Mighty and the Nobles of this world are aftonished, 'when they are told there will foon be a Great

Change. This celebrated German, it will perhaps be thought, was fomewhat premature, when he stated this astonishment to have taken place at the time he wrote 20. But as applied to the present æra his statement seems perfectly correct. The materials of a Great Change in the European world are already collected; and rapid is their increase. At length the period is arrived, when all the plunderers of mankind, however difcriminated by titles or offices, feel alternate emotions of astonishment and terror; and are seriously apprehenfive of being buried under the foundation of a Mighty Revolution.

19 Int. to the Apoc. ut fupra, p. 326.

His Expofition was published in 1740.

CHAPTER XIX.

ON PROPHECY IN GENERAL, AND THE HEBREW PROPHETS IN PARTICULAR.

ITHERTO I have been principally employed in citing extracts, or fuggefting thoughts, illuftrative of the apocalyptic predictions. But as a confiderable number of those, which occur in the chapters immediately fucceeding, and in the subsequent part of the work, are taken either from Daniel, or from Isaiah, or from fome other prophetic writer of the Jewish difpenfation, I have concluded, that fome extracts, relative to the Hebrew prophets, and to prophecy in general, may

be

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be properly introduced, and that this part of the work furnishes a convenient place for their infertion. Had fo large an affemblage of general obfervations been introduced in the beginning of the work, and added to thofe, relative to the apocalypfe, which are brought forward in the iiid and ivth chapters, I should have been apprehensive, left a confiderable proportion of my readers, being principally folicitous to penetrate the import of particular prophecies, would have neglected to betow upon them that degree of attention which they juftly claim.

To know future events,' fays Dr. Sykes, and to be ' able to foretell them, is not, cannot be the effect of study, or peculiar temperature of body; it cannot be ⚫ taught in schools, fince it depends upon an infinity of ⚫ free contingent actions, which he alone who governs all things can direct or forefee. If, therefore, events have been forefeen and foretold, at fuch diftance of time, as excludes the knowledge of human minds, and 'the powers of their conjectures, it must be owing to 'divine influence, and to that alone'.'

There are, it may be observed, several propofitions, to prove any one of which, would be to prove the nonexistence of prophecy. But then these propofitions are fo unreasonable, fo unfounded, that to give a fimple statement of them will be fufficient to convince the honest inquirer, that they are completely incapable of proof. If Collins, in his work against prophecy,' would have acted the part of a fair and reasonable adversary, he fhould,' fays Dr. Samuel Chandler, have proved prophecy an impoffible thing; either that there is no God; or that if there is, he doth not concern himself about the affairs of nations and kingdoms; or that if

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·Principles and Connexion of Nat, and Rev. Rel. p. 176.

' he doth, he knows nothing before it comes to pass; or that he hath no wife purposes to answer by over-ruling the affairs of the world, and executing the purposes of his own good pleasure; or that if he hath, he cannot 'discover these purposes to men; or that if he could, there is no wife and kind purpose to be answered by 'fuch a revelation; or that if there is, those to whom he • vouchsafes a revelation cannot difcover it to others".'

Referving all the other general obfervations on prophecy to a fubfequent part of the chapter, I fhall here introduce those extracts, which respect the authenticity of the Hebrew scriptures.

By the subsistence of the Jewish people at this time,' fays Dr. Lardner, 'all are affured of the antiquity and genuineness of the scriptures of the Old Teftament. 'These are received by them, and read in their fynagogues and they allow, that therein are contained promifes of a great and eminent deliverer. None 'therefore can pretend, that the fcriptures, so often appealed to by Christ and his apostles, are forgeries of 'Chriftians3.'

'There can,' fays Dr. Prieftley, be no doubt but that the canon of the Old Testament was the fame in the 'time of our Saviour as it is now; nor could it have

Vindic. of Dan. 1728, p. 30.

Lardner's Works, vol. X. p. 84.

The Jewish fynagogues in all countries were,' fays Mr. Gray, ' nu'merous: wherever the apostles preached, they found them; they were ' established by the direction of the rabbins in every place, where there ' were ten persons of full age and free condition. Accordingly the jealous care, with which the scriptures were preserved in the tabernacle, and in the temple, was not more calculated to secure their integrity, than that reverence which afterwards displayed itself in the difperfed fynagogues, and in the churches confecrated to the Christian faith,' A Key to the Old Teftament by the Rev. Robert Gray, late of St. Mary Hall, Oxf. 1791, P. 13, 16.

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'been corrupted materially after the return of the Jews 'from the Babylonish captivity, on account of the sect of the Samaritans, which took its rife about that time. 'For these people professed the fame regard to the facred 'books with the Jews themselves, and were always at ' variance with them about the interpretation of the 'fcriptures. The Samaritan copy of the Pentateuch is 'now in our hands, and excepting fome numbers, in 'which the different copies and tranflations of all an'cient writings are peculiarly fubject to vary, and a fingle text, in which mount Gerizim and mount Ebal ' are interchanged, it is the very fame with the Jewish copy. Not long after this, the books of the Old Teftament, beginning with the Pentateuch, were translated ' into Greek, and difperfed, by means of the Jews, into ' almost every part of the known world. There is not 'the least probability, that any change, worth any man's attempting to make, or in the least affecting any principal point of the Jewish religion, was made during 'their captivity; which, however, was not so long, rec'koning from the time of the deftruction of the city by 'Nebuchadnezzar, but that many of those who returned 'from it had a perfect remembrance of the temple of 'Solomon, which had been burned in the fiege by Ne'buchadnezzar; for they wept when they faw how * much the new temple was inferior to it, and can it be 'supposed, but that some of these people would have 'taken the alarm, and a fchifm have been occafioned, if any material change had been attempted to be made in 'the conftitution of the law, or the contents of the fa'cred books. If we go farther back into the Jewish 'hiftory, we shall be unable to pitch upon any time, in

5 The Jews, according to Prideaux, returned from their captivity at Babylon in the year 535 before the Chriftian æra.

'which any material change in the facred books could * have been attempted, with the least prospect of success.

It was one of the moft earneft inftructions of Mofes • himself, that the book of the law, a copy of which was 'lodged in the ark, should be the fubject of conftant reading and meditation in every Israelitish family; and it was expressly appointed, that it should be read publicly every seven years, at the feaft of Tabernacles, Deut. xxxi. 9, 13; and the Levites, who were dif 'perfed through all the twelve tribes, were particularly ' appointed to study and to explain it to the rest of the nation; and notwithstanding the times of defection and idolatry, they were never entirely without prophets, and even many thousands of others, who continued ⚫ firm in the worship of the true God, and therefore must • have retained their regard to the facred books of the law. Upon the whole, the Jews have, no doubt, acted ⚫ the part of most faithful and even scrupulous guardians of their facred books, for the use of all the world in the times of Christianity. After the laft of the prophets, Malachi, they admitted no more books into their canon, so as to permit them to be read in their fynagogues, though they were written by the most eminent men in their nation; it being a maxim with them, that no book could be entitled to a place in the canon of 'their fcriptures, unless it was written by a prophet, or a 'perfon who had had communication with God. That the fcriptures of the Old Teftament have not been materially corrupted by the Jews fince the promulgation of Chriftianity,-is evident from the many prophecies ftill remaining in their scriptures, concerning the humiliation and fufferings of the Meffiah, in which the Chriftians 'always triumphed when they difputed with the Jews. Thefe paffages, therefore, we may affure ourselves, would have been the firft that the

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"Jews'