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DISCOURSES
ON
PRO PH E C Y,
IN WHICH ARE CONSIDERED
ITS STRUCTURE, USE, AND INSPIRATION:
BBINO
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.
OjJ yag iiTt efAov fft/vsffxgi/aff/xe'voj elfflv ol X6yoi, owJe riy^jm av- &gwjn'vip x6)taXXw^j(T/M,evo»* aXXa rovrovs Aa^iJ yJiv s\|/aXX6v,
75a\]/£v. Justin Martyr p. 194.
LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBERMARLE-STREET.
MDCCCXXIV.
\^'
LONDON : PRINTED BY WILMAM CLOWES,
NoOhumherland-court.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
WILLIAM, EARL OF MANSFIELD,
AND THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
RICHARD RYDER, M.P.
(ONE OP HIS MAJESTY'S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL).
TRUSTEES OF THE LECTURE FOUNDED BY BISHOP WARBURTON,
THESE DISCOURSES
ARE RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED BV THEIR OBEDIENT HUMBLE SERVANT,
THE AUTHOR.
COINJTENTS
INTRODUCTION.
1. Of the previous Probability of a Divine Revelation.
2. Of the Plan and Course of Inquiry pursued in the fol-
lowing Discourses, p. 1 — 16.
DISCOURSE I.
On the Connexion of Prophecy with the other Evidences of Revealed Religion, p. 17 — 44.
II Peter I. 21. For Prophecy came not in old time by the will of Man ; but holy Men ofGodspaUe as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
DISCOURSE II.
On the contents of the Prophetic Volume as distin- guished from its Predictions, p. 45 — 72.
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 to hear.
11 CONSENTS.
Essential principles of Religion and Morals enforced by the Pro- phets.— ^Intermediate character of the prophetic Revelation between that of the Law, and the Gospel. — Personal office o* the Prophets.
PART II.
Same Subject eontinued, p. 73 — 92. The doctrines of Providence and Repentance fully stated in the Prophetic Volume. — Importance of those Doctrines. — General 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 op Prophecy— in its earliest age— from tha Fall to the Patriarchal Times, p. 93—129.
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 j in the Patriarchal Age.
PART II.
State of Prophecy in the Patriiirclial Age luorc diblinctly considered.
CONTENTS. Ill
— T\ro-fold promise to Abraham. — Partition of the subjects of Prophecy connectedntherewith. — Prophecy of Jacob. — Measure of illumination afforded to the Patriarchal Age. — Analogy in the use of Patriarchal, and later Prophecy. — Difference be^ tvreen them. — Integrity of the Mosaic Records, p. 129 — 154.
DISCOURSE IV.
State op 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 shttU 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, and whether understood in their mystical sense, when they were first ap- pointed.— 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 pe- riod.—The judgment of Michaelis concerning the principle of the Mosaic Law inadmissible, p. 155 — 216.
PART II.
Prophecy on the temporal subject concurrent with the promulgation
b2
iV CONTENTS.
of the Law.— True relation between the entire state of Pro- phecy and the Law, dedticed.— Remarks upon that relation, p. 217—230.
DISCOURSE V.
State of Prophecy from Samuel to Malachi.
Acts III. 24. Yea, and all the Frophets 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 it« One Principal Age : various subjects of it.— Particular mission of Samuel.— His regulation of the conunonwealth of Israel. — Prediction concerning David, p. 231— 251.
PART II.
State of Prophecy in the Reigns op David and Solomon. Enlarged revelation of it. — The Temporal and the Evangelical Pro- phecy united. — Double sense vindicated. — David the promulger of the chief Prophecies concerning Christ and the Gospel, in this age.— Prophetic Psalms. — ^Integrity of Prophecy. — Dura- tion of the temporal kingdom in the family of David.— Insta- bility of the reigning families in Samaria. — Termination of the temporal kingdom in the reign of Coniah. — Conspicuous Pro- phecy announcing it. — That kingdom never restored. — Consi- derations on the history of the Maccabees. — Temple of Solomon. State of Prophecy respecting it. — One definite use of Prophecy to foreshew the suspension, or abolition, of the particular ordi-
CONTENTS. V
nances of the first Covenant. — Accomplishment of Jacob's pro- phecy concerning the, pre-eminence of the tribe of Judah, p. 252—306.
DISCOURSE VI.
State of Prophecy from the Reign op Solomon to its final Cessation, p. 307 — 459.
Amos III. 7.
Surely, the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his 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 idolatry. — 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 prophecies on the temporal subject, p. 307 — 353.
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
Vi CONTENTS.
Canon.— Whether any of the prophetic books are entirely de- void of Christian prediction? Greatest increase of the pro- phetic information concerning the Gospel, when granted?— Adaptation of it, p. 354 — 381.
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 fureshewing the sera of Chris- tianity, p. 382—401.
PART IV.
Last age of ancient Prophecy, from the Captivity to its final Cessa- tion. — Completion of former prophecy. — Second Temple. — Concluding communications of the prophetic oracles. — Their Christian import vindicated and explained. — Recapitulation, p. 402—459.
DISCOURSE VII.
Op the Divine Forbknowlege, and its Union with the Li- berty OP Human Action, p. 463-^492.
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.
CONTENTS. Vll
DISCOURSES VIII. IX. X. XI. XII.
On the Inspiration of Prophecy.
DISCOURSE VIII.
Criterion op Prophetic Inspiration. — Proof of it in the Predictions concbrning Christianitt, p. 495 — 532.
Isaiah LX. 3.
And the Gentiles shall come to thy Light, and Kings to the b rightness of thy Rising.
DISCOURSE IX. Predictions concerning the Jewish People, p. 534 — 564.
Deuteronomy XXVIII. 59. Then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance.
DISCOURSE X«
Predictions concerning the Grbat Apostacy, p. 537 — 599.
Revelations XIX. 10.
For the testimony of Jesus is the sjnrit of Prophecy.
Vlil CONTENXS.
DISCOURSE XI.
Predictions on the Subject of Pagan Kingdoms ; Nineveh Babylon, Tyre, and Egypt, p. 691 — 629.
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 gene- ration to generation ; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there ; neifher shall the shepherds make their fold there.
DISCOURSE XII.
Predictions concerning the Descendants of Ishmael — AND the Succession of the Four Ancient Empires, p. 633—660.
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 know- ledge to them that know understanding.
He revealcth the deep and secret things : he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him.
tagc Hi, line 1-2, far " Haggiah" read " Aaggia." 03, line (',.^i'r "on whose," icaj " in whose.
INTRODUCTION.
I. Of the previous Probahiliti/ of a Divine Revelation.
II. Of the Plan and Contents of the folloiving Discourses.
Antecedently to a consideration of the proper Evidences of Revealed Religion, it cannot be said with any shew 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 Government ; 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
B
2 INTRODUCTION,
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. Sup- posed Revelations, or Traditions of them, there always have been ; and often they have been such, as, having nothing of merit or excel- lence in their matter, nor any considerable inducement of evidence to recommend them, have yet obtained credit, and been received, solely, 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 con- formable 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,
INTRODUCTION. 3
which in many cases have had in them every- thing to create a poieitive disbelief, excepting the one presumption, 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 Revela- tion, or the traditionary impressions of One actually given ; a propensity, therefore, which attests either the Probability, or the Fact.
It is true, a different view of the matter has been attempted to be given. It has been contended, that a Revelation is impro- bable, because unnecessary ; and unneces- sary, 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 ad- verted to ; and cannot be reconciled with the History of the World, which has ex- hibited the hopes and principles of Natural Religion, in its best day, labouring and crying
B 2
4 INTRODUCTION.
aloud for aid to their support; is, further, alleged ineffectually to the question. For were it ever so true, that man could dis- pense with a revelation, as not strictly neces- sary 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 supposing that God should improve, by confirming, or extend- ing in any degree, the discoveries which man may be able to make of the Nature and the Will of God, and of his 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 com- munication 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, be progressive : neither of them very hard or revolting sup- positions. 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 attainments and his ca- pacities, that he may come to a more enlarged knowledge both of God and himself than he
INTRODUCTION. 5
can npw attain to ; and come to this by an act of the divine fav,pur, making the adequate change in his condition ; there is the Kke 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 interposition 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 Revela- tion being unreasonable or unlikely. It fol- lows that its positive Evidences will have their force entire : whatever that force may be, it is not diminished or encountered 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
6 INTRODUCTION.
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 evi- dence, a more commanding proof, might be necessary to satisfy both those requisitions, than 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 fa- vour— a presumption arising from the rea- sonableness 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 cannot be otherwise ; for it is in the nature of things that pre- sumptions founded on a general view of what is likely to take place shall be indifferent to, and e(jually serve, the true, and the pretended, instance of the event. But here comes in the use of the proper evidence, to ascertain di- rectly the origin of the professed revelation.
INTRODUCTION. 7
and discriminate, by decisive signatures, the True from the False. And I think it may be concluded from the whole tenour of the attes- tation which God has given to that which we believe to be His revealed Truth, that the in- tention of the evidence vv^ith 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 mis- take and confusion of its character, under the claims and pretences which lie in the way from the spurious religions set up in the world.
With respect to the sufliciency of Natural Religion, as the topic is urged by those who would discredit the expediency or the neces- sity of Revealed, we must take into the account that it is a paradox of modern in- vention, 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 Na- tural Religion have come to be so far under- stood and admitted as they are, may fairly be taken for one of the effects of the Gospel Re- velation ; a proof of its actual influence, on
8 INTRODUCTION.
Opinions at least, instead of any disproof of its necessity, or use. It were easy to establish this point, to the fullest conviction, by a com- parison 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 sup- plied. 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 sulHcient for the illumination of the World.
INTRODUCTION. 9 '
At the same time it ought to be under- stood, that when we venture to judge before- hand, by views of our own, concerning the probable conduct of the Deity in any in- stance, 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 determina- tions of our judgment, will here equally become the believer and the unbeliever. 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 ob- vious appearances of Man's condition, and the acknowledged ideas we hold of the Provi- dence 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, the untenable assumption. And herein is contained the view which I have wished to secure to the
10 INTRODUCTION.
first consideration of Revealed Religion, viz., that its Evidences offer themselves to us un- encumbered by any prejudice or suspicion attaching to the bare idea of such a gift from God. If they are valid and legitimate Evidences, Evidences such as will bear the test in their proper character, they are adduced in an unexceptionable 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, a more cool dis- passionate 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 in them of the state of this argument, which forms what may be considered the more complex subject of the Evidences of Religion, bclonfTin.cc at once to the Jcvvish and the
INTRODUCTION. 11
Christian Revelations ; more than any other part of the proof, penetrating both; and open- ing a wide field of discussion in various direc- tions.
Accordingly it has drawn to itself more of speculation and learned research than the other topics which enter into the same com- prehensive subject ; not merely as to the interpretation of particular texts or portions of Prophecy ; 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 al- ways agreed well together; and some few of them, with too forward a zeal, have put in the sickle before the grain was ripe, and so far, by their unskilful husbandry, have discredited the harvest. But the result upon the whole has been, that their learned and successful labours have gathered in the stores, and made the interpretation and the real evidence of Prophecy, in most of its
J 2 INTRODUCTION.
material subjects, sufficiently accessible to those who are intent on such information ; 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 vs^hat it is, as derived from its own records, and submitted to be examined. 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 First object has led me to trace the history of prophecy, as it hes at large in the Scrip- ture 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, unex- ceptionable form, what kind of Predictions will answer to the character of divinely in- spired Prophecies, and consequently will pos-
INTRODUCTION. 13
sess a decisive and independent evidence of their Inspiration; thence to suggest some means of judging of the argumentative evi- dence of different parts of Prophecy ; and to vindicate its perfect authority by examples of its predictions canvassed and examined : the demonstration of its Prescience being the true and appropriate Test of its divine origin.
But besides its Prescience, there are other notices and characters of the Uke origin, dis- persed throughout its records, and these not the less satisfactory in being less formal and prominent. Some of these internal no- tices I have , endeavoured to illustrate and improve ; and the inquirer, who will be at the pains of making the study for himself,, with any degree of patient and connected attention, 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 ge- neral, and the Connexion of Prophecy with the rest.
The Second, in considering the Contents of
14 NTRODUCTION.
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 done when I come to that part of my inquiry, that, in the Four Discourses al- lotted to the Structure of Prophecy, the subject is treated on the assumption of the general authority of the Prophetic Revela- tion being granted. For the question there to be discussed is this : Supposing Prophecy to have been given, what was its use and intent ? what the measure and kind of illumi- nation which it afforded? The question is one for believers, wishing to see into the order and tenour of that Revelation of the truth of which they are already satisfied. And what is Prophecy, 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 prophetic volume, I have adduced by
INTRODUCTION. 15
the way some proofs to enforce its authority and inspiration, when in the survey of its structure, materials for that kind of argu- ment occurred. The assumption which I have mentioned of course is rehnquished, 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 no- tice of the congruity and adaptation of Pro- phecy in its parts, either in relation to each other, or to the seasons of its progressive development. 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 ex- position 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 wis- dom, as to exercise, and commend itself to, our highest reason ? But nothing which in
16 INTRODUCTION.
the last result wears the appearance of intri- cate 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.
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 exigencies 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 ex- tension 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 deli- vered. One important division of the in- quiry is still wholly wanting ; that is, a View of the Prophecies of the New Testament. My appointed Course of Lectures was com- pleted before I could embrace this branch of my subject, and the defect remains unre- deemed in the present publication.
DISCOURSE I.
On the Connexion of Prophecy with the other EVIDENCES OF Revealed Religion.
i)
DISCOURSE I.
ON THE CONNEXION OF PROPHECY WITH THE OTHER EVIDENCES OP REVEALED RELIGION.
11. Peter 1,21.
For Prophecy came not in old time hy the Will of Man ; but Holy Men of God spake as they w^ere moved by the Holy Ghost.
THE Christian Religion appeals to Pro- phecy as one of its evidences. If we would do justice to the appeal, we must examine the volume of Prophecy in this light, to ascer- tain how far it does, in fact, establish or con- firm the truth and divine origin of the Religion which professes to ground itself upon it.
But Prophecy is pledged to attest the Jewish, 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
€ 2
20 Prophecy an Evidence common to
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 esta- blishes 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 subjects and immediate uses, to the support of the elder Religion ; yet the apparent economy of God, embrac- ing the two dispensations, will constrain us to extend the truth and authority of the orie to the defence of the other, the connexion of their evidence being a consequence of 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 inspired and authentic character, to uphold, and recommend to our assent and reasonable acceptance, that which is offered to us as the last and best of God's dispensations, the Re- ligion of Christ.
To this end, in evidence of the tmth and divine origin of the two Revelations, but in particular of the Christian, which is our
the Jewish and Christian Revelations^ 21
present concern in the world, and which, if true, demands something more than an inert behef, I wish to direct the substance of my inquiry in the following discourses, in which I shall endeavour to open and enforce some of the illustrations and proofs of the inspired authority of Scripture Pro- phecy.
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 Pro- phecy. Secondly, Of its Use and Design in reference to the several 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 com- bine 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
22 " Prophecy an Evidence common to
be brought ; and there the proof, if it hold good, is simple and direct. But yet, upon the use of so much reflexion as so great a question requires, and to persons who will take the pains of putting together the notices which there are of a singular wisdom per- vading the volume of Prophecy, that wisdom seen, as well in its matter, as in its adap- tation to the supposed course of the di- vine Economy, there is a satisfaction to be had of no small value ; a satisfaction which 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 contribute 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 esta- bhshed, the Inspiration of Prophecy, or in the words of scripture, that " Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man ; but Holy
the Jewish and Christian Revelations. 23
men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." — -The line of investigation thus described, it remains for me to pur- sue it.
But I must bei permitted to clear my way for that purpose by some preliminary obser- vations on one material point, the general state of the Christian Evidences. For Pro- phecy 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 observations I shall devote the remainder of my present discourse.
It is possible that in treating of this, and perhaps some other parts of my subject, I shall pass into details of argument 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 pro- gress in their religion beyond the scope of such considerations. To men already satis- fied of the truth and the importance of the
24 On the Connexion of Prophecy with 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 of an inquiry which they have had happily an- swered in the effect of a well persuaded rea- son 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 w^hat we are asking them to believe. But I know not how I could acquit myself to the duty of this Lec- ture, or to the intentions of the distinguished Founder of it, if I declined any kind of dis- cussion likely to enforce a more correct esti* mate of the real extent of the whole evi- dences of our Religion, or of that one of them w^hich 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 exa- mined, there is a certain body of evidence,
other Evidences of the Christian Religion. 25
which taken together constitutes the proper and adequate answ^ 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 con- stituent parts of this body of evidence, they include, among other topics, the follow- ing most commonly insisted on ; the Miracles of our Saviour and his Apostles ; the series of Prophecy ; the extraordinary perfection and sanctity of His Moral Doctrine ; His own Character, as expressed in His Life upon earth ; the rapid and triumphant Propa- gation of His Religion under the special cir- cumstances of that event ; the singular adap- tatipn 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 harmonizing proof. How- ever 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 has pleased the Almighty to ascertain His last revelation
26 On the Connexion of Prophecy with the
to us. And as each of these arguments, sup- posing the matter of them to be truly al- leged, 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 ac- complishment of its predictions, attests the authentic inspiration by which it was given. Miracles, public unequivocal miracles exhi- bited, bring home to the very senses of men the intervention of a divine power; com- petently witnessed and recorded, they trans- mit the conviction from age to age. Unex- ampled and perfect moral purity of doctrine seems to be, in fact, what it pretends to be, an emanation from the source of all Rec- titude and Holiness. The life and character
other Evidences of the Christian Religion. 27
of the Founder of Christianity have no pro- totype 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 compendious prac- tical 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 accept- ance.
Such are the force and tenour of the evi- dences of Christianity, if, as I have said, the matter of them be truly alleged ; that is, if we have well attested miracles and prophe- cies, 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 as- sumption, to allow a considerable weight to each. But I speak now of the argu- ments 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
28 On the Connexion of Prophecy with the
were to lay down beforehand what would be the most prevailing inducements to his belief of a Revelation, 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 in- ternal ; its august apparatus of prophecies and miracles ; the excellence of its constitution in its laws, doctrines, and sanctions ; its power in subduing the laboured opposition of the world ; with the glory of its Founder, illumi- nating 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 princi- ples of all our knowledge.
This coincidence of the religion, in its evi- dences, with the natural frame of our reason and principles of judgment, is worthy of no- tice, as contrasted with the tenour 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 ;
other Evidences of the Christian Religion. 29
and now that they are revealed, 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 belief 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 authenticated to us by modes of reason in which we have a direct 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 or 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 difference 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, ig
30 On the Connexion of Prophecy with the
above it, is no more than agrees with the following reflexion : That a proof would not be such to a. mind which could not distinctly apprehend and judge of it ; and, therefore, to bring men to the first knowledge of a reve- lation, they must be addressed on the footing and principles of their nature: but as dis- ciples and converts to live by the religion, it is in course, and altogether in reason, that they accept the revelation itself as an autho- rity 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 con- viction so admitted, the prerogative of faith will follow.
The extent and comprehensiveness of the whole proof of Christianity being thus con- cisely stated ; and also the simplicity and reasonableness of it ; I would next observe, that in treating of any single branch of the Gospel evidences, the result of such sepa- rate 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
other Evidences.of the Christian Religion. 31
our divided inquiry. Otherwise our notions, as to the real forcfe of the evidence, must be erroneous, or incomplete ; erroneous, if upon a part of the proof, we conclude against the whole ; incomplete, if we conclude without it. For though some kind of proof be in- capable of accession by an extended cumula- tive 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 ag- gregate of the concurrent proofs will close the investigation.
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 evidence ; 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 posi- tive 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 misapprehen-
32 On the Connexion of Prophecy with the
sion does seem frequently to make its way into the examination of this great question, as a feeUng at least, and an implied reason at the bottom, for expecting a more com- plete satisfaction than the single topic in hand may be capable of affording. The mis- taken feeling, where it is perfectly sincere, is not hard to be accounted for. For the se- paration of the essential branches of a com- bined 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 ; especially 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 argu- ment, narrowing the subject down to the reduced compass within which we are busied in viewing it, and transferring the imper- fection of our details of thought to the sub- stance of more enlarged truth.
And it may be, that it is to some such mistake of mind as I have here been de- scribing, rather than to a plain want of can- dour and integrity, in treating the evidences of
other Evidences of the Christian Religion. 33
religion, that we ought to ascribe some of the most unwarranted apd inconsequent insinua- tions against it, drawn by sceptical writers from the inconclusiveness or defect, as it ap- pears to them, of single and detached argu- ments for it.
Take the argument from Prophecy, for instance. Let it be granted that there are parts of prophecy, of which we cannot deter- mine how they ought to be applied; that there are others partially obscure, as not offering any very obvious or explicit illustra- tion 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 supposed 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 fol- low that prophecy is not a valid and substan- tial argument ? Shall its obscurity, in what- ever degree it may exist in some instances, refute the force of others which want no- thing in point of perspicuity or exact appli- cation ? Or, because we do not perfectly see how all the evidence of prophecy is to be
D
34 On the Connexion of Prophecy with the
unfolded, 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 Scep- tical reasoners contend that our minds should be made up, upon that supposed deficiency in a single branch of the argument, to the ex- clusion 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, having 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 de- monstration : 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 con- sidering the inference obtained upon distinct
other Evidences of the Christian Religion. 35
topics of the evidence, as an article and in- gredient, which it ,is, in an aggregate of reason, it is quite certain that their writings must have taken another shape, and been very different from what they are. Perhaps the impression on their own beHef might have been different also. But, at the least, they ought to have apprized 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 inconclusive one by one, we have a series of exceptions to the truth of religion, instead of a train of favourable presumptions, growing stronger at every step. The disciple of Scep- ticism 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 discarded one after another, instead of being connected and combined.
i D 2
36 On the Connexion of Prophecy with the
It is to guard against the insinuation of this error, incident 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 indebted 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 ex- isting ; a disparagement of its value by sup- pression ; a plea for infidelity, inconsistent with the ordinary rules agreed to and esta- blished for the examination of truth. And on this account, unless the advocates of un- belief will deal with the question in another manner than it has been their system 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
other Evidences of the Christian Religion. 37
of the argument. Sometimes it has been a treatise* against the proof from Miracles ; sometimes against that from Prophecy -f ; sometimes the honour of the Gospel Morals has been assailed, as if they had been imi- tated by the wisdom of heathen and unin- spired 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 exa- mined, 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 dis- proof or actual objection, I take upon me to assert in behalf of every unprejudiced in- quirer; 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 demon- stration.
Before an audience, many of whom are highly exercised in the application of their
* As by VVoolston and Ilumc. t By Collins,
38 On the Connexion of Prophecy with the
minds to a complex evidence, and to the deci- sion 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 differing 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 run together into a perfect con- viction. Let this reasonable process be ap- plied 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 compre- hended in the mixed and various evidences of our Religion, which deserves to be further considered by itself, a condition highly characteristic of its truth, and indeed replete
other Evidences of the Christian Religion. 39
with the strongest confirmation of it. The condition is this, th^t its evidences are so ex- ceedingly dissimilar in their several descrip- tions. 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 component members of the argument is a material consideration. 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 following remarks may serve to shew. If man's contrivance, or the favour of acci- dent, could have given to Christianity any of its apparent testimonies; either its miracles or its prophecies, its morals or its propagation, 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 contrived 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 pro- phecies to the same object. Further, it de*-
"m-
40 On the Connexion of Prophecy with the
manded not only a different art, but a totally opposite character, to conceive and promul- gate its admirable morals. Again, the achieve- ment 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 originality and wis- dom, as could be the offspring only of con- 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 excel- lence of virtue, impossible to be taken from, or confounded with, the fictions of inge- nuity. 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 Accident are too vain to be thought of. The genuine state of the Christian evidence is this ; there is unambiguous testimony to its
other Evidences . of the Christian Religion . 4 1
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 sub- ject, produce them all, or can now account for their existence.
The whole compass and system of the Chris- tian Evidence unquestionably has nothing like it, nor approaching to it, in the Annals of the World. It is a phenomenon standing alone. I assert this, on the concession of those who have exalted it, beside their intention, by the impotent comparisons 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 unauthenticated relations in the cloudy ro- mance 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 compa- rison with the oracles of Heathenism, long ago put to silence, or the legends of a more recent superstition. Its divine Morals have been
42 On the Connexion of Prophecy with the
represented as little better than might be de- rived from the philosophy of a Grecian or an Eastern teacher, Socrates or Confucius. Its wonderful progress and propagation, carried without any of the instruments of human power, and in opposition to them, have been matched with the success 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 furnish the separate materials of such comparisons as the objectors have been able to produce : whilst the conspi- cuous and uncontested fact, that Christianity unites within itself the signs and indications which no other system, philosophic or reli- gious, does, nor is pretended to do, leaves it in possession of a character which repels the indignity of all comparison, by the distant and incommensurate pretensions of the things attempted to be put in resemblance with it.
I close these prefatory remarks, which have been intended 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
other Evidences of the Christian Religion. 43
which the authors have consented to put the defence of our Rehgion on single points of strong and commanding evidence. " The Short Method with the Deists*," is one : the Tract upon " the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul-f,'* 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 investi- gation of the principles and motives of hu- man action, applied to the Conversion of the Apostle. It has not occurred to me to know of any answer having been made to shake the credit of either of these essays of Christian argument. For any thing that appears, their ground is unassailable. But I mention such concise and limited arguments, to remark, where they leave us, whatever conclusiveness 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 conviction, they only conspire with other multipHed reasons in supporting the same faith. If the single stone or column
* By Leslie, t By Lord Lyttleton.
44 On the Co7inexion of Prophecy, &c. ^
be sufficient to uphold the edifice, we are not to think that the edifice really presses upon that single support ; when it reposes, and with a far greater security, upon the broad united strength of the entire range and system of its fabric ; that fabric of Truth, as we believe it to be, which, in its Proofs, as well as in its Doctrines, "is built upon the " fouridation of the Apostles and Prophets, " Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner- " stone*."- •
» Ephes. II, 2D.
DISCOURSE IT.
Contents of the Prophetic Volume as dis- tinguished FROM ITS Predictions.
DISCOURSE II.
CONTENTS OF THE PROPHETIC VOLUME, AS DISTIN- GUISHED FROM ITS PREDICTIONS.
Jeremiah XXV. 4. Ajid the Lord hath sent unto you all his servants the Prophets, rising early, and sending them; but ye have not hearkened, nor inclined y&ur ear to hear.
IN my former Discourse I spoke of the con- nexion in which Prophecy stands with the other evidences of Revealed Rehgion. 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, what- ever 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 apprehend to be the fact,
48 Contents of the Prophetic Volume
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 accumulated demonstration ; in which nei- ther the conclusiveness 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 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 Evidences is not compensated by the positive force of the rest ; oj that a chain of attestations and inferences, deduced from distinct and independent reasons, ought to bring us to a disbelief of the common subject in which they all concur.
as distinguished from its Predictions. 49
Would he put the case that the Miracles of the New Testament are not completely authenticated ; that Prophecy 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 exam- ple ; the propagation of the Gospel, by such instruments, not incapable of being explained on human principles ; its profound adapta- tion to the nature of man not unlike an acci- dent ; 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 difliculties, and must for ever remain there, till he is prepared to resist and reply to the reason which arises from these considerations put together, and repel the claims of a reli- gion 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 invalidat- ed. Finding here, on the whole, so much,
£
50 Contents of the Prophetic Volume
and in all the rest of the world so little, to create or fortify a rational faith, he will re- cognise in them the discriminating proofs, which designate the truth and certainty of the Revelation to which they adhere, and thereby command his assent to " the record which God hath thus given of His Son."
As to the believer in Revelation, he, with respect to this variety of evidence, liiay ob- serve upon it, not without some confirmation of his faith, how many of the divine attri- butes 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 at- testation. The Sovereign Power of God, over-ruling nature as his creature, is seen in the miracles. His Omniscience in the Prophe- cies— 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, illustrated in the life of his Incarnate Son ; Benevolence, Long-suffering, Wisdom, Holiness. The very evidences, therefore, of the Christian Religion
as distinguished from its Predictions. 51
have impressions of the divine nature irradi- ating them ; and thus they coincide with the system of that religion itself, wherein the Di- vine Being, in the exercise of these his perfec- tions, 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 our in- quiry. In opening which subject, so as to discourse upon it, I take for the present the prophetic writings of the Old Testament only; and keeping in view the Use of Pro- phecy, and its Inspiration, as the two chief points to which I direct myself, I shall begin with some consideration of the prophetic vo- lume, as to its general nature and contents.
By examining the actual contents of Pro- phecy, 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 Pro- phet, and what the purport and end of his
E 2
52 Contents of the Prophetic Volume
prophecy. A restriction this to which we must submit, whatever be our doubts or our beHef. To the believer the ways and word of God will best explain and justify themselves. And with regard to the other in- quirer, his business cannot be to say, a priori, what it is that revelation, or any part of it, ought to contain, 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 first communication of Prophecy, or in the design of it, it will be conducive 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 discourse, that, this done, we may give an undivided attention to the Predictive, the more eminent branch of he same Revelation.
I. Prophecy, then, is not a series of mere predictions. Far from it. It abounds in
as distinguished from its Predictions. 53
matter of another kind ; I mean the conti- nued 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 direct, personal, and responsible relation of man to him. Accordingly the most frequent subjects of the prophet are the laws of God ; his supreme dominion and his universal 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 worship and faith ; and of justice, and mercy to man ; the whole of these duties enforced by explicit sanctions of reward and punishment. These original principles of piety and morals overspread the pages of the book of prophecy. They are brought forward, they are inculcated, from first to last. They are often the subject where nothing future is in question : they are con- stantly interwoven with the predictions ; they are either the very thing propounded, or connected with it ; and all the way they are impressed with a distinctness and energy of
54 Contents of the Prophetic Volume
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 nowhere be shewn, certainly not in the works or systems of pagan wisdom, so much of decisive and luminous information, con- cerning the unity, providence, m.ercy, 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 let 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 per- ceives that he is instructed and elevated by the discoveries made to him of the Supreme Being, and of the kind of worship and obe- dience required from himself; and these dis- coveries 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 use- ful therefore to himself, and the most worthy
as distinguished from its Predictions. 55
•
of the source from which they profess to come. On this hea,d I cite the words of Origen, who does not overstate this persua- sive 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, Hke 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*." The more sceptical reader will see in them something to arrest his attention, and excite in him a suspicion, that the teachers of so excellent and virtuous a discipline of life, and the ex- positors 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 sub-
* 'O "Ki [xsT S7ri[jt.s\eiag xa) Tr^otro^rjg svrof^av(ov Toig 7r^o(pr}rixo7g >-6yois, Tra^wv s^ auroD too avayivwc- xsiv 'i)(yog £V^oyo"<a(r/*ou, 31 (ov Traa-^ei xeto-^ijereTai, oox av^ocoTTcov elvai (r\i!y^a^ii,ara rovg TrsTn^sofxivoug Qeou Xoyovg. Origenes Trsq) ao^wv. P. 162. ed Par.
56 Contents of the Prophetic Volume
jects, 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 insti- tutes a comparison between the gifts of supernatural illumination, and describing that species of prophecy of which I am speaking, viz., that which is for the simple exposition of the doctrines of religious truth, of it he says, " If therefore the whole Church be come toge- " ther into one place, and all its teachers pro- " phesy " 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 " manifest ; and so falling down on his face, " he will worship God, and report that God is ** in you of a truth." Such was the idea the Apostle had of this gift of moral prophecy, that, by its visible subserviency to the in- struction and edification of a religious com- munity, 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 " righteous-
as distinguished from its Predictions. 57-
" ness, 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? Perhaps in this way : — St. Paul thought only of the unbeliever born, one whose sincerity, in his natural ignorance, was open to in- quiry and information. Not of the unbe- liever made, who has taken his side, and by prejudice, or by the neglect of serious examination, that is, by a chosen 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 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
58 Contents of the Prophetic Volume
sanctity and integrity of the doctrine extant in the books of the prophets of Israel. — ^But what the prophets deUvered, they delivered as by inspiration : however they spoke, whe- ther to predict, or to instruct, 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 Prophecy with the creeds of Paganism. In the one, the religion 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 variance. And the Philo- sophy which did the most to reclaim the theory of ethical truth, could not restore the broken union between that truth and reli- gion ; and so the whole system, in which
.as distinguished from its Predictions. 59
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 perfect con- cord together ; in that age of the world they were no ordinary persons who did so. None but they are known to have done it.
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 vir- tue ; the sanctions of it have less of an exclu- sive reference to temporal promises, and in- cline more to evangelical ; the Ritual of the Law begins to be discountenanced by it ; the superior value of the moral commandment to be enforced ; 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 Gcd
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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, and to animate its spirit, and to fill up, or direct, its practice. The habits of love, and the sentiments of obedience to the command- ment, may be further informed, the obliga- tions 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 everywhere 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, a 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 in- strument of piety and devotion, and were so
as distinguished from its Predictions. 01
much superadded to the legal worship. They are the institute of. a service of piety, for which, in the ordinance of the Law, was no such provision.
Again ; the Law forebore, in some few points, a perfection of its discipline. It prac- tised an unwilling condescension, in yielding to " the hardness of heart," the gross and refractory temper, of the people, to whom it was given. This was seen in the non-prohi- bition of a plurality of wives, and the permis- sion 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. Mean- while, one of the Prophets * had given a clear intimation that God approved not the permis- sion so allowed, but would draw the do- mestic 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. This single doctrine, so promul-
* Malachi ii. 14-16.
62 Contents of the Propheiie Volume
gated as it is by the Prophets, makes a conspicuous distinction between them and the Law.
Let it not be thought that this view of the Prophetic Revelation derogates in the least from the proper perfection or excellence of the ancient law of God. His law at all times no doubt has been perfectly adapted, to his purposes in giving it ; to the state of the persons to whom given; and to the proper exercise and probation of their obe- dience. 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 revela- tion 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 intermediate 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 compa-
as distinguished from its Predictions. 63
rison of the Mosaic and the prophetic books ; and if it make the, same impression upon others, they will perceive it to be, first, ex- planatory 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 pa- rallel 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 approach- ed its consummation. So of other instances of Scripture prediction ; they had their en- largements. 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 reve- lation 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
64 Contents of the Prophetic Volume
original inspiration granted to them, as they declare, and not as commentators who merely elicit the sense of the law exist- ing. Hence 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 Prophets *." Hence Christ acknowledges and confirms " the Law and the Prophets" as the two connected parts of the existing moral reve- lation, which he came not to destroy, but " to complete," and establish for ever -f*.
And it is remarkable, that the Prophet, who of all others is the most full and explicit in delineating the Messiah's kingdom of re- demption, is equally distinguished for the copiousness and variety of his lessons of holi- ness. Isaiah is not more" the evangelical Pro- phet " 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 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,
• Zechariah vii. 12. Compare Neheraiah ix. 30. t Mattb. V. 17.
as distinguished from its Predictions. 65
whereby to direct equally his faith and his obedience, none coald be taken so adequate to both those purposes as the volume of this eminent Prophet, to whom it was given to behold the glory of Christ's kingdom with an eagle eye, and to drink of the spirit of holiness beyond his brethren.
To conclude this topic, I add one observ- ation more upon it. One book of the Penta- teuch 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 Testament ; the book of Deuteronomy. This book embraces a rehearsal and republication of the law by the great Prophet 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 stipu- lated blessings of obedience (which I may call the Mosaic beatitudes) ; and a terrific insight into the future plagues of his apostate 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 signatures of authentic truth and inspiration less stampt upon it. But here also may be traced the progres-
F
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sive scheme of Scripture. For this very- book, if I mistake not, might, in its doc- trinal 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, exhibited in the doctrines, promises, and precepts of the prophet 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 re- velation will be seen to compose a consistent whole, not by uniformity, but progression, every part of it silently advancing toward the spirit and perfection of the Gospel.
III. In the last place, the Prophets, beside their communication 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 com-
as distinguished from its Predictions. 67
mission they received. Hence their work to admonish and reprove ; to arraign for every ruUng sin, to blow the trumpet to repentance, and shake the terrors of the divine judg- ments over a guilty land. Often they bore the message of consolation or pardon ; rarely, if ever, of public approbation and praise.
The integrity and fortitude wherewith these holy men acquitted themselves of this charge, 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 sin- cerity and zeal, but in the faithful record of the expostulations and rebukes which they delivered in the face of idolatrous or oppres- sive kings, a degenerate priesthood, and a corrupt, rebellious people, *' Magna fides et grandis audacia ProphetarurrC' is their just panegyric*. But in this service they betray none of the spirit of turbulent and fanatical agitators, who step out of order to make the public sin their field of triumph, but a grave and masculine severity, which bespeaks their entire personal soberness of mind, and the reality of their commission. Isaiah, Jere-
* Hicronym. on Ezek. p. 143, Vol. v.
F 2
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miah, and Ezekiel, are all 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 Scrip- ture, so to no part of it does that idea more fitly belong, than to the admonitory homilies of the Prophets.
From this particular service of the Prophets results a testimony to their Mission. First on their own part. Whatever proof men could give of integrity in their pretensions by will- ingness to suffer, that proof they gave. The Prophets, like the Apostles, were confessors and martyrs. No confederacy of interest, or favour, can be imputed to them; Priest- hood, Kings, and People, all equally 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 op- probrium of that infatuated city : but it is the crown and glory of her martyr Prophets. Next, an equal testimony results on the part of the Jewish people, their persecutors. When we consider the austerity of rebuke addressed by these men to the people of Israel and
as distinguished from its Predictions. 69
Judah, and the unfavourable light in which their national charaLcter is represented by them, almost without an exception, 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 be- lieved, 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 ir- resistible 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 Jewish people, who hereby are witnesses in their own shame; and sur- vive too with that admitted character, 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
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were not merely preserved*, but adopted into the 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 mission. There is but one reason to be given why they did so, a constrained and extorted conviction. But such was the pro- mise given in hand to the Prophet. " I '* do send thee unto them, and thou shalt say " unto them. Thus saith the Lord God. And " they, whether they will hear, or whether ** they will forbear, for they are a most re- " bellious house, yet shall know that there " hath been a prophet among them f ." Or more explicitly : And " when this cometh to " pass, lo it will come, then shall they know " that a prophet hath been among them J." Here we have the explanation of the fact. The actual fulfilment seen of what their Pro- phets had foretold, convinced that most un- believing people; a people to whom their Pagan judges, looking at them and their re-
* It is obvious to remark, how tlic equal preservation of these vitu- perative parts of the prophetic vvriting-s helps to accredit the faithful transmission and authenticity of the entire text of prophecy, t Ezck. ii. 5. t Ezek. xxxiii. 3.
as distinguished from its Predictions. 71
ligion 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 belief, which stood out against the authority of their real pro- phets, (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*."
But Pagan and Jewish belief held a dif- ferent 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.
* 2 Chronicles xxxvi. 16.
END OF PART I,
DISCOURSE 11.
PART II.
Contents of the Prophetic Volume as dis- tinguished FROM its Predictions.
DISCOURSE II.
PART II.
Jeremiah xxv. 4. And the Lord hath sent unto you all his sermnts the Prophets, rising early ^ and sending them; but ye have not hearkened, nor inclined your ear to hear.
HITHERTO I have considered the contents of Prophecy, which may be called moral or didactic, as distinguished from its predictive matter. But I must pursue the statement already given through two topics which de- serve 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 Re- pentance.
I. The Prophets of the Old Testament in- culcate with a remarkable perspicuity and decision, the overruling agency of God's pro- vidence in the affairs of the world. Their
76 Contents of the Prophetic Volume
whole prophecy is more or less a commentary upon this doctrine. Let us attend to the form in which it is expressed. The prediction of prophecy, verified in its fulfilment, attests the divine foreknowledge, and the communi- cation 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 present 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 outstretched 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 displayed by more palpable manifestations. It is extended to Egypt, to Babylon, and Persia ; to Moab, and Ammon ; to the isles of the Gentiles ; and 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 infliience of human motives ; no
as distinguished from its Predictions. 11
derangement of what we commonly call the natural course of things. Cyrus, for instance, whom the Greek historian describes, and de- scribes, 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 explained by the Prophet Isaiah. Moses was a deliverer from Egypt, and Cyrus from Ba- bylon : the one acted under an express lega- tion, clothed with the power of miracles ; the other had no such extraordinary power given to him. Yet the divine providence wrought by both ; and so that providence, in its ordi- nary course, is yet certain, active, and uni- versal. 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 announcing 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 accom- plishment, and declaring themselves some- times to have been thereby constituted, as it were, the agents of the divine counsels. " I
78 Contents of the Prophetic Volume
" 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*." " See," saith the Oracle to Jere- " miah, I have this day set thee over the na- ** tions, and over the kingdoms, to root out, and '' to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw " down, and to build and to plant -f-." This is 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:}:." The Assyrian deso- later in the utmost exorbitancies of. his am- bition was the unconscious servant of an un- seen power ; the instrument of the wisdom which rules the world.
This, to the serious religionist, is a doc- trine 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
* Amos iii. 6. t Chap. i. 10. J Isaiah xxxvii. 25.
as distinguished from its Predictions. 79
is to be, but as administering the plan and executing the ends of his Providential Go- vernment, (wise and right that government must be) in the midst of all the tumult of the seeming disorders, the vicissitudes, and way- ward course of the world. To know this, to have his mind set at rest upon it, is a first desideratum of his feelings and knowledge. And how was that desideratum to be obtained? Reason, indeed, must ever lean to the per- suasion that the Creator of the world is its controuling Governor ; and in the natural world is fully reflected the order of his Go- vernment. 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, 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 spe- culations which have arisen concerning Pro- vidence and Fate, Providence and Fortune ; speculations these which grew out of the sense of nature, and only put into form the anxious questions of every thoughtful mind.
so Contents of the Prophetic Volume
Revelation in prophecy speaks to the point, and solves the inquiry. And this is the dis- closure which it makes, that in the present dispensation of God, as it respects man, there are tw^o 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 promises, directed to men in an ac- countable 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 over-ruling Providence, it should seem that we could have no sure know- ledge of its existence, nor any competent knowledge of its extent, except by a reve- lation asserting and exemplifying 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 myste- rious power is out of sight. Scripture then has ascertained that which we wanted to know,
as distinguished from its Predictions. 81
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 acknowledge 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 provi- dence of God in the government of the world.
The sense of conscience which teaches with some effect the expectation of a judg- ment to come, that is, some state of retri- bution under the Divine Government, has nothing to say to the world, in its order, as it now is. Conscience, and the present con- stitution of things, are not corresponding terms. The one is not the object of per- ception to the other. It is Conscience, and the issue of things, which go together. And Experience, which is a more competent judge in the case, is too often disconcerted and wearied in her observations. Revelation gives the whole truth, the appointed retribu- tion, and the immediate Providence ; and prophecy especially is employed in assert-
o
82 Contents of the Prophetic V olume
ing this last essential 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 embar- rassment, the 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 attri- butes 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 Intelli- gent and gracious Ruler. Were we in the
as distinguished from its Predictions, 83
chains of fate, how gloomy would our case be. Were we in the hands of men, too often how fearful, how humiliating and afflict- ing. But the impression of the scene is changed, when we admit into it the direction of an all- wise and perfect Being, on whose rectitude and goodness we may acquiesce through the whole course of his providen* tial 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. Pro- phecy fulfilled, proves that neither Fate nor Man are masters of the v/orld. These are final tests of all such 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 preci- sion in the prophetic writings, is one than which in practical religion none can be named of greater importance. It involve
G 2
84 Contents of the Prophetic Volume
the last alternative in the judgment which man makes of his condition before his Maker. What has Natural Religion to promise or de- clare upon it? Natural Religion stands in sus- pense, fearful and ignorant : 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 soli- citude of apprehension, no trouble of mind in the case, seems only the more depraved in his insensibility. Now had the Prophets of Israel preached no other doctrine 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 consci- ence, and the encouragement supplied to the recovery of his frail and faultering 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 doc- trine. The fact is, that the best philosophy of paganism was ignorant of it; and so far
as distinguished from its Predictions. S5
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 reflexion inform him.
Comparing the Law and the Prophets to- gether in this article, we mark the differ- ence between them. The Law* includes a general promise of pardon to the people when in captivity, in case of their national repentance ; the pardon to comprehend a re- storation of them to their land. The Pro- phets f 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 interests of personal religion.
It is true, the grace of repentance is emi- nently a Gospel doctrine ; its foundation lies in the Atonement of the Christian Scheme. But here, as in other instances, prophecy made anticipations of Gospel truth. The pro- phets were empowered to preach repentance and pardon, before that Altar was raised on
* Deut. XXX. 1 — 6. Compare Neheiniah, who appeals to this Mo- saic promise of national pardon. Chap. i. 8. 9. + See Ezek. xviii ; Isaiah Ivii. 15, 16.
86 Contents of the Prophetic Volume
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 predictions concerning the Gospel itself are enlarged, its practical doc- trines, at the same time, are more developed. The revelation spreads in each point ; and Pro- phecy, as I have wished to make it appear, is throughout an advancement and approxima- tion to the Gospel. Viewed in which light it serves to elucidate not more its own use, than the entire progressive consistency of Reve- lation.
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 Religion which Prophecy after the Law inculcates afresh, in some points with an expansion and improvement of them ; the personal duty at- tached to the Prophet's mission has also been considered ; and lastly, the doctrines of Pro- vidence and Repentance; consolatory, effica- cious doctrines, which it needed, and may I not say, it deserved, a revelation to bring down from heaven.
as distinguished from its Predictions. 87
Whether the moral and didactic truths, which we have reviewed, are exactly the kind of matter which some persons might expect to find filling so large a portion of the pro- phetic 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 recom- mendation 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 incul- cated in them, and so perspicuously ex- pressed.
If we compare them in this character of their composition with other pretended pro- phetic records, they will rise by the compa- rison above the suspicion of having proceeded from any similar origin. Read the oracles of Paganism; consult the most revered of the ancient temples and shrines of divination. Where are the pure morals? where the theo- logy? where the incessant and systematic reference in those oracles to the cause of po- sitive virtue and practical religion? Where, indeed, any great and unequivocal concern in
88 Contents of the Prophetic Volume
such matters ? " What is the chaff to the wheat," is the demand of one of the Prophets of Israel*. May the inquirer after truth take the fan in his hand, and make the separation, in giving the chaff to the winds, and gather- ing the wheat with these inspired men of God.
Upon the whole of this branch of Pro- phecy which we have hitherto considered, I subjoin some concluding observations.
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 pas- sion of natural curiosity, in the discoveries of the future which they professed to make. At the same time, what they taught was en- forced by the more cogent evidence of their mission. The teacher and the prophet were combined. His predictions, from time to time fultllled, gave authority to his doctrine. They did as much so as if they had been designed to no further end.
Secondly, We observe that the Prophets of the Old Testament, lay the practice of reli- gion and virtue, where the teachers of the
* Jcreuiiah xxiii. 2S.
as distinguished from its Predictions. 89
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 under- stand as they ought the advantage of a clear and authoritative rule of moral Truth pro- vided for their direction. If speculatists are willing to grant its use for the imbecihty and ignorance of the mass of mankind, for them- selves however they would prefer to rely upon their own independent reason, or the de- ductions 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 set- tled. Let the same truth be dictated by the word of God, it puts on a new meaning ; and if the maxim be true, that " all knowledge
90 Contents of the Prophetic Volume
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 ca- pable of being benefited by Revelation, than the theorists of moral sentiment, the dis- Coursers 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 ; the case would be different ; 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 studies, only to promote our work.
The last reflexion I shall make is this, that when the divine origin of the prophetic, or any other part of Revelation, is argued from the nature of its very genius and doctrine, it is a kind of proof which cannot be expected to operate upon all men alike. It is granted
as distinguished from its Predictions. 91
that this internal evidence is not so strong and conspicuous in th^^ prophetic volume, as in the New Testament : but whatever it may be in either, its force turns upon a certain exer- cise of the moral perceptions, which vary, and upon what men are in their own charac- ter. 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 sym- pathy 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 prin- ciple, that evidence in moral subjects is modi- fied 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 di- dactic matter, to command their faith and reverence, this indifference and failure of con- viction on their part ought to create no sur- prise, nor consequently any uneasiness or mistrust, in others, who experience a different impression. We know not how far their tem- per and spirit may have taken the lead of
92 Contents of the Prophetic Volume, &c.
their judgment. This is certain, that unless they are examples of sanctity and virtue in their own lives, their indifference to Re- vealed 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 Evidence may serve equally to the ends of a moral probation to all to whom it is offered, however it may be received *. But, perhaps, it is by its internal evidence in particular that this trial is most distinctly made, that evidence having the nearest con- nexion 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 universal truth which is spoken by Christ, " If any man will do his WilU he " shall know of the doctrine whether it be
" of Godf."
And this is a truth which is prior to the question of Revealed Religion, and will re- main whether we admit that or no. Only it follows from the same truth, that, if that reli- gion be of God, it cannot be deliberately rejected without a personal fault in some ob- liquity of will and temper.
* Butler's Analogy. t John vii. 17
DISCOURSE III.
Of PnoPHEcr in its earliest Age, from the Fall to the Patriarchal Times.
DISCOURSE III.
OF PROPHECY IN ITS EARLIEST AGE, FROM THE FALL TO THE PATRIARCHAL TIMES.
Genesis XVII. 7.
And I mill establish my covmant between me and thee, and thi/ seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.
IF the observations which have been laid together in the foregoing discourse should have recommended the authority of the pro- phetic volume on account of its moral doc- trines, 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 evi- dence of its inspired origin is still untouched, consisting in the series and the fulfilment of its predictions, by which medium it is that Prophecy bears its most effectual testimony to the truth of the Jewish . and Christian revelations.
95 Prophecy in its earliest Age from
This evidence, constituted in the comple- tion of Prophecy, is of a more coercive kind. It challenges the assent upon a clear and inde- pendent 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*."
This is one proof whereby God asserts the prerogative of his name, in opposition to the vanities of idols, and the 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 a combination of them, the proof of a divine foreknowledge dictating the whole, will be more conclusive. This is 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 reve- lation carried on under distinct branches. Its
* Isaiah xliv. 7.
the Fall to the Patriarchal Times. 97
evidence becomes thereby proportionably ex- tensive ; and also, Which is a different quaUty of it, more closely combined ; and on that ac- count less open to the imputation of a fortui- tous coincidence between its scheme, and the event of things corresponding with it.
But here again is a twofold view to be taken of the prophetic volume. We may con- sider it either in its structure, or in the verifi- cation of its predictions. In the last, we must select single prophecies, or concurrent pro- phecies relating 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 evi- dence of the whole. But with respect to its structure, the points to be observed will be, What were the subjects on which Pro- phecy was given, what its order, in relation to seasons and purposes. It is this examina- tion of its Structure which it will be expe- dient to pursue in the first instance, as pre- paratory to the examination of it under the second head, in the accomplishment of its predictions.
H
96 Prophecy in its earliest Age from
In tracing the course of Prophecy as con- tained in its own records, we may 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 de- sign ; 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 Prophecy 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 predictions 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 ; whe- ther they are among the greater or the less articles of it, and how far their particular evidence upholds, or affects, the authority 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 Inspiration.
{
the Fall to the Patriarchal Times. 9!)
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 prophecy, 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. Inci- dental proofs of its inspiration will be sug- gested by the way. But the formal discus- sion of those proofs will be reserved to its place hereafter, when the Order of Pro- phecy shall be confronted with its Truth, and its predictions put to a test in their completion.
This survey of ancient prophecy will in- clude its greater documents, wherever they may be found. Books not avowedly prophe- tical, at least not commonly so named, con- tain the recorded text of predictions, as the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and others, which therefore must contribute their information
H2
100 Prophecy in its earliest Age from
to the inquiry in hand. For though Pro- phecy had its age subsequently to the Mosaic Law, when it spoke with a fuller voice and clearer communications, and so the Law and the Prophets are sometimes 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 re- demption 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 is 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 ex-
the Fall to the Patriarchal Times. 101
plained, was appointed " to bruise the Ser- " pent's head," that is, to take away the Tempter's triumph, which could only be by repairing the loss suffered by transgression, and cancelling, or mitigating, the interdict of the divine sentence laid upon it. — This origi- nal promise of mercy is the dawn and dayspring of prophecy. Man was not excluded from Pa- radise, till Prophecy had sent him forth with some pledge of hope and consolation. . But this first prediction may serve to point out something 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 rela- tion with God ; and since this subject was the first that introduced the revelations of Prophecy, we may reasonably suppose it was a principal one always in view ; and also that other predictions, 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 Prophecy having begun with the prospect of man.'s redemption, could be directed in its after course to nothing greater.
102 Prophecy in its earliest Age from
And such the fact will appear to be, when we draw to a point the dispersed and multi- phed predictions of the Old Testament. The intimation of a scheme of divine mercy given at the Fall, is the prelude to further and more precise discoveries of it, through every subsequent age and aera of revelation. Inter- mediate 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 com- bined predictions, lest I should seem to mea- sure by conceptions taken from the standard of human works, the order and method of any part of the divine dispensations. How- beit, 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
the Fall to the Patriarchal Times. 103
further in numerous predictions ; the word of promise grew in fgrce and clearness, as it approached to its close ; and it was succes- sively enriched with new particulars of in- formation ; till at last they embodied within them all the chief lineaments of the dispensa- tion which was subsequently made known in the actual accomplishment of it, and the Advent of the Redeemer was but the visible appearance of the divine light with which the radiant cloud of Prophecy had long been ready to break forth.
The limits and range of Prophecy were indeed as extensive 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 Pro- phets cannot go beyond it. For man's re- demption, 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 in later ages. And He " unto whom all his " works are known from the beginning," never left man in ignorance of this his design of
104 Prophecy in its earliest Age.
mercy. But though the horizon of the pro- phetic 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 shown 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 Pro- phecy 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 predic- tion, 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 un- certainty 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 priginal prophecy.
Prophecy at the Mra of the Flood. 105
II. From the Fall it is but a short step in man's history to the Flood ; the interval comprehending but few generations. 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 aera 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 per- mitted to pass without the intervening warn- ings of prophecy. To the One righteous man and his family, appointed to preservation, the impending deluge was foretold whilst it hung yet within the sealed windows of heaven*. The Ark, which he was instructed to build, was itself a second, a visible prophetic warn- ing, to the rest of the world, if an obstinate wickedness, which had resisted God's Spirit f, might be alarmed by the signs of his judg- ment.
In this instance. Prophecy served to exer- cise and sustain the faith of the righteous
* Genesis vi. 17, t Genesis vi, 3.
106 Prophecy at the JEra
Elect Family. It spoke the long-sufFering of God, in the intermediate opportunity of repentance, to others * ; both of them pur- poses 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 w^aters. The predictions following the Flood are ample and explicit, and they contain a covenant of mercy con- veyed to the second progenitor of our race. But what the nature of this covenant ? The memorable character of it is this, that it is framed in a complete relation to the recent overthrow of the Deluge.
It is a charter of Natural mercies and blessings -f*, comprehending 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 succes- sion and return of the seasons : " While the " earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and " cold and heat, and summer and winter, and
* 1 Peter iii 20. t See Genesis, viii. 21, 22. ; ix, 1—17.
of the Flood. 107
" day and night, shall not cease ;" with one specific stipulation a'dded of God's mercy, that He would visit the earth with a Deluge no more. " And I will establish 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 *.
Here Prophecy, as we see, re-established the peace and order of Physical Nature, which had undergone so great a convul- sion. 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 pro-
• Genesis ix. 11. " This," says Bishop Taylor, " was^the World's covenant, not the Church's." — Christian Consolations, ch. v.
108 Prophecy at the Mr a
mise that this ruin of waters should be the last, is itself a signal monument of predic- tion : for who will say that a recurrence of the Jike 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; though not always so thought of, it 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 in- strumentality of another Element, which in its turn will be the minister of God's purpose *.
But here a question occurs, whether the promises respectively 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 sea-
* ^ Peter iii. 7,
of the Flood. 109
sons 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 rekindled the hope of his greater mercy yet in sus- pense, 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 prophecy. But I am unwill- ing to build any thing upon dubious inter- pretations of the letter, or sense, of Scripture. It admits of a doubt, whether the Scripture text, in this point, can be so understood, as to exhibit any difference between the Old world and the New, in respect of the seasons and natural state of the earth, and thereby a re- mission of the primitive curse; or whether the blessing to Noah be nothing more than a promise of the deliverance and future exemp- tion of the earth from its recent disorder ; in a word, whether that blessing were opposed to the original evil, or only to the deluge. The former of these two interpretations is acutely and ably supported by Bishop Sher- lock*, who has written with so much proba-
* Foiu-th Discourse on Prophecy.
no Prophecy at the JEra
bility 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 distinguishing 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 prophecy in its several parts.
So much however is clear, that any one con- siderable instance of God's promises brought into a course of fulfilment, 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 faithful- ness of any other mercies which might yet be only in prospect. So far the promises at the Fall, and after the Flood, may be safely connected.
of the Flood. 1 1 1
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 goodness, without any admixture of another nature: his placability, his present acceptance of man, his future favour, are the things sig- nified; all encouragements to faith and obe- dience. So that vv^hen 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 pro- phecy 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 reli- gion 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 De- luge, were now before men's eyes, and if we carry ourselves back to their state and feel- ing, so placed as they were, we shall see it was of God's wisdom, as well as his good- ness, that he was pleased to temper and qua- lify to them the terrors of his past dispen- sations, and make prophecy at this time the messenger of reconciUation, and peace, and an immediate hope.
112 State of Prophecy
III. The next epoch of Prophecy is the Call of Abraham. He is the Father of the Faithful ; and in him Prophecy 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 possession of the land of Canaan by his family being the subject of the one, the universal blessing of Man- kind, " the blessing of all families of the " earth in his seed," that of the other * ; and a solemn pact, or covenant, founded upon these promises, and accompanied with large assu- rances of God's favour and protection to him and his posterity, being ratified to him.
This mixed subject requires to be dis- tinctly noticed. We have here the first point of union, in Prophecy, of the two dis- pensations, the Jewish and the Christian : ' and from this aera Prophecy takes up and preserves a twofold character, related to them both. The possession of the land of Canaan by Abraham's offspring, now pro- mised, identifies itself with the establishment of the Hebrew people, and thereby leads us
• Genesis xii. 3. j xiii, 14, Sfc.
in the Patriarchal Age. 113
into that dispensation which includes the law of Moses ; the extraordinary superintendence of the Theocracy over that people ; with the authentic transmission of the divine promises and revelations in one line, by their hands, down to the aera 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 Firs 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 na- tions of the earth should be blessed."
That we do right in connecting the promise given to our First Parents with that of the
I
114 State of Prophecy
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 other- wise than as applying to the redemption of man from the state of condemnation into which he had passed. The Evil and the Blessing would explain each the other.
1. 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.
in the Patriarchal Age. 115
therefore, exceedingly distinct, in their ex- tent, and in their kind ; and their distinction was marked from the beginning. Further, I assume it as a principle, which indeed has been sufficiently established upon scripture evidence, and vindicated by learned divines, that we are to consider the selection and ap- pointment 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 appointment of the Jewish people, or that other great and material ends were not thereby promoted : but that the leading and most comprehensive design of the appoint- ment was to introduce the Gospel, by con- necting 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 know- ledge of the Gospel, and the preparatory dis- cipline for it, which it contained ; or " as being " the shadow of the good things to come :" and
I 2
116 State of Prophecy
the Prophets, who were sent to that separated people, having it as an eminent part of their mission to " bear witness to Christ," and an- nounce his rehgion. For the benefit and privi- lege of the Israelite consisted in this, " chiefly " because to him were committed the oracles " of God ;" and those oracles were a per- petual witness of the better dispensation. So that the hopes of the ancient believer may be said to have been always in a state of pil- grimage, travelling onward through successive periods of revelation, and finding no rest till they had crossed the barrier flood, which di- vided the law and the gospel, the first dis- pensation 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 privileges of their distinctive cha- racter : 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 fulfilment of
in the Patriarchal Age. 117
the first, we see, was in order to its com- pletion. %
2. Next, the whole tenour of Prophecy bears a visible reference to this twofold design of the divine economy communicated to Abra- ham. 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 Jewish people. Their subjects coincide with the promulgation, or progress, of the first, or with the history of the last : at least, the ex- ceptions to this determinate reference of Pro- phecy are inconsiderable. 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 thpir share in giving evidence 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 themselves, or to the nations with whom their fortunes connected them, as it consolidated the authority of the dispensation under which they lived, was instrumental by a plain and necessary consequence, first to the intro- duction of the Gospel, and secondly to the proof of it for ever.
118 State of Prophecy
I have been the more anxious to state pre- cisely the twofold 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 attest- ation of the Christian Faith, on several ac- counts. First, By this paitition of the sub- jects of prophecy, we shall simplify our view of its structure, and be carried to a truer idea of the use and intent of its several chap- ters of prediction, as they may hereafter come to be examined. Secondly, we shall exclude a mistaken principle which has infi- nitely warped the interpretation of it, in the hands of persons of an excellent piety, but an ill-instructed judgment ; the prin- ciple of endeavouring to expound almost every prophecy, either immediately, or typi- cally, 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 unskil- fulness 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 ob- served to do disservice to the cause of truth, the adulterated interpretation of the Old Tes- tament prophecies, which did not express any
in the Patriarchal Age. 1 1 9
thing of Christ, or his religion, throwing doubt and suspicion upon tTie genuine sense of those which did *. The prophecies which unques- tionably 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 ; for 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 sub-
* 01 TTCtcav TTjv ira'Ka.iot.v ^icc%r^xr^v s\g tov l^qi^ov (xsracps^siv 7reiqa)[xsvQi, oux e^to a\Tia<re(og £i(r)v, errsiTrs^ xa) ' E?y,Xrjo"i, xa) roig firj efxolvoocriv aurriv alq6Tixo7$f Icr^usiv Iv T-Y] xoL^' 'jjjU.cov hi^oa<n jw-ap^r^ — to. yaq ju-vj slg auTov sl^rjfjisva, sx3<a^OjU,evo<, xa) to. a^idg^wg sl^rifxevot oTTOTrleuso-^-ai 7r(x.qa<rxsv(X^ou<ri Isidorus Pelusiot. lib. ii. epist. 195.
120 State of Projjhecy
serviency to him. For when they ministered to the First dispensation, which had its appen- dant services of prophecy, yet that dispensa- tion and all its evidences are subordinate to his, and thereby Moses and Elias are witnesses and servants to his proper glory.
3. Lastly, I observe that the twofold de- sign of the divine economy was never divided, but there is an unity in it throughout. It was not the divergent course of two unconnected and independent dispensations ; but there was a temporary disposition of things made in the one to prepare the way for the second and greater ; that which comprehends in it the constant design of the counsels of God towards man ; the first which had been disclosed, and was often confirmed ; and which having been variously prefigured in the veil of types, or expressed in the clearer delineations of pre- diction, was finally brought to light by Him " who is the Author and Finisher of our faith," and of the faith of all who have known him by the several communications of pro- phecy from the beginning.
Antecedently to the time of Abraham, our chief epoch of Prophecy, the predictions
in the Patriarchal Age. 121
properly evangelical are few ; being one or two at the most, so far, as they are preserved. Whether there may have been others of the like nature, the record of v^^hich has been withdraw^n, it is impossible to say ; but from an allusion made in the Epistle of St. Jude to the " prophecy of Enoch," which has not been preserved in its place in the old Scrip- ture, it is clear that some predictions were ori- ginally given beyond those which we possess ; and it is also probable that, of those others, some might be of a nature to keep alive the expectation of the future deliverance of man- kind. This idea is favoured by the tenour of that prophecy of Enoch's, of which we owe the notice we have of it to St. Jude. " Enoch also, " the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, " saying. Behold the Lord cometh with ten " thousands of his saints, to execute judg- " ment upon all*." Since Enoch foretold of the Judicial Advent of Christ, it is not unreasonable to think that he might speak also of his Advent of Redemption, And it is to be observed, that his is a signal history in the antediluvian age. We see he was a Prophet; we know also that he was an
* Jude 14, 15.
li^ State of Prophecy
eminent Saint, and God gave a sign to the world in the miracle of his translation. " Enoch walked with God, and he was not, * for God took him*." I argue, that this sign and exhibition of his singular end, besides being a reward to the Saint, had its use in commanding the faith of others to his pro- phecy, whatever that might be ; and whilst his removal to blessedness was itself some presage of the general hope of a future im- mortal state, such a specific miracle causing " that he should not see death," would plainly be a fit counterpart, or confirmation, to any prophecy of his, if such there were, of Christ's coming " to dissolve the Power of deatW 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 trans- mitted in a distinct form to a later age, it is clear that they were meant for the Faith of the age in which they were better known, not of ours to which they have not de- scended. His translation to reward has been
* Genesis, v. 24.
in the Patriarchal Age. 123
a perpetual motive pf hope, and will be so, to the end of thie 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 pro- phecy 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 vindi- cated, 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 in- definiteness, of the older discoveries of pro- phecy will soon be forgotten, in the copious- 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 Pro- phecy, 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 de- termination of things in the world towards the accomplishment of his intended mercy, pro-
124 State of Prophecy
phecy began also to unfold the scheme of that mercy. The free communication of the Gospel promises, bears date with the com- mencement of that system of Providence, in the appointment of a family, a nation, and a temporary covenant, out of which the com- pletion of those promises, in the fulness of time, was ordained to spring. The event was at a distance : but in the first step taken to- wards it, there is a disclosure made ascer- taining the distant design : and the Patriarch,' who is the original Heir of the promises, is made the depositary of those chief informa- tions 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 records of prophecy, we have a preg- nant 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 tradition, inter- cepted in many of its channels by the ruin of the deluge, to cast back upon that period
in the Pairiarchal Age. 125
more favourable and prominent revelations of prophecy, than are hov^ 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 Jev^ish 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 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 pre- dictions ; and whilst the scantiness of early pro- phecy in its actual records is no impeachment to the completeness of the Mosaic Scriptures for every end of our faith and instruction, 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 Re- demption ; that supposed evidence is the use
126 State of Prophecy
of Sacrifice. If the rite of Sacrifice con- veyed 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 pro- phetic 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 precarious in the argument. By the primary fact, I mean, whe- ther 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 ordinance of that type, or prophetic fact. If we admit others not known to be so posi- tively ordained, we shall have nothing but un- certainty in our deductions. That the first Sa- crifice 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
in the Patriarchal Age. 127
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 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, unless 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 pro- phecy as well as interpret it ; and all such speculation, whatever else it may be, is not fit to be committed with the solid evidences of Faith and Religion, or with the history of them.
I conclude by resuming the authentic testi- monies of Prophecy. The dispensation of it was not confined to Abraham. 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 Patriarchs a bond of personal religion. His name and his worship v/ere in- vested with authority and honour among
128 State of Prbphecy
them, whilst Idolatry*, and Corruption f- of life and practice, polluted 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 :|: : this was a present pledge, a sensible evi- dence of the faithfulness of God in all his promises ; 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 convic- tion which they had, not only of his reve- lation, but of his experienced providential care and goodness. " They drank of the " brook in the way." Immediate mercies gua- ranteed the greater in prospect. Such was the service rendered to religion by prophecy in the patriarchal age, the first aera of its more copious promulgation.
* Joshua xxiv. 2. f Genesis, xv. 16. xix.
% Patriarchal History passim.
in the Patriarchal Age. 129
In closing our survey of this period, I would bring together once' more the original por- mise made after the Fall, and the evange- lical promise to Abraham. The first was given when the state of primitive blessedness in Paradise was newly lost ; the other, when the land of Canaan was first promised. The former of these prophecies supplied some hope that the forfeited blessedness was not wholly gone for ever ; but the second, the Gospel promise 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.
K
DISCOURSE III.
PART II.
The State of Prophecy iff the Patriarchal Age^
CONTINUED.
K 2
DISCOURSE III.
PART II.
Genesis xvii. 7.
A7id I will establish my cove7iant between me and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generation, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.
RESUMING the investigation of Prophecy in its predictive 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 themselves, in regard to the seasons at which, or ^he 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 accomplishment. It directed the eye of one age to look forward to the opening de- signs of God : it offered to convince another by the work of his Providence exhibited in their completion. After we shall have seen what it is upon
134 State of Prophecy
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, we exa- mine 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 structure of the scheme of Prophecy, and upon the face of its records, that there is something in it which manifests an extended wisdom, under a co- herence and aptitude of design, which is one point I shall endeavour to establish ; in that case it v^ill 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 origiri of that internal wisdom of design which is discernible 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 Abra- ham is the eera from which Prophecy takes a
in the Patriarchal Age. 135
double, though not a divergent, course ; and that, from that tinie, it is occupied in two general subjects ; first, in predicting the his- tory of his family, the Hebrew people, or of the nations with whom they were con- nected ; secondly, in developing the gospel dispensation. This partition of it is com- plete ; 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 ob- servation, or was connected with the origin or the interests 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 Abraham, those promises of God so often referred to throughout 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 subsequent 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 tho cth^r.
136 State of Prophecy
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 succession and derivative order of Revelation. From his time began that line of the divine oracles, which, first pre- served in his family, and afterwards secured in record, hath never been broken nor lost, but having successively embraced the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospel, is now com- pleted, to remain the lasting and imperish- able 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 and from Noah downwards, till the later inspired Pro- phet, 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 Pa- triarch we enter the visible church which God began to build upon earth, and in that sanctuary the light of Revelation has beei^
in the Palriarchal Age. 137
fixed in its sphere, and has never ceased to burn. Hence it is'^that the inheritance of God's revealed promises 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 bles- '* sed him, and increased him*." In the New Testament the like reference to Abraham is constant.
That we do not mistake in classing the predictions of Prophecy under the two gene- ral heads, and giving to them the application, which I have described, is obvious from the text of the Prophecies themselves, without assuming 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*
* Chap. u. 1, 2,
1 38 State of Prophecy
ceive, and every hearer or reader of them, when first they were given, might perceive the same, that they foreshewed the fortunes and condition of the Hebrew people, their Church and country, whether of good or evil ; or the condition of the states with which they were most connected by vicinage, league, or hostility : or that they foretold the establish- ment of a new dispensation of things, to be effected by the advent of an extraordinary Person, for ends of a religious nature, par- ticularly of Mercy and Redemption ; which is the complex account of the Gospel dis- pensation.
Keeping, therefore, this partition of the subjects of Prophecy in view, and reverting to it as a principle of their order and con- nexion, we may go on to examine Prophecy in its progress ; taking with us the observation which has been made, that the rational expo- sition of it requires that we attend to the seasons and circumstances under which it was given, and endeavour to take some mea- sure of it by its adaptation to them. For it was never given to be an insulated phaeno- menon, nor merely to demonstrate the pre- science of its all-wise Author ; but by Him it
in the Patriarchal Age. 139
was ingrafted upon the exigency of times and persons, and sebved as a light of direc- tion to the attentive observers of it, before the event had set the seal to its truth. Let this reflexion be borne in mind, if I seem to be intent on keeping the thread of Prophecy and of History unifed together. I must add also, that a certain acquaintance w^ith the contents of Scripture must be presumed on the part of my hearers in this branch of our inquiry : without 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 judg- ment in this case, which materials can be de- rived only from the knowledge or examina- tion of the chief document itself, the Scripture volume. Nor is this the only instance wherein our satisfaction, or even our means of judging of the Truth, or Use of Revelation, are made to depend upon some personal study of it. There is cause to think that scepticism itself is often no more than a form of very un- reasonable enthusiasm, demanding conviction without the pains of inquiry.
1. The descendants of Abraham, whilst as
14Q Stale of .Proj)hecy
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 im- plying an exclusive dominion of occupation, thereby circumscribed, his promise, and, as a consequence, separated the people, to whom it was conveyed, 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 country, in Egypt. When therefore the pa- triarch Jacob was driven thither by the ca- sualty of a famine, combined with the seem- ingly fortuitous elevation of one of his sons to be lord of that country, he received by the way the interpretations 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*,"
This prophecy in part repeats, in part
* Genesis xlvi, 2, 3,
in the Patriarchal Age. 141
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 Amo- '* rites is not yet full*." The addition made in the prophecy to Jacob, is to shew that Egypt was to be the land of the last inter- mediate abode, and increase, of his race: a particular which had not been specified be- fore, but was now supplied at the crisis when Jacob was carried thither, under the uncer- tainties of a momentary occasion ; " not know- ing whither he went ;" that is, 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 prepara- tives of its greatness. But the seed of a na- tion, 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
* Genesis xv. 13,
142 State of Prophecy
of moment to observe this historical fact ; be- cause the circumstance in it which looked to be most adverse to the fulfilment of the divine prediction, did eventually conduce to it, and almost prepare the way for it. First of all, their occupation and habits bf life, as Shep- herds, were a reason for a separate place being given to 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 se- lected race in union with itself, and unmin- gled 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 Egyjpt always has been, to the labours of tillage, and the inha- bitants 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 preparing 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
in the Patriarchal Age. 143
his promise, to their land of rest. Prophecy, therefore, seems to Huve 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 predic- tions of its long period of continuance, of the bondage of the adopted race, of their increase, and of their deliverance, and restoration to Canaan, in the power of a great people.
IT. 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 com- prising a variety of determinate particulars. The general scope of his prophecy, how- ever, is this, that it is directed to the land of Canaan, and distributes the Tribes there with a peculiarity of lot, under a geographical re- striction, which makes it clear that the land of Canaan is the field of the prophecy, even if the explanation were not subjoined ; " Be-
144 State of Prophecy
" hold, I die : but God shall be with you, and ^' bring you to the land of our fathers."
The prophecy bears one circumstance in- cluded 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 pro- phecy, The common calculation of humaii life would not have warranted such a pro- mise, at least in any times of the world with which we are acquainted. For if an inheri- tance 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 impro- bable that such a disposition of the inheritance should take effect in all its branches. But here the grant was from the almighty Dis- poser, and Prophecy relied upon intentions not to be defeated*.
* The succession and increase of the human race, however, are of 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 sciisons of the world. God has kept the system of nature in this g'reat instance in his own hands ; witness the disparate longevity of man in different periods since the Creation. And if the term of human life have varied from seven hundred to seventy years, what a
in the Patriarchal Age] 145
Again ; Observe the season when this dis- closure, 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, there- fore, 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 assured to their fathers, and which was still shewn to be the immutable object of the divine donation ; whilst the distri- bution of this patrimony held forth to be
multitude of other phenomena connected with tnc succession and in- crease 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 be in our own under any circumstances whatever of society or life. The same obtained in tlie line of Ishujael. AVc want the suHicient 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 manner to assume, without limit, a perpe- tual uniform action, retrospectively, for the general sy&tem of the world. Since man, in his physical constitution, has undcr«-one such a change, what may not have happened to other parts of the Natural System ?
L
146 State of Prophecy
made among twelve 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 sea- sonable the Patriarch's prophecy was to be- speak his own faith. His death-bed was 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, in the very conjuncture of things, when the course of Providence 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 to- wards the Advent of Christ. This it does in the memorable designation which it makes of the tribe of Judah, and the perpetuity, or
in the Patriarchal Age. 147
prolonged continuance, of the sceptre with that tribe, appointed to extend to the Gospel aera. " 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 prominent revelation of two things : the prolonged duration of some public power of the tribe of Judah, 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. For his prophecy, be it observed, is the first place in Scripture * which exhibits, or implies, the
* His i)rophecy is followed by this significant comment upon it. "All " these are the tivelve tribes of Israel : aud this is that their father " spake unto them, and blessed them, every one according to Ids bless • " ing- he blessed them." — Genesis xlix. 23.
La
148 . State of Prophecy
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 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 tribal constitution.
in. 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 religion grounded on faith, 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
in the Patriarchal Age. 149
the clearest guidance to the Ufe, by an imme- diate present rehance upon the understood purposes of God, were the temporal. It is hot to be denied that the nearer purposes of the divine economy are in this period the most explicitly 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 ; for 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 perfect*."
IV". Concerning the measure of illumina- tion afforded to the Patriarchal, and 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
* [Jebr, xi, 43,
150 State of Prophecy
use in furnishing a guidance to the minds of men, according to the Hght which it con- veys. 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, a 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 exercise 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 also right to think that some were more enlighten- ed than others, and taught to see further into the truths partially revealed. For these de- grees 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 subject to be measured.
But upon the whole, we shall take our opi- nions of the comparative illumination of pro-
in the Patriarchal Age. 151
phecy, 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 im- proved 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 desires and hopes, proportioned to the cravings of their own exalted piety. In the actual contents of Patriarchal prophecy, however, the temporal subject takes by far the precedence, 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 sub- sist in the distribution of the light of pro- phecy, and the succession of the Mosaic and the Christian covenants. For patriarchal pro- phecy is to the covenant of Canaan the same beacon of light which later prophecy is to the Christian covenant. Not only the pro- mise of Canaan in the antecedent prophecy is
152 State of Prophecy
most explicit, but 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 pe- riod of time prefixed in each case. The many varied predictions of patriarchal prophecy still tend to Canaan, as the predictions of later pro- phecy centre in the Gospel. Thegeneral ana- logy 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 subse- quent 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 per- ceive in these two principal members of pro- phecy. The later is full of prediction, not merely of the Gospel, but of the Messiah, His person. His nature, His works, and every note of his character. In short. Pro- phecy delineates the second covenant, and the Founder of it. Not so in Patriarchal
in the Patriarchal Age. 153
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 mes- diator, 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 si- lence 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 *." But the point in hand is, that Prophecy has adequately ex- pressed this distinction.
It would be obvious to insist here again on the integrity of this first divine Messen- ger, " 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 predictions concerning the land of Canaan, which he has prefixed to the history of his law and ministry, not a word of prophecy be found calculated to draw atten-
t Hcb iii, 5;
154 State of Prophecy in the Patriarchal age.
tion to his own person, character or mission, no auxiUary oracle to aid his pretensions or office, we shall be obliged to acknowledge his abstinence from the use of an advantage- ous 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 Ca- naan ; but it penetrated beyond, to the Re- deemer ; which anterior notices of him, pre- ceding 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 *."
* Luke ii. 70.
DISCOURSE IV.
State of Prophecy contemporary WITH THE Promulgation of THE Mosaic Law.
DISCOURSE IV.
STATE OF PROPHECY CONTEMPORARY WITH THE PROMUL- GATION OF THE MOSAIC LAW.
DeUT. XVIII. 15.
The Lord tluj God will raise up unto thee a Prophet 'from the midst of thee, of thy brethre?!, like unto me: unto him ye shall hearken.
HAVING brought the consideration of Pro- phecy 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 Providence 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.
158 State of Prophecy contem'porary with
But on moving upon this line of the pro- phetic history, I shall find it necessary to enter into some discussion concerning the Mosaic Law itself: for, except upon some clear and definite ideas of its nature and con- stitution, it will be impossible to treat sin- cerely of the state of prophecy concurrent with it. The principles of that Law there- fore, its Sanctions, and its Types, will come under consideration ; and some of the ques- tions which have been raised on these points will be examined. And, as the result of such preliminary discussion, I propose to deduce the true and determinate relation subsisting between Prophecy 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 in- dulgence to a course of argument, which in some points may appear digressive, but is in truth directed throughout to the single object of elucidating the state of Prophecy, and its use, I go on with the prophetic subject.
I. Four hundred years had been foretold to Abraham, as the term of the abode ap-
the Promulgation of the Mosaic Law. 159
pointed 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 * ;" nor did the persecution of their Egyptian 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 -j-.'*
This persecution of bondage, which was enforced with an unsparing hand, because with the rigour of a declared policy J, 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, throughout 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 suff'erings, by the grati- fication it afforded to the meaner appetites,
* Acts vii. 17. t Exod. i. 12. % Exod. i. 10.
160 State of PropheGy cordem.'porary with
which under the debasing 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, we have their manner of spirit significantly given : " in their heart they turned back into Egypt ; starting aside like a broken bow*." 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 wit- nesses to it in the same degree. It had fore- told 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 vindi- cation wrought by the God of Israel in his
* Psalm Ixxviii. 57.
the Promulgation of the Mosaic LaW. 161
own cause : first, in pursuance of his covenant of mercy to his people, Ito which covenant a con- stant reference is made through this scene of his doings ; secondly, to the confusion of " the gods of Egypt," and the impieties of false re- ligion in the person of his idolatrous enemies, and to the overthrow of that obstinate pride of unbelief which defying his commands, given in behalf of his people, opposed itself to the most sufficient evidence of 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, un- belief, pride, false religion, were arrayed on the one part. On the other, miracles, which had failed to convince, were multiplied to sub- due ; and the issue of these miracles was in the fulfilment of an engagement of prophecy, in the judgment of the oppressor, and the rescue of the chosen people from their ignoble cap- tivity and affliction of bondage. For so to Abraham it had been foretold, " Know of a " surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in " a land that is not theirs, and shall serve " them ; and they shall afflict them four hun-
M
162 State of Prophecy contemporary witk
" dred years. And also that nation whom " they shall serve will I judge, and after- " wards they shall come out with great sub- " stance**"
II. Subsequently to the departure from Egypt, but before the entrance into Canaan, the promulgation of the Law was inter- posed. The rescued people were at large ; they were disengaged, as much as men could be, from the holdings of local or civil con- nexion; in that sense they were ready to receive an entire body of civil laws and polity, if there should be an adequate autho- rity 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 'prin- ciples from the impieties of a surrounding domi« nant 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
* Genesis, xxv. 14.
the Promulgation of the Mosaic Laiv. 163
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 unoccupied and de- tached ; though the taint of corruption they had imbibed in Egypt was never wholly purged away ; and God, without doing vio- lence to their moral state, supplied what else was wanting, the wisdom of framing their law, and the authority of imposing it : the very reception of which law, under such circumstances, would itself have been the great miracle, had others been wanting to attest that law, and to enforce it.
But the preceding miracles of Egypt ushered in the act of divine Legislature. They were its credentials ; they established it in its principle, and in its whole autho- rity. Its principle was the confession of the unity of God, and of his sovereignty, as the exclusive object of obedience and of worship. The miracles of Egypt were the
M 2
" 164 State of Prophecy contemporary with
direct and sensible vindication of this his sovereign character, and they clothed his delegated Messenger and Prophet with the authority required for the admission of his law. Those works of power were therefore to the children of Israel the palpable proofs of the One true God whom they were to serve, and the credentials of the law under which they were to serve him. What had been fire to consume their enemies was light to them. And such, perhaps, we may infer to have been the adequate and ulti- mate purpose of those signs and wonders, which, being simply neither for destruction, nor deliverance, but including both, were intended to consign in indehble characters, and with an irresistible force, the truth and divine origin of the dispensation about to be revealed. For the signs of God have a bear- ing upon some law of faith, or doctrine of obedience. He works Miracles to give force to Truth. So it was in the wonders of Egypt, the prelude to his Law ; so it was in the wonders of the Wilderness, which crowded round its promulgation.
III. The Law was given in its several
the Promulgation of the Mosaic Law. 165
branches, moral, civil, and ceremonial. First, in the order, as in worth, came the Moral Law, in the comprehensive rule of the Ten Com- mandments, with other precepts of essential duty connected with it ; next the digest of their Civil government ; lastly, the complex code of their Priesthood, Ritual, and Worship. Under this complete regimen of an inspired law, dictated in all its parts, they took pos- session of the promised land, through the overthrow of its inhabitants ; whom their loathsome and obdurate wickedness, ripened to the full, had doomed, under a judicial sen- tence, to extirpation. On which side soever the Israelites looked, whether behind them or before, to Egypt, or to the Wilderness, or to Canaan, they beheld in all that befel their enemies, and in all that was done for themselves, the manifestation of supernatural power, enforcing by a proportionate evidence the obligations of the singular covenant under which they were placed. Such was their law, and such the establishment of it. — But next of the peculiar Sanctions wherewith it was enforced.
IV. The sanctions of this covenant were-
166 State of Prophecy eontemporary with
Temporal. The blessings of Canaan, and the plagues of the present world, are the system of reward and punishment which the wisdom of God thought fit to bind upon it. No other sanctions, none acknowledged and expressed, are to be found associated with its enact- ments, to ratify them in the publication, or in the observance. Large and general de- clarations there are, interspersed throughout the books of the law, of the rewarding good- ness and favour of God, and of the intensity of his dipleasure upon disobedience ; the force of which is to create indefinite hopes and fears, under an extent, which, as God had not limited, so neither could man presume to do so. But positive stipulations there are none, save the temporal. " The law of *^ of Moses, whose endearment was nothing " but temporal goods and transient evils, could '« never make the comers thereunto perfect ;" says Bishop Taylor, in his Sermon on the Evangelical righteousness described. Or, if we choose to take the judgment of one of the most exact and faithful explorers of scriptural theology, let it be that of the memorable Hales. " If we look into the Jew's common- ** wealth, and consider the letter of Mose
ihe Promulgafion of the Mosaic Law. 167
^* law, they may seem not only to have a direct ^* promise of temporal felicity, but of no " other save that. For in the law God gives ^* to Moses the dispensation of no other but ** temporal blessings and cursings. In the xxvi " of Leviticus, and xxviii of Deuteronomy, ** where God seems to strive with all possible " efficacy to express himself in both kinds, ** there is not a line concerning that which '* should betide them at their ends ; all their ** weal, all their woe, seemed to expire with ?* their lives*." To the accuracy of which re- presentation nothing can be added.
In this quality of the sanctions of the Mo- saic Law we mark a prominent example of that difference, which the whole tenour of scripture commands us to confess, as subsist- ing between the Jewish and the Christian covenants: the Christian being founded on " the better promises ;" and Moses, as the fact proves, having had no commandment to inscribe in his law the doctrine, or promise in it, the reward, of eternal life, which it is the privilege of Christ openly to promise, as it
* Hales' Reraains, p. 238. Augustine h»s occasionally expressed tlio same ideas. — See in particular Tractat, xxx. in Evangel. Joannis,
168 State of Prophecy contemporary/ with
is his gift to bestow : a subordination of in- feriority in the Law to the Gospel, which is consistent with every other comparison we can make between them. But as a future eternal state is not made the sanction of the law of Moses, so neither is the doctrine of it made an explicit revelation either in the Law, or any other part of the Pentateuch. The text cannot be produced which simply de- clares it ; and that none such exists, is evinced, or, confirmed, by the discourse of our Saviour in his refutation of the Sadducees. For when, in proof of the resurrection of the dead, he referred those deniers of it to Moses, calling the Lord " the God of Abraham, the God of " Isaac, and the God of Jacob," we must sup- pose that he selected this text as one of the most forcible and clearest of the book of the law, capable of imparting the knowledge of a resurrection and a future state. But since he deduced that knowledge from thence by an implication, is it not a certain sign that the doctrine was not to be found there expressed? His own just and emphatic reasoning esta- blishes the truth in question by this medium ; '* God is not the God of the dead, but of the " living," By the aid ofhis illuminating reason,
the Promulgation of the Mosaic Law. 169
we perceive the truth deduced. But who will say that the same tftith could have been in- ferred as a clear, infallible consequence, with- out his reason to derive it ? Suppose his me- dium of explication withdrawn, how few could have supplied it ? At the most, since the doc* trine was to be had only by being so inferred, we must gnant it was no article of the express Mosaic revelation. It lay indeed in its ele- ments of proof; but then it has been one office of Christ, and his greater revelation, to enable us to understand many things con- tained in the first. The Sadducee erred cul- pably by his denial of the truth ; yet there is a wide interval between his offence in the de- nial, and the certainty of knowledge founded on a direct revelation. Within that interval the evidence of the doctrine had its range ; till the fulness of truth came, and turned the twilight of Jewish hope into the splendour of the Christian. Meanwhile, the hope which was afforded, it was the depravity of some to cast away, and the piety of others to cherish and embrace. Such, I apprehend, is the true state of the evidence on this subject in the Mosaic revelation.
170 State of Prophecy contemporary with
- But here a cloud of controversy has been raised. The absence of the doctrine of a Fu- ture Eternal State from the sanctions of the Mosaic Law has given to the unbeliever a topic of objection ; to others, occasion of scruple and uneasiness. As an argument of objection to the authority of the Mosaic Law, it has been more than repelled by the great Writer, whose name will always be remembered, when the Divine Legation of Moses is called in question on this ground. But I am not certain that this eminent person has directed the force of his mind with equal assiduity and patience so on the other side, to satisfy, or remove, the scruple existing there. Since Prophecy is connected throughout with the course of revealed religion, and the state of it contemporary with the law can never be understood, without a settled and precise view of the law itself, as to its character and stipulations, I am unwilling to pass this disturbed point without endeavour- ing to clear my way through the difficulties which are thought to press upon it. The following considerations, therefore, are offered to the abatement of that scruple which the pure temporal rewards and punishments of
the Promulgation of the Mosaic Law. 171
the law have created in minds whose satis- faction deserves the most to be consulted.
Some of the uneasiness resulting to the piety of believers from the quality of the Mosaic sanctions, probably arises from a mis- taken view either of the principle of moral obli- gation, or of the moral value of motives, se- conding that obligation, as compared with the obligation itself. Now the religionist should consider that the obligation of man to obedience under the divine law, does not rest upon any specific pledge, or institution, of reward, or punishment, at all. It rests upon this, the knowledge of the divine will im- posed; consequent to which is the duty of obedience. The relation of man to God, as his Creator and Sovereign Lord, is the imme- diate reason and principle of duty ; and the perception of this relation is the evidence of the duty. It is essentially a part of our reasonable nature in looking to God, to confess his title to our service ; without staying to inquire " what profit is there that we should serve him?" And although this sense of our reasonable nature is weak, and not to be intrusted with the whole interest of our duty, yet it is really a principle, and
172 State of Prophecy contemporary with
always to be acknowledged as such, in weigh- ing the just claims of our Creator, and in cul- tivating our habits of duty. It is true, the conviction of a rule of reward and punishment is necessary to the practical support of human obedience, as the rule itself is essential to the divine law, according to the decision of the Apostle, " he that cometh to God must believe " that he is a rewarder of them that diligently " seek him." But this conviction of reward and punishment is not separable from our ideas of God, and all religion whatever ; and still less is it separable from the act of God's own publication of his law. Consequently the publication of the divine law carries with it, under every form, an obligation complete. The duty is perfect, whenever the will is known. That the Jewish religion had this principle in its fullest extent, is certain. No law ever spoke more forcibly its authority. The very act of its publication was in mi- racle. The thunders and lightnings of Sinai were its ratification.
Now although we can never esteem too highly the great mercy of God revealed in the Christian Covenant, and the excellence of the reward therein proposed to our faith and
ihe Promulgation of the Mosaic Law. 173
duty, yet it is the piety and virtue of mind directed to Him aS the object of homage and obedience, that gives to our action what- ever degree of rectitude it can have. To know and to serve him, that is rehgion, whether it be with a view to the present hfe, or to the next, and whatever inducements or encouragements he may choose to supply. The greatest rewards of endless felicity sought, or expected, in any other service than his, cannot consecrate that service, nor make it a part of essential religion. For this reason, an upright observer of the Mosaic law, look- ing to God and his command, had more virtue than the votary of a false religion, who might seek a Pagan Elysium, or a Mahometan Para- dise, for the retribution of his practice, or his worship : And a virtuous man, conforming to his conscience as to the will of God, has his virtue in that conformity, whether he know of any distinct reward or not.
It follows as a consequence from this prin- ciple of obligation, that neither the particular measure of the reward proposed, nor the in- definiteness of it, can affect the integrity of the obligation itself. When it was said to Abraham, " I am thy shield, and thy exceed- *' ing great reward," that general promise of
174 State of Prophecy contemporary with
the divine favour v^as