four thousand years. It contains an account of God's making a covenant with a particular nation, that they should be his people, and he would be their God, in a peculiar sense; of his often interposing miraculously in their affairs; giving them the promise, and long after the possession, of a particular country; assuring them of the greatest national prosperity in it, if they would worship him, in opposition to the idols which the rest of the world worshipped, and obey his commands, and threatening them with unexampled punishments, if they disobeyed him, and fell into the general idolatry; insomuch that this one nation should continue to be the observation and wonder of all the world. It declares particularly, that God would scatter them among all people, from one end of the earth unto the other; but that when they should return unto the Lord their God, he would have compassion upon them, and gather them from all the nations whither he had scattered them; that Israel should be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation, and not be ashamed or confounded world without end. And as some of these promises are conditional, others are as absolute as any thing can be expressed; that the time should come when the people should be all righteous, and inherit the land forever; that though God would make a full end of all nations whither he had scattered them, yet would he not make a full end of them; that he would bring again the captivity of his people Israel, and plant them upon their land, and they should be no more pulled up out of their land; that the seed of Israel should not cease from being a nation for ever.* It foretells, that God would raise them up a particular person, in whom all his promises should finally be fulfilled; the Messiah, who should be in au high and eminent sense, their anointed Prince and Saviour. This was foretold in such a manner, as raised a general expectation of such a person in the nation, as appears from the New Testament, and is an acknowledged fact; an expectation of his coming at such a particular time, before any one appeared claiming to be that person, and when there was no ground for such an expectation, but from the prophecies; which expectation therefore must in all reason be presumed to be explanatory of those prophecies, if there were any doubt about their meaning. It seems moreover to foretell, that this person should be rejected by that nation, to whom he had been so long promised, and though he was so much desired by them. And it expressly foretells, that he should be the Saviour of the Gentiles; and even that the completion of the scheme, contained in this book, and then begun, and in its progress, should be somewhat so great, that, in comparison with it, the restoration of the Jews alone would be but of small account. It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be for salvation unto the end of the earth. And, In the last days, the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it--for out

* Deut. xxviii 64. Chap. xx 2; 3. Isai. xlv. 17. Chap. Ix. 21. Jer. xxx. 11. Chap. xlvi. 28 Amos ix. 15 Jer. xxxi $6.

† Isai viii. 14, 15. Chap. xlix 5. Chap. liii, Mal. i. 10, 11, and Chap iii.

of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day, and the idols he shall utterly abolish* The Scripture farther contains an account, that at the time the Messiah was expected, a person rose up, in this nation, claiming to be that Messiah, to be the person whom all the prophecies referred to, and in whom they should center; that he spent some years in a continued course of miraculous works, and endued his immediate disciples and followers with a power of doing the same, as a proof of the truth of that religion which he commissioned them to publish; that, invested with this authority and power, they made numerous converts ́in the remotest countries, and settled and established his religion in the world, to the end of which the Scripture professes to give a prophetic account of the state of this religion amongst mankind.

Let us now suppose a person utterly ignorant of history, to have all this related to him out of the Scripture. Or suppose such an one, having the Scripture put into his hands, to remark these things in it, not knowing but that the whole, even its civil history, as well as the other parts of it, might be from beginning to end an entire invention, and to ask, what truth was in it, and whether the revelation here related was real or a fiction? And instead of a direct answer, suppose him, all at once, to be told the following confest facts, and then to unite them into one view.

Let him first be told in how great a degree the profession and establishment of natural religion, the belief that there is one God to be worshipped, that virtue is his law, and that mankind shall be rewarded and punished hereafter, as they obey and disobey it here; in how very great a degree, I say, the profession and establishment of this moral system in the world is owing to the revelation, whether real or supposed, contained in this book; the establishment of this moral system, even in those countries which do not acknowledge the proper authority of the Scripture. Let him be told also what number of nations do acknowledge its proper authority. Let him then take in the consideration of what importance religion is to mankind. And upon these things he might, I think, truly observe, that this supposed revelation's obtaining and being received in the world, with all the circumstances and effects of it, considered together as one event, is the most conspicuous and important event in the story of mankind; that a book of this nature, and thus promulged and recommended to our consideration, demands, as if by a voice from heaven, to have its claims most seriously examined into; and that, before such examination, to treat it with any kind of scoffing and ridicule, is an offence against natural piety. But it is to be remembered, that how much soever the establishment of natural religion in the world is owing to the scripture revelation, that this does not destroy the proof of religion from reason, any more than the proof of Euclid's Elements is destroyed by a man's knowing er thinking that

* Isai. xlix 6. Chap ii Chap xi. Chap. Ivi. 7. Mal. i 11. To which must be added the other prophecies of the like kind, several in the New Testament, and very many in the Old; which describe what shall be the completion of the revealed plan of Providence, † Page 162, &c.

be should never have seen the truth of the several propositions contained in it, nor had those propositions come into his thoughts, but *for that mathematician.

Let such a person as we are speaking of be, in the next place, informed of the acknowledged antiquity of the first parts of this book. and that its chronology, its account of the time when the earth and the several parts of it were first peopled with human creatures is no way contradicted, but is really confirmed, by the natural and civil history of the world, collected from common historians, from the state of the earth, and from the late invention of arts and sciences. And as the Scripture contains an unbroken thread of common and civil history, from the creation to the captivity, for between three and four thousand years, let the person we are speaking of be told in the next place that this general history, as it is not contradicted but is confirmed by profane history as much as there would be reason to expect, upon supposition of its truth-so there is nothing in the whole history itself, to give any reasonable ground of suspicion of its not being, in the general, a faithful and literally true genealogy of men, and series of things. I speak here only of the common scripture history, or of the course of ordinary events related in it, as distinguished from miracles and from the prophetic history. In all the scripture narrations of this kind, following events arise out of foregoing ones, as in all other histories. There appears nothing related as done in any age, not conformable to the manners of that age; nothing in the account of a succeeding age which, one would say, could not be true, or was improbable, from the account of things in the preceding one. There is nothing in the characters which would raise a thought of their being feigned; but all the internal marks imaginable of their being real. It is to be added also, that mere genealogies, bare narratives of the number of years which persons called by such and such names lived, do not carry the face of fiction, perhaps do carry some presumption of veracity; and all unadorned narratives, which have nothing to surprize, may be thought to carry somewhat of the like presumption too. And the domestic and the political history is plainly credible. There may be incidents in Scripture, which taken alone in the naked way they are told, may appear strange, especially to persons of other manners, temper, edu cation; but there are also incidents of undoubted truth, in many or most persons' lives, which, in the same circumstances, would appear to be full as strange. There may be mistakes of transcribers, there may be other real or seeming mistakes not easy to be particularly accounted for; but there are certainly no more things of this kind in the Scripture, than what were to have been expected in books of such antiquity, and nothing in any wise sufficient to discredit the general narrative. Now, that a history claiming to commence from the creation, and extending in one continued series through so great a length of time and variety of events, should have such appearances of reality and truth in its whole contexture, is surely a very remarkable circumstance in its favor. And as all this is applicable to the common history of the New Testament, so there is a farther credibility, and a very high one, given to it by profane authors; many of these writing of the same times, and confirming the truth

of customs and events which are incidentally as well as more purposely mentioned in it. And this credibility of the common scripture history, gives some credibility to its miraculous history; espe cially as this is interwoven with the common, so as that they imply each other, and both together make up one relation.

Let it then be more particularly observed to this person, that it is an acknowledged matter of fact, which is indeed implied in the foregoing observation, that there was such a nation as the Jews, of the greatest antiquity, whose government and general polity was founded on the law here related to be given them by Moses as from heaven; that natural religion, though with rites additional, yet no way contrary to it, was their established religion, which cannot be said of the Gentile world; and that their very being as a nation depended upon their acknowledgement of one God, the God of the universe. For, suppose in their captivity in Babylon, they had gone over to the religion of their conquerors, there would have remained no bond of union to keep them a distinct people. And whilst they were under their own kings, in their own country, a total apostacy from God would have been the dissolution of their whole government. They, in such a sense, nationally acknowledged and worshipped the Maker of heaven and earth, when the rest of the world were sunk in idolatry, as rendered them, in fact, the peculiar people of God. And this so remarkable an establishment and preservation of natural religion amongst them, seems to add some peculiar credibility to the historical evidence for the miracles of Moses and the prophets; because these miracles are a full satisfactory account of this event, which plainly wants to be accounted for, and cannot otherwise.

Let this person, supposed wholly ignorant of history, be acquainted farther, that one claiming to be the Messiah, of Jewish extraction, rose up at the time when this nation, from the prophecies above mentioned, expected the Messiah; that he was rejected. as it seemed to have been foretold he should, by the body of the people, under the direction of their rulers; that in the course of a very few years he was believed on and acknowledged as the promised Messiah, by great numbers among the Gentiles, agreeably to the prophecies of Scripture, yet not upon the evidence of prophecy, but of miracles,* of which miracles we have also strong historical evidence; (by which I mean here no more than must be acknowledged by unbelievers, for let pious frauds and follies be admitted to weaken, it is absurd to say they destroy, our evidence of miracles wrought in proof of Christianity) that this religion, approving itself to the reason of mankind, and carrying its own evidence with it, so far as reason is a judge of its system, and being no way contrary to reason in those parts of it which require to be believed upon the mere authority of its Author--that this religion, I say, gradually spread and supported itself, for some hundred years, not only without any assistance from temporal power, but under constant discouragements, and often the bitterest persecutions from it, and then became the religion of the world; that in the mean time the Jewish nation and government were destroyed, in a very remarkable manner, and the people carried Page 175, &c. † Page 179, &c.

*

away captive and dispersed through the most distant countries, in which state of dispersion they have remained fifteen hundred years; and that they remain a numerous people, united amongst themselves, and distinguished from the rest of the world, as they were in the days of Moses, by the profession of his law, and every where looked upon in a manner which one scarce knows how distinctly to express, but in the words of the prophetic account of it, given so many ages before it came to pass--Thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the Lord shall lead thee.*

The appearance of a standing miracle, in the Jews remaining a distinct people in their dispersion, and the confirmation which this event appears to give to the truth of revelation, may be thought to be answered by their religion's forbidding them intermarriages with those of any other, and prescribing them a great many peculiarities in their food, by which they are debarred from the means of incorporating with the people in whose countries they live. This is not, I think, a satisfactory account of that which it pretends to account for. But what does it pretend to account for? The correspondence between this event and the prophecies; or the coincidence of both, with a long dispensation of Providence of a peculiar nature, towards that people formerly? No. It is only the event itself which is offered to be thus accounted for, which single event taken alone, abstracted from all such correspondence and coincidence, perhaps would not have appeared miraculous; but that correspondence and coincidence may be so, though the event itself be supposed not. Thus the concurrence of our Saviour's being born at Bethlehem, with a long foregoing series of prophecy and other coincidences, is doubtless miraculous, the series of prophecy, and other coincidences, and the event being admitted; though the event itself, his birth at that place, appears to have been brought about in a natural way; of which, however, no one can be certain.

And as several of these events seem in some degree expressly te have verified the prophetic history already, so likewise they may be considered farther as having a peculiar aspect towards the full com pletion of it, as affording some presumption that the whole of it shall, one time or other, be fulfilled. Thus, that the Jews have been so wonderfully preserved in their long and wide dispersion, which is indeed the direct fulfilling of some prophecies, but is now mentioned only as looking forward to somewhat yet to come; that natural religion came forth from Judea, and spread in the degree it has done over the world, before lost in idolatry, which together with some other things have distinguished that very place, in like manner as the people of it are distinguished; that this great change of religion over the earth, was brought about under the profession and acknowledgment that Jesus was the promised Messiah; things of this kind naturally turn the thoughts of serious men towards the full completion of the prophetic history, concerning the final restoration of that people, concerning the establishment of the everlasting kingdom among them, the kingdom of the Messiah, and the future state of the

*Deut. xxviii. SZ.