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trary confirms tne certainty of the miracles recorded in the Gospel history. It not only appears from that history, but from the admission of the Jews themselves,† that the cotemporaries of these miracles did not deny their performance, but on the contrary admitted it: though they would not upon their evidence embrace the Gospel (because they conceived this contrary to the Mosaic Law,) whose obligation their carnal and ambitious views led them to believe was eternal, and which they conceived no miracles could prove to be abrogated. They therefore contented themselves with asserting, that the Miracles of Christ and his Apostles must be ascribed to Magical influence, diabolical agency, or the mysterious potency of the ineffable name of God, which they conceived our Lord had learned to pronounce. But these opinions of the Jews affect not the reality or greatness of the Gospel miracles. We can judge as clearly as they could possibly do, whether the Scriptures describe the Mosaic Law as of strictly eternal obligation, or on the contrary represent it as designed to introduce a more perfect and universal religion. And our improved reason and philosophic knowledge, reject without hesitation the wild and absurd causes to which they imputed works, which the fair and candid reasoners amongst themselves confessed, no man could do, except God was with him."

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In truth the hostility of the Jewish nation to Christianity from the first, confirms the truth of the Gospel miracles. Had the Jews been universally or even generally converted by them, the sceptic might argue, with some appearance of probability, that the facts had been invented or exaggerated to gratify the national propensity, credited without examination or proof, and all inquiry into them checked, at the only period when inquiry could have detected imposition. On the contrary we are now certain that the Gospel miracles were wrought in the presence of enemies, § and thus subjected to the severest scrutiny, and

* Matt. ix. 34. xii. 24. Mark, iii. 22. Luke, xi. 15. and the corresponding passages.

+ Vide Wagenseil's Tela Ignea Satanæ; and Lardner's Jewish Testimonies, ch. v. and vii.

Vide Limborchi Collatio cum Orobio, 3 Script. Judæi, Num. iii. p. 131.

The author begs leave to refer to a work published by him in the year 1798, "to 66 prove the Apostles and Evangelists were not Enthusiasts," for a detail of particular circumstances attending the Gospel miracles, chap. i. particularly sect. iv. and chap. ii. sect. 1.

that they carried with them conviction to multitudes, notwithstanding the fiercest opposition which national prejudice, bigotry and vice could excite, and the strictest research which could be formed by the most vigilant hostility.

Undoubtedly the most powerful cause of the rejection of the Gospel by the Jews, was the deplorably vicious and depraved character of the nation at large, so strongly attested by their own historian, and incontrovertibly established by the facts which he relates.* And this depravity, it may be said, disproves every thing I have adduced, to show that Judaism was designed or adapted to prepare for the reception of the Gospel. But let it be remembered, that notwithstanding this allowed depravity of the Jews in general, it has been proved † that amongst them were preserved the principles of true theology and pure morals, which the Gospel adopts, and which were banished from all mankind beside. Let it be remembered, that amongst them and the various descriptions of persons connected with and enlightened by their religion, the Gospel found its first teachers and hearers, its first converts and missionaries; and that the noblest and purest principles of piety adorned these great instruments, employed by God for dispensing his mercies to mankind—instruments which, through every other region of the world, would have been sought in vain. Finally, let us recollect the great probability that the gospel attracted, and as it were detached from the Jewish nation, every thing pure and pious, candid and virtuous; and left behind the dregs and dross alone,—the hypocritical Pharisees, the Epicurean Sadducees, the worldly-minded Herodians, the fierce zealots, the depraved and seditious rabble: thus, according to the intimation of its divine Founder, sifting the chaff from the wheat, separating the tares from the good seed, "gathering the one into his barn, and consuming the other "with fire unquenchable."+

In truth, after the Jewish nation had obstinately rejected the Messiah, rebelled against his authority, and in opposition to his religion maintained, that the perpetual observance of the Mosaic

* Vide Josephus's History of the Jewish War, particularly Books iv. v. and vi.; or Lardner's judicious view of his testimonies to the fulfilment of our Lord's predictions, in his Jewish Testimonies, ch. iii.

Vide supra, Part II.

VOL. II.

Matt. iii. 12. xiii. 30.

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ritual was an indispensable condition of divine acceptance, and their own nation exclusively the chosen people of God, it was indispensably necessary to put an end to their national establishment, and destroy that temple with which the observance of their ritual was essentially connected, in order to maintain the universal sovereignty of the Messiah, in opposition to their rebellion, as well as to prevent all possibility of corrupting Christianity by the adoption of their errors, and of their now burthensome because useless ceremonies. Whoever observes the struggles of the Judaizing Christians thus to encumber the religion of Christ, and the extreme difficulty with which their efforts were resisted, even by direct revelation and Apostolic authority, in the very first and purest era of the church, will easily perceive the necessity of this precaution, to preserve the purity and extend the dominion of the Gospel; and that in this view, "through the fall of the Jews, salvation is come unto the "Gentiles."*

* Romans, xi. 11.

LECTURE VII.

THE PAST AND PRESENT STATE OF THE JEWS EXHIBITS THE
ACCOMPLISHMENT OF PROPHECY.

Evidence from Prophecy applicable to Judaism. Prophecy of Moses-As to the prosperity of the Jews-As to the punishments they were to suffer-Considered in their variety-Their sources-Their duration-The face of their country. These predictions antecedent to the events-Clearly applicable to them-Not such as human wisdom or political sagacity would have dictated-Instanced in the three Jewish Feasts-The Sabbatic Year-The remoteness of their destroyers-The circumstances attending the destruction of Jerusalem-In their subsequent dispersion-In their present state and sufferings.

THE delivery and fulfilment of prophecy is so important an evidence of a divine authority, and so clear in the Mosaic revelation, that it has been justly considered a defect in this work, that, in exhibiting the internal evidence for the divine origin of the Jewish religion, it did not advert, except very briefly and incidentally, to this species of proof. To supply this defect, it is intended in this and the next Lecture to exhibit a summary view of the leading prophecies which predict the fortunes of the chosen people of God; to point out their past accomplishment; consider what expectations, as to the future destiny of this singular people, these prophecies excite; and how far the present circumstances of their situation appear to coincide with these expectations, and to indicate a providential arrangement of human affairs, even now visibly advancing to that great consummation, when, to use the language of the sublime and evangelic Isaiah," it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be estab"lished in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above "the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.

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And many peo

"ple shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the moun

"tain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he "will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: "for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the "Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the na"tions, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat "their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning“hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither “shall they learn war any more.'

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The great prophecy describing most compendiously, but at the same time most clearly, the fortune of the house of Israel, is that pronounced by their inspired Lawgiver on his last address to the assembled tribes, at the close of their forty years journeying in the Wilderness, and before they had entered upon the land of their inheritance. On this solemn occasion, the Legislator assures the assembled nation; "It shall come to pass "if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which "I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set "thee on high above all nations of the earth and all these "blessings shall come upon thee, and overtake thee, if thou "shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God."+ The Lawgiver then enumerates every species of prosperity which could bless a people, in their persons, their goods, the fruit of their cattle, and the fruit of their ground, and in security from all enemies; " and all the people of the earth shall see that "thou art called by the name of the Lord; and they shall be "afraid of thee:" and in security even from the apparently inevitable contingencies of unfavourable seasons, parching heats, or excessive rains, so common in such a climate: "The Lord shall

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open unto thee his good treasure," says the Prophet," the "heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to "bless all the work of thine hand."

It is obvious to remark, how entirely unconnected are such blessings as security from warlike enemies, and the enjoyment of rain from heaven; with the observance of a religious code; and how idle and unmeaning such promises would have appeared, to any people not deeply impressed, by immediate and clear experience, with the conviction, that a supernatural power

* Isaiah, ii. 2-4.

Deut. xxviii. the entire chapter.

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