the morning dawn, and the day-star arise in our hearts," till the destined period shall arrive, for that clearer knowledge of the Almighty, and of his ways, which seems to be promised to the last ages of the church, and will terminate. in that full understanding of the justice, equity, and mercy of God's dealings with mankind, which will make a chief part of the happiness of the righteous in the future life, and seems to be described in the Scripture under the strong metaphor of seeing the incorporeal God.

This is the sum of the verse which precedes my text. It is an earnest exhortation to all Christains to give attention to the prophecies of holy writ, as what will best obviate all doubts that might shake their faith, and prevent their minds from being unsettled by those difficulties which the evil heart of unbelief will ever find in the present moral constitution, according to those imperfect views of it which the light of nature by itself affords.

But to what purpose shall we give attention to prophecy, unless we may hope to understand it? And where is the Christian who is not ready to say, with the treasurer of the Ethiopian Queen, "How can I understand, except some man shall guide me ?" The Ethiopian found a man appointed and impowered to guide him but in these days, when the miraculous gifts of the Spirit are withholden, where is the man who hath the authority or the ability to be another's guide?-Truly, vain is the help of man, whose breath is in his nostrils; but, blessed be God, he hath not left us without aid. Our help is in the name of the Lord. To his exhortation to the study of the prophecy, the inspired apostle, apprized of our necessities, hath, in the first of the two verses which I have chosen for my text, annexed an infallible rule to guide plain men in the interpretation of prophecy; and in the latter verse, he expains upon what principle this rule is founded.

Observe me: I say the apostle gives you an infallible rule

of interpretation. I do not tell you that he refers you to any infallible interpreter; which perverse meaning, the divines of the Church of Rome, for purposes which I forbear to mention, have endeavoured to fasten upon this text. The claim of infallibility, or even of authority to prescribe magisterially to the opinions and the consciences of men, whether in an individual or in assemblies and collections of men, is never to be admitted. Admitted, said I?—it is not to be heard with patience, unless it be supported by a miracle: and this very text of Scripture is manifestly, of all others, the most adverse to the arrogant pretensions of the Roman pontiff. Had it been the intention of God, that Christians, after the death of the apostles, should take the sense of Scripture, in all obscure and doubtful passages, from the mouth of an infallible interpreter, whose decisions, in all points of doctrine, faith, and practice, should be oracular and final, this was the occasion for the apostle to have mentioned it-to have told us plainly whither we should resort for the unerring explication of those prophecies, which, it seems so well deserve to be studied and understood. And from St. Peter, in particular, of all the apostles, this information was in all reason to be expected, if, as the vain tradition goes, the oracular gift was to be lodged with his successors. This, too, was the time when the mention of the thing was most likely to occur to the apostle's thoughts; when he was about to be removed from the superintendence of the church, and was composing an epistle for the direction of the flock which he so faithfully had fed, after his departure. Yet St. Peter, at this critical season, when his mind was filled with an interested care for the welfare of the church after his decease, upon an occasion which might naturally lead him to mention all means of instruction that were likely to be provided,-in these circumstances, St. Peter gives not the most distinct intimation of a living oracle to be perpetually maintained in the succession of the Roman Bishops. On the contrary, he

overthrows their aspiring claims, by doing that which supersedes the supposed necessity of any such institution: he lays down a plain rule, which judiciously applied, may enable every private Christian to interpret the written oracles of prophecy, in all points of general importance, for himself.

The rule is contained in this maxim, which the apostle propounds as a leading principle, of which, in reading the prophecies, we never should lose sight, "That no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation.” "Know. ing this first," says he, "that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation." And the reason is this, -that the predictions of the prophets did not, like their own private thoughts and sentiments, originate in their own minds. The prophets, in the exercise of their office, were necessary agents, acting under the irresistible impulse of the Omniscient Spirit, who made the faculties and the organs of those holy men his own instruments for conveying to mankind some portion of the treasures of his own knowledge. Futurity seems to have been delineated in some sort of emblematical picture, presented by the Spirit of God to the prophet's mind, which, perturnaturally filled and heated with this scenery, in describing the images obtruded on the phantasy, gave pathetic utterance to wisdom not its own.

For the prophecy came not at any time by the will of man; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

Some one, perhaps, will be apt to say, "It had been well if the apostle had delivered his rule for the explication of prophecy, as clearly as he hath expressed what he allegeth as the principle from which his rule is derived. This prineiple is indeed propounded with the utmost perspicuity: but how this principle leads to the maxim which is drawn from it, or what the true sense of that maxim may be, or how it may be applied as a rule of interpretation, may not appear so obvious, It may seem that the apostle hath

rather told us negatively how the prophecies may not, then' affirmatively how they may be interpreted and since, in most cases, error is infinite, and truth single, it may be presumed that innumerable modes of interpretation will mislead, while one only will carry us to the true sense of the prophecies, and surely it had been more to the purpose, to point out that single true path, than to guard' us against one out of a great number of deviations. Nor, it may be said, is this erroneous path, which we are admonished to avoid, very intelligibly defined. Private interpretation,

it seems, is that which is never to be applied. But what is private interpretation? Is it the interpretation of the private Christian? Is it forbidden that any private member of the church should endeavour to ascertain the sense of any text of prophecy for himself?-The prohibition would imply, that there must be somewhere, either in some great office of the church, or in assemblies of her presbyters and bishops, an authority of public interpretation,-of which the contrary seems to have been proved from this very passage."

It must be confessed, that all this obscurity and incoherence appears in the first face of the passage, as it is expressed in our English Bibles. The truth is, that the English word private, does but very darkly, if at all, convey to the understanding of the English reader the original word to which it is meant that it should answer. The original word denotes that peculiar appropriation of the thing with which it is joined, to something else previously mentioned, which is expressed in English by the word own subjoined to the pronouns of possession: Our own power-his own blooda prophet of their own. In all these places, the Greek word which is rendered by the words our own—his own-their own, is that same word which in this text is rendered by the word private. The precise meaning, therefore, of the original, may be thus expressed: "Not any prophecy of Scripture is of self-interpretation." This compound word

"self-interpretation," contains the exact and full meaning of the two Greek words which our translators have rendered by "private interpretation," and with which no two separate words can be found in our language exactly to correspond. The meaning is just the same as might be thus expressed: "Not any prophecy of Scripture is its own interpreter." It is in this sense that the passage is rendered in the French Bible of the church of Geneva; and, what is of much importance to observe, it is so rendered in the Latin translation called the Vulgate, which the church of Rome upholds as the unerring standard of the sacred text.

This, then, is the rule of interpretation prescribed by the apostle, in my text: and though it is propounded in a negative form, and may therefore seem only to exclude an improper method of interpretation, it contains, as I shall presently explain to you, a very clear and positive definition of the only method to be used with any certainty of

success.

The maxim is to be applied, both to every single text of prophecy, and to the whole.

Of any single text of prophecy, it is true that it cannot be its own interpreter; for this reason,-because the Scripture prophecies are not detached predictions of separate independent events, but are united in a regular and entire system, all terminating in one great object-the promulgation of the Gospel, and the complete establishment of the Messiah's kingdom. Of this system, every particular prophecy makes a part, and bears a more immediate or a more remote relation to that which is the object of the whole. It is, therefore, very unlikely, that the true signification of any particular text of prophecy should be discovered from the bare attention to the terms of the single prediction, taken by itself, without considering it as a part of that system to which it unquestionably belongs, and without observing how it may stand connected with earlier and later