. The field of inquiry has been rich in its produce, like “ one which God had blessed •” for the produce has proved it was first sown and prepared by Him, and that He had " cast the good seed into the ground though the inferior cultivators have not always agreed well together; and some few of them, with too INTRODUCTION. 7 forward a zeal, have put in the sickle before the grain was ripe, and so far, by their unskilful husbandry, have dis- credited the harvest. But the result upon the whole has been, that their learned and successful labours have ga- thered in the stores, and made the interpretation and the evidence of Prophecy, in most of its material subjects, sufficiently accessible to those who are intent on such in - formation; and if much yet remains to be done in the same province of argument, enough has been done to vindicate most amply by this medium of proof the Truth of Revelation. What I have endeavoured to do has been to investigate the mixt argument of Prophecy, and to state what it is, as derived from its own records, and submitted to be ex- amined. In this general Inquiry, Two objects have been kept chiefly in view: the One, to consider the State of Prophecy in the several Periods of its dispensation; the Other, to reduce to some definite form the proof of its Inspiration and divine Prescience. The Pirst object has led me to trace the history of prophecy, as it lies at large in the Scripture volume, and thence to propose some illustration of its method and order, and also of its use and design, in respect of the seasons at which it was given. The Second has led me to state in a simple, and, I hope, unexceptionable form, what kind of Predictions will answer to the character of divinely-inspired Prophecies, and con- sequently will possess a decisive and independent evidence of their Inspiration; thence to suggest some means of judging of the argumentative evidence of different parts of Prophecy; and to vindicate its perfect authority by ex- amples of its predictions canvassed and examined: the demonstration of its Prescience being the true and ap- propriate Test of its divine origin. But besides its Prescience, there are other notices and characters of the like origin, dispersed throughout its records, and these not the less satisfactory in being less formal and prominent. Some of these internal notices I have endeavoured to illustrate and improve ; and the in- 8 INTRODUCTION. quirer, who will be at the pains of making the study for himself, with any degree of patience and connected atten- tion, will easily add many observations to the same effect. The method which I have followed may be thus stated : The First of these Discourses is employed in treating of the Christian Evidences in general, and the Connexion of Prophecy with the rest. The Second, in considering the Moral Contents of the Prophetic Volume, as distinguished from its Predictions. In the Four next I have entered into the Structure of Prophecy, and the Course of its Dispensation. In the Six last, its Inspiration and divine Prescience are examined. It may be right to premise here, as I have again stated when I come to that part of my inquiry, that, in the Four Discourses allotted to the Structure of Prophecy, the sub- ject is treated on the assumption of the general authority of the Prophetic Revelation being granted. For the question there to be discussed is this : — Supposing Pro- phecy to have been given, what was its use and intent? what the measure and kind of illumination which it af- forded ? The question is one for believers, wishing to see into the order and frame of that Revelation, of the truth of which they are already satisfied. And what is Pro- phecy, but a main integral branch of Revelation, as well as an evidence of it ? — to be examined therefore in both of these lights. In tracing, however, the tenour of the pro- phetic volume, I have adduced by the way some proofs tending to enforce its authority and inspiration, when, in the survey of its structure, materials for that kind of argument occurred. The assumption , which I have men- tioned, of course is relinquished, when Prophecy comes to be examined by its proper test, which is done in the Six last of these Sermons. It has fallen within my purpose to take notice of the congruity and adaptation of Prophecy in its parts, either in INTRODUCTION. 9 relation to each other, or to the seasons of its progressive developement. I hope the reflections brought forward on this head, are made in the spirit of a sober reason, justified in their ground of evidence, and material in their use. If they fail of being so, I wish them retracted. For what is merely ingenious or subtle in the exposition of Prophecy has little chance of being useful or true. Some parts of it demand a sound erudition, and a sounder intellect, to fix their sense; some an accurate historical knowledge, to elucidate their fulfilment; and who can doubt but that the plan of it, if from God, is ordered with such a perfect wisdom, as to exercise, and commend itself to, our highest „ reason? But nothing which in the last result wears the appearance of intricate or minute speculation, can have much to do with the principles, or the use, of the Scripture Oracles, which, if they are any thing, are the wisdom of God given for the faith and moral instruction of man. — Within these ideas I have wished to confine the observa- tions which I had to offer on the scheme and adaptation of Prophecy in its several parts. These Discourses, such as they are, are sent forth before I have had the leisure I could wish to prepare them for publication ; but they are published at the earliest season when I could withdraw myself from the pressure and exigency of other duties, to give them some enlargement and revision. In plan and substance, and in the general draught of their composition, they are such as they were when preached, with the extension of particular topics which belonged to my argument, but which I wanted the skill to bring within the compass of single Sermons, when they had to be orally delivered. One important division of the Inquiry is still wholly wanting ; that is, a View of the Prophecies of the New Testament. My appointed Course of Lectures was completed before I could embrace this branch of my subject, and the defect remains un- redeemed in the present publication. DISCOURSE I. ON THE CONNEXION OF PROPHECY WITH THE OTHER EVIDENCES OF REVEALED RELIGION. 2 Peter i. 21. For Fropliecy came not in old time by the Will of Man : but Holy Men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost . TT1HE Christian Religion appeals to Prophecy as one of its evidences. If we would do justice to the appeal, we must examine tlie volume of Prophecy in this light, to ascertain how far it does, in fact, establish or confirm the truth and divine origin of the Religion which professes to ground itself upon it. But Prophecy is pledged to attest the J ewish, as well as the Christian Revelation; being offered as an evidence common to both. The whole scope of it must therefore be taken to extend to the proof and vindication of the one and the other. But since the Jewish Revelation is not only connected with the Christian, but introductory and subservient to it ; for such is the import which the Chris- tian takes upon itself to assign to the other ; it will be seen that whatever evidence establishes the truth and authority of the prior Revelation, goes, by just inference, to a verification of the Christian. In this view, though Prophecy may confine itself, as it does in many of its sub- jects and immediate uses, to the support of the elder Religion ; yet the apparent economy of God, embracing the two dispensations, will constrain us to extend the truth and authority of the one to the defence of the other; the connexion of their evidence being a consequence of Providence an Evidence common fyc. 11 the connexion of their design. And by such a kind of estimate, applied to the prophetic records, not only “ all the Prophets,” but all their Prophecies, will be found, according to the conviction they may afford of their in- spired and authentic character, to uphold, and recom- mend to our assent and reasonable acceptance, that which is offered to us as the last and best of God's dispensa- tions, the Religion of Christ. To this end, in evidence of the truth and divine origin of the two Revelations, but in particular of the Christian, which is our present concern in the world, and which, if true, demands something more than an inert belief, I wish to direct the substance of my inquiry in the following dis- courses, in which I shall endeavour to open and enforce some of the illustrations and proofs of the inspired authority of Scripture Prophecy. What I shall attempt to do, in pursuit of this end, will be reduced under three heads, in giving some account, First , Of the Structure, and the Contents, of Prophecy. Secondly , Of its Use and Design in reference to the seve- ral periods in which it was given. Thirdly , Of the Proofs which it bears of a distinct Inspiration, manifested in the accomplishment of its Predictions. It may be observed, however, that the view which I propose to take of it under the Two First of these heads, will be such as to combine with the argument of the Last of them. For Prophecy, in its Structure, and in its Use and Design, if I am able to represent it truly in these respects, contains much to exercise our attention. The fulfilment of its predictions, no doubt, is the one decisive test of its Inspiration. To this test it must be brought ; and there the proof, if it hold good, is simple and direct. But yet, upon the use of so much reflection as so great a question requires, and to persons who will take the pains of putting together the notices which there are of a singu- lar wisdom pervading the volume of Prophecy, that wisdom seen, as well in its matter, as in its adaptation to the sup- posed course of the divine Economy, there is a satisfaction 12 Providence an Evidence common to to be bad of no small value ; a satisfaction wliicb is of the nature of a positive evidence, and which, though it will vary in its degree to different minds, according to their habits or their capacity of judging of things in this way, yet can be inconsiderable to none. If therefore I can con- tribute to this kind of conviction by some leading ideas, taken from a survey of Prophecy, they will tend, with the other proof, to one and the same result. Indications of design, of fitness, and wisdom, as well as of internal truth, will coalesce with the evidence of predictions fulfilled. Both will support the conclusion sought to be established, the Inspiration of Prophecy, or in the words of Scripture, that “ Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; but Holy men of God spake as they w r ere moved by the Holy Ghost.” — The line of investigation thus described, it remains for me to pursue it. But I must be permitted to clear my way for that pur- pose by some preliminary observations on one material point, the general state of the Christian Evidences. For Prophecy is but a single branch of them. We must look at them in a collective view, thereby to apprehend the connexion in which that one stands with the rest, and form a more discriminating judgment of the value, and the application to be made, of the results we may obtain from our particular inquiry. To these preliminary obser- vations I shall devote the remainder of my present dis- course. It is possible that in treating of this, and perhaps some other parts of my subject, I shall pass into details of argu- ment which may seem to convey less of the instruction, proper to a Christian discourse, than might be desired by those of my audience who have made a progress in their religion beyond the scope of such considerations. To men already satisfied of the truth, and the importance of the Gospel, few things are less acceptable than to be recalled from the career of their past conviction, to take up again the original proofs of their faith, and resume the principles 13 other Evidences of the Christian Religion . of an inquiry which they have had happily answered in the effect of a well- persuaded reason and a regulated life. To such persons the debate with Scepticism is a tedious and worn-out speculation. Their life has outrun the question. They enjoy what we are asking them to believe. But I know not how I should acquit myself of the duty of this Lecture, or to the intentions of the distinguished Founder of it, if I declined any kind of discussion likely to enforce a more correct estimate of the real extent of the whole evidences of our Religion, or of that one of them which we have more immediately before us. His designs would rather point to a track of discussion which the ordinary tenour of theological discourse would exclude. With some regard, therefore, to a special duty so understood, I shall proceed with what I have to offer upon the connected state of the Christian Evidences. Whenever the truth of Christianity is examined, there is a certain body of evidence, which taken together consti- tutes the proper and adequate answer to that inquiry; which evidence, therefore, ought not to be divided, so long as the inquiry is supposed to be still open. If it be asked, what are the constituent parts of this body of evidence, they include, among other topics, the following most com- monly insisted on : — the Miracles of our Saviour and His Apostles ; the series of Prophecy ; the extraordinary per- fection and sanctity of His Moral Doctrine ; His own Character, as expressed in His Life upon earth ; the rapid and triumphant Propagation of His Religion under the special circumstances of that event ; the singular adaptation of the Religion itself to the nature and condition of man, both in its form and in its essential provisions. These topics, prominent as they are when separately taken, compose only one subject of connected and harmo- nizing proof. However different the ground and principle of reason in each of them may be, the effect of them is to be united, and it bears upon one and the same point in combining to make up that moral evidence by which it 14 On the Connexion of Prophecy with the has pleased the Almighty to ascertain His last revelation to us. And as each of these arguments, supposing the matter of them to be truly alleged, possesses some force in concluding upon the question at issue ; so it may be observed of them, which indeed is only a modification of the same remark, that they are all of a kind which it comes within the power of our common reason to apprehend; and they are satisfactory, because they are so intelligible, and answer entirely to the natural sense and judgment of our minds, independently of the accidents of previous study, or of any peculiar modes of thinking. Agreeably to the design of the religion itself, they carry with them an universality of application. Prophecy, verified in the accomplishment of its predictions, attests the authentic inspiration by which it was given. Miracles, public une- quivocal miracles exhibited, bring home to the very senses of men the intervention of a divine power; competently witnessed and recorded, they transmit the conviction from age to age. Unexampled and perfect moral purity of doc- trine seems to be, in fact, what it pretends to be, an ema- nation from the source of all Rectitude and Holiness. The life and character of the Founder of Christianity have «/ no prototype in the examples of human virtue. The fitness of His Religion, in every part of it, to the exigencies of the Being to whom it is tendered, gives to it a com- pendious practical authority, which almost supersedes the labour of deduction, by an intimacy of use and relation, identifying the very nature of man in his greatest needs, his best hopes, and his most rational desires, with the resources of the dispensation tendered to his acceptance. Such are the force and tenour of the evidences of Chris- tianity, if, as I have said, the matter of them be truly alleged ; that is, if we have well-attested miracles and pro- phecies, and the other arguments have a ground in fact. The defenders of Revelation have vindicated these several arguments ; and the obvious state of the case, after it has been examined, compels us, on the lowest assumption, to allow a considerable weight to each. But I speak now of 15 other Evidences of the Christian Religion. the arguments in their kind* as distinguished from their degree. I wish to insist upon their great simplicity and reasonableness; which are such, that if any person of a candid mind were to lay down beforehand what would be the most prevailing inducements to his belief of a Revela- tion, he could not, I think, easily mention any other in kind than such as we find we possess. The actual various attestations of Christianity, external and internal; its august apparatus of prophecies and miracles ; the excel- lence of its constitution, in its laws, doctrines, and sanc- tions; its power in subduing the laboured opposition of the world ; with the glory of its Founder, illuminating His Religion by the signs of a divine presence in His own person ; these furnish to us whatever our most deliberate judgment could have suggested, had it been permitted to us to choose the grounds of our belief. It now appeals to that judgment, with an integrity of claim which we shall seek in vain to resist, without invalidating the most certain principles of all our knowledge. This coincidence of the religion, in its evidences, with the natural frame of our reason and principles of judg- ment, is worthy of notice, as contrasted with the nature of some of its doctrines, which do not so coincide. Some of its doctrines there are which we could not have anticipated, before they were revealed ; and now that they are re- vealed, we cannot say they are such as come within the command and grasp of our faculties. They are of the nature of discoveries, and they are made from a system of things, of which an infinite Being is the author ; and our concern in it is, we know not how great ; but it must be all which He may choose to appoint ; and an implicit be- lief may be the only possible, or the most expedient, way of access to a part of the present knowledge which our interest in it requires : whereas hereafter our minds may be adapted to another comprehension of the truths so proposed. But in the mean time the Revelation itself is authenti- cated to us by modes of reason in which we have a direct 16 On the Connexion of Prophecy with the satisfaction. The evidence of it meets precisely the faculty of judging which we already have. It rests on media of belief to which no valid -c-r intelligible exception can be made, as unfit in their kind, or inadequate in their prin- ciple, to the ends of a rational conviction. And the differ- ence here adverted to, between the proof of Revelation and the doctrines of it, that the one is perfectly level to our reason, and the other, in some particulars, is above it, is no more than agrees with the following reflexion : That a proof would not be such to a mind which could not dis- tinctly apprehend and judge of it ; and, therefore, to bring men to the first knowledge of a revelation, they must be addressed on the footing and principles of their nature : but as disciples and converts to live by the religion, it is in course, and altogether in reason, that they accept the revelation itself as an authority for all it contains. They must learn first, by their present power of judgment, to see the religion to be from God ; but under the conviction so admitted, the prerogative of faith will follow. The extent and comprehensiveness of the whole proof of Christianity being thus concisely stated ; and also the simplicity and reasonableness of it ; I would next observe, that in treating of any single branch of the Gospel evi- dences, the result of such separate argument must always be taken with a reference to the other proof in reserve; and if the attention is engaged to a limited view of the subject for a time, the greater compass of it must not be forgotten, when we come in the end to apply the inference of our divided inquiry. Otherwise our notions, as to the real force of the evidence, must be erroneous, or incom- plete ; erroneous, if, upon a part of the proof, we conclude against the whole ; incomplete, if we conclude without it. Eor though some kind of proof be incapable of accession by an extended cumulative reason, the proof of religion is not of that nature, but one which gathers light and strength by the concentrated force of all its moral evidence. The whole of it ; therefore; must be laid together; and the other Evidences of the Christian Religion. 17 aggregate of the concurrent proofs will close the investi- gation. In making this point a matter of distinct remark, and laying some stress upon it; viz., that the vindication of our Faith rests upon an accumulated and concurrent evi- dence ; I am far from supposing that any person literally assumes the fact to be otherwise; or that in canvassing any separate portion of the proofs and reasons of it, he ever states to himself, in the way of a positive proposition, that the inference he derives from that portion of them is all that can be advanced in behalf of the religion. But yet something of this kind of misapprehension does seem frequently to make its way into the examination of this great question, as a feeling at least, and an implied reason at the bottom, for expecting a more complete satisfaction than the single topic in hand may be capable of afford- ing. The mistaken feeling, where it is perfectly sincere, is not hard to be accounted for. For the separation of the essential branches of a combined subject is too apt to limit our conception of the whole nature of it, for the moment, to the train of thought which is present before us ; espe- cially where a great interest hangs in the scale, and either our wishes or our fears intervene to agitate the judgment. The separation made seems to have the effect of staking the fortune and issue of the whole cause upon the selected ground of argument, narrowing the subject down to the reduced compass within which we are busied in viewing it, and transferring the imperfection of our details of thought to the substance of more enlarged truth. And it may be, that it is to some such mistake of mind as I have here been describing, rather than to a plain want of candour and integrity, in treating the evidences of religion, that we ought to ascribe some of the most un- warranted and inconsequent insinuations against it, drawn by sceptical writers from the inconclusiveness or defect, as it appears to them, of single and detached arguments for it. Take the argument from Prophecy, for instance. Let c 18 On the Connexion of Prophecy with the it be granted that there are parts of prophecy, of which we cannot determine how they ought to be applied ; that there are others partially obscure, as not offering any very obvious or explicit illustration of the characters and things to which we apply them; or that sometimes, where the sense of the prophecy is clear, yet the proof of a divine prescience in it is only precarious. When we have sup- posed these, or similar defects, attaching to some or many of the various contents of the prophetic writings, what shall we conclude upon it ? Does it follow that prophecy is not a valid and substantial argument? Shall its ob- scurity, in whatever degree it may exist in some instances, refute the force of others which want nothing in point of perspicuity or exact application ? Or, because we do not perfectly see how all the evidence of prophecy is to be un- folded, shall we be induced to think we have not much actually given ? Or, to go one step further, suppose the entire argument from Prophecy were only of a doubtful kind, amounting to no more than a low degree of probability; which I put merely as a supposition for the moment : will Sceptical reasoners contend that our minds should be made up, upon that supposed deficiency in a single branch of the argument, to the exclusion or prejudice of all that is yet behind ; it may be most ample evidence, sufficient, in the combined view, to a perfect conviction ? Yet many of the most confident exceptions which have been taken to the validity of the evidence of religion, have nothing better to support them than this narrow principle, that some points in this or that species of evidence are not well ascertained, or that one entire ground of proof taken by itself does not reach the certainty of a complete moral demonstration: a principle of admirable use to fortify error, and furnish an excuse to any latitude of unbelief. Had their reasoning followed the truer principle which I have suggested, of considering the inference obtained upon distinct topics of the evidence, as an article and in- gredient, which it is, in an aggregate of reason, it is quite 19 oilier Evidences of the Christian Religion . certain tliat their writings must have taken another shape, and been very different from what they are. Perhaps the impression on their own belief might have been different also. But, at the least, they ought to have apprised their readers, which they have omitted to do, that no just con- clusion could ever be drawn against the truth of Revealed Religion, till it had been looked at from a point of view embracing the full extent of its diversified matter of argument. It is in the way of the same vicious manner of reasoning to represent any insufficiency of the proof, in its several branches, as so much objection; to manage the inquiry so as to make it appear that if the divided arguments be in- conclusive one by one, we have a series of exceptions to the truth of religion, instead of a train of favourable pre- sumptions, growing stronger at every step. The disciple of Scepticism is taught that he cannot fully rely on this or that motive of belief, that each of them is insecure, and the conclusion is put upon him that they ought to be dis- carded one after another, instead of being connected and combined. It is to guard against the insinuation of this error, inci- dental more or less to divided inquiry, that I have touched upon it in the opening of the following Discourses, which confine me to a single branch of the Christian Evidences. The error will soon be obviated, if there be no bad faith to support it. Candid minds will dismiss it. But whether the error come or go, it would be a waste of high words to call it an unphilosophical one, or to say of it, that it does no credit to the pretensions of those who have been in- debted to it for much of the importance of their attempts upon the truth of Christianity. It is neither more nor less than a dissimulation of the evidence existing : a dis- paragement of its value by suppression; a plea for in- fidelity, inconsistent with the ordinary rules agreed to and established for the examination of truth. And on this account, unless the advocates of unbelief will deal with the question in another manner than it has been their system c 2 20 On the Connexion of Prophecy with the and practice to do, they will not give us leave to think they are even capable of stating it. But in conformity with the partial view which such a mistake implies, the great writers on that side have seldom made any considerable efforts, except upon single heads of the argument. Sometimes it has been a treatise a against the proof from Miracles; sometimes against that from Prophecy b ; sometimes the honour of the Gospel Morals has been assailed, as if they had been rivalled by the wisdom of heathen and uninspired Sages; and so on. Now allowing that the remainder of the proof in favour of the Gospel Revelation, upon each of these points, after they have been fairly stated and examined, is only such a probability as any man may choose to admit ; for that there is some evidence from each of them in its favour, and not the smallest measure of disproof or actual ob- jection, I take upon me to assert in behalf of every un- prejudiced inquirer; when these several inducements to one and the same conclusion of belief are drawn into each other, the joint amount of them, derived as they are from such different sources, is a collection of moral proof which we cannot properly describe as being less than that of a cogent and conclusive demonstration. Before an audience, many of whom are highly exercised in the application of their minds to a complex evidence, and to the decision of great interests depending upon it, where nothing but a complete conviction will satisfy, I speak with submission to their judgment, but with no fear of that judgment making against me, when I appeal to them, whether they have not had occasion to know how conviction is improved by converging reasons, and the more so as those reasons arise from considerations dif- fering in kind ; how the succession of new matter of proof, even light in itself, reduces any supposed uncertainty left in the earlier stage of the inquiry; how the contingency of error is gradually excluded by checks upon the first conclusion, and the conspiring probabilities of a subject 8 As by Woolston, and in another manner by Hume. b By Collins. 21 other Evidences of the Christian Religion . run together into a perfect conviction. Let this reason- able process be applied to the examination of Christianity by men who challenge it to the proof; and I will not say, It, but They, have every thing to hope from the trial. There is one quality or condition comprehended in these mixed and various evidences of our Religion, which deserves to be further considered by itself; a condition highly cha- racteristic of its truth, and indeed replete with the strongest confirmation of it. The condition is this, that its evidences are so exceedingly dissimilar in their several descriptions. They are not necessarily connected in their origin ; they are independent in their principle ; they do not infer each the other; they are connected only in the subject which they conspire to attest. This independence of the com- ponent members of the argument is a material considera- tion. Perhaps it has not been urged in the defences of Christianity, with the force it is entitled to. It affords, however, a very decisive criterion of truth, as the follow- ing remarks may serve to shew. If man’s contrivance, or if the favour of accident, could have given to Christianity any of its apparent testimonies ; either its miracles or its prophecies, its morals or its propa- gation, or, if I may so speak, its Founder, there could be no room to believe, nor even to imagine, that all these appearances of great credibility could be united together by any such causes. If a successful craft could have con- trived its public miracles, or so much as the pretence of them, it required another reach of craft and new resources, to provide and adapt its prophecies to the same object. Further, it demanded not only a different art, but a totally opposite character, to conceive and promulgate its admirable morals. Again, the achievement of its propagation, in defiance of the powers and terrors of the world, implied a new energy of personal genius, and other qualities of action, than any concurring in the work before. Lastly, the model of the life of its Founder, in the very description of it, is a work of so much origi- nality and wisdom, as could be the offspring only of con- 22 On the Connexion of Prophecy with the summate powers of invention ; though to speak more fairly to the case, it seems, by an intuitive evidence, as if it could never have been even devised, but must have come from the life and reality of some perfect excellence of virtue, impossible to be taken from, or confounded with, the fic- tions of ingenuity. But the hypothesis sinks under its incredibility. For each of these suppositions of contrivance, being arbitrary, as it certainly is, and unsupported, the climax of them is an extravagance. And if the imbecility of Art is foiled in the hypothesis, the combinations of Acci- dent are too vain to be thought of. The genuine state of the Christian evidence is this : there is unambiguous testi- mony to its works of miraculous power ; there are oracles of prophecy ; there are other distinct marks and signs of a divine original within it. And no stock but that of truth could, in one subject, produce them all, or can now account for their existence. The whole compass and system of the Christian Evidence unquestionably has nothing like it, nor approaching to it, in the Annals of the W orld. It is a phenomenon standing alone. I assert this, on the concession of those who have exalted it, beside their intention, by the impotent com- parisons through which they have sought to slander and traduce it. For what has been done? Its Miracles have been forced into a sort of parallel with some wild un- authenticated relations in the cloudy romance of a Pagan sophist, (in the case of Apollonius Tyaneus ;) or with the vague and insulated pretences of a better history, (in the case of Vespasian ;) or the mask of a detected and defeated imposture among a Roman Catholic sect. Its Prophecies have undergone the violence of a similar comparison with the oracles of Heathenism, long ago put to silence, or the legends of a more recent superstition. Its divine Morals have been represented as little better than might be derived from the philosophy of a Grecian or an Eastern teacher, Socrates or Confucius. Its wonderful progress and propaga- tion, carried without any of the instruments of human power, and in opposition to them, have been matched with the sue- oilier Evidences of the Christian Religion . 23 cess of the Mahometan heresy effected by the power of the sword. Thus all ages, and countries, and creeds, have been explored, with an industry greater than the success, to fur- nish the separate materials of such comparisons as the objectors have been able to produce: whilst the conspicu- ous and uncontested fact, that Christianity unites within itself the signs and indications which no other system, philosophic or religious, does, nor is pretended to do, leaves it in possession of a character which repels the indignity of all comparison, by the distant and incom- mensurate pretensions of the things attempted to be put in resemblance with it. 1 close these prefatory remarks, which have been in- tended to connect Prophecy with the other proofs of the Gospel, and shew the consolidated state of the whole of them, by noticing two pieces of concise reasoning, in which the authors have consented to put the defence of our Re- ligion on single points of strong and commanding evidence. “The Short Method with the Deists 0 ,” is one: the Tract upon “the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul d ,” the other. The respective writers have taken different grounds for the compendious decision to which they offer to leave the inquiry ; the one resting it upon an acute analysis of the criteria of matters of fact ; the other upon an inves- tigation of the principles and motives of human action, applied to the Conversion of the Apostle. It has not oc- curred to me to know of any reply having been made to shake the credit of either of these essays of Christian argu- ment. For any thing that appears, their ground is un- assailable. But I mention such concise and limited argu- ments, to remark, where they leave us, whatever conclusive- ness we may choose to ascribe to them. If either of them fail to convince, there is much in store to supply the defect ; and if either be adequate to a satisfactory convic- tion, they only conspire with other multiplied reasons in supporting the same belief. If the single stone or column c By Leslie. d By Lord Lyttleton. 24 On the Connexion of Prophecy §• »*- DISCOURSE II. iliutf” si 'ZonhJo )CI xn a6 [[ 7 PJS CONTENTS OF THE PROPHETIC VOLUME AS DISTIN- GUISHED FROM ITS PREDICTIONS. Jeremiah xxv. 4. And the Lord hath sent unto you all His servants the Pro- phets, rising early, and sending them ; but ye have not hearkened, nor inclined your ear to hear . TN my former Discourse I spoke of the connexion in which Prophecy stands with the other evidences of Revealed Religion. Let me recapitulate briefly what was there said. It was pressed upon your reflexion, that Prophecy makes only one component part of the various and extensive proof by which it has pleased God to ascertain His last Revelation to us ; and consequently, whatever force and weight we may choose to assign to it, it ought never to be taken alone, when the inquiry is, what are the grounds of our belief in that Revelation? Admitting that Prophecy may contain enough to satisfy the question, which I ap- prehend to be the fact, and shall endeavour to establish, still the case does not stand so, that we are left to any single medium of Evidence. We have a system of proof; an evidence drawn from testimonies differing in kind, but conspiring in effect, and combining together to an accu- mulated demonstration ; in which neither the conclusive- ness of any of the branches of the argument, taken alone, is charged with the whole weight of the question ; nor the imputed insufficiency of any of them, when so taken, can touch the validity of the collective inference. This limitation I premise, not of course to disparage 26 Contents of the Prophetic Volume the argument from Prophecy, which I am to state and apply, but to obviate the erroneous use which might be made of it; by pointing out to the Unbeliever, that there can be no safety for him, as assuredly there is none, till he has satisfied his mind that the supposed failure of cogent proof under any one head of the Christian Evi- dences is not compensated by the positive force of the rest; or that a chain of attestations and inferences, de- duced from distinct and independent reasons, ought to bring us to a disbelief of the common subject in which they all concur. Would he put the case that the Miracles of the New Testament are not completely authenticated; that Pro- phecy is not luminous enough ; the morality of the Gospel not so extraordinary as to be clearly beyond the wisdom of man ; and the personal character of its Founder not so much above all example; the propagation of the Gospel, by such instruments, not incapable of being ex- plained on human principles; its profound adaptation to the nature of man not unlike an accident; the sincerity and martyrdom of its first teachers, who attested the facts of it, possibly a delusion ? Still he is only at the beginning of his difficulties, and must for ever remain there, till he is prepared to resist and reply to the reason which arises from these con- siderations put together, and repel the claims of a religion which they so strangely conspire, each in some degree, and all with a more pregnant evidence, to corroborate and establish. The dispassionate inquirer will read these evidences in another sense. In each of them he will trace some real and substantial testimony; something not to be invali- dated. Finding here, on the whole, so much, and in all the rest of the world so little, to create or fortify a rational faith, he will recognise in them the discriminating proofs, which designate the truth and certainty of the Revelation to which they adhere, and thereby command his assent to u the record which God hath thus given of His Son.” as distinguished from its Predictions . 27 As to the believer in Revelation, he, with respect to this variety of evidence, may observe upon it, not without some confirmation of his faith, how many of the divine attributes are pledged and engaged to him, for the truth of the Gospel. For the evidence of it embodies to his view the very fulness of those attributes; there being no one just idea we can frame of the Supreme Being, which does not find a place in some point of that attestation. The Sove- reign Power of God, overruling nature as His creature, is seen in the miracles — His Omniscience in the Prophecies — His Holiness in the laws of the Gospel — His Wisdom in the adaptation of it — His Providence in its propagation — and not one, but many of the divine perfections, illus- trated in the life of His incarnate Son; Benevolence, Long-suffering, Wisdom, Holiness. The very evidences, therefore, of the Christian Religion have impressions of the divine nature irradiating them ; and thus they co- incide with the system of that religion itself, wherein the Divine Being, in the exercise of these His perfections, is proposed to us as the object of faith, with its consequent affections and duties. From this introductory survey of the general Evidences of Christianity, I pass to Prophecy, the proper subject of my inquiry. In opening which subject, I take for the present the prophetic writings of tbe Old Testament only ; and keeping in view the Use of Prophecy, and its In- spiration, as the two chief points to which I direct myself, I shall begin with some consideration of the Prophetic Volume, as to its general nature and contents. By examining the actual contents of Prophecy, we shall take the only legitimate method of investigating its Use . For our duty is not to assign to it such a character as we might think it ought to have, and to read it to find that character ; but to follow its course and reason, and thereby inform ourselves what was the mission of the Prophet, and what the purport of his prophecy. A restriction this, to which we must submit, whatever be our doubts or our be- 28 Contents of the Prophetic Volume lief. To the believer the ways and word of God will best explain and justify themselves. And with regard to the other inquirer, his business cannot be to say, beforehand, what it is that revelation, or any part of it, ought to con- tain, but seeing it to be such as it is, whether it be not worthy of his acceptance. If we take up the Prophetic Volume, we find it readily distinguishes itself into two parts, which may be called the Moral or Doctrinal, and the Predictive; and although these parts were not disjoined in the communication of Prophecy, or in the design of it, it will conduce to our purpose to take a view of them separately. I begin with the first, the Moral or Doctrinal, which I shall go through, with as much conciseness as I can, in the present dis- course; that, this done, we may give an undivided at- tention to the Predictive, the more eminent branch of the same .Revelation. I. Prophecy, then, is not a series of mere predictions. Far from it. It abounds in matter of another kind : I mean the continued strain of moral doctrine which runs through it; including under that name the only efficacious and sufficient moral doctrine, that which is founded upon a knowledge of God, His attributes, and His will, with a sense of the personal and responsible relation of man to Him. Accordingly the most frequent subjects of the pro- phet are the laws of God ; His supreme dominion, and uni- versal providence, the majesty of His nature, His spiritual being, and His holiness ; together with the obligations of obedience to Him, in the particular duties of an inward faith and worship; and of justice and mercy to man ; the whole of these duties enforced by explicit sanctions of re- ward and punishment. These original principles of piety and morals overspread the pages of the book of prophecy. They are brought forward, and inculcated, from first to last. They are often the subject where nothing future is in question : they are constantly interwoven with the pre- as distinguished from its Predictions. 29 dictions; they are either the very thing propounded, or connected with it; and all the way they are impressed with a distinctness and energy of instruction which shew it was none of the secondary ends of the prophet’s mission to be this teacher of righteousness ; insomuch that, if we except the Gospel itself, there can no where be shewn, certainly not in the works or systems of pagan wisdom, so much of decisive and luminous information, concerning the unity, providence, mercy, and moral government of God, and man’s duty founded upon His will, as is to be gathered from the Prophetic Volume. Let the predictions of Prophecy then, for a time, be put out of our thoughts ; and the prophetic books be read for the pure theology which they contain. With what feelings of conviction they are read by the religionist, it is not hard to tell. He perceives that he is instructed and elevated by the discoveries made to him of the Supreme Being, and of the kind of worship and obedience required from himself ; and these discoveries made with an authority and a com- manding power, which argue them to be, what they are given for, a law of life and practice; doctrines, not of theory, but of self-government and direction ; the most useful therefore to himself, and the most worthy of the source from which they profess to come. On this head I cite the words of Origen, who does not overstate this persuasive force of the prophetic writings, when he says of them, that "to the meditating and attentive reader they raise an impression of enthusiasm” (a true and rational enthusiasm, like a spark of their own inspiration), " and by his perceptions convince him, as he reads, that these compositions can be none of the works of men which have obtained the credit of being the oracles of God a .” The more sceptical reader will see in them something to arrest his attention at least, and excite in him a sus- a 'O 5e juer’ eTTinieXeias /cat tt pocfox^s ivTvyx^voov T0 * y 7r pocpr]TiKo7s A 6yots f iraQuv e£ a vtov tov ai'ayivcoo'Keiv tx vos ^Oouaiao’/xov, 5t* oov ira^x* 1 TrsiorOficre- rai, ovk avdpc/jTroov eluat cruyypa/^uara rovs 7re7rtaTeUjU€Vous Geov \6yovs. Origines nep\ apxw, p. 162. ed. Par. 30 Contents of the Prophetic Volume picion, that the teachers of so excellent and virtuous a discipline of life, and the expositors of so rational a theology, are not to be set down for vain pretenders to inspiration, unless it can be proved that other diviners, or sages, in that period of the world, spoke so much to the purpose, or that such was the ordinary march of reason in these subjects, which, more than any other, have tried the rectitude of the human intellect. There is a judgment of St. Paul's, which I would refer to in this instance. He institutes a comparison between the gifts of supernatural illumination, and describing that kind of prophecy of which I am speaking, viz., which is for the simple exposition of the doctrines of religious truth, of it he says, “ If therefore the whole Church be come to- gether into one place, and all its teachers prophesy” in this manner; and “ there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned; he is convinced of all, he is judged of all.” “ And thus the secrets of his heart are made mani- fest ; and so falling down on his face, he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth b .” Such was the idea the Apostle had of this gift of moral prophecy, that, by its visible subserviency to the instruction and edifica- tion of a religious community, he thought it might do much, even convince an unbeliever. Let the prophets of the Old Testament be tried in this manner. Let the whole company of them be heard as they delivered their doctrines to the ancient Church of God, and reasoned on “ righteousness, temperance, and judgments to come.” What will the unbeliever say? Has he ever fairly read or listened to this promulgation of instructive truth? and does his conviction answer to the appeal ? If it does not, how shall we account for the Apostle’s judgment? Per- haps in this way : — St. Paul thought of the unbeliever born, one whose sincerity, in his natural ignorance, was open to inquiry and information. Not of the unbeliever made, who has taken his side, and by prejudice, or by the neglect of a serious examination, that is, by a chosen b 1 Cor. xiv. 23 — 25. as distinguished from its Predictions. 81 ignorance, warped himself into the more inflexible prin- ciples of unbelief. But when were these essential doctrines of religion and morality taught? They were taught to one separated people, at a time when the popular religion of the rest of the world was gone into idolatry and polytheism, and the principles of morals proportionably gross and imperfect; or where better notions on these subjects had place in the minds of men, they yet had no solid footing, for want of the sufficient authority to enforce them upon the life and conscience ; and at the best, the very choice of their notions fell short of the sanctity and integrity of the doc- trine extant in the books of the prophets of Israel. — But what these prophets delivered, they delivered as by inspi- ration : however they spoke, whether to predict, or to in- struct, it was not in their own name, “ but as the word of the Lord came unto them.” This was a high pretension in their doctrine; yet for what greater or better purpose could inspiration be given ? The worthiness of the end, and the apparent fruits of the gift, render the gift itself most credible. For, compare in this light the oracles of Scripture Pro- phecy with the creeds of Paganism. In the one, the reli- gion is the foundation of the morals. By the pagan creed, the morals were rather perverted and deteriorated. The best resources, indeed, of heathen virtue were in the natural faith of conscience, which a corrupt theology could not wholly obliterate. But in the one case, religion and virtue were united; in the other, they were at vari- ance. And the Philosophy which did the most to reclaim the theory of ethical truth, could not restore the broken union between that truth and religion ; and so the whole system, in which man’s best fortunes lay, was out of order. Philosophy wanted religion; and oracles and priests cared little for virtue. The teachers of Israel held both in per- fect concord together. In that age of the world they were no ordinary persons who did so. None but they are known to have done it. 32 Contents of the Prophetic Volume II. In the second place, I observe that this Moral Revelation, made by the succession of Prophets, holds an intermediate place between the Law of Moses and the Gospel itself. It is a step in progress beyond the Law, and preparatory to the Gospel. It is a step beyond the Law, in respect of the greater distinctness and fulness of some of its doctrines and precepts; it is a more perfect exposition of the principles of personal holiness and virtue ; the sanctions of it have less of an exclusive reference to temporal promises, and incline more to evangelical : the Ritual of the Law begins to be discountenanced by it; the superior value of the moral commandment to be en- forced; and altogether, it bears a more spiritual, and a more instructive character, than the original law given by Moses. The Law had said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength. Nothing can go beyond this commandment in the extent of it ; but where nothing is to be added to extend a law, much may be added to expound it, to animate its spirit, and fill up, or direct its practice. The habits of love, and the sentiments of obedience to the command- ment, may be further informed, the obligations may be improved, the practical force of the law exalted. It is such an improvement as this, made by the Prophets upon the Law of Moses, whose authority they every where recognise, which the attentive reader is invited to consider. Perhaps I only multiply words to express the simple important fact, viz., that in the prophets there is a more luminous, and more perfectly-reasoned, rule of life and faith, than in the primary Law ; and therefore that God’s moral Revelation was progressive. It is more perfect in the Pro- phets than in the Law ; more perfect in the Gospel than in either. — Let me specify a few points of the comparison. In this order of prophecy, I include the Psalms, which of themselves are a great instrument of piety and devotion, and were so much superadded to the legal worship. They are the institute of a service of piety, for which, in the or- dinance of the Law, was no such provision. as distinguished from its Predictions . 33 Again : the Law forebore, in some few points, a perfec- tion of its discipline. It practised an unwilling condescen- sion, in “ yielding to the hardness of heart,” the gross and refractory temper, of the people to whom it was given. This was seen in its non-prohibition of a plurality of wives, and its permission of divorce. But the Holy Jesus, who came to restore the divine Law to its first integrity, as well as to make atonement for the transgression of it, He, in His Institutes, reformed these temporary concessions. Meanwhile, one of the Prophets 0 had given a clear intima- tion that God approved not the permission so allowed, but would draw the domestic charities into stricter bonds of union and severity. Take another case ; the Prophets taught the doctrine of repentance with a clearness and certainty which were not admitted into the Law of Moses. This single doctrine, so promulgated as it is by the Prophets, makes a conspicuous distinction between them and that preceding Law. Let it not be thought that this view of the Prophetic Revelation derogates in the least from the proper perfec- tion or excellence of the ancient law of God. His law at all times, no doubt, has been perfectly adapted to His pur- poses in giving it; to the state of the persons to whom given; and to the proper exercise and probation of their obedience. But it no more infringes upon the wisdom or holiness of the Lawgiver, or the dignity of His Law, to suppose His revealed Will to be enlarged from time to time, with respect to the sense of His law, than it reflects upon His Wisdom or Truth, that His revelation in any other parts of it should be, as in some confessedly it is, progressive. Having so extricated the view which I take of the inter- mediate character of moral prophecy, as standing between the Law and the Gospel, from any evil suspicion, I trust the truth of it will be admitted. The fact presents itself to my own mind upon a comparison of the Mosaic and the c Malaclii ii. 14 — 16. D 34 Contents of the Prophetic Volume Prophetic books; and if it make the same impression upon others, they will perceive it to be, first, explanatory of the scheme of Revelation; and next, an internal mark of the consistency and proportion of its distant parts, and thereby of its entire wisdom and its truth. This fact, moreover, exhibits the parallel which obtains in revelation between its Morals and its Predictions . The line of prediction began at the first with the promise of a Redeemer; but the promise was general and obscure, and indeterminate in all its modes and circumstances. The same word of promise was enlarged from time to time ; it grew in force and clearness till it approached its consummation. So of other instances of Scripture predic- tion ; they had their enlargements. In like manner, the divine law was unfolded. The Patriarchal and the Mosaic covenants do not express so full a model of the law of righteousness, by which man is to serve his Creator, as the later revelation given by the prophets. The prophets carry on that law ; they furnish it with new materials, of sentiment, motive, and duty ; and this they do under the guidance of an original inspiration granted to them, as they declare, and not as commentators who merely elicit the sense of the law existing. Plence the sin of Israel was this, that “ they made their hearts as an adamant-stone, lest they should hear the Law , and the words which the Lord of hosts hath sent in His Spirit by the former Pro- phets d .” Hence Christ acknowledges and confirms “ the Law and the Prophets” as the two connected parts of the existing moral revelation, which He came not to destroy, but “to complete,” and establish for ever e . And it is remarkable, that the prophet, who of all others is the most full and explicit in delineating the Messiah's kingdom of redemption, is equally distinguished for the copiousness and variety of his lessons of holiness. Isaiah is not more the evangelical Prophet for that which he foretold, than for that which he taught. And this might be said, that, although a Christian could not consent to a d Zechariah vii. 12. Compare Nehemiah ix. 30. e Matt. v. 17. as distinguished from its Predictions . 35 surrender of the New Testament itself, yet if any one book of the Old were to be selected as a substitute for that more perfect gift, whereby to direct equally his faith and his obedience, none could be taken so adequate to both those purposes as the volume of this eminent Pro- phet, to whom it was given to behold the glory of Christ's kingdom with an eagle eye, and drink of the spirit of holiness beyond his brethren. To conclude this topic, I may add one observation more upon it. One book of the Pentateuch there is, wherein may be found the pathos and sublimities of religion in a strain not to be surpassed in any part of the Old Testa- ment ; the book of Deuteronomy. This book embraces a rehearsal and republication of the law by the great Pro- phet of it himself; with a survey of the wonders of Egypt and the Wilderness ; the past acts of God's mighty arm, working in terror and in mercy ; the stipulated blessings of obedience, (which I may call the Mosaic beatitudes) ; and a terrific insight into the future plagues of His apo- state people. Of the majesty of the book, and the im- pressiveness of it in these particulars, a calm and deliberate perusal can alone convey any just idea. Nor are the sig- natures of authentic truth and inspiration less stampt upon it. But here also may be traced the progressive scheme of Scripture. For this very book, if I mistake not, might, in its doctrinal character and use, be set above the simpler and earlier promulgation of the law as recorded in Exodus. And next, though in sublimity it be inferior to nothing in the Prophets, it may be ranked as only approaching to the practical standard of faith and personal obedience, exhi- bited in the doctrines, promises, and precepts of the pro- phet Isaiah. The considerate reader will judge whether this account of the expansion of the divine law by the later prophets be not a just one. If it be admitted, one use and intent of their mission will be better understood ; and the remote members of revelation will be seen to com- pose a consistent whole, not by uniformity, but progres- sion, every part of it silently advancing toward the spirit and perfection of the Gospel. d 2 36 Contents of the Prophetic Volume III. In the last place, the Prophets, beside their com- munication of doctrine, had another, and a practical office to discharge, as pastors and ministerial monitors of the people of God. To shew “ Jacob his transgression and Israel his sin,” was a part of the commission they re- ceived. Hence their work to admonish and reprove; to arraign for every ruling sin, to blow the trumpet to re- pentance, and shake the terrors of the divine judgments over a guilty land. Often they bear the message of con- solation or pardon; rarely, if ever, of public approbation and praise. The integrity and fortitude wherewith these holy men acquitted themselves of this cnarge, is partly known from history, which recites the death of martyrdom which some of them endured. But it lives also in their own writings; not in the praise of their sincerity and zeal, but in the faithful record of the expostulations and rebukes which they delivered in the face of idolatrous or oppressive kings, a degenerate priesthood, and a corrupt, rebellious people. “ Magna fides et grandis audacia Prophet arum ” is their just panegyric f . But in this service they betray none of the spirit of turbulent and fanatical agitators, men who step out of order to make the public sin their field of tri- umph, but a grave and masculine severity which bespeaks their entire personal soberness of mind, and argues the re- ality of their commission. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, are eminent examples of this ministerial duty. And if St. Paul could say of Holy Writ, that it “is profitable for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,” as he speaks of the Old Scripture, so to no part of it does that idea more fitly belong, than to the admonitory ho- milies of the Prophets. From this particular service of the Prophets results a testimony to their mission. First on their own part. Whatever proof men would give of integrity in their pre- tensions by willingness to suffer, that proof they gave. The Prophets, like the Apostles, were confessors and mar- tyrs. No confederacy of interest, none of favour, can be f Hieronym. in Ezek. p. 143. vol. v. as distinguished f rom its Predictions . 3 7 imputed to them: Priesthood, Kings, and People, all fell under their reproof; and they were persecuted by all. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! thou that killest the Prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee;” this is the opprobrium of that infatuated city: but it is the crown and glory of her martyr Prophets. Next, an equal testi- mony results on the part of the Jewish people, their per- secutors. When we consider the austerity of rebuke ad- dressed by these men to the people of Israel and J udah, and the unfavourable light in which their national cha- racter is represented by them, almost without an excep- tion, there is no room to think that public vanity, or public credulity, meant to preserve in such writings as theirs an advantageous history to recommend either people in the eyes of the world, or that they could gain by having it believed, or by believing themselves, that they had had prophets among them. But the words of the Prophets are said to have been “ graven on a rock, and written with iron.” Had they not been so written and engraved, by an irresistible evidence of their inspiration, how could they have withstood the odium and adverse prejudice which they provoked ? How could they have survived with the unqualified and public acknowledgment of their inspira- tion from the J ewish people, who hereby are witnesses in their own shame ; and survive too with that admitted cha- racter, when every thing else of any high antiquity has been permitted to perish, or remains only as a comment confessing the inspiration of these prophetic writings ? And the stress of the argument lies in this; that these writings were not merely preserved but adopted into the public monuments of their Church and nation ; strange archives of libel to be so exalted, if their authority could have been resisted. But the Jews slew their prophets, and then built their sepulchres, and confessed their mis- sion. There is but one reason to be given why they did g It is obvious to remark, how the equal preservation of these vituperative parts of the prophetic writings helps to accredit the faithful transmission and authenticity of the entire text of prophecy. 38 Contents of the Prophetic Volume fyc. so, a constrained and extorted conviction. But such was the promise given in hand to the Prophet. “ I do send thee unto them, and thou shalt say unto them, Thus saitli the Lord God. And they, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear, for they are a most rebellious house, yet shall know that there hath been a prophet among them 11 .” Or more explicitly : And “ when this cometh to pass ; lo it will come ; then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them 1 .” Here we have the explanation of the fact. The actual fulfilment seen, of what their Prophets had foretold, convinced that most un- believing people ; a people to whom their Pagan judges, looking at them and their religion from a distance, and with the fallacy of their own superstitions at home before their eyes, gave a name for credulity; but whom their own interior history shews to have been governed by a very opposite genius, in a slowness and reluctancy of be- lief, which stood out against the authority of their real prophets, (as against the other divine guidance they had,) till a feeling experience brought them to reason. This “credulous” people “ mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and misused His Prophets ; till the wrath of the Lord rose against His people, and there was no remedy k .” But Pagan and Jewish belief held a different course, and the difference is instructive. The Pagan first believed what his prophets and oracles told him, and afterwards rejected; the Jew rejected, and afterwards believed. There is every reason to think that the result in each case was equally just; conformable to the deserts of the subjects examined. h Ezek. ii. 5. 1 Ezek. xxxiii. 3. k 2 Chron. xxxvi. 16. END OF PART I. DISCOURSE II. PART II. Jeremiah xxy. 4. And the Lord hath sent unto you all His servants the Fro - phets, rising early, and sending them; lut ye have not hearkened , nor inclined your ear to hear. H ITHERTO I have considered the contents of Pro- phecy, which may he called moral or didactic, as distinguished from its predictive matter. But I must pursue the statement already given through two topics which deserve for their importance, under this head of my subject, a more distinct mention; an importance which will be acknowledged on every principle of Reason or Natural Religion. The first of these topics is the doctrine of Providence, the other the doctrine of Repentance. I. The Prophets of the Old Testament inculcate with a remarkable perspicuity and decision, the overruling agency of God’s providence in the affairs of the world. Their whole prophecy is more or less a commentary upon this doctrine. Let us attend to the form in which it is ex- pressed. The prediction of prophecy, verified in its fulfil- ment, attests the divine foreknowledge, and the commu- nication of that foreknowledge. But prophecy combines therewith the illustration of another divine attribute. It represents the future event, which it brings to view, as a part of that system of things in which the Creator is pre- sent by the direction of His power, and the counsels of His wisdom, appointing the issues of futurity as well as foreseeing them ; acting with “ His mighty hand and out- 40 Contents of the Prophetic Volume stretched arm,” seen or unseen ; “ ruling in the kingdoms of men, ordering all things both in heaven and earth.” This doctrine of a controuling and present providence is not restricted to the Jewish Theocracy, wherein it is dis- played by more palpable manifestations. It is extended to Egypt, to Babylon, and Persia ; to Moab, and Ammon ; to the isles of the Gentiles ; in a word, to all the nations of the earth. It is asserted, when the event in question is brought about with no sensible disturbance of the ordinary influence of human motives ; no derangement of what we commonly call the natural course of things. Cyrus, for instance, whom the Greek historian describes, and describes, no doubt, truly, as pursuing his career of conquest in his own proper character, was yet an instrument appointed for purposes of the divine government, which purposes are ex- plained by the prophet Isaiah. Moses was a deliverer from Egypt, and Cyrus from Babylon: the one acted under an express legation, clothed with the power of mira- cles; the other had no such extraordinary power given to him. Yet the divine providence wrought by both; and so that providence, in its ordinary course, is yet certain, active, and universal. This is the account of the present constitution of things, which the tenour of prophecy goes to assert and establish. Agreeably thereto the Prophets deliver their disclosure of events hereafter to take place, not as if they were an- nouncing the bare truth of the future fact, but a purpose and a design; dispensing a strain of prediction which carries in itself the seed of its accomplishment, and declar- ing themselves sometimes to have been thereby constituted, as it were, the agents of the divine counsels. “ I the Lord will accomplish it” is subjoined to the event declared. “ Shall there be evil in a city (evil suffered), and the Lord hath not done it a ?” “ See,” saith the oracle to Jeremiah, cc I have this day set thee over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, and to build, and to plant b .” This is b Chap. i. 10. a Amos iii. 6. as distinguished from its Predictions. 41 a figure indeed; for the Prophet himself was not to do these things ; but it is plain without a figure who was to do them. Again, “ Hast thou not heard long ago ; how I have done it, and of ancient times that I have formed it? Now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldst be to lay waste defenced cities into ruinous heaps 0 .” The Assyrian deso- later in the utmost exorbitances of his ambition was the unconscious servant of an unseen power ; the instrument of the wisdom which rules the world. This, to the serious religionist, is a doctrine of the greatest moment to his rational satisfaction. It gives to him the assurance of knowing that the system, in which his place and being are cast, is in the hands of God, not only as foreknowing that which it is to be, but as adminis- tering the plan and executing the ends of His providential government, (wise and right that government must be,) in the midst of all the tumult of the seeming disorders, the vicissitudes, and wayward course of the world. To know this, to have his mind set at rest upon it, is a first deside- ratum of his feelings and knowledge. And how was that satisfaction to be obtained? Reason, indeed, must ever lean to the persuasion that the Creator of the world is its controuling Governor ; and in the natural world is fully re- flected the order of His Government. But in the world of man, where are the signs of His presence ? They are not so obvious to the sight. For there God^s “way is in the sea, and His path in the great waters, and His footsteps are not known.” And who could say, whether, in the freedom of man, and the precarious effects of that freedom, the controul from above was not for a time suspended or excluded ? Hence the perplexed and interminable speculations which have arisen concerning Providence and Fate, Pro- vidence and Fortune ; speculations these, which grew out of the sense of nature, and only put into form the anxious questions of every thoughtful mind. Revelation in prophecy speaks to the point, and solves c Isaiah xxxvii. 26 . 42 Contents of the Prophetic Volume the inquiry. And this is the disclosure which it makes, that in the present dispensation of God, as it respects man, there are two causes in action, the Divine Will, and the responsible power of will given to man. Of the latter, our own consciousness had been partly a witness; but the Scripture is infinitely the more decisive and eloquent witness of it, by the universal tenour of its laws and pro- mises, directed to men in an accountable capacity, upon motives and reasons which presuppose, and can only act upon, some moral liberty of will and exercise of judgment. But of the former, the present direction of an overrul- ing Providence, it should seem that we could have no sure knowledge of its existence, nor any competent knowledge of its extent, except by a revelation asserting and exemplify- ing it. For it is a power which veils its interference, and moves so as not to shock the tenour of man’s responsible action in his course of trial and duty. What we see in the world is man’s agency ; and often he seems only to have too much power there. The other greater mysterious power is out of sight. Scripture then has ascertained that which we wanted to know, which we might surmise and hope for, but could never determine with a practical cer- tainty but by an information better than our own. And perhaps they who have pursued the question the furthest on the grounds of natural reason, will be the first to ac- knowledge, that revelation interposes in season, in the crisis of their inquiry, to give them possession of a truth, which they could neither quite entertain nor quite reject — The present providence of God in the government of the world. The sense of Conscience which teaches with some effect the expectation of a judgment to come, that is, some state of retribution under the Divine Government, has nothing to say to the world in its order, as it now is. Conscience, and the present constitution of things, are not correspond- ing terms. The one is not the object of perception to the other. It is conscience, and the issue of things, which go together. And Experience, which is a more competent as distinguished from its Predictions . 43 judge in the case, is too often disconcerted and wearied in her observations. Revelation gives the whole truth, the appointed retribution, and the immediate Providence ; and Prophecy especially is employed in asserting this last es- sential branch of the Divine Economy. As to the difficulty which there may be, of which I shall have to speak hereafter, in reconciling in one scheme of thought the agency of man with the foreknowledge, and the positive appointments, of Providence, it is what it is ; though perhaps not greater than exists in other instances which we pass over without scruple. But the practical embarrassment, the only serious evil of the subject, is done away; for both those principles are established; and we are taught by the one to understand our own obligations of duty, by the other to confess the sovereign attributes of God. Let me pause for a moment, to observe what a basis, by this doctrine, is laid of peace and tranquillity, to every thoughtful and most feeling mind ; and how different the aspect of the world becomes when we have reason to know that all things in it, and every combination of them, whether in the fortunes of kingdoms, or in the more private state, are under the controul of an intelligent and gracious Ruler. Were we in the chains of fate, how gloomy would our case be. Were we in the hands of men, too often how fearful, how humiliating, and afflicting. But the impression of the scene is changed, when we admit into it the direction of an all-wise and perfect Being, in whose rectitude and goodness we may acquiesce through the whole course of His providential dispensation. — Will it be said, after all, this is the value of the doctrine, if true ; but how shall we know its truth ? Definitively, by miracles and prophecy. Miracles prove that the order of physical nature is not Fate, nor a mere material constitution of things, but the subject of a free, omnipotent Master. Prophecy fulfilled, proves that neither Fate nor Man are masters of the world. These are final tests of all such 44 Contents of the Prophetic Volume questions ; and so the evidences of Revealed put an end to some of the main questions and difficulties of Natural Religion. II. The other doctrine to which I referred is that of the efficacy of Repentance. This doctrine, stated with great energy and precision in the prophetic writings, is one than which in practical religion none can be named of greater importance. It involves the last alternative in the judg- ment which man makes of his condition before his Maker. What has Natural Religion to promise, or declare, upon it? Natural Religion stands in suspense, fearful and igno- rant. And yet he, who has sinned, is concerned to know whether there be hope for him in reserve : and who is there that has not his part in that concern? He who has the justest sense of his demerit in his failure of duty, has the keenest concern to know it. And he who experiences no solicitude of apprehension, nor trouble of mind in the case, seems only the more depraved in his insensibility. Now had the Prophets of Israel preached no other doc- trine than this, “ Repent, and live ye they would have been the messengers of a blessing, among the most needful and the greatest, that man can receive in the peace so offered to his wounded conscience, and the en- couragement supplied to the recovery of his frail and faltering virtue. It is argued, and, I think, justly, that the admission to the benefit of repentance is an act of pure favour, in the gratuitous goodness of God; on which account nothing less than His own word could be a warrant for the doctrine. The fact is, that the best philosophy of paganism was igno- rant of it; and so far that philosophy was unfitted to the condition of man, in supplying the helps and motives to his duty, or a remedy to the defects of it. But Prophets taught what Sages did not. Which of the two were the best friends of man, let every one’s own reflection inform him. Comparing the Law and the Prophets together in this as distinguished from its Predictions . 45 article, we mark the difference between them. The Law d includes a general promise of pardon to the people when in captivity, in case of their national repentance ; the par- don to comprehend a restoration to their land. The Pro- phets 6 address the individual, and guarantee the promise to every soul “ turning from the error of his ways.” The Law in this point regards the nation as the object of the grace. The Prophets do more ; they descend to the in- terests of personal religion. It is true, the grace of repentance is eminently a Gos- pel doctrine; its foundation lies in the Atonement of the Christian Scheme. But here, as in other instances, pro- phecy made anticipations of Gospel truth. The prophets were empowered to preach repentance and pardon, before that Altar was raised on which the Atonement was to be offered which gives to the doctrine its consistency in our knowledge of the divine Economy respecting it. And I would observe generally, that in proportion as the predic- tions concerning the Gospel itself are enlarged, its prac- tical doctrines, at the same time, are more unfolded. The revelation spreads in each point ; and Prophecy, as I have wished to make it appear, is throughout an advancement and approximation to the Gospel. Viewed in which light it serves to elucidate not more its own use, than the entire progressive consistency of Revelation. I have now given a cursory statement of the contents of the Prophetic Volume, taken apart from its predictions. I have noticed the essential principles of Morals and Re- ligion, which Prophecy, after the Law, inculcates afresh, in some points with an expansion and improvement of them : the personal duty attached to the Prophet* s mis- sion has also been considered : and lastly, the doctrines of Providence and Repentance; consolatory, efficacious d Deut. xxx. 1 — 6. Compare Nehemiah, who appeals to this Mosaic pro- mise of national pardon. Chap. i. 8, 9. e See Ezek. xviii ; Isaiah lvii. 15, 16. 46 Contents of the Prophetic Volume doctrines, which it needed, and may I not say, it deserved, a revelation to bring down from heaven. Whether the moral and didactic truths, which we have reviewed, are exactly the kind of matter which some per- sons might expect to find filling so large a portion of the prophetic books, is not of moment. They are there ; and it is manifest that the Prophet had the inculcating of these truths in his commission. Perhaps it will be granted on a rational estimate, that it is no small recommendation of the absolute authority of those books, to see that they are so full of essential piety and morals, and take so much care of the unchangeable duties of man to God, and that those duties are so powerfully inculcated in them, and so perspicuously expressed. If we compare them in this character of their com- position with other pretended prophetic records, they will rise by the comparison above the suspicion of having pro- ceeded from any similar origin. Read the oracles of Pa- ganism ; consult the most revered of the ancient temples and shrines of divination. Where are the pure morals? where the theology? where the incessant and systematic reference in those oracles to the cause of positive virtue and practical religion ? Where, indeed, any great and un- equivocal concern in such matters ? “ What is the chaff to the wheat ?” is the demand of one of the Prophets of Israeli May the inquirer after truth take the fan in his hand, and make the separation, in giving the chaff to the winds, and gathering the wheat with these inspired men oi God. Upon the whole of this branch of Prophecy which we have hitherto considered, I subjoin some concluding ob- servations. First, It was wisely ordered that the gift of prediction, and the teaching of material truth, should go together as they did in the ancient Prophets. It took from them the suspicion of being mere instruments to gratify the passion * Jeremiah xxiii. 28. as distinguished from its Predictions . 47 of natural curiosity, in the discoveries of the future which they professed to make. At the same time, what they taught was enforced by the more cogent evidence of their mission. The teacher and the prophet were combined. His predictions, from time to time fulfilled, gave authority to his doctrine. They did so as much as if they had been designed to no further end. Secondly, We observe that the Prophets of the Old Testament lay the practice of religion and virtue, where the teachers of the New have laid it, upon faith in the revelation of the Divine Will. It is not a formal system, but a rule, of Ethics, which they propose : and it is best for the purposes of life that it should be so; though men do not seem to understand as they ought the advantage of a clear and authoritative rule of moral Truth provided for their direction. If speculatists are willing to grant its use for the imbecility and ignorance of the mass of mankind, for themselves however they would prefer to rely upon their own independent reason, or the deductions of a philosophic system. But the Truth which is to govern life, though it lose not its essence in whatever way it be obtained, has not in every way the same efficacy and influence. An operose deduction may convince the understanding, without dis- posing to practice ; nay, it often happens that the greater is the success of the intellect in eliciting a. principle or rule of duty, the less is its impression upon the springs of conduct ; the reason of which may be, that the mind is wearied before it is satisfied, and the spirit of action is gone before the theory of it is settled. Let the same truth be dictated by the word of God, it puts on a new mean- ing; and if the maxim be true, that “all knowledge is power,” the knowledge which is to give the impulse to duty takes its greatest sway and momentum as derived immediately from His paramount wisdom and will; and so it will be found that “ the obedience of faith” is better than the philosophic ; and that for action, and an efficient principle of it none are more capable of being benefited 48 Contents of the Prophetic Volume by Revelation, than the theorists of moral sentiment, the discourses upon virtue. Were the business of life, knowledge and speculation, not a particular demeanour, a course of piety and duty; were we born to be moralists, rather than men of virtue ; that would make a difference. But as it is, “ life is short, and science is slow,” and we shall be learning, perhaps disputing, some of our gravest duties when we should be practising the habits of them, unless we are wise enough to sit at the feet of Apostles and Prophets, and take ad- vantage of the inspired Law, which will abridge our stu- dies, only to promote our work. The last reflection I shall make is this, that when the divine origin of the prophetic, or any other part of Revela- tion, is argued from the nature of its very genius and doc- trine, it is a kind of proof which cannot be expected to operate upon all men alike. It is granted that this in- ternal evidence is not so strong and conspicuous in the prophetic volume, as in the New Testament : but what- ever it may be in either, its force turns upon a certain exercise of the moral perceptions, which vary, and upon what men are in their own character. They in whom the sense of religion, the desire of holiness, integrity, and purity, are the highest, and their minds most alive to such objects, will see, by a real intuition, the excellence of a code of doctrine to which others will be feebly attracted by any sympathy of their judgment or feeling; or, it may be, will turn from it with the alienation and distaste of a mind opposed to its whole spirit. It is no more than the admitted principle, that evidence in moral subjects is mo- dified by the mind to which it is addressed. If, therefore, unbelievers really study the Scripture with attention, and yet see nothing in its genuine character, its sublime or its didactic matter, to command their faith and reverence, this indifference and failure of conviction on their part ought to create no surprise, nor consequently any uneasiness or mistrust in others, who experience a different impression. We know not how far their temper as distinguished from its Predictions . 49 and spirit may have taken the lead of their judgment. This is certain, that unless they are examples of sanctity and virtue in their own lives, their indifference to Revealed Religion on the head of its internal evidence must, by the nature of the case, be of no weight. It has been justly observed, that Religion and its Evi- dence may serve equally to the ends of a moral probation to all to whom it is offered, however it may be received s. But, perhaps, it is by its internal evidence in particular that this trial is most distinctly made, that evidence having the nearest connexion with our personal habits : whereby, whilst we scan religion, its Author, it is plain, may be making His judgment of us. For it is a great and uni- versal truth which is spoken by Christ, “If any man will do His Will , he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God*” And this is a truth which is prior to the question of Revealed Religion, and will remain whether we admit that or no. Only it follows from the same truth, that, if that religion be of God, it cannot be deliberately rejected with- out a personal fault in some obliquity of will and temper. s Butler’s Analogy. h John vii. 17. E DISCOURSE III. OF PROPHECY IN ITS EARLIEST AGE, FROM THE FALL TO THE PATRIARCHAL TIMES. Genesis xvii. 7. And I will establish My covenant between Me and tliee , and thy seed after thee , in their generations, for an everlasting cove- nant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee . I F the observations which have been laid together in the foregoing discourse should have recommended the authority of the prophetic volume on account of its moral doctrines, and the emphasis which it lays upon things of an eternal truth and obligation, viz., the principles of essential religion ; it will be remembered that the direct and proper evidence of its inspired origin is still untouched, consisting in the series and the fulfilment of its predic- tions, by which medium it is that Prophecy bears its most effectual testimony to the truth of the J ewish and Chris- tian revelations. This evidence, constituted in the completion of Prophecy, is of a more coercive kind. It challenges the assent upon a clear and independent reason. For the prescience of futurity, in great and remote instances, is confessedly one of the divine attributes. The giver of Prophecy claims it for such, and our reason confesses the claim. “ Who , as I, shall call and declare it, and set it in order for Me, since I appointed the ancient people ? and the things that are coming, and shall come, let them shew unto them a .” This is one proof whereby God asserts the prerogative of His name, in opposition to the vanities of idols, and the a Isaiah xliv. 7. 51 Prophecy in its earliest Aye . ignorance of men. His prophetic revelation He submits to us as the instrument of our conviction. If the prophetic revelation so submitted embrace not merely detached events, but a series and combination of them, the proof of a divine foreknowledge dictating the whole, will be the more conclusive. This is the case of Scripture Prophecy. It is not a collection of insulated predictions ; but it is, in several parts, a connected order of predictive revelation carried on under distinct branches. Its evidence becomes thereby proportionably extensive; and also, which is a different quality of it, more closely combined : and on that account less open to the imputation of a fortuitous coin- cidence between its scheme, and the event of things cor- responding with it. But here again is a twofold view to be taken of the Pro- phetic Volume. We may consider it either in its structure , or in the verification of its predictions. In the last, we must select single prophecies, or concurrent prophecies re- lating to one and the same event : a comparison of them with their completion will shew the evidence attaching to them : and an extension of the like comparison to other parts of Prophecy will collect the evidence of the whole. But with respect to its structure, the points to be ob- served will be, What were the subjects on which Prophecy was given, what its order, in relation to seasons and pur- poses. It is this examination of its Structure which it will be expedient to pursue in the first instance, as preparatory to the examination of it under the second head, in the ac- complishment of its Predictions. In tracing the course of Prophecy as contained in its own records, we way presume, that, if it be a gift of divine wisdom, we shall discover in its very structure some indi- cations of the wisdom by which it was given. We may expect to find, upon the face of its apparent character, proofs of fitness and design ; because such proofs are seen in all the other works which we know to come from the same wisdom. Moreover, this survey of the order of Pro- e 2 UBRARY UNIVERSITY OP IttWrtfi 52 Prophecy in its earliest Age, from phecy will best open to us the uses which it was intended to serve in the several periods of its dispensation. Lastly, after its general frame has been ascertained, single predic- tions comprehended in it will be ready to be examined with more advantage, inasmuch as we shall see what place they hold in the entire range of Prophecy ; whether they are among the greater or the less articles of it, and how far their particular evidence upholds, or affects, the autho- rity of the whole prophetic book. My intention is, therefore, to treat of the structure of Prophecy in the present and three following Discourses ; and, when some idea of its Form and Use shall have been first established, to treat of the direct proof of its Inspi- ration. In the earlier inquiry, however, it is to be observed, that the general truth of Revelation will be assumed. The argument will be, Admitting the presumed origin of pro- phecy, what notices does it supply of wisdom, fitness, and design; what illumination did it afford, in reference to the times when it was given, or the times to which it was to be applied? Upon this ground I shall be allowed, for a time, to speak in the person of a believer, who would follow Prophecy by its own light as it illustrates the divine economy. Incidental proofs of its inspiration will be sug- gested by the way. But the formal discussion of those proofs will be reserved to its place hereafter, when the Order of Prophecy shall be confronted with its Truth, and its predictions put to a test in their completion. This survey of ancient prophecy will include its greater documents, wherever they may be found. Books not avowedly prophetical, at least not commonly so named, contain the recorded text of predictions, as the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and others, which therefore must contribute their information to the inquiry in hand. For though Prophecy had its one principal age subsequent to the Mosaic Law, when it spoke with a fuller voice and clearer commu- nications, and so the Law and the Prophets are sometimes the Fall to the Patriarchal Times . 53 taken for the divided oracles of Holy Writ; yet it has never been silent in any period of the world, but has been the herald and messenger of Divine Truth, from the first fall of man, to his redemption under the Gospel, and there it continues to speak, if we will hear it, “with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God,” through futurity, to the final consummation of all things. I. The date and origin of the predictions of prophecy are with the earliest history of man. The earliest history of man, when he had come from his Maker’s hands, and passed into his own, is that of his Sin and his Fall. But no sooner had he lost his original ground of acceptance with his Maker, than prophecy began to intimate the hope of his recovery and restoration. The first prediction was given in mercy : it was given in a promise adapted to man’s forfeited condition — the promise of a Redeemer, who, in some way not then explained, was appointed “to bruise the Serpent’s head,” that is, to take away the Tempter’s triumph, which could only be byrepairing the loss suffered by transgression, and cancelling or mitigating, the inter- dict of the divine sentence laid upon it. — This original promise of mercy is the dawn and dayspring of prophecy. Man was not excluded from Paradise, till Prophecy had sent him forth with some pledge of hope and consolation. But this First Prediction may serve to point out some- thing of the general aim and design of all the rest. At the least it opens to us one comprehensive subject, in which the whole human race was concerned, and their concern in it not less than their state of relation with God. And since this subject was the first that introduced the revela- tions of Prophecy, we may reasonably suppose it was a principal one always in view ; and also that other predic- tions, when they did not specifically relate, might yet be subservient, to it, by promoting nearer purposes, which purposes, however, centred in that chief design. For Pro- phecy having begun with the prospect of man’s redemp- tion, could be directed in its aftercourse to nothing greater. 54 Prophecy in its earliest Age , from And such the fact will appear to be, when we draw to a point the dispersed and multiplied predictions of the Old Testament. The intimation of a scheme of divine mercy given at the Fall, is the prelude to further and more pre- cise discoveries of it, through every subsequent age and sera of revelation. Intermediate predictions there are, and of another kind, interposed from time to time. But the original subject is resumed and prosecuted through the whole body of ancient prophecy : in the Patriarchal, in the Mosaic, in the later age, it is still kept in sight. The frequency of its presence, in union with other subjects, indicates its paramount plan in the order of prophecy. I would not here apply the technical name of a system to the course of these combined predictions, lest I should seem to measure by conceptions taken from the standard of human works, the order and method of any part of the divine dispensations. Howbeit, it is no more than a strict account of the fact to say, that the nature and objects of the Redemption, as well as the advent, and character of the Person by whom it was to be wrought, were revealed further and further in numerous predictions ; the word of promise grew in force and clearness, as it approached to its close ; and it was successively enriched with new parti- culars of information; till at last they embodied within them all the chief lineaments of the dispensation which was subsequently made known in the actual accomplish- ment of it, and the Advent of the Redeemer was but the visible appearance of the divine light with which the radi- ant cloud of Prophecy had long been ready to break forth. The limits and range of Prophecy were indeed as exten- sive at the first as they were afterwards. To Adam was given a hope of the Redemption of his race. This was the primitive promise ; and the last of the Prophets cannot go beyond it. For man’s redemption, begun in his present state of being, and hereafter to be completed, is a work which extends itself to the whole duration of his existence, and runs out into the infinitude of the divine mercy. The scope of Prophecy was therefore as large from the first as the Fall to the Patriarchal Times . 55 in later ages. And He “unto whom all his works are knowm from the beginning/* never left man in ignorance of this His design of mercy. But though the horizon of the prophetic sight was thrown open at once to this extent, it was dim, and the vision of it was but the image of a cloud — the objects were shewn darkly, and the mirror of Faith was obscured by the shadows which rested upon the gates of Paradise, from which man was made an exile. But since religion cannot so much as exist without hope, the earliest intimation of Prophecy we see was adapted to the support of that essential feeling in the heart of man. It was clearly a promise of relief, an antidote to perfect despair. It contained the prediction, that some one should be born of the seed of the woman who “ should bruise the head of the Tempter/* by whom therefore the penal effect of man’s transgression should be in some way reversed. With all its uncertainty as to the mode in which this end should be effected, the promise had within it a principle of hope and encouragement, and the materials of a religious trust fitted to keep man still looking to his Maker. And such was the immediate moral use of this great original prophecy. II. From the Fall it is but a short step in man’s history to the Flood; the interval comprehending but few gene- rations. The Flood is the execution of God’s first general judgment upon sin; one of His mysterious doings, in defacing, in punishment of the wickedness of man, the excellent work of His own hands, which at its creation He had pronounced to be good ; an sera dividing the old world and the new; the second birth of the fortunes of the human race. So great a crisis of the world was not permitted to pass without the intervening warnings of prophecy. To the One righteous man and his family, appointed to preserva- tion, the impending deluge was foretold whilst it hung yet within the sealed windows of heaven b . The Ark, which b Genesis vi. 17. 56 Prophecy at the JEra of the Flood . he was instructed to build, was itself a second, a visible prophetic warning, to the rest of the world, if an obstinate wickedness, which had resisted God’s Spirit 0 , might be alarmed by the signs of His judgment. In this instance, Prophecy served to exercise and sus- tain the faith of the righteous elect Family. It spoke the long-suffering of God, in the intermediate opportunity of repentance, to others d : both of them purposes of religion, expressive of the righteous and gracious government of God. The Renovation of the World had also its auspices of prophecy. God set His bow in the cloud, and prophecy reflected her beams of light from the retiring waters. The predictions which follow the Flood are simple and explicit, and they contain a covenant of mercy conveyed to the second progenitor of our race. But what is the nature of this covenant? The memorable character of it is this, that it is framed in a complete relation to the recent over- throw of the Deluge. It is a charter of Natural mercies and blessings e , com- prehending a second grant to man of dominion over the creatures, and over the earth ; the promised multiplication of his species; and the pledge of an orderly succession and return of the seasons : “ While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease;” with one specific stipulation added of God’s mercy, that He would visit the earth with a Deluge no more. “ And I will esta- blish My covenant with you ; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there be any more a flood to destroy the earth f .” Here Prophecy, as we see, re-established the peace and order of Physical Nature, which had undergone so great a c Genesis vi. 3. d 1 Peter iii. 20. e See Genesis viii. 21, 22 ; ix. 1 — 17. f Genesis ix. 11. “ This,” says Bishop Taylor, “ was the World’s covenant, not the Church’s .” — Christian Consolations , chap. v. 57 Prophecy at the JEra of the Flood . convulsion. Its promises were adapted, and with a special fitness, to the occasion : for to the relics of the human race newly escaped from the terrors of the great Deep, the wreck of the world, and the general extirpation of their kind, what other engagements of the divine favour could there have been more seasonable, or more instructive at this time, than that God had recalled His wrath with the flood, and restored the earth to them again, secured to their peaceful use and dominion ? The distinctive and most opportune promise, that this ruin of waters should be the last, is itself a signal monu- ment of prediction. For who will say that a recurrence of the like catastrophe of destruction, a second deluge, was not then to man his most natural fear, or even his most reasonable calculation? But that word of promise took him out of his own fears and notions ; and hitherto Four Thousand years have confirmed its truth. At this day we live under this Covenant, coeval with the renewal of the world, and appointed, for so it is expressed, to be commensurate with its duration. This covenant, though not always so thought of, is our tenure ; it gives the law to the Elements and the Seasons; till the second change shall come, ordained to be, not by the waters of a deluge, but by the instrumentality of another Element, which in its turn will be the minister of God’s purpose?. But here a question occurs, whether the promises re- spectively given to Adam and to Noah have any thing in common. It has been argued, that the earth after the deluge was relieved in its primitive curse; the seasons tempered; the sterility and unkindliness of the ground abated; and therefore, that God having taken off the malediction in this kind, the Natural curse, thereby con- firmed the hope of His greater mercy yet in suspense, with respect to the Moral Evil. This union of the two subjects, if it were well founded, would add an elucidation to the tenour of ancient pro- 8 2 Peter iii. 7. 58 Prophecy at the JEra of the Flood . phecy. But I am unwilling to build any thing upon dubious interpretations of the letter, or sense, of Scrip- ture. It admits of a doubt, whether the Scripture text, in this point, can be so understood, as to exhibit any dif- ference between the Old world, and the New, in respect of the seasons and natural state of the earth, and thereby a remission of the primitive curse ; or whether the blessing to Noah be nothing more than a promise of the deliverance and future exemption of the earth from its recent disorder: in a word, whether that blessing were opposed to the ori- ginal evil, or only to the deluge. The former of these two interpretations is acutely and ably supported by Bishop Sherlock 11 , who has written with so much probability of reason on his side, that it would be wiser to embrace his judgment, in the point, than easy to undertake to refute it. But I shall do neither ; for in pursuing the structure of Prophecy, I wish to impose upon myself the rule of dis- tinguishing between what is clear , and what is justly liable to question or exception. Under this rule, I forbear to urge, in the prophecy which is before us, a sense of it, which yet has no small evidence in its favour, and would, if received, improve the apparent connexion of early pro- phecy in its several parts. So much however is clear, that any one considerable instance of God’s promises brought into a course of fulfil- ment, becomes a pledge for the completion of others yet depending; and therefore the safety and security of the Earth, and of the Natural System, which were witnessed subsequently to the deluge as mercies in possession, and in virtue of the promise made to Noah, would furnish an argument of religious trust in the faithfulness of any other mercies which might yet be only in prospect. So far the promises of the Fall, and after the Flood, may be safely connected. And in truth it is a distinguishing point of these chief revelations instant after the Flood, that they are peaceful and cheering. It is a display of God’s mercy and good- h Fourth Discourse on Prophecy. 59 State of Prophecy in the Patriarchal Age. ness, 'without any admixture of another nature : His placa- bility, His present acceptance of man, His future favour, are the things signified ; all encouragements to faith and obedience. So that when God “ renewed the face of the earth,” He revived the stock of religion too : the fairest part of the change was in these discoveries of mercy, when prophecy rose in an orb of light on the restored world, and shed in the hearts of men hope and consolation. This was a service to religion suited to its exigency. For the gloom of the Fall, and the fate of the old world, which had gone down in the darkness of the Deluge, were now before men’s eyes ; and if we carry ourselves back to their state and feeling, so placed as they were, we shall see it was of God’s wisdom, as well as His goodness, that He was pleased to temper and qualify to them the terrors of His past dispensations, and make prophecy at this time the messenger of reconciliation, and peace, and an immedi- ate hope. III. The next epoch of Prophecy is the Call of Abra- ham. He is the Father of the Faithful; and in him Pro- phecy began to make its larger revelations of the objects of faith. Among the predictions, often repeated, with which he was favoured, two are distinguished among the rest, and they nearly include the sum of the whole ; the pos- session of the land of Canaan by his family, being the subject of the one; the universal blessing of Mankind, “ the blessing of all families of the earth in his seed,” that of the other 1 ; and a solemn pact, or covenant, founded upon these promises, and accompanied with large as- surances of God’s favour and protection to him and his posterity, being ratified to him. This mixed subject requires to be distinctly noticed. We have here the first point of union, in Prophecy, of the two dispensations, the Jewish and the Christian: and from this sera Prophecy takes up and preserves a twofold cha- 1 Genesis xii. 3 ; xiii. 14, &c. 60 State of Prophecy racter, related to them both. The possession of the land of Canaan by Abraham’s offspring, now promised, identifies itself with the establishment of the Hebrew people; there- by it leads us into that dispensation which includes the law of Moses; the extraordinary superintendence of the Theocracy over that people; with the authentic trans- mission of the divine promises and revelations in one line, by their hands down to the sera of the Gospel. This is the one part of the divine economy resting on the promise of the land of Canaan. With regard to the second, and greater, the universal blessing of the human race, it is the original promise made to our First Parents, repeated and confirmed, with this provision annexed, that the blessing of the human kind, the blessing “ of all nations of the earth,” should spring from the succession of the Jewish Patriarch. And as our Saviour explained the faith of Abraham, when He said, “ Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it, and was glad,” no doubt we are to understand that the Patriarch beheld that day of Christ through the medium of this same promise which we are now considering ; perhaps in other ways ; but unquestionably by this prediction, that “ in his seed all nations of the earth should be blessed.” That we do right in connecting the promise given to our First Parents with that of the universal blessing made to Abraham, the common direction of both, which we know to be to the person of Christ, the promised Seed, sufficiently shews. This, however, is an interpretation deduced from the event. But the relation of the two seems to result also from the very purport of the promises as they were to be understood when given. It was too plain, in the time of Abraham, that “the serpent’s head” had not been broken; there were no signs in the Flood, nor in any thing before it, or after it, that the worst evil of the Fall had been done away. The moral interdict, the primeval sentence, therefore, remained ; and when a general blessing to extend to all the nations of the earth was revealed, it could not be understood otherwise than as applying to the in the Patriarchal Age. 61 redemption of man from the state of condemnation into which he had passed. The Evil and the Blessing would explain each the other. I. With respect to the promises given to Abraham, I repeat again, that one of them was exclusive and particular to his family ; the other extended to all the nations of the earth. The possession of Canaan clearly could not be the universal blessing. They are, therefore, exceedingly dis- tinct, in their extent, and in their kind ; and their distinc- tion was marked from the beginning. Further, I assume it as a principle, which indeed has been sufficiently esta- blished upon Scripture evidence, and vindicated by learned divines, that we are to consider the selection and appoint- ment of a separate people to have been made for the custody and transmission of the divine promises of that more general nature. It is not affirmed that the sense of Scripture, on this head, directs us to think that such was the only purpose to be served by the selection and appoint- ment of the Jewish people ; or that other great and mate- rial ends were not thereby promoted : but that the leading and most comprehensive design of the appointment was to introduce the Gospel, by connecting and preserving the several revelations of God, till they merged in the last, to which the whole Jewish economy is declared to have been subservient ; the Law, being described as “ an elementary teacher to bring men to Christ,” in respect of the imperfect knowledge of the Gospel, and the preparatory discipline for it, which it contained ; or “ as being the shadow of the good things to come :” and the Prophets, who were sent to that separated people, having it as an eminent part of their mission to “ bear witness to Christ,” and announce His religion. For the benefit and privilege of the Israelite consisted in this, (C chiefly because to him were committed the oracles of God ;” and those oracles were a perpetual witness of the better dispensation. So that the hopes of the ancient believer may be said to have been always in a state of pilgrimage, travelling onward through successive periods of revelation, and finding no rest, till they had 62 State of Prophecy crossed the barrier flood, which divided the law and the gospel, the first dispensation and the second. The accomplishment, then, of the First of the promises made to Abraham, when God brought in His people by signs and wonders, “ to the land which He had sworn to their fathers to give them,” laid the foundation of the Jewish polity, under their separate law, and with the privi- leges of their distinctive character : whereas the Second of those promises remained yet to be accomplished. But if it was deferred, the fulfilment of the first was made to be one conspicuous proof of its equal certainty, and also the fulfil- ment of the first, we see, was in order to its completion. 2. Next, the whole order of Prophecy bears a visible reference to this twofold design of the divine economy communicated to Abraham. Take the Prophecies in their several periods, it will be found they all grew out of the one design, or the other. They have their connexion either with the Gospel, or the J ewish people. Their sub- jects coincide with the promulgation, or progress, of the first, or with the history of the last ; at least, the excep- tions to this determinate reference of Prophecy are incon- siderable. But the prophecies directed to the history of that people, since they existed as a people principally for the sake of the Gospel, will bear their share in giving evi- dence to the Gospel itself. Every prophecy which served to uphold the faith of that people ; every prediction which passed through their hands, whether relating to them- selves, or to the nations with whom their fortunes con- nected them, as it consolidated the authority of the dis- pensation under which they lived, was instrumental by a plain and necessary consequence, first, to the introduction of the Gospel, and secondly, to the proof of it for ever. I have been the more anxious to state precisely the two- fold character of prophecy in respect of its subjects, and to fix the sense in which we ought to understand the proper subserviency of the whole of it to the attestation of the Christian Faith, on several accounts. First, By this par- tition of the subjects of prophecy, we shall simplify our in the Patriarchal Age . 63 view of its structure, and be carried to a truer idea of the use and intent of its several chapters of prediction, as they may hereafter come to be examined. Secondly, we shall exclude a mistaken principle which has infinitely warped the interpretation of it, in the hands of persons of an ex- cellent piety, but an ill-instructed judgment; the principle of endeavouring to expound almost every prophecy, either immediately, or typically, in a Christian sense. This mode of explication, after all arts and temperaments have been applied to it, fails ; and the credit of divine prophecy loses by the detected unskilfulness of the interpreter. The error is one of an early origin in the Christian Church ; and the reproof of it followed ; for it was soon observed to do dis- service to the cause of truth ; the adulterated interpreta- tion of the Old Testament prophecies, which did not ex- press any thing of Christ, or His religion, throwing doubt and suspicion upon the genuine sense of those which did k . The prophecies which unquestionably relate to the Gospel are numerous, full, and explicit ; and they require no sup- port from equivocal or forced expositions to be put upon others. There are also mixt or typical prophecies, which combine the Christian with some other analogous subject. But, besides both of these, there are portions of prophecy which must be granted to stop short in their proper Jewish, or other limited subject, without any sense or application beyond it. Thirdly, we shall perceive at the same time, how unnecessary it is to the honour of the Gospel, to have recourse to that mistaken principle ; since after all, it is most true, that the Holy Jesus is the Lord of the Prophets : for they spoke by His Spirit, and all that they spoke was but in subserviency to Him. For when they ministered to the First dispensation, which had its appendant services of prophecy, yet that dispensation k O I 7r uaav tV iraXaiau BiaOriKrjv els rbv Xpicrrhy fieracpepeiv Treipdofxevoi, ovk amatrecos ela\v, eirenrep iced ''EWrjai, kcl\ t o7s fM] eyKpivovcnv avr^u a/pe- tlkoTs , ev rrj KaO ’ Tjfiui/ diddavi juaxy — ra yap jutj els avrbv elpr]/xeva eKpia^ofJLevoi, Kal ra a/3 LatTrcos elp^pLeva irTronreveadai Trapa-n to the world in the miracle of his translation. “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him m .” I argue, that this sign and exhibition of his singular end, besides being a reward to the Saint, had its use in com- manding the faith of others to his prophecy, whatever that might be : and whilst his removal to blessedness was itself some presage of the general hope of a future immortal state, such a specific miracle causing “that he should not see death” would plainly be a fit counterpart, or con- firmation, to any prophecy of his, if such there were, of Christ’s coming “to dissolve the Power of death ” over the human race. But though these ideas be exceedingly reasonable, there is no material consequence depending upon them. For if Enoch was the example and the prophet of the old world, yet since his predictions have not been transmitted in a distinct form to a later age, it is clear that they were meant for the Faith of the times in which they were better known, not of ours to which they have not de- scended. His translation to reward has been a perpetual motive of hope, and will be so, to the end of the world ; but how far it was interpreted and explained by collateral notices, we have the less occasion to inquire, since we want the means to decide. Reverting then to the state of Gospel prophecy prior to the time of Abraham, I have no desire to make the written contents of it appear to be other than they are, or to sug- gest by implication any apology for them, as though they needed to be anxiously vindicated, because they are not more full and expressive. We have only a brief memorial of the state of Prophecy and of Religion at the first. But the fewness, as well as the indefiniteness, of the older dis- coveries of prophecy will soon be forgotten, in the copious- m Genesis v. 24. F 66 State of Prophecy ness and circumstantial delineations of those which follow in their proper age. For my own part, I think we ought rather to perceive and admire the perfect order of written Prophecy, as it now stands, taken in conjunction with the known order of the Divine Economy. For when God began, by the Call of Abraham, to make the first visible disposition and determination of things in the world, to- wards the accomplishment of His intended mercy, pro- phecy began also to unfold the scheme of that mercy. The free communication of the Gospel promises, bears date with the commencement of that system of Provi- dence, in the appointment of a family, a nation, and a temporary covenant, out of which the completion of those promises, in the fulness of time, was ordained to spring. The event was at a distance : but in the first step taken towards it, there is a disclosure made, ascertaining the distant design : and the Patriarch, who is the original Heir of the promises, is made the depositary of those chief informations which convey them. The Father of the Faithful is put in possession of the oracles of Faith. There is a harmony and consistency here which cannot be denied. Moreover, in the general simplicity of the earlier re- cords of prophecy, we have a pregnant evidence (that I may take notice of that also) of the veracity and good faith of the sacred Historian. For with respect to the Antediluvian period, who does not see that room was given, by the defect of permanent authentic memorials of that time, and by the opportunities of a broken tra- dition, intercepted in many of its channels by the ruin of the deluge, to cast back upon that period more favour- able and prominent revelations of prophecy, than are now to be found in the Pentateuch ascribed to so early an origin? For example, some monument of prophecy to bear upon the history of the Jewish people, or any other subject incident to the time of Moses, or his own purposes, might have been carried to that remote age, more safely, than the later predictions, which do actually occur, could in the Patriarchal Age . G7 be submitted to scrutiny with the more distinct checks of a recent evidence pressing upon them. But there is an absence of all such remote and well-accommodated predic- tions ; and whilst the scantiness of early prophecy, in its actual records, is no impeachment to the completeness of the Mosaic Scriptures for every end of our faith and in- struction, it is one of the many palpable indications of the truth and integrity wherewith they were written. One other supposed evidence there is, which I must not pass by without a particular notice, since it is sometimes so much insisted on, of a specific revelation having been made to the primitive race, concerning the Christian Ke- demption ; that supposed evidence is the use of Sacrifice. If the rite of Sacrifice conveyed to the Antediluvian race that kind of information which some Christian divines have assigned to it, it would be one of the greatest of prophecies. But whether we are justified in constructing the proof of a prophetic revelation, in any degree, out of that rite of primitive worship, is yet a question : for the case is, that both the primary fact , and the explication of it, are pre- carious in the argument. By the primary fact, I mean, whether Sacrifice was a Divine appointment ; and if it were, the next question is, whether it were explained, in any degree, to the sense of the Christian Atonement. All prophecy must be of God : and a type, or prophetic fact, can come into the census of prophecy, only by His or- dinance of that type, or prophetic fact. If we admit others not known to be so positively ordained, we shall have nothing but uncertainty in our deductions. That the first Sacrifice was by divine Institution, is more than the text of Scripture will permit us to say. Its silence, in such an article, an article connected with the very life of religion, suggests the contrary opinion. But be that as it may ; in default of the direct information, whatever the reasons of probability may be, it is wiser to forbear to treat of primitive Sacrifice as a prophecy, or an evidence of one, lest we forget the great difference there is between the F 2 68 State of Prophecy known positive ordinances of the Jewish Covenant, and the uncertain authority of an earlier usage, on which the stamp of a special appointment is not clearly set. In truth, un- less we have the certain datum of the Type having been instituted, or the Prophecy delivered, we shall be joining materials of our own to the sacred edifice, presuming to make the prophecy as well as interpret it; and all such speculation, whatever else it may be, is not fit to be com- mitted with the solid evidences of our Faith and Religion, or with the history of them. I conclude by resuming the authentic testimonies of Pro- phecy. The dispensation of it was not confined to Abra- ham. It reached through the Patriarchal age, and the whole body of its predictions belonging to this age easily combine together. The oracles of God became to the Patri- archs a bond of personal religion. His name and His wor- ship were invested with authority and honour among them, ^whilst Idolatry 11 , and Corruption 0 of life and practice, pol- luted the nations around them. Their faith was directed by multiplied promises of His favour, but still involving the same specific objects which were contained in the revelation to Abraham, the blessing of mankind, and the possession of Canaan. But prophecy deigned to take these early disciples of it by the hand. We see their personal fortunes, and in many particulars their life and conduct, were guided by it p : this was a present pledge, a sensible evidence, of the faithfulness of God in all His pro- mises; and so the supports of their faith grew with the enlarged duties of it : reserved and distant hopes acquired a footing to rest upon, and drew strength from the con- viction which they had, not only of His revelation, but of His experienced providential care and goodness. “ They drank of the brook in the way.” Immediate mercies guaranteed the greater in prospect. Such was the service rendered to religion by prophecy in the patriarchal age, which was the first sera of its more copious promulgation. n Joshua xxiv. 2. 0 Genesis xv. 16 ; xix. p Patriarchal History passim. in the Patriarchal Age . 69 In closing our survey of this period, I would bring together once more the original promise made after the Fall, and the evangelical promise to Abraham. The first was given when the state of primitive blessedness in Para- dise was newly lost; the other, when the land of Canaan was first promised. The former of these prophecies sup- plied some hope that the forfeited blessedness was not wholly gone for ever ; but the second, the Gospel promise given to Abraham, is set by the side of the earthly promise of Canaan, to shew that Canaan was not Paradise restored, nor the seat of man’s expected recovery. The Gospel promise being coincident in the time of its revelation with the Temporal, we shall be justified in considering it as a corrective to mistaken views of the Temporal : a timely evidence of God’s ulterior dispensation. DISCOURSE III. PART II. Genesis xvii. 7. And I will establish My covenant between Me and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generation, for an everlasting cove - nant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee . T>ESUMING the investigation of Prophecy in its pre- dictive matter, I shall follow it in its course : and shall combine throughout such observations as may tend to illustrate the scope and aim of the predictions them- selves, in regard to the seasons at which, or the persons to whom, they were delivered. For the word of Prophecy, as the examination of it will shew, always had its twofold use, to instruct by its promulgation, as well as by its ac- complishment. It directed the eye of one age to look for- ward to the opening designs of God: it offered to con- vince another by the work of His Providence exhibited in their completion. After we shall have seen what it is upon the whole which Prophecy communicated, we shall be the better prepared to judge of its use and intent in the system of the divine Government : and also to seek the proper proof of its inspiration in the fulfilment of its predictions. In the earlier stage of the inquiry we consider what it is to which Prophecy asks our attention : in the second, w r e examine in what degree it satisfies it. In the first, we have to explore a history : in the second, to weigh an evidence. Only if it shall appear from the very scheme of Prophecy, and upon the face of its records, that there is something 71 State of Prophecy in the Patriarchal Age . in it which manifests an extended wisdom, under a cohe- rence and aptitude of design, w 7 hich is one point I shall endeavour to establish ; in that case it will be reasonable to carry such visible character of it to the side of evidence, and admit it as a presumption, that there was some great origin of that internal wisdom of design which is discern- ible in the Prophetic Volume ; and which, at the least, will command our attention as a fact to be accounted for. It has been stated that the Call of Abraham is the sera from which Prophecy takes a double, though not a di- vergent, course ; and that, from that time, it is occupied in two general subjects, first, in predicting the history of his Family, the Hebrew people, or of the nations with w hom they were connected : secondly, in developing the Gospel Dispensation. This partition of it is complete; for either the Hebrew, or the Christian subject, embraces the whole of what there is of the Pagan : Pagan history being included only as it fell within the range of Jewish observation, or was connected with the origin or the in- terests of the Gospel. Prophecy did not extravagate into remote subjects, beyond the Jewish, or the Christian pale. Further I observe, that the promises granted to Abra- ham, those promises of God so often referred to through- out the Scripture, are, in fact, the fundamental points, which (as we may presume) have fixed and determined, in the divine plan of Prophecy, the tenour of its subse- quent traditions. For in Abraham were united both the temporal and the evangelical promises — the possession of Canaan by his offspring being the object of the one, the universal blessing of Mankind, ordained to originate also in his offspring, that of the other. Prophecy, therefore, by pursuing the divided course which I have specified, only adhered to, and completed, the mixt revelation made to him at its beginning. And here it is remarkable that God hath pleased to make this Patriarch to be the head and root of the suc- cession and derivative order of Revelation. From his 72 State of Prophecy time began that line of the divine oracles, which, first being preserved in his family, and afterwards secured in record, has never been broken nor lost, but having suc- cessively embraced the Law, the Prophets, and the Gos- pel, is now completed, to remain the lasting and im- perishable monument of Revealed Truth in the world. We know not what reception the older oracles of divine truth had, nor how far they were preserved, from Adam or from Noah downwards, till the later inspired Prophet, a descendant of Abraham, fixed the memory of them in part, perhaps restored it, in his volume of the Pentateuch. But from Abraham the authentic tradition of Prophecy and of Revelation is perfect. With this Patriarch we enter the visible church which God began to build upon earth, and in that sanctuary the light of Revelation has been fixed in its sphere, and has never ceased to burn. Hence it is that the inheritance of God’s revealed pro- mises in the world is traced in Scripture to Abraham, not to the elder progenitors of the Jewish, or the human race, Noah, or Adam: as in that emphatic and sublime invocation of Isaiah, “ Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord ; look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you; for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him a .” In the New Testa- ment the like reference to Abraham is constant. That we do not mistake in classing the predictions of Prophecy under the two general heads, and giving to them the application, which I have described, is obvious from the text of the Prophecies themselves, without as- suming either their inspiration, or their fulfilment. For from Abraham to Malachi, the language in which they are conceived is so far clear and explicit as that we per- ceive, and every hearer or reader of them, when first they were given, might perceive the same, that they foreshewed a Chap. li. 1, 2. in the Patriarchal Age . 73 the fortunes and condition of the Hebrew people, their Church and country, whether of good or evil ; or the con- dition of the states with which they were most connected by vicinage, league, or hostility : or that they foretold the establishment of a new dispensation of things, to be effected by the advent of an extraordinary Person, for ends of a religious nature, particularly of Mercy and Redemption; which is the complex account of the Gospel Dispensation. Keeping, therefore, this partition of the subjects of Pro- phecy in view, and reverting to it as a principle of their order and connexion, we may go on to examine Prophecy in its progress ; taking with us the observation which has been made, that the rational exposition of it requires that we attend to the seasons and circumstances under which it was given, and endeavour to take some measure of it by its adaptation to them . For it was never given to be an insulated phenomenon, nor merely to demonstrate the prescience of its all-wise Author; but by Him it was in- grafted upon the exigency of times and persons, and made to serve as a light of direction to the attentive observers of it, before the event had set the seal to its truth. Let this reflection be borne in mind, if I seem to be intent on keeping the line of Prophecy and of History united together. I must add also, that a certain acquaintance with the contents of Scripture must be presumed on the part of my hearers in this branch of our inquiry : with- out which I could not expect the general view proposed to be given, to be admitted as a just and faithful one ; nor is it possible, by quotation made on the moment, to supply the materials for an adequate judgment in this case, which materials can be derived only from the knowledge or ex- amination of the chief document itself, the Scripture vo- lume. Nor is this the only instance wherein our satis- faction, and even our means of judging of the Truth, or Use of Revelation, are made to depend upon some per- sonal study of it. There is cause to think that scepticism itself is often no more than a form of very unreasonable 74 State of Prophecy enthusiasm, demanding conviction without the pains of inquiry. — But I must proceed. I. The descendants of Abraham, whilst as yet he had no offspring, were constituted into a distinct people by the word of the divine prediction. For He “who seeth the things that are not as though they were,” by granting to the progeny of the childless Patriarch the possession of the land of Canaan, a grant implying an exclusive dominion of occupation, thereby circumscribed His promise, and, as a consequence, separated the people, to whom it was con- veyed, from the rest of the world. But this people, so constituted in the designs of God, was yet to be formed, and to be formed and reared to maturity in another coun- try, in Egypt. When therefore the patriarch Jacob was driven thither by the casualty of a famine, combined with the seemingly fortuitous elevation of one of his sons to be lord of that country, he received by the way the interpre- tations of Prophecy upon the designs of providence. “God spake unto Israel in visions of the night ; and said, I am God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt. For I will there make of thee a great nation . I will go down with thee into Egypt ; and I will also surely bring thee up again b .” This prophecy in part repeats, in part fills up, a former given to Abraham. To Abraham it had been foretold, “Thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again : for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full 0 .” The addition made in the prophecy to' Jacob, is to shew that Egypt was to be the land of the last intermediate abode, and increase, of his race : a particular which had not been specified before, but was now supplied at the crisis when Jacob was carried thither, under the uncertainties of a momentary occasion; “not knowing b Genesis xlvi. 2, 3. c Genesis xv. 13. in the Patriarchal Age. 7 5 whither he went;” nor to what further ends, till they were so explained of God. “ Three score and ten persons,” composing the family of Jacob, were the beginnings of this people, Famine and Exile the preparatives of its greatness. But the seed of a nation, thus sown in weakness, was raised in power. Consider by what steps it was so raised. The men were Shepherds; “they were all men of cattle;” and “every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians.” It is of moment to observe this historical fact ; because the circumstance in it which looked most adverse to the ful- filment of the divine prediction, did eventually conduce to, and almost prepare the way for it. First, their occu- pation and habits of life, as Shepherds, were a reason for a separate place being given them to inhabit, the land of Goshen, the best fitted to their use. Next, the prejudices and antipathy of the Egyptians to their pastoral character, acted as a constant principle of separation to preserve the selected race in union with itself, and unmingled with the mass of their indigenous, but to them alien, fellow -subjects. The land of Goshen, covered with its cattle, in a country principally devoted, as Egypt always has been, to the la- bours of tillage, and the inhabitants of that pastoral Oasis, fenced in, like their own flocks, within a separate pale and fold, by the very hatred of the people who had given them a reception, wore a character of their own, and gave signs of the purposes which the almighty Shepherd was pre- paring to bring out of such beginnings, when He should “lead His people forth like sheep,” as He afterwards did, “by the hand of Moses and Aaron;” and bring them, according to His promise, to their land of rest. Pro- phecy, therefore, seems to have entered into a course of preparation to its accomplishment, though with adverse and contradictory appearances, from the instant of the settlement in Egypt, which began with clear and distinct predictions of its long period of continuance, of the bondage of the adopted race, of their increase , of their deliverance, 76 State of Prophecy and their restoration to Canaan in the power of a great people. II. The death-bed of Jacob, the founder of this sacred colony, was visited with a further effusion of prophecy. He was enabled to predict to his sons distinctively some striking points in the future condition of the Twelve Tribes which were to spring from them ; points exceedingly unlike in their kind, and comprising a variety of determinate particulars. The general scope of his prophecy, however, is this, that it is directed to the land of Canaan, and dis- tributes the Tribes there with a peculiarity of lot, under a geographical restriction; which makes it clear that the land of Canaan is the field of the prophecy, even if the explanation were not subjoined ; “ Behold, I die : but God shall be with you, and bring you to the land of our fathers.” The prophecy bears one circumstance included in it, which demands a separate notice. It foretold, that these twelve sons of Jacob should be the founders of so many Tribes , by a perpetuation of race and lineage to each. This itself was a great undertaking of prophecy. The common calculation of human life would not have war- ranted such a promise, at least in any times of the world with which we are acquainted. For if an inheritance of territory were to be apportioned upon the contingency of a several male offspring in a numerous and multiplied distant issue, to twelve sons of a family, I believe it will be allowed to be an event highly improbable that such a disposition of the inheritance should in all its branches take effect. But here the grant was from the almighty Disposer, and Prophecy relied upon intentions not to be defeated d . d The succession and increase of the human race, however, are among those phenomena which we shall not be justified in subjecting to the calculations of any fixed immutable laws, for the ordinary state of things, in all seasons of the world. God has kept the system of nature in this great instance in His own hands ; witness the disparate longevity of man in different periods in the Patriarchal Age . 77 Again: Observe the season when this disclosure, so full and circumstantial, is made, confirming, for the third time, the promise of the return from Egypt, with an accession of particulars against a time still far off. Jacob, under the divine command, had planted his family in Egypt ; he had given them a home there, and a fixed possession. Lest, therefore, the force of the antecedent predictions with regard to Canaan, should be obliterated or obscured by the interposed abode and domestication in this other foreign country, the most specific disclosure is made to them as to their subsequent enjoyment and partition of their proper inheritance, which had been originally as- sured to their fathers, and which was still shewn to be the immutable object of the divine donation; whilst the distribution of this patrimony held forth to be made among tivelve tribes, gave to the heads and founders of these tribes an immediate personal hope and interest in the promised land, and thereby turned their minds the more distinctly and forcibly to the object of God’s promise. I need not stay to remark how seasonable the Patriarch’s prophecy was to bespeak his own faith. His death-bed w T as full of hope, and he departed like one of those who “ died in faith, not having received the promises, but beheld them afar off.” But we see it furnished a new and signal instruc- tion to the hopes and views of his family, and led them on to God’s further purpose. At the crisis of time, and since the Creation. And if the term of human life have varied from seven hundred to seventy years, what a multitude of other phenomena connected with the succession and increase of the species may have partaken of a similar variation ! Perhaps the descent of twelve numerous tribes from as many sons of one family was not so extraordinary in those days, as it would he in our own under any circumstances whatever of society or life. The same obtained in the line of Ishmael. We want the sufficient data from which to draw any certain conclusions in the comparison we make in this point, between those primaeval times and any others. It is a precarious hypothesis in like man- ner to assume, without limit, a perpetual uniform action, retrospectively, for the general system of the world. Since man, in his physical constitution, has undergone such a change, what may not have happened to other parts of • the Natural System ? 78 State of Prophecy in the conjuncture of things, when the course of Provi- dence appeared to be making a different order for them ; when they seemed to be taking root in Egypt ; their faith is recalled to the primitive blessing secured to them by the veracity of the God of their Fathers. But this prophecy contains something more : it opens to us one distinct view towards the Advent of Christ. This it does in the memorable designation which it makes of the tribe of Judah, and of the perpetuity, or prolonged continuance, of the sceptre with that tribe, appointed to extend to the Gospel sera. “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto Him shall the gathering of the people be.” The critical investigation of this prophecy in all its parts is not necessary to my purpose. But after all that has been written upon it, I may treat it as a pro- minent revelation of two things : the prolonged duration of some public power of the tribe of J udah, as distinguished from the rest; and the cessation of that power on the coming of Christ ; — to whom “ the gathering of the people should be ;” who should rule by a new sceptre, or polity, that of Judah being then to be taken away. Now, although the evangelical prophecies during these early times could never be out of place or season, yet I think we must confess a singular aptitude of season for the union of this one Christian prediction with the other branches of the Patriarch/ s prophecy. Eor his prophecy, be it observed, is the first place in Scripture e which ex- hibits or implies, the constitution of the twelve tribes under which their state was afterwards to be moulded and wholly governed. As soon as prophecy recognised this division and arrangement of tribes, it set the mark also upon that one tribe which was destined to have the pre-eminence of duration, and the privilege of a nearer e His prophecy is followed by this significant comment npon it : “ All these are the tivelve tribes of Israel : and this is it that their father spake unto them, and blessed them; every one according to his blessing he blessed them/’— Genesis xlix. 28. in the Patriarchal Age. 79 union with the Advent of Christ. When the form of tribes began to be seen at all, the Christian subject, in relation to those tribes, is immediately introduced. And so this one design of God is disclosed under each other view of the intentions of His Providence. It was joined with the first general promise of Canaan; it is now joined with the partition of that promised land, and specifically with the tribal constitution. III. The remaining predictions belonging to this age come under the same scheme of exposition with those which have been considered. They laid a basis of reli- gion grounded on Paith, in which the temporal and the Gospel promises were combined together. But the more distinct and the more copious revelations of prophecy, those which gave the most determinate objects of hope, and the clearest guidance to the life, by an immediate reliance upon the understood purposes of God, were the temporal. It is not to be denied that the nearer purposes of the Divine Economy are in this period the most ex- plicitly unfolded. The fact is so. And in reason we shall see it accords most perfectly with the visible work and de- clared order of God’s providence, that it should be so. Por it is no more than this, that men’s duty, and their conformity of hope and action to the divine will, were in the first instance guided by prophecy through that instant course of things which God made to be the sphere of their faith and trial, as it was of His own first dispensation ; “ He having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfects” IV. Concerning the measure of illumination afforded to the Patriarchal, and the next ensuing age, by the other, the Evangelical, Prophecies, we have no criterion whereby we can judge, so safe and exact as that of the recorded predictions themselves. No disclosure of prophecy can be without its use in furnishing a guidance to the minds of f Heb. xi. 40. 80 State of Prophecy men, according to the light which it conveys. It may also have another direct use, in exciting inquiry, and hope, and a desire of further knowledge ; and these are exercises of the habit and disposition of religion; and they are as much so as the principles of a more resolved, and more instructed faith. The evangelical prophecies therefore, in whatever measure they were given, were a direction to faith in its views, and an inducement to the further ex- ercise of its habit, where the prospects of it were less clear. It was an act of religion in Prophets, and in Patriarchs, “ to desire to see the things which yet they did not see,” or were permitted to see only “ as through a glass, darkly.” At the same time, by the actual communications made, it is right to think that some were more enlightened than others, and taught to see further into the truths partially revealed. For these degrees of knowledge are relative to the minds and apprehensions of men, which differ, or to the gift and favour of God’s illuminating Spirit, not sub- ject to be measured. But upon the whole, we shall take our opinions of the comparative illumination of prophecy, in that time, most judiciously and truly, if we think of it as shedding its greater light upon the first, the Temporal promise, the nearer in its approach; whilst whatever discoveries it made of the better promise of God’s mercies, would be cherished and improved with a zeal according to the piety of particular men, whose aspirations after those greater mercies would cause them to love the promise itself more, and instruct them to draw from it a support to their de- sires and hopes, proportioned to the cravings of their own exalted piety. In the actual contents of Patriarchal pro- phecy, however, the temporal subject takes by far the pre- cedence, in the copiousness, and the strict delineation, of the predictions relating to it. Hence we discern that Patriarchal prophecy was plainly a preparative to the Covenant of Canaan. And because it was so, there is on this account a great analogy seen to subsist in the distribution of the light of prophecy, and the in the Patriarchal Age . 81 succession of the Mosaic and the Christian covenants. For patriarchal prophecy is to the covenant of Canaan the same beacon of light which later prophecy is to the Chris- tian covenant. Not only the promise of Canaan in the antecedent prophecy is most explicit, hut the years are numbered to the commencement of the possession of it. The term of four hundred years foreshewn to Abraham corresponds with the period of years numbered to Daniel There is a definite period of time prefixed in each case. The many varied predictions of Patriarchal prophecy still tend to Canaan, as the predictions of later prophecy centre in the Gospel. The general analogy therefore which I have stated, and which I think will be acknowledged to obtain in the structure of Prophecy in its two chief periods, the one preceding the Law, the other subsequent to it, as related to the two Covenants, may contribute to fix our judgment in each case of its use, and to illustrate also the accordance and harmony of revelation in its most essential branches. One great difference, however, we perceive in these two principal members of prophecy. The later is full of pre- dictions, not merely of the Gospel Covenant, but of the Messiah, His person, His nature, His works, and every note of His character. In short, Prophecy delineates the second covenant, and the Founder of it. Not so in Patri- archal prophecy ; it knows nothing of Moses, the destined legislator of the first. There is no provision made for his honour. It is simply the promise of Canaan, with a pro- found silence as to the legislator, or the mediator, of the covenant in question. Such testimony is there given to the eminent glory of the mediator of the better covenant, no less by the silence of the older prophecy, its silence concerning Moses, than by the full utterance of the later, concerning Christ. This distinction we know to be due to Him; for He was Lord over all, and Moses was “but faithful as a servant 11 .” But the point in hand is, that Prophecy has adequately expressed this distinction. b Genesis xv. 13. h Heb. iii. 5. G 82 State of Prophecy in the Patriarchal Age . It would be obvious to insist here again on the integrity of this first divine Messenger, “ who was faithful indeed in all his house,” but who was not deemed worthy to be an object of prophecy. For if, in the exact and luminous pre- dictions concerning the land of Canaan, which he has pre - fixed to the history of his law and ministry, not a word of prophecy be found calculated to draw attention to his own person, character or mission, no auxiliary oracle to aid his pretensions or office, we shall be obliged to acknowledge his abstinence from the use of an advantageous opportunity of representation, which any principle short of Truth could scarcely have rejected. But it is too little to speak of the veracity of this great Prophet, when we should rather be impressed with the divinity of the oracles which he has delivered. But finally, Patriarchal Prophecy, whilst it was silent as to Moses, was not so of Christ. It cast its prediction forward to Him who was ordained to be “the Seed of Abraham,” and the consummator “ of the sceptre of Judah.” Ancient Prophecy, therefore, predicted Canaan; but it penetrated beyond, to the Redeemer; which anterior notices of Him, preceding the Law, shew the constant and pre-eminent designation made of Him from the beginning. When He came into the world, He had His signs before Him. He came only as God had “ spoken by the mouth of His holy Prophets, which have been since the world began 1 .” { Luke ii. 70. DISCOURSE IY. STATE OE PROPHECY CONTEMPORARY WITH THE PRO- MULGATION OP THE MOSAIC LAW. Deut. xyiii. 15 . The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee , of thy brethren , like unto me : unto him ye shall hearken . H AYING brought the consideration of Prophecy in the Patriarchal times to a close, we may pass to the next epoch of it, which is coincident with the promulgation of the Mosaic Law. The deliverance from Egypt being the step of God’s Providence preparatory to the institution of that Law, and to the possession of Canaan connected therewith; and being also the accomplishment of one principal part of antecedent prophecy; I will take a brief view of that event of deliverance, and of the ordinary and miraculous Provi- dence combined, by which it was brought to pass. After which, I will speak of the Law, and the accompanying prophecies which were joined with its promulgation. But on moving upon this line of the prophetic history, I shall find it necessary to enter into some discussion con- cerning the Mosaic Law itself: for, except upon some clear and definite ideas of its nature and constitution, it will be impossible to treat sincerely of the state of pro- phecy concurrent with it. The principles of that Law therefore, its Sanctions, and its Types, will come under consideration ; and some of the questions which have been raised on these points will be examined. And, as the g 2 84 State of Prophecy contemporary with result of such preliminary discussion, I propose to deduce the true and determinate relation subsisting between Pro- phecy, in each of its parts, and the Mosaic Law, and shew what was the state of Faith and Religion under which men were placed by those connected members of Revelation. Craving, then, a patient indulgence to a course of argu- ment, which in some points may appear digressive, but is in truth directed throughout to the single object of eluci- dating the state of Prophecy, and its use, I go on with the prophetic subject. L Four hundred years had been foretold to Abraham, as the term of the abode appointed to his family in a foreign land ; during the latter half of which period, from the death of Jacob to the Exodus, there is a pause in the communications of prophecy. When “ the time of the promise drew nigh which God had sworn, the people grew and multiplied* 1 ;” nor did the persecution of their Egyp- tian masters impede the progress of their increase and greatness; but, as it is written, “the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew b .” This persecution of bondage, which was enforced with an unsparing hand, because with the rigour of a declared policy 0 , was an instrument which furthered the purposes of Providence to their liberation. It did not succeed to the diminution or decay of the people upon whom it was inflicted; it did succeed in disposing them to wish for their deliverance out of a land which was become, through- out its coasts, their prison-house. Nor was it more than sufficient to break off their growing attachment to their present home — that home was a seat of plenty, and had won them, under all their sufferings, by the gratification it afforded to the meaner appetites, which under the de- basing influence of slavery are so apt to gain in strength, and prevail upon the character. When therefore Moses, their deliverer, had brought them out into freedom, but set before them only the table of Providence in the desert, a Acts vii. 17. b Exod. i. 12. c Exod. i. 10. 85 the Promulgation of the Mosaic Law . we have their manner of spirit significantly described : “ in their heart they turned back into Egypt; starting aside like a broken bow d .” They turned back to the fruits and plenty they had left behind, and started aside from their great directing marksman’s aim. In no material instance did they promote, scarcely did they follow, the high things proposed to be done for them. But as they were unwilling agents in the cause of prophecy, they are efficient witnesses to it in the same degree. It had foretold that which they would have defeated, had the fulfilment been left simply to their obliquity of action. Their redemption from Egypt, which had been the subject of Prophecy, was the work of miracles. God’s mighty arm verified His own oracles. The judicial plagues inflicted upon Pharaoh and his people, were the vindica- tion wrought by the God of Israel in His own cause : first, in pursuance of His covenant of mercy to His people, to which covenant a constant reference is made through this scene of His doings ; secondly, to the confusion of “ the gods of Egypt,” and the impieties of false religion in the person of His idolatrous enemies, and to the overthrow of that obstinate pride of Unbelief which defying His com- mands, given in behalf of His people, opposed itself to the most sufficient evidence of a divine power, enforcing those commands. “ Who is the Lord that I should obey Him?” was the impious demand of Pharaoh. The reproof of his obduracy was in plagues and death upon him and his people. Tyrannic oppression, unbelief, pride, false re- ligion, were arrayed on the one part. On the other, mira- cles, which had failed to convince, were multiplied to subdue ; and the issue of these miracles was in the fulfil- ment of an engagement of prophecy, in the judgment of the oppressor, and the consequent rescue of the chosen people from their ignoble captivity and affliction of bond- age. For so to Abraham it had been foretold, “ Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in the land d Psalm lxxviii. 57. 88 State of Prophecy contemporary with that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years. And also that nation ■whom they shall serve will I judge , and afterwards they shall come out with great substance e .” II. Subsequently to the departure from Egypt, but before the entrance into Canaan, the promulgation of the Law was interposed. The rescued people were at large ; they were disengaged, as much as men could be, from the holdings of local or civil connexion ; in that sense they were ready to receive an entire body of civil laws and polity, if there should be an adequate authority to impose it : but they were placed in a state which has not been known, I believe, to produce any other second instance of the like phenomenon. When did a migration through a desert ever besides produce a new and complicated Polity, exempted in its principles from the impieties of a sur- rounding dominant superstition, framed on the reverse model, and opposed to an assimilation with them; fully digested in the detail, and wrought into the public choice of the migratory people? A desert does not supply the matter upon which a great part of such a system could attach, and which usually serves to mould the frame of it ; in fact, well-ordered Polities in the common experience of the world grow up out of their first essays of administration, and do not precede it. But, as I have said, the moral capacity of this sequestered people was ready for such a system to be imposed, because their minds were so far un- occupied and detached ; though the taint of corruption they had imbibed in Egypt was never wholly purged aw^ay; and God, without doing violence to their moral state, supplied what else was wanting, the wisdom of fram- ing their law, and the authority of imposing it : the very reception of which law, under su i r during the same Period. III. Pagan Prophecy ) IY. Last Age of Prophecy, from the End of the Captivity to its Cessation . Amos iii. 7. Surely , the Lord God will do nothing , but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets . nnHEY who have not turned their minds to consider the actual contents of ancient Prophecy, may not be aware how nearly it amounts to a complete history of the Hebrew people, that people of God to whom it was given : a com- plete history, not indeed through the whole of their Annals, but through that great period of them which includes the most remarkable changes of their condition, and during which the mission of Prophecy lasted: that period com- prehending the time from the commencement of their Monarchy to their resettlement after the Babylonian bond- age and the restoration of their Temple. Within these limits I believe it to be nearly the fact, that there is no known event of any magnitude, affecting them as a people, 169 State of Prophecy, fyc. which had not its place in the antecedent warnings of pro- phecy ; nothing befell them, which was not foretold ; the apparent case of prophecy fully supporting this declaration of one of its messengers : “ Surely, the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets.” Through so full a probation did Prophecy pass in maintaining its cause with a people little disposed to a gratuitous conviction ; and so great an insight did it afford into the Providential Government of God, to those among them who, with a more susceptible mind, sought that kind of instruction, and found it, as they might well do, in the explanations of their prophetic Oracles. In a certain sense, History has been justly called the interpreter of Prophecy ; but to the Israelite, Prophecy was more the interpreter of History; for it gave him the intelligible notice of the approaching events, and it supplied him with the reasons of God's Providence in bringing those events to pass. Prophecy did not inform the Israelite in so systematic a way of the changes destined to take place in other states and kingdoms. There is a plain reason why it should not ; for in those alien affairs he was not equally concerned, and of the truth and prescience of the predictions of them he could not always be so good a judge. But it opened enough of the history of those kingdoms, which lay wdthin his sphere of view, to instruct him in the general Providence and Government of God ; whilst in his own particular dis- pensation it was more watchful and constant. I have now to follow it in its progress; and the com- pleteness of its revelation, in that sense in which I have described it as complete, will be one point among others which my investigation will go to establish. The Division of the Kingdom was the next Epoch in the arrangement to which I proposed to adhere, and I proceed to the prophecy connected with that Epoch. I. With the peaceful and prosperous reign of Solomon ended the glory of the kingdom of Israel. There straight- 170 State of Prophecy way ensued tlie great change, in the dismemberment of the kingdom, by the revolt of the Ten Tribes from Reho- boam, Solomon’s son, and the establishment of a separate kingdom under Jeroboam : Judah, with Benjamin annexed, alone adhering to the house of David. This was a convulsion in the whole body of Israel. Their monarchy, so lately compacted and settled, rent in pieces ; their public union, under which they had originally been made subjects of the divine Covenant, broken ; and a cause of discord, if not of a more active hostility, rooted between the members of the great Commonwealth, which God had planted in Canaan in a community of Country and Religion. It was a change which raised a question as to their covenanted relation ; and this effect of it gives it its chief importance. For where did the promises of God, attached to that relation, rest? With Israel, or with Judah? or with both? or were they forfeited ? The shock was not permitted to take place without the prior information of prophecy to unravel the maze of things so disordered. The event itself had been foretold in Solomon’s reign, by the prophet Ahijah, and other pro- phecy supplied discriminating marks of the purposes of Providence now in operation. For let us consider. There were the predictions of the ascendency of power to the Tribe of Judah, and the continuance of its Sceptre, that is, of its public existence and civil union, till the advent of the Messiah : there were the recent promises of an extraordi- nary favour to the house of David; there was the Temple at Jerusalem, that Temple so lately built with a critical coincidence of the opportunity, to predetermine the local seat of their religion, and thereby attach and appropriate the Covenant; lastly, there was the precise document of Ahijah’s prophecy, which fully met the case, both in the particular form of the event, and in the reason of it. As to the event , that prophecy had limited the defection to the extent of the Ten Tribes, and had fixed the time of it, by throwing it beyond the life of Solomon, but bringing it at the Division of the Kingdom . 171 within that of his son ; and assigning the new kingdom to its master, who yet had to fly for his life into Egypt before he could aspire to the conquest which was promised to him. As to the reason of God’s moral government in this proceeding, that was also explained : so much was to be taken away, because of the corruptions of Jerusalem, and the demerit of the degenerated family of David : so much was to remain, to make good the mercy and favour pro- mised to that city and that family, and thereby carry on the ulterior scheme of the divine dispensation. “ Howbeit, I will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand (Solo- mon’s) ; but I will make him prince all the days of his life, for David My servant’s sake, whom I chose, because he kept My commandments and My statutes. But I will take the kingdom out of his son’s hand, and will give it unto thee, even Ten Tribes. And unto his son will I give one Tribe, that David My servant may have a light alway before Me in Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen Me to put My Name there a .” An event of such magnitude was preceded therefore, as we see, by an adequate information of prophecy. But for that information, the event might have seemed to be a catastrophe without hope ; to break up the federal charac- ter of the chosen people; to interrupt, or confound, the transmission of the Covenant, under which they had been embodied. By the intimations previously given, all these points were adjusted ; at least they were sufficiently cleared as to that which would be the first and principal object of a believer’s attention, either then or now, the course of the divine Economy. The particular prophecy of Ahijah is so exact in its terms, as to be a perfect history of the impending event. But there is one supposable way of attempting to invalidate that prophecy, which I may do well to consider. It may be said, that the Partition foretold was possible to be fore- seen, inasmuch as the Ten Tribes had already shewn a disposition to act together (which is true) and oppose them- * 1 Kings xi. 34. 172 State of Prophecy selves in concert to the dominion of the tribe of Judah. Consequently under symptoms of commotion it might be expected that the confederacy in a revolt would be com- posed of those Tribes. To this surmise I would reply, that the occasion and pretext of the revolt did not subsist till after the prophecy of it was delivered. It took its rise from Rehoboam’s rigour of government ; and the prophecy fell upon the prosperous reign of Solomon b , who held all Israel together in peace; a peace undisturbed, till the prophetic warning had first been given. But suppose that this incident of the change, the Separation of the Ten Tribes, taken alone, was not a test of clear supernatural prescience in the days of Ahijah; how will the case stand? That disposition of the Tribes which united them together, and opposed them to Judah, was created and ripened, no doubt, by moral or occasional causes influencing the passions and conduct of human agents, although we have not those causes particularly ex- plained. It illustrates, therefore, in a signal manner, the prescience of that older prophecy of Jacob, given so many hundred years before, which separated the Tribe of Judah to some destination above the rest, and apart from the rest; since nothing could prepare so well for the fulfilment of those restricted promises verging to the favour of that single Tribe, as this very disposition of union and of jealousy. What might be doubtful as a sign of divine foreknowledge in one age of prophecy, is a more preg- nant proof of it in another. Let the arrangement of things, which issued in the division of the Kingdom, pass for an object of human calculation in the days of Solomon. What is it, when viewed from the death-bed of Jacob in Egypt? The revolt, predicted by one Prophet, took place on the excitement of human motives . It was established and con- b Jeroboam’s flight into Egypt, (a public fact ;) whom “Solomon sought to kill,” because of this prophecy, shews that it was then published. 1 Kings xi. 40. 173 at the Division of the Kingdom . firmed by another c against the current of such motives . God forbade the attempt to subdue it. “ Return every man to his house, for this thing is from Me.” Under this command the extraordinary change was completed. The agency of man had been prophetically foreshewn in the one instance ; it was authoritatively suspended in the other. A ferocious and self-willed king, who would take no counsel before the revolt, acquiesced, and all Judah with him, in the dictate of a prophet, after it. Why did he and his people so act, except upon a conviction which they could not resist of that prophet’s authority ? Do princes make a surrender of their kingdoms and their passions on such easy terms, without knowing why they do it ? The time had been, when “the words of the men of Judah were fiercer than the words of the men of Israel.” But now “ an hundred and fourscore thousand chosen men, which were warriors, and assembled to fight against the house of Israel, to bring back the kingdom again to Reho- boam, the son of Solomon d ,” turned their steps in obedi- ence to a prophet. Such men are not governed by mere words. “ When they hearkened, therefore, to the word of the Lord, and returned to depart, according to the word of the Lord;” I infer that they had reason to know whose word it was which they obeyed. I must advert once more to the Moral History of this change, which the Scripture has very clearly expressed. The judicial cause of the spoliation of the kingdom is de- clared to have been the idolatrous impieties introduced by Solomon, and advanced by Rehoboam; whom therefore God infatuated in his counsels to urge him to his punish- ment. Such was the will of God’s providence, and the reason of it. Whereas the proximate cause, by which the human agency in the affair moved, was the violence and rigour of Rehoboam, when he rejected the hoary wisdom of the advisers of his father’s throne, and thereby, in the c Shemaiah. 2 Chron. xi. 3. d 1 Kings xiii, 21. 174 State of Prophecy common course of human feeling, provoked his people to rebellion. But in the government of God, whence events , not the sins of men, spring ; for those sins are of the objects of His government ; Idolatry was the crime which led, in penal retribution, to the first defacing of the commonwealth of Israel ; according to the sentence of the Law, which in its threats had said, “ I will break the pride of your power* ” And AhijaVs prophecy, when it promised to Jeroboam his kingdom, explained withal the reason of the gift, that it was not granted in favour to himself, but in chastisement to Jerusalem and her King. — Hereby this piece of history becomes a moral document definite and complete. For it presents an example, explained in all its parts, of God’s overruling power, and man’s agency , concurring to complete a prophecy ; that completion a moral end, in conformity to a sentence of the divine law . II. We have seen the Establishment of this new king- dom, and how prophecy directed it ; we must look next to its singular and bold Corruption . Jeroboam, in his very acquisition, received a warning against the sin which had forfeited the spoil into his hands : but he was no sooner possessed of it than he outdid the offence which had in- curred the prior forfeiture. He founded in Samaria a system of open Idolatry. To counteract the alienation of his people by any return of feeling to their worship at Jerusalem, he set up for their use a Priesthood, Ritual, and Altar, not of pure Religion, but of Idol Worship. The Golden Calves in Bethel and in Dan were the pub- lic monument of this impiety. “ These are thy gods, O Israel,” the creed of the new kingdom f . The Unity and the Spirituality of God being the firs doctrines of their Law, and the confession and worship of Him, under that character, the first duties of their Re- ligion, and all Idol-worship prohibited, whether as a sub- stitute for, or an addition to, their proper religious service ; * Levit. xxvi. 19. f 1 Kings xii. 28. at the Division of the Kingdom . 175 the sin of Jeroboam had this novelty and excess of enor- mity in it, that whereas the contaminations of Idolatry before had been surreptitiously, or more openly, associated with their better Institutions, it was now made the National Religion, formally received and established. For the king’s apostasy met a ready participation among his people. He incorporated them in allegiance to his throne under the compact of this sin. Hence the reason of the title which is affixed to his memory, to brand his crime, and the gene- ral contagion of it, the title of “ Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.” After what we have seen of Prophecy hitherto, we shall scarcely expect it to remain silent in this crisis of wicked- ness, involving the whole kingdom of Israel , unless their transgression was come to the height of cutting off from them the access of such communications. But God’s pro- vidence left them not to a state of dereliction. He con- tinued to send His prophets to the divided members of His people, to Israel, as well as to Judah, as if to demon- strate to them that His government was one of patience and longsuffering ; of which the continued mission of the prophets, under such provocation of offence, was an ex- ercise, and a sensible proof ; nor was it the less so, when those messengers could carry only rebuke and correption. We know how prophecy dealt with this offence, which may not improperly be called the original sin of the king- dom of Israel. The Idol Altar in Bethel, as soon as it was reared, had its sentence of condemnation written upon it. Whilst the king was in the act of hallowing it to its pro- fane service, at its first festival, it fell by prophecy : its polluter was foretold by name, and it was desecrated in prediction with the ashes of its own priests. “Behold, there came a man out of Judah by the word of the Lord unto Bethel; and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. And he cried against the altar in the word of the Lord, and said, O Altar, Altar, thus saith the Lord, Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, 176 State of Prophecy Josiah by name, and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee g ." Every one will per- ceive that all this solemnity of prediction delivered by a prophet sent for the purpose out of the land of Judah, was not merely to certify the future fact, that the Altar should be so defiled, but to set a mark upon the sin which was established and propagated by that public scandal and seat of impiety. This was the immediate moral use of the pro- phecy delivered. The train of circumstances connected with the utterance of it had the like effect in giving force to this present object of its denunciation. The withering of the king's hand, when “he put it forth from the altar" against the prophet; the healing of it again upon the momentary pang of his humiliation ; the signs given by the rending of the Altar, and the scattering of its ashes ; the command laid upon the messenger prophet “ to eat no bread, nor drink water" in that polluted place ; his strange kind of death for prevarication of duty in this point ; the dying request of the old inhabitant prophet of Bethel; these are the group of particulars gathered round the pre- diction. Do we ask what they all mean? They were instruments to heighten the prophetic warning, and en- force it upon men's senses and attention. But what is more, they serve now to authenticate the prediction. Take the withering of the king's hand whilst he stood by the altar, in his high place, with his people around him, assembled for the establishment and celebra- tion of their reprobated religion; a prophet from Judah being the accusing party on the other side. The king was no penitent f he had no more inclination to believe after- wards in judicial miracles wrought upon himself, or to up- hold the credit of a Judah prophet, than the Altar had to scatter its ashes. I ask then, how this exhibition of a public miracle upon his person, done in the face of day, or how the story of it, could be shaped into a tolerable false- hood, if it was not a perfect truth ? z 1 Kings xiii. at the Division of the Kingdom . 177 Or take the dying request of the Bethel prophet : “ He said to his sons, When I am dead, then bury me in the sepulchre wherein the man of God is laid ; lay my bones beside his bones : for the saying which he cried against the altar in Bethel, and against all the houses of the high places which are in the cities of Samaria, shall surely come to pass.” Such a command for the place of his burial was equivalent to an inscription placed over his grave, express- ing the reason of his choice. Suppose the inscription to have been there; it would be an evidence, not that the prophecy was a true one, but that it was uttered. The public annals of Josiah's history, at the distance of three hundred and fifty years, will speak to its truth. This interposition of prophecy was for a sufficient cause. It was a timely remonstrance -with the separated part of God's people upon the crime which became the chief source and spring of their growing corruptions, and thereby the cause of their reprobation, miseries, and ruin. The remonstrance was planted upon the public ground and scene of their offence : a memorial of reproof, which might constantly meet the transgressor, whenever he came before the forbidden Altar. But with what effect was this and other warning pro- phecy given? From Jeroboam, theirs/ king of Israel, to Hoshea, the last , there is no one reign, no one king, ex- cepted from the imputation of the general depravity. It is a line of unmitigated irreligion and wickedness 11 . King after king has his historic epitaph, annexed to his memory, that “ he did evil in the sight of the Lord whilst his people followed his example. In that people a righteous few indeed there were. But a prophet's eye once explored in vain to find them : and it required a revelation of God to number the “ Seven Thousand” in Israel. I need not h Of J elm, the single king “ who destroyed Baal out of Israel,” and so far “did well;” the other memorial follows : “hut Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart : for he depw'ted not from the sins of Jeroboam , which made Israel to sin.” 2 Kings x. 31. N 178 State of Prophecy enlarge upon the service of prophecy during this period. It is clearly adapted to the state of reigning irreligion, in commination and reproof. The mission of the two great prophets, Elijah and Elisha, falls in the earlier time of this period, a mission directed chiefly to the house of Israel and her kings, and enforced by Miracles, to convince and awaken an apostate people. The duration of Elisha’s ministry reaches nearly to that of Jonah ; and from Jonah we enter into the series of the prophetic Canon. This is the continuity of Prophecy. — There is also another proof of that same continuity, viz., the prophecy given to Jehu during the ministry of Elisha , “that his children should reign after him to the fourth generation,” expires not till after the prophecies of Amos and Hosea have begun 1 : and these prophets, as will be shewn hereafter, begin to fore- shew the deletion of the kingdom of Israel. Consequently the series of prophecy is so far complete. The result is, that the kingdom of Israel has its entire history written in the perpetuity of its wickedness, as re- corded in the ministry of its prophets ; and the one general document which expresses what the state of that kingdom was from first to last, and for what object of merciful fore- warning its prophets were sent, is this : “ Jeroboam drave Israel from following the Lord, and made Israel sin a great sin. For the children of Israel walked in the sins of Jero- boam, which he did ; they departed not from them : until the Lord removed Israel out of His sight, as He had said by all His servants the prophets*.” III. It belongs to the outline of the structure of Pro- phecy which I am now giving, to remark, that the dismem- berment of the Hebrew nation became one safeguard of the prophetic evidence. The people of Samaria professed to hold the Law r of Moses, and to receive the Pentateuch. The predictions contained in the Pentateuch w r ere thereby placed under a jealous and divided care. The jealous feel- 1 For this fact, compare 2 Kings xv. 8 — 12, with the date of time prefixed to the prophecies of Hosea and Amos. k 2 Kings xviii. 21, &c. at the Division of the Kingdom . 179 ing would be addressed most of all to tliose predictions which concerned the fortunes of the Tribe of Judah, partly delivered in those books. If the Samaritans did not re- ceive into their Canon some of the later predictions relat- ing to the Tribe, or to the Family, of David, those predic- tions, and many others, were not on that account the less, but rather the more submitted to their scrutiny, and might have been discredited, either as to their promulgation, or their fulfilment, if the eye of an enemy could have found the means of inflicting any such discredit upon them. The prophecy against the Altar in Bethel has all the benefit of these invidious and hostile circumstances. That Altar was set up in a spirit of schism to the Temple at Jerusalem. A prophet of Judah was sent against it : a king of Judah was proclaimed the person to pollute it. How desirable would it have been to the separatists of Samaria, and how easy, to have disproved, by a simple denial, the utterance of a prophecy in their high place purporting to be for the affront of their country, and the shame of their national worship, if no such prophet were sent among them. This guarantee of the evidence of Prophecy, in several of its chief articles, was most perfect so long as the kingdom of Samaria stood; it lost much of its force, when that king- dom was reduced ; but there were relics of the Ten Tribes left in Samaria and in Judaea, among whom the tradition of history and of adverse public feeling continued : who, therefore, were always some check upon the custody of that evidence. And it will be borne in mind that much of later prophecy continues to enlarge the distinction in favour of the Tribe of Judah; a preference which must therefore have kept alive that kind of inquisitive atten- tion. The same spirit was animated again by the building of the Second Temple, which became a known object of jealousy to the Samaritan race 1 . IV . Prom the Establishment of the separate Kingdoms, 1 Ezra, chap. iv. N 2 180 State of Prophecy I pass to their Dissolution and Captivity , and the State of Prophecy connected therewith. When these kingdoms stood up together, it was inde- terminable by reason, for any thing that we can see, which would be the more stable or prosperous of the two. That of Samaria seemed to have the advantage, her greater territory and numbers considered. Perhaps the spirit of defection, in which her state was founded, portended ill to her internal peace. That symptom excepted, it a doubtful one, the problem of calculation apparently was either inde- terminable, or the data of it inclined to the preponderance and superior stability of the new kingdom. Prophecy however supplied other data. What we have already seen of the promises on the side of the Tribe of Judah and the Family of David, might be taken by a plain inference to negative the hopes of the other Tribes, and other families. For those promises made to the first, being matter of favour and distinction, virtually cut off other Tribes and Thrones by a speedier termination of their power. But the question was not left to depend upon such an inference. It was decided more positively, by direct pro- phecy. Of the Four Greater, and the Twelve Less, Pro- phets, whose books we possess, the most ancient are Jonah, Hosea, Amos, Isaiah. The Chronology of the age of Joel cannot be well ascertained ; but no difficulty results from thence to the point in hand. For whatever be his age, his prophecy implies the protection and preservation of Judah and Jerusalem: and the prophecy of Jonah relates to a foreign subject, the city of Nineveh. Taking then the other three prophets of the highest antiquity, Hosea , Amos , and Isaiah , who are at the same time more copious and articulate in their predictions, consider the information they supplied concerning the relative destiny of the two kingdoms. It is a striking fact, that the First Chapter of Hosea , probably the most ancient of the three, is directly to the point. It bears upon the difference to be made between the House of Israel and the House of Judah. relative to the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah . 181 Observe the text ; “ I will no more have mercy upon the House of Israel ; but I will utterly take them away. But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the Lord their God” The whole book of this prophet inculcates the speedier dispersion and desolation of the house of Israel. Both Israel and Judah indeed are threatened : but the burden of his prophecy is upon Ephraim, Bethel, and Samaria. Take the other eldest prophets, Amos and Isaiah . The words of Amos are those “ which he saw concerning Israel ,” and the main drift of his prophecy bears upon the desola- tion and captivity of Samaria. Consult Isaiah , and you find him prophesying thus : “ Because Syria, Ephraim (Israel), and the son of Remaliah, have taken evil counsel against thee, saying, Let us go up against Judah and vex it , and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal ; thus saith the Lord God, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin : and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken , that it be not a people These texts which I have cited are decisive in ex- pressing the earlier downfall of Israel; but they are only some of the first, with many following them, to the same effect. Israel was to be broken within threescore and five years ; and the Assyrian power, “ the rod of the divine anger,” was foreshewn by Hosea’s prediction to be the instrument of the divine judgment so proclaimed 11 . The Assyrian conquest fell upon that kingdom, in three repeated inva- sions, which ended in its desolation and captivity in the fullest extent ; whilst the inhabitants of the land, the flower and strength of it, were swept away, transplanted among strangers in the cities of the Medes 0 , and lost in the obscure m Isaiah vii. 6, 7, 8. n Hosea xi. 5. 0 According to the original prediction of Aliijah, and given at the beginning of the kingdom, “ The Lord shall root up Israel out of this land ; and shall scatter them beyond the river” 1 Kings xv. 15. 182 State of Prophecy settlements of an irreclaimable exile. From that day Israel has ceased from being a people. The question naturally strikes us here. Why did Israel fall, and Judah not follow in the overthrow? The Assyrian power was in the career of its victories, and meant to have overwhelmed Judah also. The attempt was made; the as- sailant army was on its approach, and had advanced within sight of the walls of Jerusalem. But Prophecy cast its shield in the way, and cut off the assault in the prepara- tions of it. We have seen what was said by Hosea long before , in the difference of God’s mercy to Israel and to Judah. But in the last moment of danger, Isaiah was sent with the message of deliverance. “ Thus saith the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields, nor cast a bank against it, for I will defend this city to save it for Mine own sake, and for My ser- vant David’s sake p .” By a miracle this prophecy was accomplished. But both the prophecy and miracle require some farther attention. Bead the history of the i^ssyrian invasion, and you will see it was not an aggression of common warfare, in the mere lust of conquest. The Invader made it his boast, that he would confound the God who was known and worshipped at Jerusalem with the defeated idols and divinities of Polytheism, whose local tutelary name had been no defence against the power of his arms. His defi- ance is that of Infidelity and Irreligion, more than the vaunt of ordinary aggression. He sent to reproach and blaspheme the Holy One of Israel 9 av ekdrj ra aiTOKetpeva avrw : where the phrase rd airoKelpeva, in grammatical form, and partly also in sense, is equivalent to that of rd etcXetcrd : and yet, without inquiring whether their version be a correct one, it is not supposed that the Translators had any other idea of the prophecy than as being capable of being applied to the Messiah. So much premised; whilst I should admit that the original text, in this one clause of Haggai's prophecy, both as to its grammatical form, and the genuine idea of it, re- quires some deliberation of a sober criticism, yet the ver- sion of it which is meant to be destructive of the Christian sense is only precarious, and the contrary interpretation, or such an interpretation as leaves room at least for the Christian sense, is very capable of being defended. Per- haps no just and satisfactory decision will ever be made upon the simple document of the text itself; — but the context, the spirit of the rest of the prophecy, and the analogy of other contemporary prophecy ; that is, the col- lateral and subsidiary arguments ; must fill the void which literal criticism and philology leave to disputation. But all these second arguments go to the favour of the more enlarged, the Christian scope of prophecy. 2. But it is contended that Christ did not come to the Second Temple, but to a Third, built by Herod ; conse- quently that the promise of a greater glory, to be mani- fested in Haggai’s Temple, could not be accomplished by the presence and ministry of Christ, but must be sought in the splendour and wealth of the Second Temple ; a sense which some of the later Jews have put upon the prophecy, in their endeavour to refute the evidence implied in it, that the Messiah either has come, or was to come, within the duration of Haggai’s Temple. — It is impossible not to Its Christian Oracles vindicated and explained . 241 say that there is a great deficiency of theological and rea- sonable judgment in the misapplication of the historic learning which has supplied this objection. If the Temple were to be considered as a subject of architecture, it might be disputed with some reason whether the substitution of Herod's fabric did not make the later Temple a Third , rather than leave it the Second. But in the history of the Divine Dispensation, and m the history of the Jewish people, there can be only two temples, the first, Solomon's, the second, the restored temple, of which Haggai pro- phesied, and to which Christ came; the moral, and the public relation, which the Temple bore to their religion, their covenant, or their civil state, admitting no further multiplication of its species. For the mere material fabric, though not wholly unimportant, can never pretend to enter into this relation. And it can the less enter into it, inasmuch as Herod's work, whether of enlargement, or of rebuilding, never broke the continuity of the moral sub- ject, but was so conducted as not to interrupt the course of the Temple worship. In the eye of history, therefore, and in the estimate of religion, there were two Temples and no more. This point being so clear on the principles of reason, I further add that the historic phrase of Josephus, from whose narrative of Herod's work the objection of a third temple is derived, is a direct confirmation of the statement which I have made. For after all that he had previously written of the extent and splendour of Herod's new edifice, how does that writer sum up the history of the Temple, when he comes to its destruction by Titus? “ Twice," he says, “the Temple was burnt, on one and the same day in the revolution of time ; and from its first building , its founding by Solomon, to its present destruction, in the second year of Vespasian, there is a period of 1130 years, seven months, fifteen days ; but from its later building , which Haggai e directed in the second year of Cyrus , to e eVo^craTo. De Bello Jud. vi. iv. 4. R 242 Last Age of Ancient Prophecy . its present capture by Vespasian, a period of 639 years and forty- five days.” So that in his review of the Temple and its fate, he glances over all the enlargement and re- construction of it from its foundations by Herod, and rests his eye upon a first and a second Temple, as the only ob- jects worthy of an historian’s recollection. Whereas, there- fore, it is urged by the Author f , who has endeavoured to give the utmost force to the alleged objection, “that if there be any difference between rebuilding or repairing , if Haggai's temple differed from Solomon's , and was a second Temple, then Herod's was not the same with Haggai's , but was truly a third;" I reply, first, that a judicial deso- lation of the Temple, which reduced it to ashes, and ex- tinguished its service for Fifty years, creates a chasm in the line of its history, and a real distinction between Solomon’s building and Haggai’s, which the quiet and peaceful renovation of the later change does not introduce between Haggai’s and Herod’s : — and, secondly, that the Jewish historian, who describes at large, and with some pomp, what Herod did in his new work, still finds it con- sistent with historical truth to make Haggai’s temple, and that which was destroyed by Titus, one and the same g ; and, by the same reason, we shall be justified in taking the restored temple of Haggai to be that which had the privi- lege and glory of the advent of Christ. In this instance again, the collateral arguments, and the internal reason of the case, support the Christian sense of the prophecy, and no other. First, it is improbable to think that the later Temple, either by the occasional gifts of its proselytes and worshippers, or the successive contri- f Dr. Heberden. 8 I do not enter into the question of Herod’s renovation of the temple, what it was, whether it embraced a reconstruction of the whole, or only an enlargement of it. Josephus must be considered a competent witness in the case. And he clearly describes a complete rebuilding from the foundation, ot the Temple properly so called. But most of bis Commentators still argue that it was the Second Edifice perpetuated in a gradual renovation . — See Antig Jud. xv. xi. 3. and Interpp. in loc. Its Christian Oracles vindicated and explained. 243 butions of heathen princes, or the promiscuous devotion of surrounding countries, or even by the greater efforts of Herod, was ever brought, in any age of it, to the splendour and real magnificence of the original temple of Solomon, in which the public and tributary wealth of the whole monarchy of Israel, in its height of prosperity and power, were appropriated, under the direction of a great and lofty - minded king, to the simultaneous completion of the work* — Next, it is still more unreasonable to think, that pro- phecy should direct men to any such quality whatever in the second temple, as constituting “its greater glory,” when the visible glory of the divine Presence, the symbol of God’s inhabitation, was withdrawn from its sanctuary ; a loss for which nothing of material and earthly splendour could be any compensation : least of all could that com- pensation be had in Herod’s work, the gift of no piety, but the ostentation of a vainglorious, sanguinary, and irre- ligious ruler, who reared many other sumptuous fabrics, castles and palaces, in the same spirit as he built the temple at Jerusalem, to be monuments of his pride, or instruments of his ambition; in all which there was nothing that Prophecy could regard, or be thought to hold forth to the Israelite, as his consolation, or as the glory of the temple of God. But Herod’s pomp was not ordained to last; it came in the close of the duration allotted to that seat of worship, and only prepared it to be a more striking pile of ruin, with little of “ peace within its walls,” if we regard it only in its material fabric. Where then shall we look for the completion of all that sublime prophecy, which hung over the Temple, when it rose the second time from its foundations, and uttered such promises as these: “ According to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so My Spirit remaineth among you. Yet once, it is a little while — and I will shake all nations, and the desire [or, the treasure] of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with glory — and the glory of this latter house shall be 244 Last Age of Ancient Prophecy . greater than of the former — and in this house will I give peace , saith the Lord of Hosts;” where, I say, shall we look to find this august prophecy satisfied, except in the Saviour of the world, who by His presentation, and by His divine teaching, by His personal ministry, and the mystery of His sacrifice, gave to the second Temple the witness of “God's Spirit remaining with His people” ac- cording to the original design of their covenant, and mani- fested there such a glory , and such a gift of peace , as prophecy might acknowledge for the just and sufficient completion of its promises ? Whilst “ the new heavens and the new earth,” the renovated moral universe of God, re- ceived Him as the Being, by whom, and for whom, their change and concussion had been made. IY. The same prophet Haggai has a second prediction, which directs us equally to the Messiah. It is addressed to Zerubbabel ; but, whatever be its import, it seems to be connected with the former by the introductory mention of the like concussion “ of the heavens and the earth.” “ Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, saying, I will shake the heavens and the earth . And I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms , and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the heathen , and I will overthrow the chariots and those that ride in them, and the horses and their riders shall come down, every one by ihe sword of his brother . In that day , saith the Lord of Hosts, will I take thee, O Zerubbabel My servant, the son of Shealtiel, saith the Lord, and will make thee as a signet : for I have chosen thee y saith the Lord of Hosts h .” There is an apparent con- nexion in the subject of the two prophecies, expressed by the commotion and shaking of the world ; and there is a proximity of time in their communication : for the second prophetic word came to Haggai three days after the former 1 . These are presumptions that they had a general agreement in their scope and object, but presumptions only: the proper evidence of that agreement , if it exist, will be in 1 See chap. ii. 1 , and 20. h Haggai ii. 21, 23. Its Christian Oracles vindicated and explained, 245 the internal sense, and completion, of the second prophecy, which must be examined. “ In that day,” in that season of commotion in the hea- vens and the earth, and of the kingdoms of the world, God promises to make Zerubbabel a (C signet for he was chosen to be some instrument of His will. The question is, how is this prediction to be applied ? Is it merely a personal promise, to be completed in Zerubbabel himself? or is it a symbolical promise, annexed to his person, but directed to a greater than Zerubbabel ? The second of these two interpretations, I propose to shew to be the only true one ; the only one valid in the comple- tion, and consistent with the text of the prophecy. And as I hope this will be the last occasion of any controversial argument, necessary to the elucidation which I wish to give of this concluding period of prophecy, I entreat my readers' patience, whilst I exercise my own, in canvassing the contrary opinion, which stands in my way, and is sup- ported by Grotius, and by the recent authority of the Translator of the Minor Prophets , archbishop Newcome, as well as others before him, but which I consider to be wholly remote from the design of one of the most em- phatic oracles of the last age of the prophetic revelation. This contrary opinion I shall give in the representation made of it by that Translator. “ Some think that Zerub- babel is put for his people and his posterity,” (says that Prelate). “ But it may well be said, that the commotions foretold began in the rebellion of Babylon which Darius besieged and took, and exercised great cruelties upon its inhabitants.” Herod, iii. 20. — “ Prideaux places this event in the 5th year of Darius ; others, with more probability in his 8th year : compare Zecli. ii. 9. Yitringa calls this event secundum gradum interitus Babylonis .” The same author includes, in the shaking of the kingdoms, which is described in the text, “ the calamity of Babylon , the Mace- donian conquests in Persia, and the wars which the suc- cessors of Alexander waged against each other.” Of any 246 Last Age of Ancient Prophecy . reference of the prophecy to the Messiah, or His history, he does not entertain even the mention. This interpretation, which in the end makes Zerubbabel the object of the prophecy, is untenable for two reasons : it neither holds true in the history, nor will it reach any one article of the prophetic text. First, it is plainly futile to make the insurrection and rebellion of Babylon, and its re-subjugation by Darius, any part of the matter of the prophecy; since in that scene of Babylon there were no “ new heavens and new earth, no overthrowing of the throne of kingdoms, no destroying the strength of the kingdoms among the nations.” The throne of the Persian kingdom stood; and none of the thrones of the kingdoms among the nations, with which Zerubbabel or his people had any thing to do, were overthrown, or destroyed. The second stage of the ruin of Babylon will never correspond with that large and general concussion of things, which is the previous ground of the prophecy. Grotius, to find a basis for his interpretation, includes the revolt in Egypt k , as a part of the prophetic matter. But that revolt belongs to the last year of the reign of Darius, a time to which it is not certain whether Zerubbabel survived : and if he did survive, the revolt itself was suppressed and subdued, and only reduced a vassal kingdom to a stricter coercion and subjection ; and therefore it could never represent the pro- phetic idea “ of the subversion of kingdoms.” Think of that wide field of thrones and powers overturned, and you will see that a provincial rebellion can furnish nothing to occupy it. As to the later commotions of the world, the subversion of the Persian Empire by Alexander, and the wars of his Successors, they are more like to the possible subject of the prophecy : but with these commotions what had Zerubbabel personally to do ? They entered not into the world till two hundred years after the prophecy, and almost as long a time after his death. But suppose there had been subversions of the thrones of kingdoms contem- porary with Zerubbabel, which there were not : for in his k Herodot. lib. vii. 1. Its Christian Oracles vindicated and explained . 247 days the Persian empire, and other great kingdoms, as re- lated to Judaea, remained rather in a stationary order; but suppose there had been such events passing, why, in respect of them should Zerubbabel be a “signet,” the chosen of God, when he individually had in them no other part, either of fear or deliverance, than the rest of his people? and since these commotions did not break upon Judaea, the whole people of God would be more the signet , the peculiar care, of the protecting Providence, than any single person living in the heart of that people. I conclude, therefore, that Zerubbabel, as to his own history, is not, and cannot be, the object of the prophecy, which speaks of a far greater system of things than came within the compass of his time and condition. This inadequate interpretation set aside, the other, which refers the scope of the prophecy to the Messiah and His kingdom, will appear to be the true. The just and regular evolution of the prophetic text will demonstrate its inter- pretation. First, “the shaking of the heavens and the earth” will be the sign of the introduction of the new dis- pensation of God. The “ overthrow of the thrones and kingdoms of the world” will be the image of that general contrast, which prophecy so often makes, between the fall of those earthly kingdoms, and the stability of that which cannot be shaken ; whilst the subversion of some of the greater kingdoms , which actually fell prior to the age of the Gospel, as the Persian, Macedonian, Syrian, and Egyp- tian, may be more distinctly included, (all of them sub- jects of other prophecy, particularly in Daniel, and so pointed out to the notice of the Israelite). Lastly, the suppression of wars , and the destruction of the implements of war, will denote the discomfiture of human power, op- posed, whether knowing or unknowingly, to the purposes of God; and that there was such a pause and suppression of war at the first sera of the Gospel, in that region of the world where the Gospel had to run its course, is suffi- ciently known. The discomfiture specified to be wrought 248 Last Age of Ancient Prophecy . “ by a brother’s sword” in all this earthly tumult, may be either the common mutual destruction which the kingdoms of the world generally make of each other : or it may de- scribe more definitely the Civil Wars of the East , among the Successors of Alexander, and the Civil Wars of Rome , which wasted the world, both preceding the Gospel; to- gether with the Intestine Wars among the Jews them- selves, at the time of their final destruction, a phenome- non connected with the establishment of Christianity. The general view , however, of these convulsions, and changes of the kingdoms of the earth, is unquestionably clear in the ground of the prophecy, whether we may choose to take up the more definite references of it, which I have mentioned, or not. So far the line of interpretation is certain. But, in all this, why is Zerubbabel so distin- guished in the prophecy, when it looks so far beyond him ? Why is he characterized as the signet of God ? He is so distinguished as being the Representative of Christ ; and his fitness to be that Representative is most evident. Of his line and seed was Christ born into the world. When God, therefore, restored His people, and reinstated them in their covenant, and their land again, by this prophecy He designated Zerubbabel, and set His choice upon him, as the signet of His hand and purpose, in whom some work of His providence and mercy should be accom- plished ; but the time and period of that future work was to be measured by the circle of “the new heavens and the new earth,” and therefore it was to be in the ulterior sys- tem of God, after the great change of things in the new y the Christian dispensation. Consider, then, the whole case. In Zerubbabel the genealogy of the Messiah, after the restoration from Baby- lon, begins. Zerubbabel is the head of that genealogy : in him it has its double concourse 1 : both the lines of the descent of the Messiah meeting in his person. This headship of Zerubbabel is the index of the sense and import of the prophecy. For the restoration of the 1 See Matt. i. 12 ; Luke iii. 27* Its Christian Oracles vindicated and explained . 249 Hebrew people, when they resumed the tenure of their covenant again, was an epoch when any special mark of prediction relating to the Messiah would come in season ; and such prediction was the more opportune, when we consider the state of doubt and ambiguity which might now seem to attach to the former promises of God, given to the family of David, when that family had been set aside from the throne, and the whole body of it had been disturbed, in its civil order and hereditary privileges, by the troubles of the Captivity. The short, but emphatic prophecy, delivered to Zerubbabel, clears this disorder or ambiguity, and directs us again into the line of the di- vine promises. How had the Captivity begun ? It began with the re- jection of Coniah and his seed; and Jeremiah's great pro- phecy to the particular heir of the throne and house of David had been, “ As I live, saith the Lord, though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were the signet upon my right-hand, yet would I pluck thee thence™.” The like image of “ the signet" upon God's right-hand, in this prophecy of Jeremiah, could not escape the notice of Gro- tius. But it is rather surprising that this very image did not lead him into the connexion and joint moral import of the two prophecies of Jeremiah and Haggai. The Cap- tivity begins with that sentence of rejection upon Coniah and his seed; the Restoration equally begins with the contrary promise to Zerubbabel ; the parity of the image, the relation of the two seasons, and the doubtful condition of the house of David, all tending to shew the mutual aspect of the two prophecies. To Zerubbabel however no throne is promised, and none was given. Yet he is chosen , and has the divine adoption, or acknowledgment, set upon him. Whence I infer, that that adoption , or acknow- ledgment of him, in relation to “the sure" and yet re- maining “ mercies of David," the promises of the Chris- tian Covenant, is the specific point of the prophecy of Haggai. Jeremiah xxii. 24. 250 Last Age of Ancient Prophecy . It is not to be maintained that all this force and con- nexion of the prophecy could be understood from the first utterance of it ; but they may be understood now ; as they might also have been in the first age of the Gospel. It is one of those prophecies which time and the event would set in their proper light. But yet, from the first, it was a direction to the Israelite to expect in Zerubbabel, or in his seed, a work of God connected with the renovation of the heavens and the earth, and the succession of kingdoms ; a work which the Israelite assuredly never could see in Zerubbabel’s line, till he came to the advent of Christ, Meanwhile this long repose and obscurity of Zerubbabel’s family, and of the whole house of David, during so many generations prior to the Gospel, was one of the prepara- tions made whereby to manifest more distinctly the proper glory of it, in the birth of the Messiah. In this view is presented one instance more of that order and analogy which Prophecy has been seen to hold in the designation which it made of Christ. In the Call of Abraham, in the Partition of the Tribes, in the Foundation of the Temporal Kingdom, in the Kestoration from the Captivity, there will be one and the same signa- ture, set upon the persons, family, or tribe, wherein His advent was to be expected; each more memorable season of the first dispensation having inserted in it some distinc- tive notice, relating personally to Him, as well as the gene- ral promises of God’s purposed work, which He alone has fulfilled. The analogy confirms the single instance here in question ; and that instance, in its turn, tends to sup- port and complete the analogy. Y. Perhaps I may now shake off the dust of a contro- versial discussion which I have not been able to avoid with respect to the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah, and close my survey of later Prophecy with the Predictions of Malachi, which have had their interpretation less dis- puted. Its Christian Oracles vindicated and explained. 251 The last of the Prophets lived, and gave his oracles, after the Temple was rebuilt 11 . His moral admonitions shew that the service of the Altar and the Temple, with its offerings and sacrifices, was established, and in use ; for it is a profane and insincere spirit in that service, a reli- gion without purity, which he labours to reform ; and both the people and the priesthood , have their share in the im- puted contamination of their restored worship. The Christian predictions of Malachi are singularly framed, in many points of them, upon this existing state of religion. “ I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hands.” Such is the reproof : but what the prophecy joined with it ? “ From the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same, My name shall be great among the Gentiles , and in every place incense shall be offered unto My name, and a pure offering ; for My name shall be great among the heathen , saith the Lord of hosts 0 .” The concourse of worshippers to the restored Temple leads the prophet to predict the greater assembly of the Gentile world, when the knowledge and worship of God should have the circuit of the sun, and every place, as much as Jerusalem, should be fit to be a temple or an altar to His service : whilst the formality and hypocrisy of the Jewish worshipper prompt the prediction of the purer worship, and holier offering, of the Christian Church. Again : “ And now, 0 ye priests , this commandment is for you.” After the prophet has delivered at large his reproof of them in their public, sacerdotal duties ; “ Ye are departed out of the way ; ye have caused many to stumble at the law ; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi , saith the Lord of hosts :” the prediction follows : “ Behold, I will send My messenger, and He shall prepare the way be- fore Me : and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come n Chap. i. 10. iii. 10. 0 Chap. i. 11. 252 Last Age of Ancient Prophecy, to His Temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, He shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the day of His coming ? and who shall stand when He appeareth? for He is like a re- finer's fire, and like fullers' sope : and He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver : and He shall purify the sons of Levi as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness . Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem he pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old, and as in former years." The Covenant, the Temple, the Levitic Priesthood, the Offering, are all combined in this prediction; but the force of the prophetic representation does not consist in the mere analogy of the Jewish images , but in the action and import of the existing scene, which gave life to that form of representation. The Temple was again in use : the prophecy is, “ the Lord whom they seek shall suddenly come to that Temple ." A prevari- cating priesthood “ was corrupting the covenant, and mak- ing men stumble at the law it is foretold, that the Lord will send His messenger “ to prepare His way before Him." That priesthood had debased religion by ignorance and personal corruption : the prophecy is, that the messenger of the new covenant “ will sit in judgment as a refiner ," and discerner of spirits, and purify His priesthood, and hallow the offering by the graces and sanctity of His apostles and evangelists . So that this great predictive revelation of the Gospel is at once a prophecy, and a moral parable, putting to shame the priesthood of those days of Malachi, in the reversed exhibition of the holiness and spiritual illumination of the new Covenant and its puri- fied ministers. It is one predominant and general characteristic, there- fore, of this last age of Prophecy, that its predictions of the Gospel are modelled upon the history of the Temple, the Priesthood, and Public Worship. In the auspicious re-establishment of the Temple and Priesthood ; in the pro- faneness and irreligion which soon entered with this reuo- Its Christian Oracles vindicated and explained . 253 vated state of public Order; prophecy equally set forth the Gospel promises. What was fair and glorious, in this scene of Jewish history, was made a pledge of the glory to come. What was base and degenerate, had its opposed counterpart exhibited in the sanctities of the new Cove- nant. In a word, the Second Temple is covered with Christianity. And now, when Prophecy was about to be withdrawn from the ancient Church of God, its last light was mingled with the rising beams of “the Sun of Eighteousness.” In one view it combined a retrospect to the Law with the clearest specific signs of the Gospel advent. “Remember ye the law of Moses My servant, which I commanded him in Horeb, for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments, j Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet , before the great and dreadful day of the Lordv” Prophecy had been the oracle of Judaism, and of Christianity, to uphold the authority of the one, and reveal the promise of the other. And now its latest admonitions were like those of a faith- ful departing minister, embracing and summing up his duties. Eesigning its charge to the personal Precursor of Christ, it expired with the Gospel upon its tongue. I have now traced the outline of Ancient Prophecy in its several ages : and a brief statement may suffice, to re- capitulate what has been said in the survey which has been taken of the Structure and Use. I. It has been shewn that the character of Prophecy is not simple and uniform, nor its light equable. It was dispensed in various degrees of revelation ; and that reve- lation adapted, by the wisdom of God, to purposes which we must explore, by studying its records, and considering its capacity of application. p Malachi iv. 2. 254 General View of the Structure II. The principal age of Prophecy is from Samuel to Malachi. From the Fall to the Flood, and thence to the Call of Abraham, its communications are few . In the Patriarchal Age, they are enlarged . During the Bondage in Egypt, they are discontinued, but renevjed with the Law. A pause of them, during four hundred years, fol- lows the Law ; and a pause of the like duration precedes the Gospel. III. The subjects of Prophecy varied. Whilst it was all directed to one general design, in the evidence and sup- port of religion, there was a diversity in the administra- tion of the Spirit, in respect of that design. In Paradise, it gave the first hope of a Redeemer. After the Deluge, it established the peace of the Natural world. In Abra- ham, it founded the double covenant of Canaan and the Gospel. In the age of the Law, it spoke of the Second Prophet, and foreshadowed, in Types, the Christian doc- trine, but foretold most largely the future fate of the se- lected People, who were placed under that preparatory dispensation. In the time of David, it revealed the Gospel Kingdom, with the promise of the Temporal. In the days of the later Prophets, it presignified the changes of the Mosaic Covenant, embraced the history of the chief Pagan kingdoms, and completed the annunciation of the Messiah and His work of Redemption. After the Captivity, it gave a last and more urgent information of the approaching Advent of the Gospel. Thus ancient Prophecy ended as it had begun. The first discovery of it in Paradise, and the conclusion of it in the book of Malachi, are directed to one point. In its course it had multiplied its disclosures, and furnished various succours to religion, and created an authentic record of God’s Providence and Moral Government to be committed to the world. But its earliest , and its latest use, was in the preparatory revelation of Christianity. It remains, as the general inference to be deduced from the and Use of Ancient Prophecy . 255 whole, that the Holy Jesus, and His religion, are the one principal object of Prophecy, the beginning and end of the elder revelation of God. St. Paul has intimated the varied form, and different degrees of light, under which prophecy was successively dispensed, when he says of it, that “ God in sundry parti- tions of His Truth, and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the Fathers by the Prophets And if the inquiry, which has been so far pursued through these Dis- courses, might pass for a Comment upon this text of the Apostle, by elucidating, in any degree, “the manifold wisdom 1 ” of the divine design which is embodied in the Volume of Prophecy, perhaps they may be thought to have their sufficient use. q TloXv/uLepu/s Ka\ TroXvTpiirus. Heb. i. 1. r ‘H tioXvtto'ikiXos vocpia. Ephes. iii. 10. END OE DISCOURSE VI. DISCOURSE YII. OF THE DIVINE FOREKNOWLEDGE, AND ITS UNION WITH THE LIBERTY OF HUMAN ACTION. Isaiah xlvi. 10. Declaring the end from the beginning , and from ancient times the things that are not done , saying, My counsel shall stand , and I will fulfil all My pleasure. T N the first ages of Christianity, when its apologists and teachers applied the argument from Prophecy to demonstrate its truth, a discussion was soon introduced as to the reconcilableness of the Divine Foreknowledge with the Liberty of human Action . For some of the things fore- told in Prophecy, being, in their obvious and formal cha- racter, of the nature of sins , and others, the effect and consequence of them, it came in the way to examine whether the agents could be left free, when their actions were thus ascertained and foreknown. The question was not wholly a new one. It had been discussed, though with some difference in its form, in the schools of Philosophy, where the debate commonly had been, whether the fore- knowledge of future events, if such foreknowledge any where existed, did not infer a fatal necessity of things. From this previous entertainment of the question, it passed into the Church, and the defences of religion ; and there it has been pursued into a more subtle and elaborate in- vestigation than it had undergone before. For it has been the fortune of Revealed Religion to attract all the objec- tions which the stock of controversial philosophy could 257 Of the Divine Foreknowledge , tyc. supply, to render the reception of its truth jealous and reluctant ; and even the very force and importunate autho- rity of its evidence seems to have provoked the suspicion and scepticism of Natural Reason, and to have operated in many instances to a more pertinacious discussion of difficult points, which had any connexion with it; whilst men, whether with a good, or an ill faith, have scrupulously measured every sacrifice of doubt, and disputed every con- cession of belief, which the system of Religion, and its evidence, have demanded of them. The ancient Fathers of the Church met this question, concerning the union of the Divine Prescience with human Freedom, wisely, and most reasonably. They stood upon the proofs of God’s Prescience, which authentic and unambiguous prophecies supplied; they maintained the Liberty of human action, without which they saw there could be no religion: and, whatever solutions, or quali- fications they attempted to give of the apparent difficulty subsisting in their view of the case, they sought no relief of it whatever, by going to invalidate the one principle, or the other, the prerogative of the divine Foreknowledge, or the responsible Freedom of man’s moral agency. Justin Martyr , Origen , Eusebius , all concur in this judgment, and even Augustine , when he argues most coolly, does not dissent from them. “ Wherefore we are by no means obliged, either retaining the prescience of God, to deny the liberty of the will, or, retaining the liberty of the will, to deny to God, which piety forbids, the prescience of things future*.” a “ Quocirca nullo modo cogimur, aut retenta prcescientia Dei, toUere vo~ luntatis wrbitrium, aut retento voluntatis arbitrio , Deum, quod nefas est, negare, prascium futwrorum” — De Civitate Dei, lib. v. cap. 9, 10. I refer to this Treatise of Augustine, which I think may be considered as the most tem- perate, exact, and judicious, of all his works : the least infected either with the violence of acrimonious controversy, or the license of a popular and fanci- ful abuse of argument. As such it probably contains the truest expression of his opinions — and those opinions such as will be most satisfactory to others. Por a monument of Christian learning and reasoning, it is clearly among the 258 Of the Divine Foreknowledge , and Such is the conclusion to which Augustine brings his inquiry on the question proposed, “ An voluntatibus homi- num aliqua dominetur necessitas ?'' And the rest of the Fathers whom I have* named, with others, are not less explicit in urging and maintaining the same conclusion. In the doctrine, however, thus asserted, the freedom of man's moral agency is not to be taken for the integrity of his nature, or the absence of all innate corruption of his will. In such a sense, the Scripture, the Creed of the Christian Church, the sober Experience of the world, would disclaim and refute it. But such is not the necessary, and cannot be the true idea, of human liberty, in any general consideration of it. Moral agency may consist with great irregularity and disorder in the constitution of man's na- ture. Consequently, it is not in question, whether he is wholly free and perfect in the balance of his faculties and desires, his understanding and will ; but whether he have so much freedom and power of rational election left to him, as to be a subject of probation, and, within the limits of that probation, to be responsible for his action : it being clear that his responsibility, and his moral power, must be commensurate the one with the other. His duty may be difficult in any degree, and the wrong bias and pro- pensity may be ever so strong, short of an absolute and inevitable determination to evil. Yet the principle of moral agency will remain ; and this is the state of that principle which alone it is of any serious importance to vindicate in the question at issue ; and such a view of it, in a greater or less latitude, the Scripture every where confirms, the Creed of the ancient Church embraced, and Experience, as well as the best Philosophy, will sanction. The nature which is “far gone from original righteous- most valuable remains of the Primitive Church . — Justin Martyr's doctrine may be seen in his Second Apology, p. 80, 81. ed. Par. 1636. Origen's — Contra Celsum, p. 73, 74; and more largely Philocal. cap. xxiii. xxv. Eusebius's , Prseparat. Evang. lib. vi. cap. vi. with his extract from Origen, cap. xi. its Union with the Liberty of Human Action . 259 ness,” may yet, in all its disorder, which some men mag- nify so much, and others as unreasonably deny, retain the elements of its probationary character, the faculty to know, and the freedom to choose, in good and evil, though each greatly impaired; and in this condition, however fallen from integrity and rectitude, the essence of freedom, though not the strength and perfection of it, will have its place 5 . Resuming, then, the combined doctrine of the divine Prescience and human Liberty , I must observe, that the difficulty which we may experience in reconciling the one of these principles with the other, cannot justify us in rejecting either. Each of them is established upon a com- petent evidence . There are proofs, in Prophecy, of God's foreknowledge of men's actions. The liberty of those actions is proved by many media: by our personal con- sciousness ; by the conditions of Revealed Religion ; by all laws, human and divine ; by the common sense of mankind, whose judgment and language are framed, not merely on the admiss on of this principle, but on rules of taking an account of it. It is further proved by the strictest reasoning of the best philosophers, who have asserted it, and by the concessions of others, who have denied it ; for the reasoner, who denies human liberty, never fails in his life, to deal with others as though they possessed it, and proves himself to be so far free as the greatest inconsist- ency can shew him to be. In a word, Religion, Laws, Internal Consciousness, Society, all verify this doctrine. Consequently, although it may not be impossible to im- pugn it by some of our purblind speculative objections, yet the denial of it can never be made without a great and b If I might transfer, with some variation, the words of the poet, I might say of this moral constitution of man’s nature, “ His form had not yet lost All her original brightness, nor appear’d Less than God’s image ruin’d.” s2 260 Of the Divine Foreknowledge , and manifest difficulty, and that a difficulty pressing upon us in the strongest relations of our whole nature and being. But such a difficulty must be reckoned as equivalent to a practical refutation of the system which includes it. Each, therefore, being supposed as distinctly proved, God’s pre- science, and man’s freedom ; if their union and consistency pass our comprehension , that will be no ground why we should reject the first things proved by reasons which we do comprehend . That would be for our ignorance to refute our knowledge. For where does the difficulty in this second case origin- ate ? Where is it situated ? It originates in a province of thought, wherein our notions confessedly are inadequate and imperfect; in our estimate of the Divine Nature and the infinite Perfections of God. Without insisting upon what might be very justly said, that in many of our specu- lations concerning the Deity, and the extent and capacity, if I may so speak, of His perfections, it is even reasonable to expect great, and perhaps overpowering, difficulties; I ask, whether the sense of such difficulties, when perceived, can be allowed to be a sufficient answer to other conclu- sions presented to us in direct and convincing evidence; or whether it be not wiser to think that the infinity of the Divine Being, and the vastness of His Attributes, are the true reason of the intricacy under which we view many questions relating to Him, and to the exercise whether of His knowledge, or His power. It contradicts many axioms of our most certain knowledge, to deny man to be a free agent. But it contradicts no such axiom to admit that of free and undetermined actions an Infinite Being may have an infallible foresight. IIow this can be, is a hard and mysterious point : it may be an absolutely insolvable enigma to our understanding. But it is only an enigma . The contradiction in it has not yet been shewn. And to use the strict philosophic distinction of Clarke, applied by him in another case, “ Absurdities , contradictions , disagree- ments of ideas , are things just as different from difficult its Union with the Liberty of Human Action . 261 consequences of demonstrative truths, which cannot be per- fectly cleared, as light is from darkness 0 .” In order to diminish the difficulty, however, in our pre- sent case, and reduce it within its proper hounds, there are many accurate distinctions which have been urged, to separate between the divine foreknowledge, and the neces- sity of the things foreknown. “ He who predicts ,” says Origen, “is not the cause of a future fact : but the future fact, which would have been, though it had not been pre- dicted, gave the occasion to the foreknower to foretell it d .” Causation clearly is not included in knowledge : and “ fore- knowledge doth no more necessitate events to come to pass than after knowledge* ” The proper agent is the cause of his action ; and neither the infallibility of God’s prescience, nor the positiveness of the futurition foreseen, can affect the production of the action. When the ancient sceptic argued, that from the veracity of prophecy it would follow that the crimes foretold by it must come to pass, Origen justly replied, “ Infallibly they would, but not by any ne- cessity*” In fact, the free and voluntary production of such actions by the agents themselves, is understood, in the hypothesis, to be a part of the object of God's fore- knowledge. His foreknowledge, therefore, cannot destroy that quality of them which is itself, by that hypothesis, one of the things foreknown. Certainty and Necessity , not only are possible to be dis- tinguished, the first as belonging to knowledge, the other to the nature of things, but as not implying either of them the other. For of necessary things there is often an un- c Third Defence of the Immateriality, &c. p. 303. d Contra Celsum, p. 73. — So the author of the Quaest. et Respons. ad Ortho- doxos, p.425. Opp. Justini. /cal ovk earn/ f] Trp6yv(a eo’ecrdai avriov rijs Trpoyvwcretas* e Bramhall, p. 744. f Et yap rb t IlavTws, a/couet avr\ tov , KaTTjvay Kao’/uei'ces, ov bcco'o/JLev avrf* dvj/ar ov yhp i)v /cal p.7) y eveaQai. Et de rb, Tlavroos, Aeyei avrl rod, V E crrat, oirep ov KooAherai chai aArjOes, Ka.v bvvarbv fj rb y evecrSai, ovSev Av 7 T€i rbi / A6yov. Contra Celsum, p. 74. 262 Of the Divine Foreknowledge, and certain knowledge, owing to the ignorance of the mind judging of them; and thence , as Limborch has acutely observed, there may equally be, by the perfection of the judging mind, a certainty of knowledge, where the things themselves foreknown are contingent, and undetermined Or again, if certainty be considered as expressive of the truth of things , it expresses merely the truth, not the man- ner, of their causation, or their being : which causation and being may be either necessary, or free. And these clear distinctions in the subject, although they may not completely satisfy the mind, or enable us to comprehend the union of the divine foreknowledge with man's free- dom, yet go a certain way in abating the perplexity of the speculation, by shewing that consistency may well be believed, where contradiction is not obviously expressed, or implied. My proper business, in this branch of my inquiry, is with the 'prescience and inspiration of Prophecy : and the supernatural origin of scripture prophecy may be proved, whether we are able to reconcile it with the freedom of human actions, or no. It may be thought, therefore, that I might have proceeded to examine the evidence of the prophetic inspiration, without adverting to this other, an abstract inquiry. But there is too much at stake in the great question of man's moral agency, to permit it to be slighted in any serious argument of Religion; and the result of the Prophetic evidence, in demonstrating ever so clearly a divine inspiration, I should consider to be of small use to religion, if that same evidence could be thought, as has been contended, to disprove the possibility of human freedom. The best arguments of Religion would then only destroy its proper subject. Hence it is of the z Tlieologiae Christiana} lib. ii. cap. viii. sect. xix. tit. discrimen inter certi- tudlnem et necessitatem ; et incertitudinem et contingentiam . Where Lim- borch has stated concisely and perspicuously most of the chief points of the question. its Union with the Liberty of Human Action . 263 first importance to uphold the entire doctrine of the Divine Prescience, and of man’s moral probationary freedom, in those very instances of his action which have been most definitely foreknown and foretold. Divines, as well as Metaphysical reasoners, there have been, who have disjoined these principles. Hobbes and Bayle have argued from the admission of the Divine Pre- science against the possibility of human freedom. Collins has repeated their doctrine. The older writers of the Soci- nian School have chosen rather to deny the possibility of an absolute divine Prescience in things contingent, as the actions of free agents ; whilst some of the later writers of that School have adopted the other hypothesis of a Neces- sity in the system of the world. Some few of our own Church have gone to the same side with the older Soci- nian writers, in denying the divine Prescience of free un- determined actions. In which number I must place a very candid and dispassionate inquirer. Dr. Pearson, who has lately preceded me in the office of this Lecture, and has devoted the first of his Discourses to the maintenance of his opinion. That speculatists, such as Bayle and Collins, should entertain and press any unfavourable consequence, which can be represented as following from Prophecy, or any other part of the evidence of Revelation, is not inconsis- tent with the disposition which they have shewn towards Revealed Religion, in the general tenour of their opinions. Por nothing so disturbs the foundation of religion, and the practical use of it, taken as a system addressed to man, as the disbelief of his free responsible character. Whether it be assumed to be a direct act of the Supreme Being, or any concatenation of objects and causes, extrinsic to man, which subjects him to one determinate and necessary in- evitable course of action ; his proper agency, and his pro- bation, are equally destroyed. Thence, by any opinions, to undermine the belief of his freedom, is, in the result, to overthrow all Religion, Natural and Revealed, and do 264 Of the Divine Foreknowledge , and away with Virtue, as well as Faith. When, therefore, we observe that Bayle and Collins are apparently willing to admit the evidence of prophecy, as a proof of Revelation, so that they may carry it at the same time to the denial of human freedom, it creates some just suspicion as to the fairness and probity of their speculations. For although they loved not Revealed Religion, yet the Cause of Virtue, which they generally professed to regard, required a differ- ent treatment at their hands : and the coolness with which they consented, in theory, to disbelieve human liberty, or leave it in doubt, upon any supposed proof whatever, is one of the most remarkable, and not the least instructive points, in the history of their sceptical opinions. The Philosophy which makes God to be the sole Agent, and efficient Cause of all things done in the world, has sometimes been disguised in the pretensions of a more ex- alted piety. But under whatever specious form it is pro- posed, it is refuted by the existence of Moral Evil . Other efficient causes of action there are, or Sin had not existed. Other efficient causes of action there are, or how could God judge the world ? The inferior agents, deriving their being, and their power of action , from God, have that power, there- fore, with the capacity of a determination of its exercise in themselves. The prevalence of Evil, and the positive doc- trines of Religion, equally attest this inferior and subordi- nate, but responsible and free agency. Whatever colour of piety, therefore, there may seem to have been infused by some men into this ideal system, which would refer all things that are done to the sole power of one supreme effi- cient Agent, as their direct determining cause; it is un- sound in its principle, and, in effect, makes God to be the Author of Moral Evil, which is one of the greatest contra- dictions that can enter any moral system. And although this philosophical scheme of Malebranche has had to reckon among its disciples, persons of an ingenuous and unques- tionable piety, it can scarcely be thought on that account the less an aberration of reason, or less injurious to reli- its Union with the Liberty of Human Action. 265 gion. The essential character of Scriptural Theology is necessarily subverted by it ; for that Theology imputes to men their actions, as being the cause of them, which im- putation must all be resolved, in such a theory, into a mere empty unintelligible figure. There is “a Meditation” or Essay, of Lord Bacon, in which even that eminent writer seems to have made some approach to this theory, which ascribes to the Deity an universal causation of actions. He states it to be one source of heresy and religious error, to attribute a wider extent “ to the divine knowledge than the divine power, or rather a wider extent to the divine power , simply knowing , (for knowledge is power,) than to the same power , moving and acting ; as though God foreknew some things inactively {otiose), which He does not predestinate and preordain But if this kind of opinion be a source of heresy, Bacon thereby intimates that he would consider the divine know- ledge, and the divine agency, as inseparable 11 in the pro- duction of the things foreknown. But in this one instance we may say that the great Philosopher has been mistaken in his argument. The knovjledge and the active power of God may be of equal extent, both infinite, and reaching to all things ; and yet His power may be exerted, not in the causation of some actions, but in the moral government of them. Evil actions, which He does not produce, are yet under His power, in His control and appointment of their effects, whether in respect of the doer of them, or of others. The whole world therefore will be the subject of h Tertius gradus est eorum qui arctant et restringunt opinionem priorem tantum ad actiones humanas quae participant ex peccato, qnas volunt sub- stantive, absque nexu aliquo causarum, ex interna voluntate et arbitrio hu- mano pendere, statuuntque latiores terminos scientice Dei quam potestatis ; vel potius ejus partis potestatis Dei, (nam et ipsa scientia potestas est,) qua scit, quam ejus qua movet et agit ; ut praesciat quaedam otiose, quae non prae- destinet et praeordinet. Sed quicquid a Deo non pendet, ut auctore et prin- cipio, per nexus et gradus subordinates, id loco Dei erit et novum principium, et deaster quidam. Et tamen admodum recte dicitur, quod Deus non sit auctor inali, non quia non auctor , sed quia non mali. — Meditationes Sacrae de Haeresibus, p. 747. 266 Of the Divine Foreknowledge , and His power, and under His administration, as well as under His knowledge — but without transferring to Him the origin of actions, which, if evil, would convey to Him the origin of their evil. And in this instance I should suppose that Bacon had unawares carried a principle of his Natural Philosophy into Religion. In physical nature it is per- fectly true that the Divine Agency is the one sole efficient and adequate cause. In the Moral System, in the sphere of intelligent beings, Revelation and Reason teach another order. The incongruity , which Bacon suggests would fol- low from the admission of man to be a principle of His actions, is beside the question. He says it would make man an independent creature, a little divinity . There is no independence in man, and none can be supposed. He is a subordinate and dependent being, from first to last. But if by a delegated power of moral agency he becomes deaster quidam , it is only as his Supreme Creator has made him so. And perhaps the authentic order of his creation, which was “ in the image of his Maker , ” may render that title and character of him not so invidious, as it is here intended to be. But in that communicated character of man the first Giver of it has the proper glory, and the re- ceiver has only, in the remains of it which are left to him, a responsibility, which ought in reason to make him fear- ful and humble. The distinction, to which Bacon here objects, between the knowledge and the preordination of God, is asserted in the whole scheme of the prophetic volume. The Prophets describe the events of things to be altogether in the hand of God ; to be the work of His Providence, and according to the rule of His predetermination and positive appoint- ment. But the same Prophets make the evil actions of men their own. * The evil action they represent as the ob- ject of God’s Foreknowledge; the effect of it, as the act of His Providence. The sins foretold are not the less with censure and blame imputed to men, but the consequences attendant upon those sins are ascribed to God. This is a its Union with the Liberty of Human Action . 267 difference which is maintained universally in the Predic- tions and the Ethics of Prophecy combined together ; and there is no part of Holy Writ more opposed to the doc- trine of Predestination, as a positive appointing cause of those actions of men for which the divine judgments are inflicted, than the book of the Prophets. At the same time no part of it is more explicit in vindicating the uni- versal prescience of God as to those actions, and asserting His previous providential appointment of every conse- quence following from them, and every judgment inflicted upon them. This distinction, so intelligible, and so important, is in perfect conformity with that great text of the New Testa- ment which has cost Christianity so many painful disputes : u Whom He did foreknow , them He did predestinate 1 a separation here expressed in the exercise of the divine attributes, which, if candidly considered, and strictly kept in view, might have prevented many rash decisions, which now remain upon record, to admonish and instruct by their inconsistency with, and opposition to, Scripture. The same distinction stands in equal conformity with that other memorable text : “ Of a truth against Thy Holy Child Jesus — both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel appointed to be done k .” The deed, we see, is imputed to the human agents. The effect of it, and the effect alone, to the hand and counsel of God. He, ordaining an effect from an evil act foreseen, appoints the suffering by His predestination, and permits the act foreknown to the doer’s will. The calm and temperate tone of Dr. Pearson’s recent discussion of this question, and the sincerity and fairness with which he has stated his opinions, are entitled to re- * Rom. vhi. 29. k Acts iv. 27, 28. yeveaOou, [to take 'place ]. It is not said “ whatsoever Thy coimsel appointed them to do.” 268 Of the Divine Foreknowledge, and spect from those who may be very far from assenting to what he has advanced in support of them. He contends, without reserve, that the free actions of men are not with- in the Divine Prescience; resting his doctrine partly on the assumption, that there are no strict and absolute pre- dictions, in Scripture, of those actions in which men are represented as free and responsible ; and partly on the ab- stract reason, that such actions are in their nature impos- sible to be certainly foreknown 1 . The assumption, which the author here goes upon, is certainly erroneous : inasmuch as there are prophecies in Scripture definitely predicting judicial visitations for vo- luntary sin, and prophecies including equally the parti- cular sin, and its punishment. The instance which he has selected “ of the punishments which were prophetically denounced by Moses against the Israelites,” instead of being the uncertain and indeterminate prediction which he states it to be, is a conspicuous example of a prophecy absolute as to the event . “The Lord said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, and this peo- ple will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake Me, and break My covenant which I have made with them. Then My anger shall be kindled against them,” &c. m Which declaration of their foreknown sin Moses repeats in the same chapter 11 . In this instance, therefore, the Divine Prescience comprehended their sin and their punishment. But their sin was optional and free. It was in breach of a condition which they had the power to keep. The other examples, often cited, of the predictions concerning the cruelty of Hazael, the treachery of Judas , the denial of Peter, are only some among many of the same class ; viz., definite prophecies of the yet un- determined actions of men. The prophecy of Jonah con- cerning the destruction of Nineveh is improperly and in- judiciously put in comparison with that concerning the 1 Warburton, Lect. i. p. 29, &c. &c. m Deut. xxxi. 16. u Dent. v. 31. its Union with the Liberty of Human Action . 269 fate of the Israelites. For Jonah did not foretell the per- severing sin, and the impenitence of Nineveh ; but only its destruction . Now the general conditional tenor of the Divine judgments may often, or always, be supposed to leave the hope of a possibility of their recall 0 . But where the obduracy of the sin is included in the matter of the prediction, as it is with regard to the Israelites, that point, upon which the recall of them might be expected, is already foreclosed in the prophecy. As to the abstract reason , “that free actions are impos- sible, in their nature, to be foreknown,” I have already considered it in the former part of this Discourse ; and I have only to add, that the author seems, in advancing this objection, to have overlooked, or very slightly considered, the distinction which Origen, Clarke p , and others had so clearly shewn to exist between certainty , and necessity of things. Upon each ground of Dr. Pearson's argument, I must be permitted to say, that I think he has scarcely exercised so much care and deliberation in forming his opinions, as the very questionable and startling nature of them re- quired. Many of his positions concerning the Divine Fore- knowledge are hazardous in the extreme, and some of them are more than hazardous. He speaks of God as foreseeing the contingent possibilities of things, and being provided with means adapted to them ; but not clearly and absolutely foreknowing what in all cases will actually take place in the moral world. Hence, the Fall of Man, and the appointment of the scheme of Redemption, connected with that Fall, are placed among the uncertainties of the Divine Mind, as though God had not an eternal fore- knowledge of one, the greatest and most wonderful of His own acts. “ Known unto God are all His works from the 0 This is expressed by Jeremiah xviii. 8. p Dcmonstrat. of Being and Attributes, vol. i. prop. x. q As Limborch and Episcopius. Limborch, quoted page 262 above. Epi- u opius, Instit. Theol. lib. iv. sect. xvii. 270 Of the Divine Foreknowledge , and beginning.” This text, the author properly observes, re- lates to the works of God, not of man. But since the works of God, in His moral Economy, are in many in- stances adapted to the works of His creatures, how can His own works be foreknown to Him, if theirs are not ? His declared preordination of His own works of Provi- dence, in judgment and mercy, is one explicit and in- vincible proof of His perfect foreknowledge of theirs. Whereas, therefore, the candid author intends his opinions to be such only as can be reconciled with Scripture, I think it must be conceded that they are no less repugnant to that authority, than are any of those opinions of the Calvinistic doctrine, the avoidance of which has precipi- tated his theology into these exceptionable tenets : and it is to be regretted that he should have departed from the wariness and sobriety of Mr. Locke, whose sentiments on this subject he quotes, but only to differ from them. “I own freely,” says that excellent philosopher*, “the weakness of my understanding, that, though it be un- questionable, that there is omnipotence and omniscience in God, our Maker, and I cannot have a clearer perception of anything than that I am free ; yet I cannot make free- dom in man consistent with omnipotence and omniscience in God, though I am as fully persuaded of both, as of any truths I most firmly assent to.” One remark more I shall offer upon the abstract ques- tion under discussion. If we begin our speculation by saying, since God foresees the action and already beholds it, how can it be free, we attempt to look through the im- mensity of the Divine Mind, and place ourselves on a height far above the level of our faculties. But if we begin from below, by supposing our actions to be free, as we have the best reason to suppose them, then the creed of natural piety, and the conviction of the infinite and un- limited scope of the Divine Intelligence, will more readily help us into an apprehension of the article, and an acqui- r Locke, vol. iii. p. 487. its Union with the Liberty of Human Action . 271 escence in it. And this is a mode of consideration which I suggest, partly after an idea of Origen, as deserving to be kept in view whilst we attempt to explore this question. Nor is erroneous opinion in such points as these a thing indifferent. Derogatory notions concerning the attributes of the Supreme Being are unquestionably among the de- teriorations of Religion. Whilst it is acknowledged that we can have no sufficient, no adequate ideas, of the excel- lency and perfection of His nature, yet the mistakes of a false and an unworthy apprehension of Him it seems to be more within our power to avoid. And if our opinions are cultivated, as they ought to be, for the purposes of faith, not to be mere matter of discourse; if a sense of the majesty of God and His perfections, is to be a bond and instrument of religion, none of these perfections can be impaired in our opinion of them, without detriment to our essential piety. Whether it be His J ustice, His Mercy, or His Omniscience, as the highest ideas of them will be the truest, because, though inadequate, they are the nearest to the truth which we can reach, so the same will be the best for ourselves, both because they are the truest, and also because they set Him before us as the object of the great- est adoration of which we are capable. In this question, concerning the extent of God’s omni- science, there is a peculiar honour belonging to Him in- volved. For His foreknowledge of men’s free actions is the highest instance of that omniscience, the highest, I mean, which is distinctly brought before our observation. To foreknow, to any extent, the events of Physical Nature, which follow from the arranged constitution and laws of that nature; or to foreknow the actions of men, if those actions are the result either of a system of external causes, or of innate principles exercising a constant and inevit- de influence; this, in a manner, is only according to ie scope of human knowledge and science ; wherein the 272 Of the Divine Foreknowledge , and primary data of knowledge include the whole remote conclusions of it. But the prescience of the mysterious and voluntary action of free agents is of another order. It accords with the prerogative of God. It is “ to under- stand the thoughts long before.” If there be freedom in those thoughts, the foreknowledge of them is worthy of the Omniscient Mind. If they are a necessary and me- chanical result of causes already in being, the foreknow- ledge of them is a less distinguishing attribute. In that case, it is but equivalent to a longer deduction. Perhaps the omniscience of God, in this one exercise of it, may be estimated, in some measure, by His omnipotence , though both exceeding our comprehension. But one act of His power we believe to have been in the creation of the world from nothing. May not His omniscience be apprehended as acting in a like manner, in seeing “the things which are not, as though they were ?” The power which modifies the things that exist , is, in its kind , like the knowledge which surveys the things that exist . But the creative power is like the knowledge which anticipates the existence of things and their causes. If the first be a mystery, it is on that account the fitter to illustrate the other. There seems, therefore, to be both philosophic truth, and rational piety, in conceiving the whole order of things to be ever present to the omniscience of God. Such is the mode of viewing this subject, in which many wise and excellent men have chosen to rest. But whether this be only an expedient of a rational imagination, or a more strict and accurate truth, I leave it as it is expressed in the noble words of Dr. Henry More , (who however inclines, with some reserve, to the opinion that prescience and con- tingency are inconsistent,) or the more severe and wary re- presentation of another excellent writer, Archbishop Bram - hall. It may be conceived, that “ the evolution of ages from everlasting to everlasting,” says the former, “is so col- its Union with the Liberty of Human Action. 273 lectedlv and presentifically represented to God at once, as if all things which ever were, are, or shall be, were at this very instant, and so always, really present, and existent before Him : which is no wonder, the animadversion and intellectual comprehension of God being absolutely infinite according to the truth of His idea*” The latter: “ Con- cerning the prescience of contingent things ; in my poor judgment, the readiest way to reconcile contingence and liberty with the decrees and prescience of God, and most remote from the altercations of these times, is to subject future contingents to the aspect of God, according to that presentiality which they have in eternity 1 .” 8 Divine Dialogues, p. 60. * Works, p. 709. T DISCOURSE VIII. ON THE INSPIRATION OF PROPHECY. 1. Criterion of it. 2 . Proof of it in the Predictions concerning the Gospel. Isaiah lx. 3. And the Gentiles shall come to Thy light, and Icings to the brightness of Thy rising. I N considering the Inspiration of Prophecy, as demon- strated in its Fulfilment, my intention is, first, to pro- pose a criterion of Prophetic Inspiration, as clear and defi- nite as the nature of the subject will admit, under which the Scripture Prophecies may be severally examined ; and then to select particular instances of them, upon which to institute an examination, according to the Criterion so proposed. Examples of Prophecy, considered apart, and under a distinct view, will give perspicuity to the argu- ment to be deduced from them, and shew the grounds of reason upon which the inspired Prescience of the Pro- phetic Volume is asserted. To guard, however, against an erroneous estimate of such detached inquiry, let me repeat again the observa- tion which I have made in the beginning of these Dis- courses, that it is not the accomplishment of one portion of Prophecy, nor of the entire series of it, which consti- tutes the proof of our Religion. Separate prophecies are only parts of one head of evidence, and the whole of pro- On the Inspiration of Prophecy . 275 phecy is but one kind of evidence concurrent with, others. The sufficiency therefore of single points of the argument must not supersede the more comprehensive inference; and the supposed insufficiency of them, if there be any, must be corrected and supplied by the weight of reason in reserve. As to negative evidence, evidence tending to disprove the Christian Revelation, I venture to say there is none. It is the more necessary to keep in mind that this is the true state of the question, inasmuch as we may observe per- sons who are continually arguing, or rather speaking and writing, in such a way as is utterly inconsistent with it. If they find obscure prophecies, which they think have little force in them as proofs of inspiration, or proofs of anything else, they are for prompting the inference that Revealed Religion is but a precarious cause. And perhaps there are others who, although far from having any doubt of its truth, are yet not without some uneasiness and disap- pointment in missing a more complete satisfaction in par- ticular points of its various proof. But the evidences of Christianity are, in this respect, like those of Natural Re- ligion. The fabric of the world is full of the marks of the Creator’s agency, wisdom, and goodness. From a blade of grass up to a planet, or a sun, there is every where some element of evidence, some ground whereon to rest a rational belief. A single living creature, or the limb of a living creature, may convince. But if scepticism fall upon weak parts of this great natural argument; if it quarrel with some phenomena of it, ill understood, or, it may be, positively obscure; we must refer the inquirer for satisfaction to the structure of the world at large, we must carry him from one class of being to another, from the earth to the skies, and annihilate his doubts by the copiousness and ubiquity of the demonstration. So it is with the evidences of Revealed Religion. The system of them embraces the proper reason of our Faith, and gives the last reply to the demands of unbelief. t 2 276 On the Inspiration of Prophecy . These considerations premised, I pass to the subject in hand : And, first, I shall endeavour to fix something of a Criterion of Prophecy, by ascertaining, or describing, the conditions which are necessary to assure us that we have in any instance an inspired prediction. To constitute an original and direct proof of prophetic inspiration, it is necessarily required that the event fore- told be such as man could not foresee at the time when the prediction of it was delivered : that it should have been therefore remote from the subsisting state of things, so as to exclude the supposition of the event having been vir- tually contained in that previous state of things, or the prediction of it having been suggested by Experience, Probability, or other ordinary means of rational fore- sight. In a word, the prophecy must have been indepen- dent of the calculations of human knowledge ; and fur- ther, it must be seen to have been so. Contiguity of time, between the prophecy and the event, does not disqualify the proof, so much as proximity of re- lation between the present and the future, if any such can be reasonably supposed in the given prophecy. It is the obscurity consisting in the real , or the moral remoteness of the event predicted, which takes it out of the grasp of human knowledge. If, however, the facts foretold be dis- tant in time, as well as in the natural sequel of things ; if they stand aloof from the prophecy by years and ages in- terposed, as well as by that chasm of darkness which in- tercepts the range of man’s prospective view, when he attempts to penetrate the unlimited uncertainties of the future ; then we have an aggravation of the disproof which takes the prediction from him, and imposes upon us the necessity of ascribing it to another origin. Under these general ideas, I may describe the conditions which would confer this cogency of evidence on single ex- amples of prophecy, in the following manner. First, the known promulgation of the prophecy prior to the event. 277 Criterion of it . Secondly, the clear and palpable fulfilment of it. Lastly, the nature of the event itself, if, when the prediction of it was given, it lay remote from human view, and was such as could not be foreseen by any supposable effort of reason , or be deduced upon principles of calculation derived from probability or experience . These conditions will constitute a test, or standard of prophetic inspiration, in the rigorous estimate of its evidence. Where they clearly obtain, there we have an adequate proof of an inspired prescience. If they attach to many separate cases of prophecy, we shall have, in the whole combined together, a multiplied evi- dence, higher in proportion to the certainty there may be that each case is invested with the qualifications re- quired. I offer the criterion now stated as a standard of the original proof of a prophetic inspiration; a standard of such proof as independently, and by its own force, with- out the aid of any collateral presumptions, may command our assent. Nothing is assumed in behalf of the prophecies which answer to it. They are simply taken as so many documents contained in a Book which we call the Scrip- ture. Their date of publication, their completion, the con- tingent nature of their subject-matter, will all be open to be scrutinized. The result of that scrutiny will determine the character to be assigned to them. Prophecies in Scripture there are, which do not come up in their evi- dence, at least in the present state of it, to this standard. Upon these we cannot insist, in the first instance, nor offer them as direct and integral proofs, although they have their use, even as evidence, when taken jointly with others, upon which they lean in part for their support. The higher test alone is the decisive one. Now it may be affirmed, that both in the Old Testament and in the New, there are examples of Prophecy corre- sponding with the conditions which have been laid down : and my endeavour will be to shew, in cases selected from 278 On the Inspiration of Prophecy . each, the conformity of the prediction with the conditions, and thereby demonstrate the prophetic Inspiration. The first instance of Prophecy which I shall examine is that which relates to the Establishment of the Christian Religion . There was a time when Christianity was not in the world, but only foretold : a time when it had no being, but in prophecy. The point which I wish to establish is this, that the whole prediction of the future establishment of the religion of the Gospel was an inspired prediction, a prediction answerable to the highest test of a supernatural prescience. In order to the proof of this point, I must assume your knowledge of the public history of the world, as connected with the propagation of the Christian Religion ; and some acquaintance with the general nature and doctrines of that religion, as well as with the chief records of Prophecy, which it would be impossible, in the progress of a dis- course, to quote at large. My object will be to place your knowledge of the event in question, and of the prophecy of it, so together, as to shew the force of the argument which results from the comparison of the two, in demon- strating the inspired prescience of the prophecy. First , then, be it observed, that the professed and ex- tensive propagation of any religion, merely as a religion, a code of faith and moral duty, is not an ordinary occur- rence in the history of the world. I confess that I know only one clear and prominent example of it; that example is the case of the Gospel itself in its first propagation, with, perhaps, some of the missions which have sprung from it. The propagation of Heathenism, ancient or modern, bears no resemblance to that of Christianity. Heathenism, in any of its creeds, has spread from country to country as a component part of the popular opinion ; it has travelled with migration, or conquest : it has passed in the train of things, and by the usual channels of com- Predictions concerning Christianity . 279 munication. But the enterprise of a regular and systematic conversion of any great part of the world, undertaken and achieved as a distinct and direct work, is a phenomenon unknown in the diffusion of any of the forms of Heathen- ism or Idolatry, new or old. The genius of Paganism, jealous enough of its otiose dominion to resist encroach- ment, has wanted the charity, or the zeal, to go forth to attempt instruction and conversion. Distant lands have been none of the province of its labours. The spread of Mahometanism, which may seem on the first view to have been something like to that of Chris- tianity, was essentially unlike it, not merely in the means, but quite as much in the object. Because, Conquest, not Religious Faith, was the manifest object of Mahometanism when it began to be an active power. But if you deny that the religion was merely a pretext for the conquest, it cannot be denied that the two went together. — Whereas in the case of the Gospel, Religious Faith, Religious Doc- trine was the single object either professed or followed, and the diffusion of that faith was made the exclusive and independent work. When, therefore, the Founder of Chris- tianity said to the first Messengers of His Religion, “ Go, teach all nations,” we have reason to believe it was strictly the first instance of such a commission having been given, or undertaken, in the world; for Judaism had no such warrant for the communication of its truth; and hitherto the second instance has not been subsequently witnessed. So much, then, as to the establishment of Christianity, in this one peculiarity of it, in being a new Religion taught and propagated, as a business of set design, and introduced upon the existing institutions of mankind, with an authority of its own, demanding and obtaining acceptance. Secondly , Consider what this Religion is in itself, and whether it be not as singular in its genius and doctrines , as in the method of its propagation. No man, no reason- able man at least, will pretend to confound the Christian 280 On the Inspiration of Prophecy. Religion with any other. Be it from God, or from man, it is essentially unlike every other ; it has a character per- fectly its own, and it will remain for ever a witness of something without precedent or parallel. This distinctive character of it lies in the following properties of it united together; its spirit of benevolence, meekness, and peace; its general purity and elevation of doctrine; its uncon- taminated Theology ; the simplicity of its institutions ; its doctrine of Redemption and Atonement; its promise of spiritual aid and illumination ; its proposed reward of eter- nal life. By these marks of originality, or of distinction, taken collectively, I appeal to your judgment whether it does not stand alone, discriminated from all that has been taught as a system of religion, before it and beside it. In the third place, Look to the seat and source from which this Religion sprung. It sprung from Judsea; it had its origin from a place and people the most unlikely, in all human reason, to have given such a gift to the world. Insulated by their civil institutions, by their pre- judices, and by the disadvantageous feeling of contempt with which other nations were accustomed to regard them, they were the last people to be expected to be the founders of a dominant religion spreading to the East and the West, the North and the South. Their law was a barrier be- tween them and other nations. It cut them off from the habits of communication and influence. They had no lead in arts ; none in an enlarged distant commerce ; none in policy; to make way for their doctrine. They were not the people to attempt a wide conversion ; nor to succeed, if they attempted it. But this is not the whole of the impediment which stood between the establishment of the Gospel and the capacity of this people, from among whom it rose, for such a work. The spirit of their awn religion was in some great points exceedingly unlike the new religion which took its rise among them. They had a religion highly ceremonial, local, and restrictive. So it was designed to be, and such Predictions concerning Christianity . 281 it was. Their institute of positive ordinances gave them a remarkable system of Church-polity and worship; and nothing in it is more to be observed than its prevailing dissimilarity with the simple and liberal religion of the Gospel ; a religion which puts a disparagement upon forms and ordinances, to exalt the worship of God “ in spirit and in truth which spreads its arms to all mankind ; and is, in its nature, as applicable to every clime and country, as it is declared to be universal in its destination. It was once the question of prejudice, “ Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” With more justice and reason, hu- manly speaking, might it have been asked, “Can any good thing like the religion of the Gospel come from Nazareth?” But the fact refuted the calculation, reason- able as it might be. Infidelity has often taken pains to expose the character of the Jewish people, and with no small exaggeration to decry them for their narrowness and poverty of mind; their bigotry; their want of literature and cultivation. Take these reproaches in what measure you will, they tend only to shew the extraordinary and improbable nature of that change which was effected by this despised and dis- qualified people when they became the teachers of an en- larged and comprehensive religion, and freed the world, so far as they did, from the dominion of idolatry and superstition, which philosophy and other human learning had ineffectually attempted to do. It is admitted that they had a peculiarity in their institutions, and in their manners resulting from those institutions. But this pecu- liarity, aggravated as it was in its worse sense by their own mistake and the perversion of their law, placed them the more in opposition to that new and better religion, which, through them, by their untoward means and in- adequate instrumentality, was communicated to the world. One advantage of ability indeed there may be supposed on the side of Judaism for the enterprise of a general in- struction of mankind ; that advantage was in the essential Truth of Judaism itself. If this resource be granted to 282 On the Inspiration of Prophecy . have existed, it is so much conceded to the reality of Revelation. If denied, then the future success and tri- umphant establishment of a new religion coming from the professors of Judaism, will be left an event which had no- thing to redeem it from pure and absolute improbability. Consider the difference in aptitude and qualification, for spreading any system of doctrine, between Jewish and some other teachers. Had it been foretold, for instance, that a novel and prevalent religion should one day appear, and take a lasting possession of a considerable part of the civilized world, emanating from Athens , or from Rome: the popular philosophy and literature of the one, which had a certain freedom of access to the world at large, or the growing empire of the other, might have furnished some pledge for the accomplishment of the prediction. But Jewish doctrine could look to no such auxiliaries in civil or intellectual empire, to favour its introduction, or recommend its pretensions. Prophecy, therefore, we may say, when it predicted the reception of a Law of Religion, which was to have Jews for its teachers, and Kings and Nations for its converts, had nothing to build upon, no- thing either in present appearances, or the ordinary calcu- lation of things. One circumstance there was, their wide national disper- sion , which, although a badge of their slavery, might have promised the Jewish people some dubious opportunity of erecting, or attempting to erect, a prevalent and general religion, if they had agreed together to improve the use of their extended communication under such a dispersion. But this condition of their national fortunes did not take place till after the prophecies were promulgated which foretold the conversion of the world by their means. The prediction was contemporary with their earlier confined state in Judaea. It was delivered when Judaism itself was stationary and quiescent, and not rich in proselytes ; whereas it appears that a considerable proselytism did actually accompany it in its dispersed fortunes. But in that earlier state of things, there was nothing in reference Predictions concerning Christianity. 283 to the future predicted event, but disability and disqualifi- cation; unless we choose to admit the truth of Judaism itself, and so diminish the improbability of the introduc- tion of Christianity by conceding the reality of the prior Revelation. Let me now combine together the chief points which compose the history of the establishment of Christianity, as a known unquestionable event. First , we have its direct and systematic propagation. Secondly , its internal distinguishing character, as proposing such and such doc- trines. Lastly , its origin in Judaea, from a secluded people, whom their own institutions, and the prejudice of the world, laid under a disqualification for the work in question. This is the case of the Gospel ; a case not to be denied or contested. And I think we shall not exceed the lowest statement of the truth in affirming that the direct establish- ment of such a religion, coming from such a people, was npt merely a very memorable event, but something more; a novel and unprecedented thing, which has produced the greatest moral change, known in the public history of man, but such as was indicated by no probability, nor could be suggested by prior experience. If so, the positive and unhesitating prediction of it, a prediction recorded in prophecy for many ages before it took place, confidently announcing it, and fully anticipating its introduction, and its reception, was a prediction of supernatural prescience. We are born in the midst of this Religion, and there- fore it requires some effort of thought, though not a great one, to carry us to that point of view from whence we may contemplate the extent and magnitude of the work of change by which it first made its way, and still holds it on. But all reflection will serve to heighten your ideas of the phenomenon. Had you seen the finger of an un- known power at first, eighteen hundred years ago, strike 284 On the Inspiration of Prophecy . the rock, and bring forth water in the desert, you would more readily have owned the wonder, as every impartial and disengaged spectator must have owned it. But whilst you look at it only in its existing course, you may forget whence it came, or cease to be affected by its presence. Trace it to its source ; Judaea was the rock from which it broke, and the world around it was, and still is, the wil- derness through which it flows. Now, without inquiring whose hand it was which could produce this effect, (which is another topic,) I argue only that the propagation and institution of Christianity, an event so extraordinary in its kind, and so improbable in the circumstances of its origin, is sufficient to authenticate the inspiration of the prophecy by which it was foretold. As to the documents of Prophecy which announce and describe the Gospel; they occupy the prophetic volume from Genesis to Malachi. But it is not necessary to ask the benefit of all this range of Prophecy, in order to shew that the establishment of such a Religion, as the Christian is, was foretold. The predictions of Isaiah, Daniel, Zecha- riah, and Malachi ; or those of Isaiah alone ; or even so much of them as is contained in the last fourteen chapters of the book of this single prophet, would suffice for the purpose of our inquiry. In some measure to open this proof, take the following characteristic predictions of Isaiah ; “ It shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills ; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths : for out of Zion shall go forth the law , and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among the nations , and shall rebuke many people* i. e. instruct them by reclaiming from error. a Isaiah ii. 2 — 4. Predictions concerning Christianity . 285 “ Behold My servant, whom I uphold ; Mine elect, in whom My soul delighteth ; I have put My spirit upon Him : He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He not quench : He shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail, nor be discouraged , till He have set judgment in the earth: and the Isles shall wait for His law.” “ I the Lord have called Thee in righteousness, and will hold Thine hand, and will keep Thee, and give Thee for a covenant of the people , for a light of the Gentiles ; to open the blind eyes , to bring out the prisoners from the prison , and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house b .” “ Arise, shine ; for Thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon Thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people : but the Lord shall arise upon Thee, and His glory shall be seen upon Thee. And the Gentiles shall come to Thy light, and kings to the brightness of Thy rising 0 .” In all these prophecies the conversion of the Gentiles to a religion proceeding from Judaea is unequivocally fore- told. For that such expressions as, a law, judgment, cove- nant, light, in the prophetic volume, are descriptive of some doctrine , or revelation of a religious nature, is no more to be doubted than that the phrases of Euclid re- late to the subject of Geometry. “ The law going forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem,” is therefore a definite and unambiguous description of a religious doctrine thence communicated to the world. And “ the influx of all nations into the mountain of the Lord’s house in Zion,” is no less definite in describing the conversion of the Gentiles to a Faith or Worship of the true God, originating in that mountain, as the place b Isaiah xlii, 1. 7. c Isaiah lx. 1 — 3. 286 On the Inspiration of Prophecy . where it should be first instituted or taught. Consequently, these predictions which I have quoted, as well as others of the like tenor, are prophecies of the Gospel : for besides giving some of the appropriate lineaments of the Gospel doctrine, they state the extent and certainty of its pro- pagation among the Gentiles : and this its propagation in the Gentile world they foretell in as strong and posi- tive a way, as if it had then been an ordinary thing for any set of men to make it their object and business to spread religious opinion of any kind, or for Jews to in- struct and convert the other nations of the earth, and that by a religion above the standard of their own. But in the midst of this assemblage of prophetic matter which relates to this future order of things, there is de- lineated the character, or history of a person, of whom it is clear that He is eminently connected with the introduc- tion of the foretold dispensation, and who appears, indeed, by the text of the prophecy, to be the Minister, or ap- pointed Messenger, by whom it should be ushered into the world d . For the office and agency of this person are joined in the prophecy with the foundation of the pre- dicted religion e . Thereby the unity of the subject is as- certained. Moreover, His personal history is sufficiently discriminated. His state of humiliation, His sufferings, His judicial condemnation, His death, His subsequent power and prevailing success in the work which He had undertaken, are among the things described; and they are described in one continued draught of prediction, and with a perfect sequel and connexion, incorporating them into a common subject. Add therefore these limitations of peculiarity to the idea of the distant event, limitations which confessedly existed in the person of the Founder of Christianity, and you will advance one step further into the extent and combination of the prophetic prescience. For the Christian history is, in these points, notorious d Isaiah lii. 13. iiii. e See chapters lii. Iiii. liv. Fredicticns concerning Christianity . 287 and indubitable. The Founder of Christianity was an afflicted, suffering, condemned, slain, victorious Person. His sufferings and violent death are attested by Pagan evidence; but supposing they had not been so attested, they could not by any possibility have been feigned; for the pretended scene of them was a public, and therefore it must have been a real one. As to His prevailing power and success in the accomplishment of His proposed work, the effectual establishment of Christianity is the visible proof of that. Consequently, the prophetic and the his- toric subjects coincide in these particulars ; particulars discriminating in the prophecy, public and palpable in the fact. The result is, that we have the prediction of a dominant Religion, originating from Judaea, embracing the Gentile nations, and either formally introduced by a person of such and such a history, viz ., a suffering, con- demned, and slain person, or at least having such a per- son eminently and conspicuously joined with it, and bear- ing a principal part in its promulgation. But, since the complex fact, thus foretold, is such as was in its whole kind improbable, and, so circumstantiated, by any human foresight utterly undiscernible ; and since the event has undeniably answered to the prediction, it remains that the prediction of it, a prediction far removed in time from the event, was an inspired prophecy. But there is an accumulation of the evidence. For the same prediction describes the suffering Minister, or Pro- mulger, of the future Religion, under the following quali- ties : — “ bearing the sins of others ; healing by His stripes ; procuring peace to men by His chastisement ; giving His soul an offering for sin; making intercession for the transgressors.” That is to say, it asserts the virtue of an Atonement, and propitiatory Intercession, to belong to the person so described. Now that the Founder of Christianity has such a power of atonement and interces- sion for sin, appropriated to Him, is a fact the truth of which I cannot put in here, as of other facts of His life 288 On the Inspiration of Prophecy . and history ; because it is of a secret invisible nature ; and the belief of it rests upon the previous belief of the general truth of Christianity. But one thing is certain, that this His atoning and interceding office forms a conspicuous tenet of Christianity. It is at least a matter of fact, that the doctrine of it enters into the Religion. There is there- fore a concurrence of no small moment between the pre- diction and the event, in this particular. The prediction announces a singular and most critical fact. The religion recognises the doctrine of that fact, and is mainly grounded upon it. And this is all that the Religion historically can do ; viz ., to teach and affirm it. But this is enough to fix the capital point of our present argument, which is the identity of the Christian Religion with the subject of the prophecy. And whilst the prediction itself, by this cha- racteristic attribute of it, becomes more complete in its substantial resemblance, and more explicit in its reference ; every man endowed with any reflection must see that it was no common work for a system of religion to take up this property, the notion of a personal Atonement and Mediatorship, and make it a distinctive and fundamental tenet of its faith. This the Gospel has done, and the prin- ciple belongs equally to the religion, and the prophecy of it. In like manner the direction of other texts of pro- phecy to Christianity is made out by further qualities, con- tained in the prediction, corresponding with other essential doctrines and precepts of the religion : the specific genius of the Religion being so defined, as to leave no reason- able doubt that the prophetic texts in question describe, not merely a new scheme of religion, but, more exactly, such a scheme of religion as we behold in the actual plan of Christianity. So far, therefore, as these several instances of correspondence and agreement are admitted, so far there is a reiterated confirmation both of the direction, and of the inspired prescience, of the prophecy. But once more ; for we have not exhausted our fund of evidence; select from the Prophetic Volume other predic- Predictions concerning Christianity. 289 tions, as of the time when this Personage should appear in the world, who was to be the author of the foretold dis- pensation ; the place of His birth ; His tribe ; His family ; and associating these particulars, with the rest, into one mass of prophetic requisition, all attached to that change and crisis of a system of religion so novel, and so improba- ble in itself ; and you will approach more nearly to an esti- mate of that multiplied evidence of prophetic inspiration which centres in the single point of the establishment of Christianity. These prophecies, it is true, lie dispersed in the pro- phetic books ; consequently whether their reference be to one and the same subject, is open to some dispute. A posteriori , it is easy to shew that Christianity fulfils them ; but we admit that events may fit and agree to many de- scriptions which yet may be neither inspired, nor specifi- cally directed to them. But the state of the evidence, in this matter, is as follows : The prophecies, severally, speak of some distinguished person or persons to whom such and such appropriate marks should belong ; as the Shiloh coming at the departure or removal of the sceptre of Judah ; the Son of David, establishing an universal king- dom of Righteousness ; the Messiah being cut off, at such a period of the world ; a ruler of Israel coming forth from Bethlehem. Now the fact is, that these and other com- plicated attributes of description have been realized in one single person, and in the institution of His religion ; whose advent, birth, death, and religious kingdom, all correspond with their several mixt characters. But such coincidence and concurrence of the postulata of the whole range of the prophecy, in that one person, must I think be held of itself sufficient to appropriate them to Him. If several lines, separately taken, have an unascertained bearing, and tend we know not whether to a common centre, yet if when viewed from some one point their ten- dency to it is apparent, that point must be concluded to be the true locus of their direction and concourse, and the very fact of their capacity of meeting there 290 On the Inspiration of Prophecy. will be a proof of their having been so designed to meet. This is analogous to the case of some of these divided prophecies which we apply to the Gospel : and the application of them so made, is just and rational, on the most hard and unfavourable conditions. But this appli- cation is, at the same time, greatly strengthened by many internal indications of the prophetic text which plainly suggest, or imply, the joint and common bearing of the several members of the divided prediction. These various prophecies, therefore, confirm and enlarge the proof of an inspired prescience announcing the future establishment of the Gospel Religion. For that an event, as that was, out of the course of ex- perience, and warranted by no deductions of probability, should be not only announced, but delineated with a variety of circumstantial limitations attending it, limita- tions of personal character and individual history, in the Founder ; with internal limitations, as to the nature and genius of the predicted Religion ; and others external, as to the time and place ; this is an aggregate of prediction, beyond which we cannot well ask any stronger marks of a prescience divinely communicated. The suffering founder of a triumphant religion; that religion, distinctive and peculiar; preached by Jews abroad to the world, and from Jews by the world received; I do not now argue that such a combination of things was a miracle ; but that the confident and decisive prediction of it was a prophecy ; and that, first, the prophecy, and then the religion, were from God. It is hardly necessary for me to observe that in the case before us, there obtains the known promulgation of the prophecy prior to the event, which was one condition of the criterion proposed. The prophecies of Isaiah, which alone would embrace the greatest part of the subject, are among the more ancient of the Prophetic Canon ; and the Translation of the Old Testament made into the Greek language, and thereby submitted to a general cognizance, Predictions concerning Christianity . 291 long before the sera of the Gospel, will abundantly satisfy us in that respect. The document of prediction was therefore extant, and in the hands of men, before there were any signs of the event. I say, before any signs of the event. For the more any person looks into the intermediate history of the Jewish peopte , as related to the rest of the world, in the course of time between the promulgation of the Chris - tian prophecies and their accomplishment, the less proba- bility will he see to expect from them , in their broken and humbled fortunes, the enterprise of an instruction and conversion of the other nations of the earth ; the greater reason, therefore, to acknowledge the prescience which foresaw, and the power which wrought that extraordi- nary event. The Jewish people did not make these prophecies work their own completion : they did not even further it. They neither understood the Gospel Religion, when it was offered to them, nor adopted it, nor promoted it. But they are in this, as in other instances of prophecy, unwilling wit- nesses to its truth, unwilling agents in its accomplish- ment. For so Prophecy had spoken, that the religion which was to come from Judaea, and the Teacher of it, should be rejected by the people from among whom it came ; that a remnant of them should be saved, but the nation cast off ; and from that remnant, in the general dissolution of the Jewish church and people, should spring the proper glory of Jerusalem, and that the nation reject- ing this “ word of God,” and rejected by Him, should yet bear His name, by a chosen seed, and under the new in- stitution of things, to the ends of the earth. These adverse particulars contribute to the complexity of the prediction. The entire and reconciled completion of them significantly attests its inspiration. In conclusion, I observe that the actual state of Pro- phecy, on this head, has a singular agreement with the whole nature and design of Christianity. It is plain that u 2 292 On the Inspiration of Prophecy . nothing ever was so important to mankind as Christianity, if it be true; nothing so worthy to be foretold; nothing so fit to be made the subject of an early and continued course of prediction. Well; it had the foremost place in the prophetic revelations; it was the oldest subject, and the latest, and the most frequently revived. There is in this general congruity of Prophecy with the pre-eminent importance of the Gospel subject, a moral evidence in favour both of the Gospel and of the whole prophetic Revelation, which I leave to the reflection of every im- partial mind to pursue to its just consequences; it being clear that no art of man could model prophecy into such proportions as that it should bear this just, and well-con- stituted relation, in its whole extended structure, to the moral dignity and magnitude of a future unseen dis- pensation of things. And this is a kind of evidence quite distinct from the fulfilment of the particular things foretold. The accomplishment of the prophecies relative to Chris- tianity, so far as they have been drawn into the present argument, being, as I conceive, unequivocal, and the proof of a divine prescience, grounded upon that accomplish- ment, strict and conclusive, two observations remain which I wish to offer, the one bearing upon the hind of pre- science thus proved, the other upon the measure of ac- complishment which the prophecies in question have re- ceived. First, The Divine Prescience manifested in this instance is more in the revelation of God*s own work and design, than of the actions of men. The institution of Chris- tianity, the mission of its Founder, its first propagation, are to be ascribed solely, and its successful establishment principally, to Him. His previous revelation, therefore, of these things is expressive simply, or chiefly, of His own purpose. By prophecy He communicated His intended work. As to the ultimate reception of Christianity, we have no reason to think that the agency of man, or the Predictions concerning Christianity . 293 concurrence of things dependent on human conduct, were excluded either in the divine foreknowledge, or in the event ; but even in this case the interposition of God was pre-eminent, both an open and a secret act of His Spirit, and His power, being engaged in subduing the world to the reception of His Truth. The general prediction of Christianity is therefore to be considered as a prophecy of the greatest, and most enduring miracle, which has been exhibited in the moral government of God. The prophecy spoke for ages ; the miracle, or the extraordinary fact, call it by either name, still subsists. The second observation is upon the measure of accom- plishment which the prophecies in question have received. The phenomenon of Christianity, it may be said, was clearly predicted, but the credit of Prophecy may seem to labour on the other side; for that its predictions speak of a wider range than the Religion has reached, and the doubt is not whether all that has been effected was foretold, but whether more was not foretold than has been effected. The prophetic promises concerning the prevalence of Christianity unquestionably are large and comprehensive. They seem to embrace the whole earth. “All nations shall flow unto it.” “ The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Such predictions as these, if pressed to the letter, open the pros- pect of an unlimited, universal reception of the Gospel; which hitherto it has not had. Its dominion, wide as it has been in ancient or in modern times, and in regions rude or civilized, has yet only shared the world with other powers of a gross Heathenism unenlightened, and Infi- delity unreclaimed: whilst the march of its early propa- gation has been suspended in after ages, and stationary, if not contracted limits, have confined its pale. If, there- fore, the letter of the prophecy express its true and proper sense, it is plain that prophecy, in this great subject of it, waits a more perfect, and a more extended accom- plishment. Meanwhile, even upon this admission, what has been 294 On the Inspiration of Prophecy . already fulfilled is no small warrant and security for a more adequate consummation. The first institution of Christianity was a far greater change than its extension would be: the difficulties and improbabilities infinitely exceeded, in the first instance, the force of any now exist- ing. It conquered more than remains to oppose it. Truth, firmly established, and placed in commanding possession, has in its own nature a principle of strength, and thereby offers some promise of the probable enlargement of its reign. And in the next place, although we ought not to measure the credibility of a supposed divine promise by the actual appearance of things, because that appear- ance, adverse as it may be, is no criterion of the power which is understood to be engaged, yet the present state of the world, and a reasonable estimate of things as they lie before us, may afford a reply, and a sufficient one, to the precipitate inferences of doubt and objection. On this footing of argument, it may be alleged, that a wider dif- fusion of Christianity is at this day a probable prospect, and an object of reasonable calculation. The state of the world, in many of its relations, suggests the hope, as it offers the opportunity and the means, of such a diffusion. For the public confession and reception of the Christian Faith by the most improved and cultivated nations of the earth, nations now bearing a sway over the rest of their species, by their superiority in all the resources of moral and intellectual power, and by their possession of those great instruments of dominion, letters, science, institu- tions, and national character ; instruments which prepare some men, in the common order of Providence, to be masters of others by an innocent and peaceful subjuga- tion ; this general condition of the world, I say, humanly speaking, affords a visible inducement to believe in great possible advances of Christianity beyond its present bounds ; advances, to which a rational judgment would be loath to set any limits. And in this kind of consideration let no one imagine there is any thing of the presumptuous spirit of an attempted prophecy. The use of it is simply in Predictions concerning Christianity . 295 shewing that a visible probability may be an answer to a precarious objection. But such probability can be no mea- sure either of the sense, or the truth of prophecy, or of the power of God’s providence engaged for the perfect ful- filment of it, in whatever sense that truth may have been delivered. Whether the sense of prophecy really be that the pale of the Christian Faith shall ever be as wide as the whole world, is a point which I do not discuss. Unques- tionably a greater prevalence of it is foretold, both in the Old Testament and the New, than it has yet attained. But the conspicuous phenomenon, and the incontestable pro- phecy, were exhibited in its foundation and its triumphant settlement. And there the evidence of Christianity and of Prophecy is complete. One point, however, is certain and equally important, viz., that the Christian Church, when it comes to recog- nise more truly the obligation imposed upon it by the original command of its Founder, “ Go teach all nations,” a command, which, having never been recalled or abro- gated, can never be obsolete, will awaken another energy of its apostolic office and character, than has been wit- nessed in many later ages, in this most noble work of Piety and Charity combined; and thereby begin to dis- charge an inalienable duty, in furthering the clear design of the Gospel, and perhaps also the consummation of Pro- phecy. Whether Belief shall be universal, we know not : but as to the duty of making an universal tender and com- munication of the Christian Faith, it is too clear to be denied, and too sacred to be innocently neglected. Apart from the operation of this command, and a due obedience to it, the mere opportunities afforded by the state of the world, for the extension of Christianity, could not excite any very serious hope of such an effect, however they may favour the possibility of it. END OF DISCOURSE VIII. DISCOURSE IX. ON THE INSPIRATION OF PROPHECY. Proof of it in the Predictions concerning the Jewish People. Deut. xxviii. 59. Then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed , even great plagues, and of long con- tinuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance . I T has been urged by the defenders of Revelation, and not by others generally denied, that any one unques- tionable miracle would to the eyewitnesses of that miracle be sufficient to prove a revelation attested by it, a suitable moral end of both being supposed. The miracle granted, the inference from it could not be resisted. The acknow- ledgment of the supernatural agency must be followed by an admission of the doctrine. It is but the connexion which subsists between the lightning and the thunder; when we see the flash, we know the thunder, which fol- lows, comes from the same cloud. But miracles being to the use of the present age an evidence transmitted by testimony, it has been so ordered, as to this ground of our faith, that the number and variety of the original proofs by miracles, should come in compen- sation for the loss of force, which those proofs severally might be thought to suffer by transmission. If we have not the conviction which would result from seeing any a * Single miracles are often said to have convinced eyewitnesses on the first publication of the Gospel. John vi. 14. “ Then those men, when they had seen the miracle which Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world.” So chap. ii. 11, &c. The same Evangelist puts the miracles collectively , for the written evidence 297 Predictions concerning the Jewish People . one miracle with our own eyes, we have the satisfaction which rests upon many competently authenticated and re- corded. “We are encompassed by a cloud of witnesses,” by whom, whatever is wanting in the intensity of the proof as addressed to the senses, is supplied in the extent and accumulation of the same proof addressed to our rational understanding. Now the force which has been thus ascribed to single miracles, may be attributed also to single prophecies. It might be argued, if the defence of Revelation required such a mode of argument, that single prophecies, taken alone, are sufficient, under certain conditions, to prove a revelation; and that there are Scripture prophecies strictly satisfying such conditions. The conditions, which would confer this cogency of evidence on detached prophecies, are those which are included in the criterion which I have laid down, viz., the known promulgation of the prophecy prior to the event; the clear fulfilment of it; the remote- ness of the event itself from all human prescience; con- ditions which joined together form the true conclusive standard of a prophetic Inspiration. Tried by this stand- ard, the evidence of any particular prophecy, in its original and perfect force, may be either permanent, or temporary. It is permanent, so long as it can be shewn to be con- formable in each point to the test proposed. It declines, and loses something of its force, as an independent proof, when we want the materials of information necessary to evince that rigorous conformity of it. One example of prophecy has been submitted to this test : and the next which I now take up to be examined in like manner, is that portion of the Prophetic Volume which relates to the degraded and exiled state of the Jew- ish people. to the future faith of the world. “ Many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this hook ; but these are written , that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ” xx. 30, 31. 298 On the Inspiration of Prophecy . I. The publication of the prophecy in this instance was long anterior to the event. The substance, and the most characteristic circumstances of it, are contained in the books of Moses, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, from the latter of which I shall hereafter quote a part of it. It is referred to in the book of Nehemiah b , as a prophecy which had been delivered by Moses. The same prophetic sub- ject is resumed in the books of Amos, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, as well as other books of the Old Testament. If, with regard to some of these predictions, as those of Jere- miah and Ezekiel, which are among the latest of them, scepticism should object that they might be grounded upon the pregnant signs, or actual commencement, of the desolation and dispersion which they profess to fore- shew : no such surmise can be thrown in the way to in- validate the antiquity of the records of the prophecy in- cluded in the books of Moses. For besides other proofs of the authentic sera of those books, and of the prophecies, which they contain, ascribed to Moses, their antiquity, so far as it is involved in the present question, is established by an evidence obvious and conclusive. The division of the monarchy of Israel, after the death of Solomon, placed the books of Moses under the custody of an hostile and acrimonious schism in religion between the two kingdoms of Judah and Samaria; and Samaria, acknowledging the Pentateuch as the basis of its religion, though with a very corrupted and heretical faith, bore a second, and yet more than independent testimony, to the antiquity and authen- ticity of the Mosaic records and prophecies ; most certainly to the authenticity of those portions of the Pentateuch which are, in the very tenor of its text, explicitly ascribed to Moses as their author. Such are all those connected with the publication of the Law. The first condition therefore is largely secured in our inquiry. Chap. i. 8. Predictions concerning the Jewish People . 299 II. The second qualification of the prophecy can as little be denied. The notorious facts of history open to all the world, bespeak the eminent and palpable accomplishment of the several heads of its prediction. Following the pro- phecy as it is set forth in the Pentateuch, we are carried through an extraordinary state of long and aggravated national calamity : turning to history, old and recent, we see its narrative holding an equal pace with every denun- ciation of the prophet. The comparison has often been made between this chapter of prophecy and the accom- plishment of it. It formed a subject of illustration and argument in the apologies of the Fathers, and in their popular discourses: as may be seen in the writings of Justin, Tertullian, Chrysostom, and others; the forcible delineation of the prophecy, on the one hand, the strange and singular fate of the Jewish people, on the other, fur- nishing such images as arrested observation, and such media of conviction as every understanding might apply. Among other writers, Bishop Newton is one who has drawn out the comparison, and to his Dissertations I refer for the detail of the historic evidence, so far as the general notoriety of the principal points of it can leave the occasion for a more complete information. III. But the considerable question in this case is not, whether the things foretold have been fulfilled, of which there can be no doubt, but whether the prediction of them did not exceed the powers of human foresight; and to that question, which brings us to the third condition of the criterion laid down, I shall direct my attention. It is freely admitted that a general prophecy of the future ruin and desolation of any given people or king- dom, to take place at a distant period, is, if it should be fulfilled, no test of a prescience more than human; be- cause the desolations of conquest, and other rude vicissi- tudes of kingdoms and communities, are among the ordi- nary materials of history. Something distinctive, something of a special characteristic kind, must be introduced in the 300 On the Inspiration of Prophecy . prediction, to guard it against the suspicion of having been drawn from the usual beaten course of human affairs. Prophecy, in our present instance of it, furnishes more than one such distinctive and appropriate mark. It is part of the prediction in Deuteronomy 0 : “The Lord shall scatter thee among all people , from the one end of the earth even unto the other . — And among these nations shalt thou find no ease y neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest ; but the Lord shall give thee a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind.” — “ I will bring your land unto desolation, and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it ; and I will scatter you among the heathen, and draw out a sword after you d .” Add to which that in the prophecies of Amos, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, the doom of scattering , or removal into the uttermost parts of the earth, is pronounced upon the Jewish race not less than six times, prophecy thereby denoting that dispersion was a special plague ordained for God’s visitation upon this people. “I will cause them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth,” was His sentence upon them e . On this point the argument takes its stand, and chal- lenges our assent to the inspiration of the prophecy. Dis- persion has been the fate of the Jewish people in a man- ner and degree in which it has befallen no other people. From the period of their first overthrow, or rather from the first mutation and decline of their commonwealth, it has pursued them to the present day. It has been the habit under which they have existed, in ten of their Tribes, or in all, for seventeen hundred years, or for twenty-five hundred. The infliction of this national calamity began with the Assyrian conquest, when their Ten Tribes were swept into a captivity and exile in the East, from which, in any public strength, they never returned. The second infliction of it befell the surriving kingdom of J udah, in the Babylonian c Chap, xxviii. 64, 65. d Levit. xxvi. 32, 33. e Jerem. xv, 4. 301 Predictions concerning the Jewish People . conquest, when the main body of the population of Judaea was broken up, their king, their nobles, and other draughts of their fugitive inhabitants, were carried to bondage in Babylon, whilst a second part of them, the force of their military population, fled into Egypt f , there to experience only a later capture, and a wider dispersion, in as many as survived the sword, through the provinces of the Baby- lonian empire. But when this Tribe, which was reserved for a destiny of its own, and that a destiny already fore- shewn by prophecy, was, for the fulfilment of that inter- mediate prophecy, restored, and though not without a great loss and severance of its people left behind, re- planted in its own land again, and had there passed through the period of its appointed and foretold continu- ance to the days of the Messiah and the Gospel, then the last catastrophe of its fate, dealt by the Roman arms, ex- tended and aggravated the calamity of dispersion beyond the example of any former period of the like suffering, and the final scattering of this devoted people, which then ensued, when the sword and captivity divided between them their whole stock and race, has continued a lasting phenomenon even now fresh in the eyes of men, a phe- nomenon attesting, with an importunate energy, the pre- science, and the veracity, of Prophecy. Yet this tribe was once exempted, as we see, from the most natural consequence of a seventy years’ captivity in a foreign land. Subjugation and captivity did not always lead to irrevocable dispersion. This broken Tribe could be preserved and restored, when prophecy had predicted to it the precise term of its bondage, and the subsequent repossession of its own land. During this its temporary bondage, it was sealed up, rather than dissipated ; it had from prophecy a principle of vitality and preservation ; for there remained predictions to be fulfilled in that Tribe, and by it, in its own proper place of abode, and in its public character. But in the fulness of time, the extreme measure of predicted punishment by dispersion overtook f Jerem. xliii. 302 On the Inspiration of Prophecy. this remaining member of the Hebrew people, as it had the rest. The advent of the Messiah announced the de- parture of the sceptre from Judah, and released, if I may so speak, the last obligations of prophecy, which stood pledged for the continuance of that sceptre no longer. Then it was that the threats of penal prediction took their full effect, when the Almighty was seen accomplishing His word, which had long been suspended over the last remains of His people, and bidding all the plagues of desolation to chase them from the land which He had originally bestowed upon them, and, by His gift, made their inheritance ; their deprivation and expulsion from it having from the first been made the declared token of their rejection, as the grant of it was of their stipulated adoption. To revert then more closely to the prominent circum- stance by which prophecy distinguishes the fate of the Jewish people, their dispersion , their removal into distant lands, it must be observed that this is one critical proof, an index of the inspiration of the prophecy. The decay and dilapidation of kingdoms take place in various ways ; nothing more frequent than violent subjugation by con- quest; nothing uncommon in the silent and crumbling decay of populous states by the lapse of time ; and even extirpation and exile are not unknown as the fortune of smaller communities. But in the case of the Jewish peo- ple, there is a modification of their fate by a general and distant dispersion, to which there are few other instances, if any, to be compared at all, and in the permanence and duration of that accident there is, I believe, no one case parallel to it, or like it, whatever. It is not a bare desolation of their land, nor desolation with the exhaus- tion and disappearance of the people from their origi- nal home; but a driving of them to the four winds of heaven, superadded to the local calamities of an exter- minating vengeance, which makes the peculiarity of their fate, and of the prediction of it. Other, and long settled nations, may have been driven from their native country ; Predictions concerning the Jewish People . 303 of which, however, in nations of the scale and strength of the Hebrew people, it will not be easy to name the second example ; but such a devious dispersion, and such a perpetuity of it, are strictly unparalleled. For where is the other country in the world, and in what quarter of it, which lies so vacant, so thinly occupied, whilst its proper race are to be seen everywhere else : they, and it divided ; a solitary soil, and a displaced, distracted population, abounding any where rather than in their own land ? In that divided state they remain ; present in all countries, and with a home in none; intermixed, and yet sepa- rated; and neither amalgamated nor lost ; but like those mountain streams which are said to pass through lakes of another kind of water, and keep a native quality to repel commixture, they hold communication without union, and may be traced, as rivers without banks, in the midst of the alien element which surrounds them. In searching for a case like to theirs, I cannot suppose that any person will seriously set up, for the parallel to this fate of the Jewish people, the equivocal history of an obscure wandering race, not unknown in our own country, who are permitted to hang upon the outskirts of society, and who keep up certain usages and habits of life, without settlement, or intermixture and incorporation with others. Of this wandering horde there is no evidence of their having ever existed as a collective independent people, and having lost that state; there is no evidence of their having existed in any form, and maintained their succes- sion, for a length of time to be compared with the Jewish dispersion; and they escape now, in their insulated free- dom, by connivance and toleration, in the open neglected frontier between society and solitude. Whereas the Jewish people have lived in the full communication of public in- tercourse; they have lived in the heart of cities, in the crowded seats of commerce, and in those relations and habitudes of life which most effectually obliterate original distinctions of lineage and country. And these their re- 304 On the Inspiration of Prophecy . lations of civil life, in which they are known at this day almost to a proverb, connecting them with the business of traffick in all its details, are none of a modern date. Such has long been their mode; having no root of territorial occupancy, they have been thrown upon it ; and it is as ancient with them, as the time of Chrysostom, who speaks of them as conversant in the same medley of commerce, and to be seen among the busiest traffickers in the market of the world g . But if the two cases had a real resemblance, which they have not, how could the evidence of Scripture prophecy be impeached by that similarity? To foretell a future national condition to a given people, so strangely rare in its kind, so anomalous, so remote from the common, and indeed the uncommon vicissitudes of nations, would still be a test of supernatural prescience, even if a second instance like it could be pretended. How rare it has been, needs no other proof than this, that out of the storehouse of his- tory, modern and ancient, amidst the manifold varieties of fortune which have marked or ended the course of king- doms and communities, an operose, and indeed a frivolous ingenuity, is driven to seek, where it does, for the paral- lel required; among the desultory tribes of Gipsies or Guebres. Review the whole of this extraordinary case. From the settlement of the Hebrew colony in Egypt by the Patri- arch Jacob, to the final expulsion of the whole people from their country by the Romans, is a period of nearly eighteen hundred years. Within that compass of time twice have they passed through public bondage threatening their ex- tinction. But from their first bondage they emerged to the conquest of Canaan ; from their second to the repos- session of Judaea. It was in their progress to their earlier £ Chrysost. tom. i. p. 656. ed. Montfauc. pfi yap (jloi robs rr arpidpxas rovrovs ^irrjs, robs Kan’fjAovs, robs i/JLTropovs, robs rrjs Trdrrjs vapavopilas ye/xovras. Predictions concerning the Jewish People . 305 triumphant establishment, that the doom of their disper- sion began to be foretold; prophecy so setting its seal upon them from the first, and in the beginnings of their history. Dispersion has been their fate ; the reversed, but equally conspicuous, sequel of their public polity. It has been their fate in each branch of them ; first of Israel, next of Judah; and this final and comprehensive dissipa- tion of them has now lasted nearly eighteen hundred years, equalling the extreme period of their former national ex- istence. In every stage of their course, these eighteen hundred years have borne witness to the Mosaic oracles. The visible cause which has preserved the distinction of the Jewish race, under circumstances naturally tending to confound and destroy it, no doubt is their adherence to their peculiar law; an adherence to the name and memory of it; a traditionary nationality upon an antiquated obso- lete principle. This has been the bond of their dislocated union among themselves, and the preservative of their separation from others. By their law, they were at first separated, but to nobler moral ends, from the rest of the world ; by the same law, under their degradation, they are separated still. Does not this look like a Providential di- rection of things? But whatever it be, the evidence of prophecy has been authenticated by it. Take the subject in another view. There are prophecies of the Old Testament describing the downfall of many dif- ferent states and kingdoms. They do not make removal and dispersion the striking accident of calamity in the overthrow and dissolution of any other of these kingdoms. Tyre, and Nineveh, and Babylon, have not their end sig- nalized in that way. Yet one instance there is in which that very form of national suffering is introduced, and singled out to be made the topic of prediction. It is a prophecy relating to Egypt, and delivered thus by Eze- kiel h : "I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries.” A hasty h xxix. 12. X 306 On the Inspiration of Prophecy . judgment miglit seize upon this text, and say, here is the same thing over again. But observe the definite evidence of prophecy. In the next sentence it follows; “At the end of forty years will I gather the Egyptians from the people whither they were scattered ; and I will bring again the captivity of Egypt ; and will cause them to return into the land of Pathros, into the land of their habitation, and they shall there be a base kingdom.” We see it is a scat- tering for forty years , and not into all the kingdoms of the earth , but into certain countries; which by the prophet Jeremiah are denoted to have been the countries of the Babylonian empire , not of any vast extent 1 . After this partial scattering, the Egyptians are to be restored, and be a base kingdom in their own land . The local limits of the dispersion, the period of it, the sequel of it, are there- fore unlike in the two cases, and in the respective prophe- cies of them. That of the Jews is a lasting and total dis- persion. For of this people, as “ their plagues” were to be “ wonderful ” in other respects, so in this, that they should be “ of long continuance — Their doom is denounced upon them, and their seed . “ All these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed ; — and they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder , and upon thy seed for ever k .” To the texts of prophecy already cited, I add one more from the prophet Amos. He delivered his predictions, whilst the whole body of Israel was yet entire in Canaan and unremoved ; but place his age where you will, it makes little difference as to the authority of the following singular prophecy. “ Behold the eyes of the Lord are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord. For lo I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve , yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth 1 .” This concise prophecy contains a draught of de- terminate history; the kingdom, the body politic, to be * Jerem. xlvi. 13, 26. k Deut. xxviii. 45, 46. 1 Chap. ix. 8, 9. Predictions concerning the Jewish People . 307 destroyed from off the face of the earth ; but the people, the stock, not to be destroyed. The people to be sifted through all nations ; but the seed so sifted not to perish, nor its least grain to fall to the earth. It is a history made up of opposite particulars; destruction and preser- vation, scattering and perpetual custody, combined. It is the true outline of Jewish history. Is it of any other what- ever? Place the prophecy in any imaginable age; after the fall of the kingdom of Israel, or after the Babylonian conquest ; the phenomenon of its fulfilment remains ; its constant, perpetual fulfilment. Lastly, with the rest of their predicted condition, take one circumstance more into the account. It is foretold of them that they should become “an astonishment, a proverb and a by-word , among all the nations whither the Lord shall lead them words which imply, that this degraded people should pass into a mark and object of proverbial notice, approaching to scorn. Herein we have a further characteristic set upon their condition. A contingency dependent upon the precarious feeling and capricious judg- ment of men, is subjected to a specific prediction. And the event has justified the prophecy so understood. For is it not one of the most observable things, among all which this outcast people has been made to endure, that over and above spoliation of property, civil disfranchisement, severe, and sometimes insulting, persecutions of law, their cup of suffering has had that one last ingredient of bitterness so largely infused, and, with every other hardship, they have been marked out for the contempt and unkind feeling of the world? Deserved, or undeserved, scorn has been their portion. The proverb and the by-word have not left them. It seems to be the brand inflicted by the blasting voice of prophecy. At the same time, if it be urged that “the astonishment, the proverb, and the by-word” may be simply the badge of the atrocity of their sufferings, and the strangeness of their general fortunes : this may be granted, and the prophetic text will vary its sense, not its x 2 308 On the Inspiration of Prophecy. truth. Their fortunes, if not their persons, will carry the proverb and the by -word, and the subject is fitted to the prediction : for their plagues , from first to last, have been wonderful , and make them justly the proverb among the nations of the earth. If then the foreknowledge of prophecy, in this example of it, has been shewn to be clear and determinate ; if the prior publication of it is certain ; if the form of it has been vindicated in its peculiarity, and proved to be such as could not be suggested by any thing observed elsewhere, at the time when it was delivered ; if the accomplishment of it has been full and eminent; then the conditions of the highest standard of prophetic evidence will be substanti- ated in this instance, and we may conclude it to have been an inspired prophecy. I close this subject with some observations upon col- lateral points connected with it. 1. What shall we say to the season and occasion wherein this subject of prophecy was introduced? It stands coeval with the publication of the Law, and the whole system of the Jewish Polity. Could any station be occupied by the prophecy so conspicuous, or so critical? Their legislator and founder is he who delivers it. These circumstances give prominence and force to the prediction itself. But there is also a great moral fitness discernible in the occa- sion. The charter of Canaan, and the predicted forfeiture of it, were thereby made to go together. Prophecy, as the instrument of God's moral Government with that sepa- rated people, disclosed to them at once the scheme of His Providence, with respect to that covenanted, but condi- tional, gift. 2. An obstinate and pertinacious attachment to the name and memory of their law, is the proximate visible cause, as I have said, which now cements and perpetuates their scat- tered race. But their rejection of Christianity when it was offered to them, is imputed in the Christian scriptures, to Predictions concerning the Jewish People . 309 tlieir corruption and violation of the moral law, and their culpable blindness as to the sense of the prophecies. This immorality and culpable blindness, we may suppose to be the hinderances which still keep them at a distance from the Gospel. I say, we may suppose this ; but no more ; because we have not the same authoritative information whereby to interpret the whole case and conduct of the Jews throughout, which we have with respect to their posi- tive refusal of Christianity, when it was tendered to them by the Messiah. Whatever be the explanation of their pre- sent unbelief, it must not be thought that a real attach- ment to God’s Moral Law , as it is taught either in the Old Testament, or any where else, ever kept either Jews, or others, from the Christian Faith. This I remark, lest in ascribing the permanence of their present condition to an adherence to their law, I seem to impute a strange effect to a virtuous principle. But men may place their religion in names and formalities : and actual Judaism, the worship of the Synagogue, may be something very different from the spirit of the Mosaic Religion. “ If they believe Moses they will hear Christ.” This is a doctrine which we be- lieve presses upon them ; and the inference from it is not to their favour. 3. By this wide and lasting dispersion of the people of Israel, one purpose of God’s Providence has been pro- moted, and an evidence of Revealed Religion supplied, which could not have been secured by the like condition befalling any other nation. Had it been foretold of the people of Babylon or Nineveh, Tyre or Egypt, that they should be scattered over the face of the earth; it might have so been : and that particular prophecy would have been confirmed. But there is something more than this in the case of the Jews. Their dispersion is like a dissemi- nation of a general evidence of Revealed Religion. Wher- ever they have been seen, they have pressed upon men’s notice the authentic history of their covenant, their law, and their prophets. They have been a living proof of one half of Revealed Religion. So that in an eminent manner 310 On the Inspiration of Prophecy. the execution of the divine judgments upon them has been, in this instance, as in others, an instruction, as well as an extraordinary sight. “ So shall it be a reproach and a taunt, an instruction , and an astonishment, unto the nations that are round about thee, when I shall execute judgments in thee in anger, and in fury, and in furious rebukes. I the Lord have spoken it m .” 4. We have cause from the Scripture oracles to expect that this people will one day be restored, under the cove- nant of the Gospel, to a happier and more honourable state; and perhaps also to a public re-establishment in their own land. But this last event, their national re- storation, is a point in which we wait for a clearer infor- mation of the prophetic sense. Meanwhile, so much is certain, that, till their conversion to the Christian Faith, Prophecy, like the cherubim with the flaming sword, guards the entrance of Canaan, and forbids them the approach. 5. Lastly; The prophecies which relate to the subver- sion of the J ewish state, and the introduction of Christi- anity, are raised in the evidence resulting from them, by their joint and coincident completion. Upon one aera and crisis of things there falls an aggregate of prophetic fulfil- ment. Either event, so modified as each was, would have been a memorable fact. Together, they are a rare and wonderful fabric of providence. Nor is prophecy without its indications that this coincidence should take place. For the two events are not only each foretold, but they are sometimes so brought together in the prediction, that their concurrence appears to be manifestly intended to be expressed; and if this interpretation which unites them is not imperative from the text, it is at least the most fair and direct. Such is the impression of the prophecies of Moses and Isaiah", as well as some others. But whether this concurrent accomplishment can be strictly deduced from the text of prophecy, or no ; still it is, in the fact, such a mark of a special providence in the consummation m Ezek. v. 15. n Deut. xxxii. 21 ; Isaiah lxv. 1 — 9. Predictions concerning the Jewish People . 311 of things so produced, and such a key to the exposition of the Divine Economy, as well as to the solution of the mixt oracles of prophecy, that we shall be warranted in laying some stress upon it, on each of those accounts. Something of this kind of remark is enforced by Ter- tullian in the following passage. Speaking of the Jews, and their condition in his day, he says of their fugitive anarchy, “ Dispersi, palabundi, et coeli et soli sui extorres, vagantur per orbem sine homine, sine Deo rege, quibus nec advenarum jure terram patriam saltern vestigio salu- tare conceditur.” After which he subjoins : “ Cum hcec illis sanctce voces prceminarentur , ecedem semper omnes in - gerebant fore, uti, sub extremis curriculis saeculi, ex omni jam gente et populo et loco cultores sibi allegeret Deus, multo fideliores, in quos gratiam transferret . Hujus igitur gratiae disciplinaeque arbiter et magister, illuminator atque deductor generis humani, Filius Dei praenunciabatur °.” ° Apol. cap. 21. END OF DISCOURSE IX. DISCOURSE X. ON THE INSPIRATION OE PROPHECY. Proof of it in the Prediction of the great Apostasy. Rev. xix. 10. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of Prophecy. T HE instances of prophecy which have been stated in the two preceding Discourses, and argued upon, as satisfying the highest conditions of prophetic inspiration, were taken from the Old Testament. The next case which I shall adduce, will be taken from the New. “ For the testi- mony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” The prophetic spirit is an evidence of Christ, by its use, and by its dona- tion. It is a testimony which He brought with Him, and vested in His Apostles, as He had sent it forth by the prophets before Him ; a supernatural sign inherent in His religion, as well as preceding and announcing Him. But this prophetic spirit in the New Testament is eminently “the testimony of Jesus” on another account, by its sub- jects of prediction. For it preserves a great unity and sim- plicity in the general aim of its revelation, which is di- rected almost wholly to the condition of the Christian Church, its progress, persecutions, corruptions, and ulti- mate triumph. Such are, upon the whole, the scope and tenor of the prophecies which accompanied the publica- tion of Christianity. Their collective force, therefore, as an evidence, is in bearing testimony to Jesus, in His re- Prediction of the great Apostasy. 313 ligion. How far they support their pretensions to an in- spired origin is the material question to be examined. The case in which I shall consider the inspiration of Gospel prophecy, is that portion of it which describes the corruptions of some reigning power in the Christian Church ; a chapter of prophecy which may be shewn, first, to agree in its character with the history of the Church and See of Rome; and next, by that medium of fulfil- ment, to evince its inspiration. And as the distinguished Prelate, the Founder of this Lecture, had it in view, as one object of his institution, to enforce a special reference to those parts of prophecy which will fall within my pre- sent Discourse, by bringing them under your notice I shall comply with that his particular design, and at the same time prosecute the inquiry into the use and inspira- tion of the Scripture oracles, which I have wished to fol- low in a settled course and order, and with a more ex- tended view. As to this one subject of prophecy, on which his mind was intent, he has not only prescribed it to others, but he has cultivated it himself; and that with so much strength of reason, and eloquence of discussion, in one of those learned and argumentative discourses, which he delivered in this place, that the Author has in a man- ner surpassed the Founder, by anticipating, in this argu- ment at least, with too much skill and success, the purpose of his institution a . I. The principal document of prophecy to be examined in the case before us is contained in the Apocalypse. But as this is a book of Scripture which unbelievers have set themselves, with more than a common confidence, to assail, and which has been discredited by the mistakes, or indis- cretion, of some of its interpreters, who, in the real diffi- culty of the book, have further embarrassed its interpreta- tion by the vagueness, and by the discordancy, of their opinions upon it, I shall premise, by way of introduction, In his Sermon on the Rise of Antichrist. 314 Inspiration of Prophecy. a few remarks upon the structure and general form of this part of Holy Writ, from which the chief premises of argu- ment are to be drawn. The Apocalypse consists of three parts: 1. The pro- oemium in which the Divine Author of the ensuing reve- lation is exhibited in the person of Christ. 2. The pro- phetic and didactic charge given to the Seven Churches of Asia. 3. The extended prophetic revelation, which occupies the book from the fourth chapter to the end, and embraces an ampler period and scene of things. This last comprehensive portion of it is the great field of Apocalyptic prophecy. It consists throughout of a series of visions, communicated under a scheme of symbolical imagery. Persons and actions are drawn in it under the substituted character of a figurative representation. Hence its mysteriousness and first difficulty. Hence also the main objection which has been turned to the prejudice and defamation of the book. But on general grounds of presumption, there is no reason to think that the Apocalypse, from the nature of its style, is incapable of a rational and satisfactory, that is, a determinate interpretation. As all language abounds in metaphor and other materials of imagery, imagery itself may form the ground of a descriptive language. The forms of it may become intelligible terms ; and the combination of them may be equivalent to a narrative of description. Nor is the Apocalypse all mystery and figure. There is an admixture in it of the civil and moral idiom, both in names and phraseology, limiting in some measure the subject of the symbolical representation; and in cer- tain points the book furnishes a key to its own sense, by a positive interpretation given. With these data, the general senigma of its figurative and symbolical style has been satisfactorily solved ; the metaphor of it has been trans- lated, upon principles neither arbitrary nor precarious ; and thereby the objection made to it on account of its obscurity has been answered, so far as that obscurity 315 Predictions of the great Apostasy . arises from the scheme and structure of the visions under which its prophecies are conveyed. Those prophecies therefore come before us as a fair document of predic- tion, as much as others expressed in the more obvious and direct language of civil and historic description, modified, as the prophetic style usually is, by a tropical character. Moreover, the entire subject of this book is strongly marked by a system of chronological order. Subsequent and coincident periods of time are noted ; and the course and succession of events is made a part of the prophecy as well as the events themselves. The effect of this chrono- logical structure is a guard upon the reference of the several prophecies, whereby one of them checks the ap- propriation of another, and reduces it within a certain position, both as to series of time, and dependence of history. Lastly, the business of the whole work is mani- festly to pourtray the state of the Religion and Church of Christ. No man can read it without discovering that this is its aim. It does not deviate into things uncon- nected with this main design. But the preaching, or the resistance and persecutions, the decline, or the revival and triumph, of the Christian Faith, are distinguishable in every part of its visions, whilst other matters are ad- mitted only in subordination to this master- subject of the whole. With such internal reasons and principles, to guarantee the character of the Apocalypse, as a volume fit to be studied, because capable of being interpreted, it is scarcely necessary to resort to the authority and names of men, for a defence in its favour. But if such adventitious sanc- tion were required, it might be had in the names of Newton and Clarke, the first of whom has commented, and the other argued upon it; the one the most profound, the other among the most severe and closest of reasoners. What then, if the infidel leader of the last age thought it worthy of the levity of his mind, to make a jest of their pains ? How does that affect either them, or the book in 816 Inspiration of Prophecy. question? I shall think it an abuse of youi* attention to occupy it with any comparison of the masculine powers of mind, the integrity and severity of inquiry, and the unim- peachable love of truth, possessed, and shewn in their writings, by the two interpreters of the Apocalypse whom I have named, and by any, or all, of those who have said any thing against it. Their deliberate testimony is an answer to a thousand vague cavils. With regard to Newton, I would add this remark, that the plan of the Apocalyptic volume was a study suited to the reach and habits of his mind. There was a comprehensive system to be adjusted; though not indeed to be unfolded for the first time, for Mede had gone before, but that system gave scope to the exercise of his capacious understanding ; and there w r as an extended induction of history to be made, and that also coincided with the course and spirit of his inquiries, and with his practice of trying speculation by its harmony with a series of facts. And as his researches into the Chronology of ancient Kingdoms confirmed him in his belief of the authenticity of the account of things histori- cally delivered in the Old Testament, his investigation of the history of the later Kingdoms served as much to con- vince him of the truth and prescience of the descriptive scheme of things prophetically delivered in the New. Such were his researches ; and such the result of them. — With these preliminary remarks I take up the example of pro- phecy, which is in hand to be examined. In the 17th chapter of the Apocalypse we have the pre- ' dictive vision of some mystical power about to arise in the Christian world, a power called “ Babylon, the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.” But that we may not look to the East, to the Euphrates, for the object so described, the vision becomes its own inter- preter, and supplies the specific determination of the place and home of this power, by the mention of “the seven mountains” on which it should be seated ; a sign suffi- ciently exclusive of the champaign site of Euphratean 317 Prediction of the great Apostasy . Babylon, but the popular and the known appropriate at- tribute of the city of Rome . Its place of abode thus ascertained, we find it charac- terized, as to its proper nature and genius, in many dif- ferent ways. First, its external pomp and pageantry of show are put forward. For at the opening of the vision, the Woman who is the personated emblem of the state, or public entity, in question, meets our view in “ an array of purple and scarlet, and a decking of gold, and precious stones, and pearls :” — such an external decoration being one of the easiest marks to see and understand. Thus habited in splendour, and seated on the same ground with the ancient mistress of the world, this power is next pour- trayed in her spirit of fury and persecution : “ I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.” Again, the system and combination, by which this Power should exercise her influence, is made a part of the prediction. It was not to be a State of simple monarchical rule, but of a sway em- bracing many kingdoms, yielding to her policy for a time, and allying themselves to her purposes, whilst they re- tained their local sovereignties within themselves. These vassal kingdoms moreover are defined to be some which had no being at the time when the prophecy was given, but were to spring up afterwards, and exist together, con- temporary for a season with the domineering state seated at Rome. These several particulars are placed together in the explanatory words, which follow : “ The ten horns, which thou sawest, are ten kings which have received no kingdom as yet, but receive power as kings one hour, (that is, for a season,) with the beast. These have one mind, and shall give their strength and power unto the beast.” Which Beast, having “the ten horns,” is intro- duced at the beginning, as the slave and creature of bur- den to the Woman who is the great ruling power, “the mother of abominations.” The Power so described in her place of abode, habit, and policy, was to be known for nothing so much as in 318 Inspiration of Prophecy. being a source and fountain head of corruption, and that defined to be a religious corruption, propagated by her through the earth, but chiefly among her subject king- doms. She bears in her hand “a golden cup full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication :” and “ b the kings of the earth” are said to have “ committed fornica- tion with her, and the inhabitants of the earth to have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication ;” and her judgment is for this crime, that (C she corrupted the earth with her fornication 0 .” This crime of fornication, so imputed, is a charge of the most definite kind; the idea of it, being determined by the idiom and usage of the Old Testament, wherein purity of religious faith and worship is designated under the emblem of chastity, or conjugal fidelity, in the Church of God; and apostasy, or corrup- tion in religion, but especially idolatrous corruption, is branded as the gross pollution of virgin-modesty or plighted faith. It is the language both of the Law and the Pro- phets. To the other marks, therefore, by which we may know the state, or power, designed in this elaborate pro- phecy, add this, that there should be introduced by its means and influence some most single corruption and depravation of the Christian Faith, the same to be actively propagated among the kingdoms and inhabitants of the earth, so far as the harlot’s cup could go round, so far as there was access to communication, and her arts of in- fluence. Lastly, to describe once more, and fix, beyond the liberty of a doubt, the place destined to give birth to this portentous power, the prophecy ends, and comes to a rest, upon the note of description which follows ; “ The woman which thou sawest is that great city , which reigneth over the kings of the earth.” When the Apocalypse was written, the vision could not have been made more determinate, had the name of Rome been put in lieu of this de- scription. Let us then unite together the several component parts b Clmp. xviii. 3. c xix. 2. Predictions of the great Apostasy . 319 of this vision, which have been mentioned, and see what they amount to in the general view, and how they are to be applied. There are, indeed, one or two minor texts of the prophecy which I have passed over; because their sense is dubious, and would demand a detailed examina- tion ; but they are clearly not of such a kind as to inter- fere with, or transfer, the representation of the prophetic subject contained in those parts of it which have been considered. The identity of the subject will remain un- disturbed ; and those minor articles would only add to its completeness if they were correctly explained. The sum of things, the general draught of the vision, which we have clear and unambiguous, is this : a domineering power to be established in the city of Rome; to corrupt the faith; to spread that corruption; to be distinguished by its display of gaudy splendour ; to persecute the profes- sors of Christian faith ; to intoxicate itself in the blood of persecution ; to be supported by subservient kings ; to re- quite them for their homage with the larger draughts of' her cup of abominations. The complexity of the event thus delineated takes the prophecy of it out of the range of any vagueness of appli- cation. The circumstances, and formal characters of it are too many, and too peculiar, to leave it at large. One history in the Christian Church has fulfilled the prophecy, in all its points; that the history of the See of Rome. Gross and flagrant corruption of doctrine and worship; meretricious splendour; a sanguinary spirit of persecu- tion ; a system of domineering policy exercised over de- pendent kings, and infatuated nations ; these are the qualities concentrated, by the prophecy, in that power which was to wear so deadly an aspect on the Christian Faith. They are also the qualities which any faithful and competent historian, taking a comprehensive view of his subject, and intending to give the general picture of the Church of Rome, through the long period of her power, reduced and condensed into a few points of description, would be obliged to select and insist upon ; as the narra- 320 Inspiration of Prophecy . tive of their effects does, in point of fact, comprise the mass and bulk of the ecclesiastical details of the Papacy, written in any manner whatever. The attempt which the Romanists themselves, and some others, with an indulgence to their cause, have made, to shift the prophecy from them, and fasten it upon Pagan Rome, can be of no avail, upon the slightest investigation. Pirst, the prophecy, with all its might, refuses and resists that application forced upon it. It is not the truth, to say that Pagan Rome corrupted the world with false doc- trine. Pier empire persecuted, but did not deprave, the Christian Paith. Nor were any violent efforts put in motion to obtrude her native heathenism upon the rest of the world : which, indeed, had its own multifarious hea- thenism, its depraved and idolatrous creed and worship, previously in use ; so that a forced conformity to the re- ligion of Pagan Rome, had such conformity been imposed, could only have been a change of error for error, and no shocking innovation of a fabricated impiety. But, per- haps, there never was a sovereign victorious state, which, in the plenitude of its power, produced less of impression, either by policy, or by the free influence of other causes, upon the religious opinions and institutions of other na- tions, than ancient Rome. Her instruments of empire, her civil character and genius, were of another kind. So that in no sense can there be ascribed to her the propaga- tion of religious depravity. Secondly, the import of the prophetic language strongly denotes a Christian , rather than a Pagan, state, to be the offending harlot; according to the authentic and most usual sense of the same language in the Old Testament, wherein the crime of spiritual whoredom, or fornication, attaches to the infidelity of the Jewish Church d , far more d See Exod. xxxiv. 15 ; Levit. xvii. 7. xx. 5 ; Psalm lxxiii. 26 ; Jerem. in. 1 — 10 ; Ezekiel xvi. xxiii. ; Hosea i. 2. ii. 2. iv. 12, &c. In which passages the Hebrew people are the object of the language. — The passage in Isaiah (xxiii. 16, 17.) wherein Tyre is personified as “ an harlot,” and said “to com- 321 Prediction of the great Apostasy . than to the natural, or inherited irreligion, of heathens ; who not having been brought into covenant with God, or to the pure knowledge of Him, were in a state of inevitable pollution, and had no chastity of religious faith to pre- serve, or to forfeit. Thirdly, The chronological order of the prophetic vision, as it stands in the general plan of the book, is totally re- pugnant to the hypothesis of the Romanists, That order demands the subject of the vision to be placed in some sera much later than the age of St. John himself, or than many of the first visions which he has delineated. Whereas the power and persecutions of Heathen Rome were of an earlier origin; they preceded his communication of the Apocalypse. Lastly, “The mother of abominations” is “seated on a scarlet-coloured beast y having ten horns.” Such was the divided state of the Western Empire, when, in the middle ages, the Papal dominion rose, and rode upon the back of the Civil Power, existing in the separate kingdoms into which that empire was disparted. But no rational account can be given of this symbol of the vision, if the harlot be ancient Pagan Rome ; for her empire, if that be the beasty did not, in its Pagan form, admit of, or co-exist with, a civil sovereignty in such a diversity of kingdoms. In this point, as in the others, the application of the prophetic symbol recoils from the Heathen, upon the Christian, power. mit fornication with all the kingdoms of the earth,” refers solely to her traffic, her interchange of commercial , that perhaps a corrupting, luxury, but manifestly having nothing to de with religious infidelity. This restriction of the phrase, in the matter of religion, to the Hebrew people, is not, however, without its exceptions. Once, in Exodus, the Ca- naanite is included in it, chap, xxxiv. 15. And in the prophet Nahum (iii. 4.) “ the whoredoms of Nineveh” must be understood of some open and avowed propagation of idolatry by that city ; of which the historical record is lost. If any flagrant guilt of the same kind could be justly imputed to Ancient Rome, so far, and in that one point, the Pagan and the Papal States might each fall under the terms of the prophecy ; though there can be no comparison between the supposed Pagan, and the known Papal, enormity, in that offence. But other conditions of the prophecy decide the case between them. Y 322 Inspiration of Prophecy . The offending Church therefore vainly endeavours to remove the accusation of the prophecy from herself to fix it upon her Pagan ancestor; an ancestor who, with some features of resemblance to her, was still, it must be confessed, far from shewing so foul and hideous an air of moral and religious deformity. In the elder power, her civil tyranny, and her usurpations of conquest, her perse- cutions and stains of martyr blood, were not aggravated by the profligacy of false and antichristian doctrines systema- tised, and taught under the scourge of a sanguinary in- quisition, and the sway of a domineering religious supre- macy. If the kingdoms of the earth fell under her arms, they were not made drunk with the cup of her abomina- tions. She did not wield an iron sceptre in one hand, and an intoxicating chalice in the other. The religious sorceress, the Circe of the Christian World, unhappily is of a later age ; and though her wand was broken, as we have cause to rejoice it was, at the Reformation, and her arts and corruptions have long been fully disclosed ; cor- ruptions in which we ourselves had once our full share; yet some of the kingdoms which had drunk the deepest of her cup, have not yet recovered from the transforma- tion she had made of them, but still retain something of the irrational unchristianized visage upon them, imper- fectly discharged by the action of Reformed Truth, and by that improved religious knowledge, which has, how- ever, greatly qualified and softened error, in places where it has not yet been able to establish the genuine purity, or assert the public dignity, of Truth. “For by thy sorceries,” such is the complaint of outraged religion, “ were all nations once deceived.” And the delusion has been too strong, too deeply imbibed, to be quickly ob- literated, except by great efforts, and a masculine spirit of reformation. So far the character and lineaments of this Christian Apostate power have been traced in the Apocalyptic vision of St.John. To extend the prophetic subject, we must Prediction of the great Apostasy . 823 include in it the prophecy of St. Paul. This Apostle, in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, furnishes other points of description, whereby to designate the internal enemy of the Christian Church. He announces some great apostasy to take place, and “the man of sin, the son of perdition,” who has his time in a future age “ to be revealed, opposing and exalting himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, sitting in the temple of God, and shewing himself that he is God.” His coming is to have these marks upon it; it is to be after “the working of Satan with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness 6 .” The identity of the subject in this prophecy of St. Paul with that in the Apocalypse, is the main point to be esta- blished, in order to the validity of the argument to be de- duced from them combined together. The text of neither supplies sufficient data, from the mere force of the terms, to prove that connexion. The “ Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition,” cannot be immediately assumed to be the same with the Harlot Mother, or to belong to one and the same period, or local seat, of corruption. Some data, however, there are, approximating the two prophecies. “ The man of sin sits in the temple of God,” and “ the mother of fornications” is the innate corruptress of the Christian Church. There are “signs” and “lying won- ders” in the one: there are successful “sorceries” in the other. “The mystery of iniquity” is St. Paul's great ob- ject f ; St.John’s iconism is, in its essential idea, of some “ mystery ;” some strange system of iniquity, differing from the common simple operation of human error, or wicked- ness, in its more natural form. Moreover the scale of St. Paul’s prophecy seems to have something of the ex- tent and magnitude of St. John’s. For the apostasy which St. Paul describes is of such proportions, in the history of the Christian Church, as to make it a fit Chronological index of the remoteness of the day of the general resur- rection. The two subjects, therefore, having so far an e Chap. ii. 3 — 12. f Cliap. ii. 7. 324 Inspiration of Prophecy . agreement, or a capacity of agreement, in their general form, may probably be coincident the one with the other. It is the event, however, which I appeal to, as the medium of proof whereby to verify this agreement. The Hierarchy of Rome has in its day fulfilled every iota of St. Paul's prophetic description. The claims of infallibility which the Roman See has arrogated to itself; the demand of an implicit faith in its doctrines, those doctrines many of them the most contradictory to Christianity; the ty- ranny of its tribunals over the consciences of men; the blasphemous titles of address and impious homage which its Pontiff has heretofore extorted or accepted ; the domi- nion over other Churches which it has assumed ; assumed without justice, and exercised without reason or mercy; perfectly agreed with the pride of that rival enemy of God seated “in God's temple" figured out by the Apo- stle. For these inordinate pretensions are all of them, in the strictest sense, invasions of the honour and supreme rights of God, due to Him alone, or to the authority of His inspired word. Romish Infallibility disputing prece- dence with His authentic Truth; traditions disfiguring His attributes and His worship ; a servility and prostra- tion of the conscience to man, dethroning God from His dominion over the believer's understanding ; these are the usurpations of the Roman Hierarchy, concentrated in its Head, which fall nothing short of the character of “ that man of sin who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped," either God, or Jesus Christ His Son; “so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, making a show of himself that he is God ;" a character which might have defied credibility, had it not been as truly verified, as accurately foretold. Again, the multiplied delusions of the Romish system of debased Christianity, and its machinery of pious frauds, pretended prophecies, and miracles, have corresponded but too correctly with the second member of St. Paul's pro- phetic delineation. For such an usurpation of tyranny, and such a change of the Christian faith, could not be 325 Prediction of the great Apostasy . supported and conducted, without the instruments of a suitable policy. These instruments were taken from the only forge which could supply them. “ They were to be after the working of Satan (who is the father of false - hood) with all power, and signs, and lying wonders , and all deceivableness of unrighteousness.” Nor is it easy to see what other words could more faithfully describe the practices and arts which have made the chief resources of the Papal power. Its legends, its relics, its meritorious pilgrimages, its indulgences, its dispensations, its liturgy in an unknown tongue, its images, its spurious miracles, its mediator-saints, its purgatory, and others its plausible, or its revolting, superstitions, were set up as much against the genius of the Gospel, which teaches the worship of God, in spirit and in truth , in the faith of “one Medi- ator” as against the moral honesty and godly sincerity which are the glory of the Christian ethics. And these delusions have been the work of a See and Priesthood, which, having made a kind of religion too corrupt to bear the light of Scripture, and too incredible to be examined by Reason, have, with sufficient consistency, prohibited, or discouraged, the use of the one and the other, and obtruded the phantom of their infallibility, in the very height of its errors and abuses, as the substitute of com- pensation for both. This “mystery of iniquity” “in the temple of God” had its reign. If Christian Faith was well nigh extinguished by it, the truth of Christian Pro- phecy has thereby been the more illustrated g . s’ The external historic limitation, which St. Paul has joined with the sub- ject of his prophecy, is not to be omitted. “And now ye know what with- holdeth, that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work, only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.” An obstruction there was, hindering and retarding the revelation of the iniquity. What that obstruction was, cannot be elicited from the words of St. Paul, who has studiously left it under a dark and involved allusion un- derstood by those to whom he writes. The explanation of it given by the most learned of the Fathers, makes it to be the Civil Roman State ; upon the ruins of which rose the usurpation of Papal power. The explanation is con- gruous to the text, and true in the history. And the judgment of these learned Fathers in this point is of the greater weight, as it was prior to the 32G Inspiration of Prophecy. III. There is a second prophecy of St. Paul which seems to bear upon the same point in foretelling the corruptions of the Papal Church. It is as follows: “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall de- part from the faith h , giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy ; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.” The following of seducing spirits, in forged visions and miracles , and other pious frauds ; the gross casuistry, an insult to Scripture morals; and an avowed practice, a scared conscience, go- verned by that immoral casuistic code; the compulsory prohibition of marriage to her clergy ; a rigorous ritual of fasts, and an operose distinction of meats, enjoined to all her members; these are the reproaches deeply ingrained in the Roman See in her worst age, and truth forbids us to say that the pollution of them is even now purged away. But each mark of the fraudulent superstition is figured in the prophecy; and the mixt and motley garb was long worn in the eye of the world, without any sense of its shame, by the disfigured Apostate Church. It is true that there is no other evidence in the terms of this prophecy, whereby to appropriate it to its subject, excepting the essential and internal characters of the apostasy foretold. But those characters are of themselves the conclusive indication. The mixture of licentiousness and formality ; the licentiousness expressed in “ the speak - event, and must have been founded, either upon the probable sense of the text, or upon a received tradition of that knowledge of its sense, which the Thessalonians are said to have had. And indeed the expectation which pre- vailed in the ancient Church that the fall of the Roman Empire would be followed by the rise of Antichrist may well be thought to have had its origin in this very passage of St. Paul. It is enough, however, for my purpose, that this obscurer part of the prophecy is not inconsistent with that general inter- pretation of it which I have argued upon, and that it is a neutral, if not a favourable, element in the argument. h anoaT’haoi'Tcu. 1 Tim. iv. 1, 2, 3. Prediction of the great Apostasy. 32 7 ing of lies in hypocrisy” and in “ the seared conscience the other, the formality in the prohibition of marriage and meats ; the subtilty and system of art with which the fabric of imposture is sustained, denoted by “the seducing spirits the particular and positive signs con- tained in the institution of a forced celibacy and a spuri- ous Judaic ritual ; compose equally the specific form of the prophecy, and the actual lineaments of the depraved religion, into which the Roman Hierarchy perverted the Gospel. The prediction is of an apostasy from the faith to take place “in the latter times in the latter times it came : prominent in the fact, and palpable in its agree- ment with the letter of the prophecy. And as the inordi- nate ambition and spiritual pride of the apostasy is pre- figured in the former prediction of St. Paul, its spirit of deceit and doctrinal immorality, together with its super- stition, are delineated in this. These two predictions united find their joint completion in the one historical subject, and thereby the confirmation of their sense and the evidence of their truth. To foretell that a religion, pure and excellent as that of the Gospel, would in some future time be depraved, was to foretell nothing improbable. For what is there so sacred in truth which the wickedness and the mistakes of men, or the love of novelty, or the spirit of enthusiasm, or unlearned rashness, or policy and interested designs, will not model anew, and distort from its original recti- tude. Error and heresy are nearly coeval with Truth. They began to work as soon as Christianity was taught, and they may be expected to attend it to its latest day of trial. But in the predictions of the corrupted state of the Christian Faith which we are now considering, there are definite signs of a foreknowledge very different from the deductions of probability, calculated on the general principles of human weakness or human depravity. The prophetic criteria are precise ; and they are such as must be thought to have militated with all rational probability, rather than to have been deduced from it. For that the 328 Inspiration of Prophecy . doctrines of celibacy and of a ritual abstinence from meats, against the whole genius of the Gospel, by an authority claiming universal obedience, should be set up in the Christian Church; that “a man of sin” should exist, ex- alting himself in the temple of God, and openly challeng- ing the rights of faith and honour due to God ; that he should advance himself by signs and lying wonders, and turn his pretended miracles to the disproof and discredit of some of the chief doctrines, or precepts, of Christianity ; and that this system of ambition and falsehood should succeed; that it should be established with the submis- sion, and indeed with the deluded conviction, of men still holding the profession of Christianity, which is the pro- phecy of St. Paul 1 , is a paradox of prediction which must be allowed to surpass the ordinary limits of human ob- servation, and almost to exceed the power which man has to corrupt the best gifts of God. The natural incredibility of it is, not that such errors and abuses should be esta- blished in the world, but that they should be grafted on the Christian Faith, in opposition to, and in outrage of, its genius and its commands, and take a bold possession of the Christian Church. There, however, they have been grafted; and there they have had possession. And the strength of the improbable fact is the proof of the pro- phetic inspiration. Nor is it strictly necessary to this proof, that a formal connexion be shewn to exist in their very terms between these prophecies of St. Paul and the particular Apocalyptic vision of St. John. It is a strange event, that such flagrant perversions of Christianity should break forth, and grow into credit, and pass for a Chris- tian, or a Catholic Faith at Rome, or any where else. The locality of the corruption is a circumstance indifferent to the prodigy of it. The fact that it has had its reign in a particular Church, to which the Apocalyptic vision is by more positive notes directed, is a coincidence not neces- sary to be demanded in the argument, though the event has been in that order. 1 2 Thess. ii. 10, 11. 329 Prediction of the great Apostasy . To conclude then — I shall revert to the substance of the prophecy in St. John. It supplied these circumstances of description : a tyrannical power, of a Christian race, to be seated at Rome ; dressed in a robe of gaudy decora- tion ; spreading its abuses and errors over the kingdoms of the earth, persecuting the Church of Christ, and deeply stained with its blood, especially the blood of its martyrs, its public witnesses and confessors ; that same state hold- ing a number of dependant kings under its yoke; and turning their strength and power, with their consent, to the furtherance of its designs. The complexity of things in this single piece of prophecy is sufficiently manifest. And since the complex whole has, point by point, been fulfilled; and that not in an obscure corner, but in the heart of Christendom, and in the most conspicuous station of the Christian world ; the inference from that comple- tion is not to be evaded. For as to the publication of the prophetic documents, it is here, in each case, unquestionable. The Apocalypse was written before the end of the first century. The latest period of St. John's life so far certifies its antiquity. And although it was not for some time received into the gene- ral Canon of the New Testament, it was known, and pub- lished; and it was admitted into that Canon, before the dissolution of the Western Empire; and some centuries before the sera of the Papal dominion, which it describes. But our business is simply with its publication. The early publication of the Epistles of St. Paul is abundantly no- torious. — The conditions therefore, which were ori- ginally proposed, are found to obtain in this branch of Scripture prophecy, conditions warranting a divine Inspiration. One remark more I shall subjoin; it extends to the three cases of Prophecy which have been examined. Those have been, 1. the prophecy which predicts the establish- ment of the Gospel; 2. that which foreshews the rejected and outcast condition of the Jewish people ; and 3. that 330 Inspiration of Prophecy. which describes the great eclipse and corruption of Chris- tianity under the dominion of the Church of Rome. These are no prophecies of curiosity. ’The subjects them- selves ar'e of that kind in which the history of Revelation is deeply concerned. They comprise the cardinal points of the supposed dispensation of God ; the Christian Church established ; the J ewish cast into exile ; the Christian cor- rupted. These instances of prophecy have been selected because o # f the perspicuity of the proof by which they appear to be supported. For I believe it will be found, that these pro- phecies are among the most copious and prominent, and have the greatest stress laid upon them, in the whole volume of Scripture ; and that the evidence of a clear com- pletion falls at this day, and has always fallen, with the greatest force upon these particular instances. But whilst the simplicity of the argument to be framed upon them recommends them to our attention; it is also true, that they are the most important, in their subjects, that are brought forward in Holy Writ, or that can affect the visible history of Revelation. A coincidence this, between the intrinsic importance of the subjects, and the corre- sponding state of the evidence, which will convey to us, upon reflection, some idea of the wisdom shewn in the structure of Prophecy; a wisdom distinct from the fore- knowledge manifested in these predictions, but, like that foreknowledge, leading us to a divine source. For this is now seen to be the provision made for the Prophetic Evidence, that so long as Christianity shall exist as a public Religion, or the Jew survive, or the history of the long dark age of the Christian Church shall be known, the prescience of prophecy will not want a clear and com- manding proof. Note on Page 325. — The distribution of the Prophetic subject, concern- ing the Rise of Antichrist , into its leading members, is made with great just- ness and decision of judgment, by Tertullian ; who has, moreover, connected 331 Prediction of the great Apostasy. together the predictions of St. Paul with those of the Apocalypse, and reduced them into a scheme of combined and perspicuous interpretation. I shall ex- tract from his Exposition a passage, which, to the learned reader who has considered the subject, will bespeak at once the exactness and comprehensive views of Tertullian’s thoughts upon this great Gospel-Prophecy, and that too, before it had been unfolded by the event. “ Jam enim arcanum iniquitatis agitatur ; tantum qui nunc tenet, teneat; donee de medio fiat. Quis, nisi Romanus Status ? cujus abscessio in decern reges dispersa Antichristum superdnicet . Et tunc revelabitur iniquus , quern Dominus Jesus interficiet spiritu oris sui, et evacuabit, apparentia adventus sui, &c.” — De Resurrect. Cam. p. 397, ed. Lutet. END OF DISCOURSE X. DISCOURSE XI. ON THE INSPIRATION OF PROPHECY. Proof of it in the Predictions concerning Pagan Kingdoms ; Nineveh , Babylon , Tyre , and Egypt . Isaiah xiii. 19, 20. And Babylon , the glory of kingdoms , the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency , shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to genera- tion : neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there ; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. J UDAEA, though separated from the rest of the world, by the enclosure of its peculiar law and religion, stood full in the way of those states and kingdoms, which in ancient times agitated the earth. It was from the East that the flood of human affairs held its course. It was there that the kingdoms of Nineveh and Babylon, Tyre and Egypt, rose into power, and these are the Pagan states, the earliest of which we have any authentic account, as having been great enough materially to affect the condition of neighbouring and distant countries. Judaea fell under the influence which resulted from its contiguity to them all. With respect to them, it held a station of exposure and collision ; and Prophecy, occupying that station, took a range proportionably extended. Accordingly the pro- phecies of Scripture embrace something of the actions and Predictions concerning Pagan Kingdoms. 333 fortunes of each of these kingdoms ; their conquests, their vicissitudes, their overthrow, or final degradation. But the prophets of Israel and Judah direct also many of their predictions to the affairs of smaller states, of less note than those which I have now mentioned; states, of which we read little beyond the records of Holy Writ, and scarcely know in any other way than by their con- nexion with the people of Judaea. Of this kind are Moab, Edom, and Ammon : these have their place among the subjects of Scripture prophecy. But as to our informa- tion respecting them, they are little more than append- ages of Jewish history. It follows, that in examining the evidence of Inspira- tion attaching to these two branches of prophecy, we shall find a difference in our power of applying to them the conditions of the Test proposed. External and inde- pendent history will enable us to judge of the predic- tions which regard the greater empires ; whilst the means will fail of exploring the truth of prophecy, in the in- stance of the smaller kingdoms, by the like evidence of extrinsic information. For these less considerable states have buried with them the documents which might have thrown light upon our inquiry. They were soon crumbled into oblivion ; and the confirmations of prophecy have in some points perished with them. Whereas the others, the greater kingdoms, have left behind them their me- morials, which serve to verify the oracles of Scripture. Prophecy has struck its root in the relics of their history ; and the shadow of it overhangs and overspreads their ruins. I do not intend to insist upon the prophecies concern- ing kingdoms of inferior note. They are less suited to the purpose of an inquiry into the first proofs of the pro- phetic Inspiration, and they address themselves less power- fully, than some others do, to our attention at the pre- sent day. But before I quit the mention of them, I would 334 Inspiration of Prophecy . say a few words to obviate any suspicion which may be raised to their disparagement. Be it considered, then, for the honour of the Scripture Oracles, that the divine prescience might be as truly mani- fested, and God’s Providence as justly explained, by pre- dictions on the smaller scale as on the greater; and, secondly, that these inferior subordinate states whose im- portance is now so lost to us, were seen in a very dif- ferent light by the people of J udaea. To them they were jealous neighbours, or active enemies; and they were felt by them in the contentions, or other interests of vicinage, which is itself equivalent to a relation of im- portance. The pertinence, therefore, and the use, of these minor predictions, as delivered to the Jewish Church, are not in the least impaired by the magnitude of some other sub- jects of prophecy. We have seen before® that one of its ends and purposes was in being the interpreter and ex- positor of God’s providence to His ancient people, who might be competently taught by means, suited to them, which, in the lapse of time, may have lost something of their original force and clearness. And this change in the degree of evidence attending the several portions of prophecy, instead of arguing any defect in it, rather shews its integrity, by representing to us how truly and closely it was accommodated, in certain parts, to the known con- dition and circumstances of that people to whom it was immediately given; whilst others of its oracles have been of such a kind as to offer a conviction to every age. To the Israelite, assuredly, prophecy was not less important, or less capable of being scrutinized, when it spoke to him on things affecting his particular national concerns; but rather, that circumstance in it, which may seem a defect relatively to us, was, to him, an advantage, in the prox- imity of these its more confined and local subjects. Having said so much on this head, I turn to the other a Disc. YI. Part iii. p. 212. Predictions concerning Pagan Kingdoms . 335 class of predictions, those which carry us into the more considerable empires or communities of the ancient East- ern World. First, I state that there are prophecies extant of the complete overthrow, or signal degradation of all the four kingdoms of Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre, and Egypt, which overthrow and degradation have come to pass. In this general view, the broad page of prophecy, and that of history, agree together. But let it be supposed, that in these events, thus briefly described, there is nothing unusual, nothing so different from the common course of things, that any proof of a divine prescience can be grounded upon the prediction of them. Empires, it may be said, rise and fall ; their mutability, and their decay, is a matter of experience; and human foresight confidently predicts the termination of their greatness. In this kind of remark there is some reason; but not so much as may at first appear. For it is to be remembered, that we are now living late in the world, and Experience has had a long study of human affairs. We have therefore principles whereupon to cal- culate, which in foregone times, two thousand five hun- dred years ago, were not established. In an earlier age, when the general march of things was more progressive, and the efforts of man, in policy, arts, and conquest, were expanding in their first circle, the notion of a great shock of ruin and decay befalling consolidated and settled king- doms was more remote from view : and to most of the kingdoms which I have mentioned, for example, to Nine- veh, Babylon, and Egypt, such a shock of decay could not be predicted upon the observation of a similar fate having befallen others like to them; because none like to them had existed, none equally furnished with the ele- ments of a secure and permanent greatness. So far as these things have subsequently happened, prophecy has preceded the experience of them ; and, in their great un- frequency, it has gone beyond the mark of our experience. 336 Inspiration of Prophecy. But prophecy speaks a language, with respect to these ancient flourishing kingdoms, which will oblige us at once to change our hypothesis of objection. For, in each case, it combines with the general event, particulars of distinc- tion which cannot be mistaken for the anticipations of human foresight. Some of these particulars it will be necessary to quote. I. The predictions of the prophet Nahum are confined exclusively to the destruction of the kingdom and city of Nineveh. 1. One of the things foretold by him is this: “For while they be folded together as thorns , and while they are drunken as drunkards , they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry.” 2. Another: “The gates of the rivers shall be opened; and the palace shall be dissolved,” or “molten.” Each of these particulars of the prophecy is something distinctive; and each of them happens to be verified to us by the testimony of a distant and neutral witness, an heathen historian, who had it little in his thoughts when he was transmitting such incidents of his multifarious Compilation, that he was confirming the exactness of an ancient Jewish prophet. From Diodorus Siculus b , who is the author here referred to, we learn that the Assyrian camp, in a state of drunkenness, during a general festival, was surprised and overwhelmed. The prophet's image, of their being “folded together” and entangled “as thorns,” accurately expressing the em- barrassment and inability of defence, in which they were involved; and the sudden mastery which was made of them, and pressed to a complete victory being equally described in the image of “a flame devouring the dry stubble,” and enwrapping it in an instant conflagration. From the same writer we derive this other critical cii~ cumstance; that during the siege of Nineveh, in the third year of it, an inundation of the river (which was the Tigris), caused by an excessive and continuous fall of rains, burst the walls, and laid them open, such was the magnitude of the city, to the extent of twenty stadia; b Lib. ii. p. 112. ed. Rliodom. quoted by Bishop Newton. Predictions concerning Pagan Kingdoms . 337 upon which the king, seeing no hope of safety in defence, raised a vast pile, on which he consumed himself in the flames of his wealth and his palace c . Here are two articles to be noted. “The gates of the rivers shall be opened;” so it was, when the flood opened those gates of ruin in the walls. And the palace was not to be simply taken, but “ dissolved, or molten :” — an incident equally marked in the prophecy and in the fact. But let us suspend our judgment of this prophecy, till we have compared it with a second, that which relates to the taking of Babylon. In the two predictions we shall observe a certain measure of agreement, checked and limited by a difference adequately expressed. In both, a state of revelry and intoxication is foretold. In both cases it occurred. Speaking of Babylon, Jeremiah says, “In their heat I will make their feasts; and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a per- petual sleep, saith the Lord.” (Chap. li. 39. 57.) So far the agreement. — But the same prophet fixes the in- stant of the surprise upon the actual capture of Babylon , which neither was foretold, nor happened, in the capture of Nineveh; for it was the army of Nineveh, in camp before its walls, that was so surprised, before the siege had commenced. “I have laid a snare for thee,” is the definite prediction of J eremiah, “ and thou art also taken , O Babylon , and thou wast not aware : thou art found, and also caught.” (Chap. 1. 24.) Every one knows, from the narrative of the Greek historians, that the Persian army obtained possession of Babylon by a capture of sur- prise, that its people were taken as in a net, and that the one part of the city knew not of the entrance of the enemy, till the other part was in their power. Here then is one point of difference. — A second, and greater differ- ence, will add to the contrast. Each of the cities stood on a great river, Nineveh on the Tigris, Babylon on the c Lib. ii. p. 113. Z 338 Inspiration of Prophecy . », i - r 1 •„ r , u , . % Euphrates. These rivers were to be instrumental to the taking of them both, but in a dissimilar, and even oppo- site, manner ; by an inundation in the one case, and by drying up in the other. This last particular, as to Ba- bylon, is elaborately insisted on, again and again, in the prophecy “ That saith to the deep, Be dry , and I will dry up thy rivers d .” “ A drought is upon her waters, and they shall be dried up e .” A repetition of phrase, which, by its pleonasm, serves to lay the emphasis of the pro- phecy in the right place, upon one distinctive note of the divine foreknowledge. For it is a matter of trite history, that Babylon was taken in a manner corresponding with this prediction concerning her great river, when Cyrus, by a vast enterprise of stratagem, drained off the waters of the Euphrates from their channel, and so reduced them as to open a passage on foot within its banks for the entrance of his army. Let the two events then be compared together, and with the prophecies. And when we see prophecy furnishing such determinate marks of prescience ; when it speaks in the one instance of “ an overrunning flood,” and of “ the opening of the gates of the rivers f ;” and, in the other, bids the river be dry; when it appoints a mighty army, or a city, to be delivered to their victors in an hour of drunken revelry and intoxication, surrendering them to an easy capture ; when it gathers into the exigency of its predictions these, and other circumstances, dependent on causes so arbitrary and uncertain as the accidents of nature, or the devices and actions of men; how shall we resist the inference that, in all this, so accurately fore- told, so punctually fulfilled, it spoke under some super- natural direction? The date of these prophecies, however, is one ingredient in their evidence. If they were delivered at all before the completion of the events foretold, they were inspired ; d Isaiah xliv. 27. e herein. 1. 38. f Nahum ii. 6, and i. 8 ; where the actual inundation of the river, and the figurative inundation of the invading army, are united in one image. Predictions concerning Pagan Kingdoms . 339 because those events are so circumstantiated, that they could no more have been humanly foreseen one year, than an hundred years, before they took place. How then stands the proof as to their date ? If we admit the only positive testimony to be had in this point, that testimony the public judgment and decision of the Jewish Church and People, it will be abundantly decisive as to the age of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the date of their prophecies. And indeed these two great prophets were too much connected with the civil history of their country, and their writings were too important in the Jewish Canon, to leave any the most captious doubt, whether their age is properly assigned to them, or the true date to their predictions g . The one will therefore come at a distance of not less than fifty years, and the other of two hundred, from the capture of Babylon, which, with such circumstances as have been mentioned, they foretell. But as to the age of the prophet Nahum , it must be confessed that we do not possess equal data of information. His is the main prophecy which we have concerning the capture and destruction of Nineveh. The admission of his book into the prophetic Canon proves so much as this, that the Jewish Church esteemed it a real prophecy, that is, a document delivered before the event which it describes. But there are not the auxiliary notices of his personal his- tory, or of a chronological date prefixed to his book, to satisfy us in the strict demands o.f our inquiry. The testi- mony of the Jewish Church, seconded as it is by Josephus h , (who places the prophecy of Nahum 115 years prior to the capture of Nineveh,) must be allowed indeed to be a fair and reasonable warrant to the antiquity of Nahum's pre- dictions ; but yet the proof here is not so high and im . perative as it might be ; and as it actually is with regard to Isaiah and Jeremiah. If, therefore, we measure the & For instance, Isaiah was publicly consulted by Hezekiah. Jeremiah pub- licly questioned for some of his prophecies. h 'ZvvefSr) tt avra ra 7 rpQciprjix^ya nep\ N ivtvrjs juera errj euarby ica'i tc^T€- Kcu'Sf/ca. Antiq. Jud. ix. 11. z 2 3 10 Inspiration of Prophecy . prophetic evidence, in the instance of Nahum, and as it relates to the capture of Nineveh , by the standard pro- posed, we must grant that it answers to that standard only with some qualification. The plenary evidence w r ould be addressed to those who originally received the prophecy ; who would know sufficiently well whether, when they received it, the great city in question had met its fate. — I reckon it no concession made to the detriment of Prophecy, to follow the true state of its genuine evidence. But the inspiration of the prophecies concerning these great cities may be proved, or confirmed, by a second me- dium, in another point of their predictions. Zephaniah, as to Nineveh; Isaiah and Jeremiah, as to Babylon, fore- tell, not only the capture of the cities, and the overthrow of their grandeur and empire; but they pursue the sub- ject with this addition, a memorable one, that the cities themselves should pass under an exterminating desolation, and be converted into a waste, a wilderness without in- habitants, a seat of perfect solitude. Zephaniah : “ Pie will stretch out His hand against the North, and destroy Assyria; and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness. And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her; all the beasts of the nations : both the pelican and the bittern shall lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in its windows ; desolation shall be in its thresholds: — This is the rejoicing city that dwelt care- lessly, that said in her heart, I, and none besides me : how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in 1 ! ” Nahum speaks the same doom more concisely : “ She is empty, and void, and waste k .” What the two other prophets have said of Babylon's desolation is equally full and expressive. Zephaniah is stated to have prophesied in the days of Josiah, king of Judah 1 , the last year of whose reign falls 4 Chap. ii. 13—15. k Chap. ii. 10. 4 Chap. i. 1. “The word of the Lord which came unto Zephaniah, the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hizkiah, in Predictions concerning Pagan Kingdoms. 841 B. C. 608. But when was Nineveh taken? This is one of the unsettled points of ancient Chronology, and it will re- main so; for the time is long past, when it might have been cleared and reduced to certainty. In the diversity of the accounts extant, we must approximate the truth, by taking what is most credible, and that is the relation of Herodotus m , the author the nearest in age, and the best informed in the affairs of the East. He assigns the cap- ture of Nineveh to Cyaxares, and he places it after the expulsion of the Scythians from Asia n , which will be some years below the latest period of Zephaniah’s prophesying. So far then as we can go, on probable grounds, the argu- ment will be made good, that the desolation of Nineveh was predicted before its capture. — The case of Babylon is perfectly clear; its capture was long subsequent to the prophecy of its desolation . The desolation foretold has ensued. Those two great flourishing cities, the ancient glory of the East, the abodes of empire and overflowing population, have vanished. It has become an object of research to the inquisitive traveller to ascertain the spot on which they stood. With some difficulty and suspense, he explores in heaps of otherwise unappropriated ruins the vestiges of their local memory. For what are they now ? What have they long been? The haunts of beasts. Man has disappeared. “The pelican and the bittern lodge in the lintel” of their forsaken houses. Those creatures possess the waste, the character- istic inhabitants of an assured and unmolested solitude. Once more; make the most large, and indeed unwar- rantable, suppositions, as to the time of publication to be ascribed to the prophecies which speak of this final destiny of Babylon . Suppose them to have been published, and first known, after the taking of Babylon by Cyrus : that they were published after the catastrophe of this extreme the days of Josiah, the son of Amon, king of Judah.” A chronological notice, which has its force from the testimony of the Jewish Church . m Lib. i. 106. n B. C. 596. 342 Inspiration of Prophecy. devastation which they announce, is wholly impossible to be maintained, or believed, even on the most sceptical principles. Because the collection and promulgation of the Jewish Canon of Scripture, made in the age after the Return of the Jews from Babylon, was prior to the time when we know Babylon not to have been so desolated. In fact, it was the work of some centuries to break down this gigantic city into a heap of ruins. It follows, that the truth of the predictions of Isaiah and Jeremiah, in this point, is established, even upon the most extreme hypo- thesis. There is no date which can be assigned to them, ever so licentiously, which will not leave them in posses- sion of a clear prophetic character in this one branch of their subject. The proof is absolute, and beyond the reach of objection. And this I may remark, that as the sera of the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus, is the basis of Pagan Chronology 0 , the point from which it begins to be clear and consistent; so the extraneous proof of the truth and prescience of prophecy takes its proportionate force and clearness from the same sera. The greater regularity and completeness of the Pagan narrative supplies a fuller comment upon the scheme of things delineated in the Scripture oracles. With regard to Nineveh, it is granted that we cannot constitute so exact and decisive a confirmation of these oracles, out of the imperfect and ill-adjusted remains of Oriental history. And in this instance the sacred history itself, and the formal chronology of the prophecies, as to the time of their promulgation, are not so explicit as to answer every question which might be raised respecting them. But in this unequal measure of evidence, it is only a bold ignorance, or a very unthinking piety, that can presume any sort of objection. For brevity’s sake, I shall pass over any discussion of ° Primus liic Cyri annus non solum solutse Captivitatis, sed etiam totius vetustioris Chronologies basis est; et res Ebraicas cum extraneis connectit. Marsham. Canon. Chron. Sa?c. xviii. p. 630. ed. Franeq. Predictions concerning Pagan Kingdoms . 343 the discriminating particulars which may be traced in the prophecy concerning Tyre. Those particulars include the subjugation of that city; her restoration to power after a servitude of seventy years; her later calamities of cap- ture, burning, and demolition; her religious conversion; her last desolated state, like that of Nineveh and Babylon. For so it is foretold : “ I will scrape the dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock; it shall be a place for the spreading of nets; thou shalt be built no more; though thou be sought for, thou shalt never be found again p .” Time has wrought the perfect completion of this extremity of ruin : as the earlier and intermediate things foretold had their due fulfilment. In this instance, however, the anterior publication of the prophecy, as to a chief part of it, is indisputable. For even the age of Ezra, and the collection of the Sacred Canon, precede by a century the destruction of Tyre, made by Alexander; still more do they precede the subsequent conversion to Christianity, and the last stage of the ruin and solitude, foretold. Will it be alleged, to invalidate the force of all these prophecies combined, that this catastrophe of three of the greatest and most flourishing capital cities of the ancient world, is possible to have been within the range of man’s foresight, or was nothing more than what is conformable to experience? History refutes the allegation. It is not the common issue of things that great and flourishing capitals of empire are so swept away and obliterated. The merciless ravages of war and the progressive decays of time have rarely accomplished such absolute extermina- tion. Certainly when the prophecies were uttered, such things had not been seen. It would be in vain to adduce, as a similar event, the fate of Troy, or other ill-established cities of an earlier foundation, in times when the habits of migration and settlement were yet at war with each other. For as to Troy, whatever that city might have p Ezek. xxvi. 14. 21, &c. 344 Inspiration of Prophecy . been, it was as much like to Babylon, as a pile of sand to a rock. The ruin of Carthage is, perhaps, one of the best parallels that can be mentioned. But this case not only came later than the prophecies, and therefore could not have directed them ; but it may reasonably be taken as included in the Scripture prediction of the doom of Tyre; for it is a part of that prediction that the people of Tyre “ shall disperse themselves over the isles,” the Mediterranean coasts, which they did ; and “ there also they should find no rest 3;” which very sentence robbed them of the hope of any secure asylum, or resting-place, to their fortunes, in their colony of Carthage. To complete our view of the signs of inspiration con- tained in this aggregate of prophecy, it will be necessary to advert to what is foretold of Egypt, the oldest seat of policy, arts, and civil grandeur. Here again, however, I shall omit several discriminating circumstances which per- vade the substance of the prophecy, and pass on to the issue of the whole. When Ezekiel had first foretold, as a thing imminent, that Egypt should be conquered and wasted, and visited with a captivity of her inhabitants, but had fixed this first stage of humiliation to a period of forty years; he subjoins this second prediction: “Yet thus saith the Lord God; At the end of forty years, I will bring again the captivity of Egypt; and will cause them to return into the land of Pathros, into the land of their habitation; and they shall be a base kingdom . It shall be the basest of kingdoms ; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations ; for I will diminish them that they shall no more rule over the nations ; and there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt r .” Here is a significant and appropriate language, descriptive of a con- dition distinguished from that which is denounced upon Nineveh and Babylon: the kingdom, the body of the nation is to remain, but in baseness , in degradation, with- out sway, as before, among the nations; without a sove- r Ezek. xxix. 13, 14, 15. q Isaiah xxiii. 6. 12. Predictions concerning Pagan Kingdoms . 345 reign prince of its own; without dignity at home or abroad. What is here foretold, Egypt has suffered. The pro- phecy has been fulfilled, whether we take it in a con- tracted, or a more enlarged view : whether we embrace, in that view, the period of two hundred years from the date of its prediction, or the period of two thousand. The conquest of Egypt by the Babylonians, was followed by the Persian; from that time Egypt was reduced, from the height of its power and greatness, to a debilitated condi- tion, from which it has never subsequently emerged. In regard to this prophecy, the former state of Egypt should be well considered. Originally it was the most prosperous, opulent, and powerful of kingdoms; till the growth of the Assyrian power divided with it its glory, and then together they were the two foremost nations of the ancient world. There is the accuracy of historical truth, as well as the beauty of a poetic, and the force of a moral representation, in the picture which Ezekiel has given of the Assyrian and the Egyptian grandeur, as of the fairest and “ loftiest cedars in the garden of God s .” Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest made the first change upon Egypt, and with that change foretold the prophecy begins. Now it is the difference which is foreshewn in the respec- tive fortunes of these two ruling kingdoms, that marks the definite prescience. A debased and a diminished state is foretold to Egypt ; a total destruction had been foretold to the other. Correspondent with that distinction has been the event. Egypt survived with the form of a king- dom, but subjected, and sunk in its power. The Persian conquest reduced it again, to a lower humiliation, and to such a state as answered to, and sufficiently completed, the prediction. But the completion has been more ample : century after century has verified to the letter this pecu- liar prophecy upon Egypt. The doom of that kingdom has been baseness and degradation , not destruction . . The 8 Ezek. xxxi. — This admirable chapter is, in effect, one of the truest and noblest monuments of Oriental history. 346 Inspiration of Prophecy . body of it has lasted, diminished, but not annihilated; many of its great cities have been dilapidated; still the carcass of its ancient being remains, like one of those ob- jects of its own native art, a withered figure, a mummy, preserved in decay. In succession it has served every conqueror; and it has besides been subjected to an ano- malous bondage, almost peculiar to itself, in being ruled by a dynasty of slaves ; that the prophecy which con- demned it to be the basest of kingdoms might not want this signal attestation. Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Homans, Saracens, Mamluks, Turks, are enumerated, as having been its masters in turn. When once it had a partial revival of its lustre, under the Ptolemies, they were a foreign race; according to the prediction, v\d£a(ri, Kau cl Se'ot 6vi )(T kclv vrrep avrcvv rrpoOv/JLWs cnroOavovoriv, c8o3kcv a 0eb s y cv ccr 6 a i re rcaXiv, Kal fSiov a/xcivoo \a/3c?v ck 7r c ptr porrrj s. c Ot 2a85ov/ca?oi fxcvroi A cyovrcs /it) clvai avdaraariv .... rravrcXcos avrfpovv nr^jv rrjs xpvxrjs ov fxovov aPavafflav, aAAa Kal cTriSiafiov^v, olo/acvoi fir)8afiov tv t oTs Ma xre'cos ypapcpLaai arj/aaivcaQai r r)V rrjs ipvxfjs jucra ravra far) v. Tb Se avrb ro7s ’SatitiovKaiois 86yp.a rrcpl rrjs roov avdptib rrcav xj/vxys (ppo- vovcri p-^xpi t ov Scvpo 2a/uape?s, /cal olKobofxovvrcs e| avruv civai vop.o- uaOcis, Kal coos Oavarov ayoovifapLcvoi rrcpl rod Mcwae'a/s vtfxov Kal rrjs rrcpi- rofxrjs . — Comment, in Matth. p. 486. NOTES. 371 of that other Scripture. And thus their Schism had its fruit in the depravation of their faith into that debased doctrine, which is commonly known as the Sadducsean Heresy. But this Heresy of the Sadducee is said to have taken its rise, or its avowed and public prevalence, from Samaria ; and from this very principle of rejecting the Authority of the Prophets d . In this shape of the Samaritan Heresy, one may remark a resemblance to the practice of some recent Sects, who insist upon the Gospels , to the exclusion, or the disparagement, of the Apostolic Epistles ; and would limit their faith by other measures than the whole Canon of Inspiration. Meanwhile enough is found in the Pentateuch, and in the Gospels, respec- tively, to refute the partial creed both of the Ancient and the Modern Depravers of Eevealed Truth. This subject of the Samaritan Schism has also a connexion, which I shall here advert to, with the question concerning the age of the Book of Job. It does not appear, so far as I know, that the Samaritan Canon embraced that Book : and this absence of it from their Canon forms perhaps the only direct presump- tion, that occurs, against its high Antiquity ; or its credit, as the work of Moses. 4. The obscurity, of a partial information, and an indefinite promise, under which I have represented the doctrine of a fu- ture life to be left in the Pentateuch, was a state of things which gave rise to the exercise of the desires and patient hope of piety, in the Individual ; and the greater piety, we may justly think, grew into the greater strength of belief. Instead of disputing against this apparent state of the case, I see many reasons for acquiescing in such an order of Divine Revelation, and recognise in it one of the many proofs that the Gospel is, what it professes to be, the perfect oracle of Divine Truth, and the Saviour Himself, and none before Him, the light of the world. “ Christo enim servabatur, omnia retro occulta nudare, dubitata dirigere , prselibata suppler e, prsedicata reprcesentare* .” d “ Taceo Judaismi hsereticos. Dositheum inquam Samaritanum , qui pri- mus ausus est- Prophet as, quasi non in Spiritu Sancto locutos, repudiare . Taceo Sadducceos, qui ex hujus err oris radice swrgentes, ausi sunt ad hanc hseresim etiam resurrectionem carnis negare ” Tertullian . de Prescript. Heretic. p. 249. Conf. Pearson. Vindic. Ignat, p. 304. apud Patr. Apostol. Cotelerii. e Tertullian. de Resurrect. Carnis. Sub init. p. 379. ed. Lutet. B b 2 372 NOTES. Page 115. It appears that Dardanus, a contemporary of Jerom, had the same idea which Michaelis has here adopted, that the land of Canaan was a possession restored, not a free gift bestowed. See Jerom’s Epistle to him, p. 606. tom. iii. Page 154. There is a second opinion, which I have to suggest, as to the interpretation of that part of Jeremiah’s Prophecy, which is thought to relate to Coniah’s offspring. I believe that the original word (n^y), which, in our Eng- lish version, is rendered, childless , will admit of the more ge- neral sense of destitute , or deprived: and in this text may be understood to express simply Coniah’s failure of lcingly succes- sion. It is true that the term in the other texts, wherein it occurs, (which are only three, and those in the Pentateuch,) appears to describe a privation of posterity , either in the want of children, or by their death and excision. See Genesis xv. 2 ; Levit. xx. 20, 21. But the etymology of the word favours the larger sense of privation , or destitution , of any kind : and it is possible that even in those other texts in the Pentateuch, the precise notion of orphanhood of children may be derived partly from the context, giving a modification of the use of the word. The radical notion of the word is that of nudus. It is possible, therefore, that it might bear a double sense, as orhus does ; which is sometimes bereaved of children; sometimes simply destitute. The Hellenistic versions give some sanction to this opinion. Symmaclius here renders the word k£vov ; although in Levit . xx. 20, 21, he had rendered it arenvos. The Septuagint and Theodotion render it ckktjpvktov, ( proclaimed as dethroned ',) and yet they too employed the more definite term aracvos in Le- viticus. Had the Greek translators resorted to these versions, Kevov and eKKrjpvKTov , without any apparent reason for them in the original word, such as we ourselves could perceive, I should say that they did so, in order to adapt their translation to the genealogy of Coniah’s family, which mentions his descendants. But the word itself seems to justify a more enlarged and indefi- nite signification than that of childless. The sense then would be, “ Write this man deprived , or deso- late , (an heirless king ,) despoiled in his throne ; a man that shall NOTES. 873 not prosper in his days ; for no man of his seed shall prosper , sitting upon the throne of David and ruling any more in Israel This view of the passage, as derived from its phrase, is that which I now adopt. Yet I propose it with some diffidence, in- asmuch as I do not see it formally offered by other interpreters ; although several of them have put the question “ how could Coniah be orhatus liberisf when we read the continuation of his genealogy distinctly recorded ( Matth . i.). A further reason which qualifies my reliance upon the opinion which I have sug- gested, is, that it includes a change of our Authorized Version. That Version, for its great fidelity and skill, ranks in the first place of authority in all disputable points. Grotius, who was convinced that the word signifies precisely decessurum nullojilio relicto , was led, by a just consequence, to think that the genealogy embraced the adopted heirs of Coniah’ s family, not his natural offspring ; those adopted heirs being still of the family of David. He shewed a righr sense, in maintain- ing the perfect and literal completion of Jeremiah’s prophecy; and under the same conviction, in my own mind, that the pro- phecy is one which was absolute and peremptory, as to the event which it declared, I was inclined at first to follow the opinion of Grotius respecting the genealogy. My more mature thoughts, however, are in favour of the second interpretation which I have now stated. That interpretation preserves the sense of the Prophecy in its fullest terms, and requires no con- jectural suppositions to be made in the order of the genealogy. It exhibits the whole prediction as bearing upon that event which is its proper object ; the deposal of Coniah and his line, and the abrogation of the Temporal Kingdom in the house of David. And as the Promises granted to David had been, not simply that he should never want a son, but that “ he should never want a son to sit on his throne,” so the Eepeal of those promises is made more conformable to the first scope of them, if it pronounce the excision of kingly heirs , rather than of offspring. And in harmony with this view, the observant reader will perceive, that the Evangelical prophecies of Jeremiah, opposed to these which are Temporal ones, introduce specifically a “ fu- ture king upon the throne of David,” as the contemporary sup- plement to this Deposal of Coniah and his line. — See especially Jerem. xxxiii. 21. 374 NOTES. Bathe , in his Version, has rendered the clause in question thus : “ Literis hoc mandate, Virum istum infelicissimum futu- rum esse a translation which is intended, I presume, to hinder the collision of the prophetic text with the genealogy. Buddeus (Hist. Vet. Test. tom. ii. p. 461.) in like manner, de - structum , infelicem, et miserum. I am not aware how these vague translations can be justified. Michaelis f , after some doubt and hesitation, settles upon the notion of exul, or extorris ex patria, as the most probable sense of the original noun, in all the Four passages in which it oc- curs ; and expresses a wish that he had so translated it in his German Version. But this sense is introduced without any leading authority, either in the Etymology, or the Ancient Ver- sions, to sanction it ; on which account it is unsatisfactory. Thus far I had made up my opinion respecting the sense of this prophecy, and stated it, in a preceding edition. Subse- quently I have observed that the very same view and interpre- tation are proposed by Bishop Kidder, in his Demonstration of the Messias, part ii. p. 121. It is highly satisfactory to me to have the countenance of so able and judicious a writer in the interpretation which I would assign to this important text of prophecy ; and I feel less scruple, therefore, in relying upon the version of it here advanced, which I was not aware had so considerable a name to support it. It should be noticed also, that the word in question is found in Irenaeus, (Advers. Hseres. 3. 30. as cited by Bp. Kidder,) rendered by abdicatum hominem : whilst abdicatus is the Latin word used by Jerom (in loc.) to express eKKrjpvKros of the Sep- tuagint and Theodotion, and plainly denotes regal deprivation . Jerom includes in his commentary (in loc.) a plain reference to this sense of the prophecy. “ Sed fuit in captivitate et Sala- thiel et Zorobabel, et usque ad Christum nullus regiam obtinuit potestatem ; — nullus deinceps de stirpe David in terra J udoea tenuit principatum.” He also gives the history of the Hellenistic versions more completely, thus : “ Aquilae prima editio, sterilem ; secunda,