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cure her by prayer and fasting, and the like.”—“ Take care, Mr. Wesley," he remarked, " of what you are about; you want, I perceive, to support your new religion by the force of miracles; but if you once set up for working miracles, the people will flock to you from all quarters, they will meet you in the streets and highways as they did our Saviour; and perhaps they may take you short, so that you may lose more than you will gain by pretending to work miracles." He could not credit Mr. Wesley's story about the woman with the devil in her belly; and this gentleman thought it better to send her home to her own country without attempting to take the devil out of her.

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However, if we can believe what he tells us in his journals, he has been very successful in effecting some cures of this sort. He went once, as he informs us (3d Jour. p. 95) to see a woman in this melancholy state; and when he got to her, stoutly asked the devil, how he dare to enter into a Christian? On which the devil spoke thus to him out of her belly," she is not a Christian; she is mine." But Mr. Wesley soon forced him to shift his quarters. Risum teneatis amici ?

Mr Skelton, in his conversation with him, talked lightly of the common stories we hear about ghosts and devils; and mentioned to him, in a ludicrous way, that some people in one of his parishes, who were wrong in the head, imagined they were haunted by these. But Mr. Wesley, he said, was very grave, and did not seem willing to join in the joke. He would, indeed, have been inconsistent with himself if he had; for there was scarce a Magazine he put out, that had not some marvellous story in it of this kind. Yet he probably considered these and the like as so many pious frauds necessary to serve the cause of Methodism, which usually has most

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effect on weak minds. And indeed it is but reasonable to think, that this extraordinary man had too much good sense to believe the gross absurdities he countenanced by his authority. But what then are we to think of his principle?

"I shall not, I hope," says Mr. Burdy, "be accused of weakness by quoting a part of a letter I received from Mr. Skelton, especially as it contains a general advice to every young clergyman on undertaking the care of a parish."

"You see how I am made accountable for you to Lord; but pray consider, how awfully and even fearfully I am made accountable for you to an infinitely greater Lord. Let therefore a warm zeal animate you to the service and glory of God, and to the salvation of souls. Let the wisdom of the serpent and the innocence of the dove direct all your exertions. Let your words be few, slow, and articulate, that the hearer, whether in church or company, may have no trouble in taking your meaning, nor have occasion to find fault with it when he understands it. Maturely consider that Lord Dean and many others, before whom you are to appear, have a thousand times more sense than you. Think, therefore, before you speak, and speak but little, enough for the occasion, whatever it may be, and not a syllable more. God direct and bless you."

It was indeed with propriety he prescribed to others, who was himself so eminent for his abilities in the pulpit, and his eonduct in private life.

About the end of the same year, his ears were stunned with the fame of the pulpit orator Dr. Peckwell, who preached through Dublin, in meeting-houses, methodisthouses, and churches. Crowds followed after him,' enticed by novelty, as he preached without notes, which

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is a sure way of captivating the multitude, who are always taken with strange appearances. Mr. Skelton, who heard him in Bride's church, though he complimented him when he had finished, on the orthodoxy of his. sermon, said afterwards; "when I looked at him, I saw his arms, from my seat under the pulpit, moving over my head like the arms of a wind-mill." About three months after, the doctor sent him from England a sermon he had just then published, the merits of which were indeed small. But a cold phlegmatic reader is not so easily pleased as a hearer, who is warmed and captivated by the voice, gesticulation, and countenance of the extempore preacher. Adde vultum, habitumque hominis. [To be continued.]

SACRED CRITICISM. No. XVIII.

A CRITIQUE ON OUR LORD's PROPHECIES.

Matt. XXIII. XXIV. XXV.

PART II.

(Continued from Vol. V. page 349.)

TO THE EDITORS OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCHMAN'S

GENTLEMEN,

YOUR

MAGAZINE.

OUR “youthful" correspondent JUVENIS, in the course of his hardy and adventurous excursions into the abstrusest regions of chronological prophecy, has revived and extended an old hypothesis respecting the signification and termination of Daniel's grand prophetic period of 2300 days; decidedly militating against the interpretation I have endeavoured to establish, and

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utterly repugnant, I conceive, to the SCRIPTURE of TRUTH. Upon both accounts, therefore, it becomes my bounden duty, to examine and expose its insufficiency; however irksome it may be in the chase, to turn back upon the foil; or to interrupt the investigation of fresh truth, by retracing the mazes of exploded errors; which, (from a wish to avoid protracting my communications to an unnecessary length, and studious of conciseness, as much as the nature of criticism meant to be exhaustive, would admit) I declined producing before, only to refute. The present task however, will not, I trust, be altogether unprofitable to younger Biblical students, nor unacceptable even to Juvenis himself; whose commendable modesty, and well founded diffidence, led him to "request the favour of you, Gentlemen, to correct or omit any passages, which may appear to you fanciful or incorrect:" -a request, to which, I presume, your many avocations did not allow you leisure to attend.

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Among the brood of "quick" but crude "conceptions," to which your editorial indulgence has afforded easy" though premature "delivery;" the publication of which would, in kindness to him, have much better been "suppressed till the ninth year;" JUVENIS has supposed (Vol. V. pp. 227, 257)

1. That 2300 evenings and mornings may signify but half that number of days: 2. that by days are meant [Chaidean] years, each of 360 days; and therefore, that the two periods [2300 and 1150] may be equal to 2268 and 1134 Julian years respectively: 3. that they may admit of several terminations, either A. D. 1167, or A. D. 1715, or A. D. 1800: and, 4. that nothing has tended more to elucidate SCRIPTURE, than the discovery, that the PROPHECIES have manifold accomplishments.

Vol VI. Churchm. Mag. Feb. 1804. Is

The

The original source of this hypothesis, in its first branch, (of which I believe Camerarius was the first inventor), may be traced up to a radical error of the great Jewish historian Josephus*; who, in his interpretation of Daniel's vision of the Ram and He-goat, chap. 8., conjectured, that both "the little horn," verse 9, and “the king of fierce countenance," verse 23, denoted Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, the great oppressor of the Jews, and spoiler and profaner of their temple. But although there may be some traits of resemblance between

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* Josephus, after describing the “ four horns that sprang up out of the Macedo-Grecian empire, after Alexander's death observes:

Εξ αυτών δ' ανασχειν και άλλο μικρότερον, ανεγραψεν ὁ αύξησαν, ελεγεν αυτω ταυτα επιδεικνυς πιδεικνυς Θεος, πολεμήσειν αυτό το έθνος, και την πολιν αιξεσειν κατα κξατο, και συγχειν τα περι τον ναόν, και τας θυσιας κωλύσειν γενέσθαι, εφ' ἡμέρας χιλίας διακοσίας ενηκούλα έξι

« Daniel wrote also, that out of these would arise another little horn ; which, when it encreased, the God who shewed him these things, told him, would war against his nation, and take the city by storm, and pollute the sanctuary, and prevent the celebration of the sacrifices for 1296 days."

And that Josephus understood this little horn to denote Antiochus, is evident from his explanation shortly after:

Γενεσθαι δι' εκ τέτων τινα βασιλέα, τον εκπολεμεσονία το τε εθνΘ και τες νόμες αυτών, και την κατ' αυτές αφαιρησομενον πολιτείαν, και συλησολα τον ναόν, και τας θυσίας επ' ετη τρια κωλυσονία επιτελεσθηναι και δη ταυτα ήμων συνεβη τω εθνει παθειν ὑπ ̓ Αντίοχε το Επιφανες, καθώς εἶδεν ὁ Δανιηλο, και πολλοίς έτεσιν εμπροσθεν ανέγραψε τα γενησομενα.

"And that out of these would proceed a certain king, who should war against both their nation and laws; and should take away their polity, and plunder the sanctuary, and prevent the sacrifices from being performed for three years: and truly it happened that our nation suffered all these things, under Antiochus Epiphanes; according as Daniel saw and foretold, many years before they were to come to pass.” Joseph. Ant. x, 11, 7. pp. 445, 446. Hudson. Compare p. 540.

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