have followed him, that it was THE ANCIENT BOOKS OF THE PRIESTS, AND THE SACRED WRITINGS.

How clear and powerful a light this expectation throws upon our interpretation of the prophecies, which limit the time of the advent, need not be said. It is nothing less than showing that this was the interpretation of the Jews, at the very age of their fulfilment. Nor do I know whether the Jews bear a stronger testimony to our Lord, in what they thought rightly, or in what they erred. As to the period of his appearance, they were correct, and as time is a

mere

matter of fact, a thing not dependent on the temper, the traces of it ought to have been, as indeed they were, so clear, that they could not be mistaken. Could any other period of history be pointed out, in which the expectation of the immediate appearance of the Messiah began and became universal, it would be a strong argument against Christianity. It is well known that none such can, that the period of our Saviour's life was the first in which impostors rose, and that the publick expectation pointed to it, as the age of the predicted deliverer. But the Jews went no farther, than to understand the time in which their Messiah was to appear. What his character was to be, was a moral question, and all the passions and prejudices which influence the heart, and all the peculiar circum

That impostors have appeared in all the subsequent ages, is no objection to this reason, for truth ever begets its counterfeit.

stances in which the Jews were placed,* would have their operation in perverting the publick notion of the Messiah. What though he was promised as a religious teacher, they were wicked and corrupt, and such a character had no attraction in their eyes! They were also subjected and oppressed, and in the bitterness of their hearts, they thought they wanted a warrior to deliver them, a prince to marshall and avenge them. Hence what was plainly revealed, they perverted; and whereas much of prophecy is obscure, and (according to one of their own fundamental traditions,) not to be fully understood till the event, they placed upon it the interpretation, which the pressing emergency suggested; and formed by degrees the imagination of a Messiah, for whom they could mistake such wretches as the Gaulonite and the Egyptian. The last were by all confession, impostors; and they took the course which impostors naturally take. They availed themselves of the publick expectation, which was fixed on the predicted personage, and thought by seizing this tide of opinion and passion to move forward with a momentum, which might afterwards make them independent alike of popular fayour and aid. Why did not Jesus of Nazareth, if an impostor, take the same course, and

* The remark of Tacitus loses none of its force in applying it to this occasion. "Sed vulgus, more humanæ cupidinis, sibi tantam fatorum magnitudinem interpretati, ne adversis quidem AD VERA m'tabantur." Hist. v. § 13.

meet the same fortune? Where could he have gained even the idea of a character like his own, if it was not that the scriptures suggested such an one to those who searched them with a mind unbiassed by the publick prejudices? This departure from the prevailing notion is therefore a strong testimony to the sincerity of our Saviour's pretensions.* But the most important inference to be collected from the facts which this chapter contains, is the following: that at the age of Christ a firm opinion, and of old standing, prevailed among the Jews, and had by them become notorious throughout the world, that the long expected personage promised in the sacred oracles, was to appear. This is therefore the interpretation given by the Jews, to the prophecies which regard the time of the Messiah's advent, while they were yet unprejudiced. is their interpretation of their own oracles, at the only age, in which they will pretend themselves that they could have been free from the operation of antichristian principles, and at which they were left to collect the natural sense of the scripture. Is there not then, must it not be allowed that there is, a violent presumption, that this interpretation is true, and that this was really the period, at which the Messiah was to appear? And does not this presumption rise into certainty when it is

It

* This argument is most forcibly stated in the eloquent and excellent Sermons on Infidelity by Rev. Mr. Channing, p. 16, et

seq.

added, that at this very time a personage did appear, of high and uncommon pretensions, alleging himself to be this expected Messiah, and establishing a religion, which has spread from nation to nation, and from shore to shore, till it is professed by all that is learned, and civilized, and refined, in the world. I do not say, that this single correspondence of the success of our Saviour with the expectations built on prophecy, is enough to prove the divinity of the religion; but I do say, that combined with other evidences of Christianity, it ought to satisfy the mind, and especially that it ought to put to rest all doubt on the subject of evidence from prophecy, and to convince the Christian, that he has "found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write."

CHAPTER V.

HAVING thus treated the argument from prophecy, and vindicated the predictions fulfilled in our Saviour, from the objections of Mr. English, I proceed to consider a subject alluded to already,* that of Quotations.This is the name given to certain passages, quoted from the Old Testament, and applied to events and occasions in the New, to which they had not original reference; and upon these were founded all that was important, in Collins' Grounds and Reasons, and which Mr. English has transcribed from that work. This writer maintained, that the evangelists rested the proof of Christianity on the alleged fulfilment of these passages, which they quoted as prophetical from the Old Testament, but which are found upon examining the context in which they there stand, to refer to different events; sometimes to be merely historical, and to have no reference to the future. Now, we should stop here to correct a fundamental Page 83.

*

† Of Collins' work nearly a fifth is occupied in a preface, maintaining the right of free discussion, and containing a vindication, half ironical, of Whiston. Nearly two thirds of the remainder of the work is taken up with an examination of Whiston's system.