sition that a miracle can be wrought to testify to a falsehood, yet his sentiment is one that I am far from disputing, viz. that miraculous testimony cannot prove that Jesus was the predicted Messiah, if no Messiah was predicted. This however, as we shall presently more distinctly see, is a very different thing from maintaining that the miracles "have nothing to do" with the Messiahship, and that this can be proved only from the Old Testament. For the truth is, that the suppositions made by Dr. Sykes and Mr. English are different in their nature. Dr. Sykes says, that miracles could not prove Christ to be the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament, if none were foretold; but Mr. English says, that they could not prove him to be the foretold Messiah, if he were, that is, if he appeared to us to be, a different personage from the one foretold. The difference, and it is highly important, is, that in Dr. Sykes' case, it is hardly possible we should mistake in the fact, whether a Messiah were foretold or not; but in Mr. English's case it is not only possible, but very conformable to experience, that we should mistake in the interpretation of the particular character. Agreeably to this Dr. Sykes proceeds in his work, not to show directly, as might be supposed from Mr. English's intimations, that the prophecies of the Messiah were fulfilled, in the person of Christ, but first that there were predictions of a Messiah in the Old Testament, and second, that Jesus applied them to him

self, pretending that they were fulfilled in himself, and third, that this pretension was just. Now when he comes to this third point, and inquires "how Jesus proved himself to be the Christ, or the Messiah, or the Son of man," the reader will be surprised no doubt to find, in variance with Mr. English's emphatic and repeated assertion, that Dr. Sykes appeals directly and solely to the miracles of the Saviour. And after many remarks to which I earnestly refer the reader,* he adds, "But then I have shown at large, that a Messiah was foretold in the Old Testament. Miracles will therefore prove the claim of him who does them to that title, if he pretends to it, or else we must lay aside all notions of the being of God as a Governor and Director of this world. And consequently since Jesus worked miracles, and assumed to himself the title of the Messiah, his claim was just and indisputable."+ "It will thus be seen, that though the evidence of miracles is applied by him to the proof of Christianity in a manner different from that of some others, from whom Dr. Sykes expresses his dissent, yet that this is ultimately the sole evidence on which he relies, and the medium through which he makes the evidence of prophecy bear upon Christianity. So too Mr. English has hastily adduced the authority of Jeffreys, as patronising his opinion, that miracles have nothing to do with this question. Jeffreys ob

Essay on the Truth of the Christian Religion, p. 120-134, 2d edition.

† Ibid.. p. 134.

serves indeed in his introductory chapter, to which it is possible that Mr. English limited his notice, that he soon submitted to the clear evidence produced by Collins, that miracles are not of themselves a sufficient proof of Christianity."* Even this I apprehend is not enough to authorise the loose and declamatory assertion, that this author also allowed that miracles have nothing to do with the question; but had Mr. English continued his perusal a little further, he would have met with this passage, "That prophecies could be NO OTH ERWISE direct proofs of Christianity, than as they were miraculous, and so discovered the divine interposition in behalf of the gospel;" and a little farther the author's opinion is yet more distinctly expressed, "What the apostles preached to the Gentiles, and what, upon their receiving, they were baptized, and admitted into the Christian church, was the gospel; but this they received on the evidence of miracles, and the gifts of the Spirit, as it is indeed capable of no other evidence, and such a faith as this engages to the entire practice of Christianity.The additional evidence of prophecy, which they would learn afterwards would, if any at all, be very slender, compared with the other of miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, upon which they had before received the gospel. These were the proper direct proofs of Christianity, and are always proposed as such by * Jeffreys' Review, p. 69.

the apostles, and it is remarkable, as I have shewn throughout the Acts, that there is not one direct proof for Christianity brought from prophecies by the apostles; so that indeed prophecies were not made use of as the first proof to the Jews, and the last to the Gentiles, (as Dr. Sherlock had thought,) but were never made use of as a direct proof of Christianity to either Jews or Gentiles."*

It is a matter of deep regret that Mr. English should have viewed in so different a light the reasonings of these authors on so important a branch of the controversy, and in direct reply to one of his principal sources, the work of Collins.

But it may be asked, notwithstanding, whether the demand to have the inquiry confined to prophetical testimony is not just; although it be not sanctioned by Dr. Sykes and Mr. Jeffreys. And to this question I answer in the negative. First, because it is a sort of intellectual romance, and piece of rashness, to confine yourself to one kind of evidence, while a second is accessible, and that so convincing and so irresistible as the immediate testimony of God. And next the evidence of prophecy is more remote, by at least one degree, than that of miracles; for you must not only establish the historical fact, that the prophecy was made and subsequently fulfilled, but the forensick fact, that your interpretation of it is correct. This last process is of course involv. Jeffreys' Review, p. 83.

ed in the difficulties attendant on a language imperfectly known, and a style of writing imperfectly understood. And these difficulties are so great, that the Jews have differed among themselves as much almost as they have from the Christians, in expounding the prophecies of the Messiah, as will hereafter appear. But if a miracle is pretended to be wrought, we either see it or receive it on historical evidence. If it is addressed directly to us, we have only to ask our senses whether it be real. If we receive it upon historical evidence, we have only to examine the evidence, and see if it be satisfactory. The process in either case has but one step; having settled the reality of the miracle, we settle the interference of the hand of God; and the certainty of the veracity of the worker. If it be said, with Hume, that a miracle cannot be proved to have been wrought, it can be answered, that it can be proved as much as that a prophecy should have been made and fulfilled. For that a blind man should be restored to sight, by a word, is in itself a thing no more incapable of proof, than that one should now describe persons and events, which are to come to pass five hundred years hence. A prophecy is in fact a miracle; it is a supernatural work be

Jeffreys remarks, that "properly speaking, the evidence of Christ's being the [expected] prophet was not the mere agreement with the prophetic characters, (for the agreement with those characters, which are not miraculous, was no evidence at all,) but the agreement only with those characters which were miraculous, as the resurrection, i. e. indeed it was not the ac