argument rests, and the steps which lead to the conclusion, than to form premature conceptions of the amount of this part of the evidence for Christianity.

SECTION I.

In every point of investigation, it is of great importance to ascertain precisely the point from which you set out, that there may be no danger of confounding the points that are assumed, with those that are to be proven. There is much reason for making this remark in entering upon the subject which we are now to investigate, because attempts have been made to render it confused and inextricable, by misstating the manner in which the investigation ought to proceed. Mr. Gibbon, speaking of that argument from prophecy, which often occurs in the apologies of the primitive Christians, calls it an argument beneath the notice of philosophers. "It might serve," he says, "to edify a Christian, or to convert a Jew, since both the one and the other acknowledge the authority of the prophets, and both are obliged with devout reverence to search for their sense and accomplishment. But this mode of persuasion loses much of its weight and influence, when it is addressed to those who neither understand nor respect the Mosaic dispensation, or the prophetic spirit."* Mr. Gibbon learned to use this supercilious inaccurate language from Mr. Collins, an author of whom I shall have occasion to speak fully before I finish the discussion of this subject, and who lays it down as the fundamental position of his book, that Christianity is founded upon Judaism, and from thence infers that the Gentiles ought regularly to be converted to Judaism before they can become Christians. The object of the inference is manifest. It is to us, in these later ages, a much shorter process to attain a conviction of the truth of Christianity, than to attain, without the assistance of the Gospel, a conviction of the divine origin of Judaism: and, therefore, if it be necessary that we become converts to Judaism before we become Christians, the evidence of our religion is involved in numberless difficulties, and the field of objection is so much extended, that the adversaries of our faith may hope to persuade the generality of mankind that the subject is too intricate for their understanding. The design is manifest; but nothing can be more loose or fallacious than the statement which is employed to accomplish this design. In order to perceive this you need only attend to the difference between a Jew and a Gentile in the conduct of this investigation. A Jew who respects the Mosaic dispensation and the prophetic spirit, looks for the fulfilment of those prophecies which appear to him to be contained in his sacred books, and when any person declares that these prophecies are fulfilled in him, the Jew is led by that respect to compare the circumstances in the appearance of that person with what he accounts the right interpretation of the prophecies, and to form his judgment whether they be fulfilled. A Gentile, to whom the divinity of the prophecies was formerly un

* Gibbon's Roman History, chap. xv.

known, but who hears a person declaring that they are fulfilled in him, if he is disposed by other circumstances to pay any respect to what that person says, will be led by that respect to inquire after the books in which these prophecies are said to be contained, will compare the appearance of that person with what is written in these books, and will judge from this comparison how far they correspond. Both the Jew and the Gentile may be led by this comparison to a firm conviction that the messenger whose character and history they examine, is the person foretold in the prophecies. Yet the Jew set out with the belief that the prophecies are divine; the Gentile only attained that belief in the progress of the examination. It is not possible, then, that a previous belief of the divinity of the prophecies is necessary in order to judge of the fulfilment of them; for two men may form the same judgment in this matter, the one of whom from the beginning had that belief, and the other had it not.

The true point from which an investigation of the fulfilment of prophecy must commence, is this, that the books containing what is called the prophecy, existed a considerable time before the events which are said to be the fulfilment of it. I say, a considerable time, because the nearer that the first appearance of these books was to the event, it is the more possible that human sagacity may account for the coincidence, and the remoter the period is, to which their existence can be traced, that account becomes the more improbable. Let us place ourselves, then, in the situation of those Gentiles whom the first preachers of the Gospel addressed; let us suppose that we know no more about the books of the Jews than they might know, and let us consider how we may satisfy ourselves as to the preliminary point upon which the investigation must proceed.

The prophecies to which Jesus and his apostles refer, did not proceed from the hands of obscure individuals, and appear in that suspicious form which attends every prediction of an unknown date and a hidden origin. They were presented to the world in the public records of a nation; they are completely incorporated with these records, and they form part of a series of predictions which cannot be disjoined from the constitution and history of the state. This nation, however singular in its religious principles, and in what appeared to the world to be its political revolutions, was not unknown to its neighbours. By its geographical situation, it had a natural connection with the greatest empires of the world. War and commerce occasionally brought the flourishing kingdom of Judea into their view; and although repugnant in manners and in worship, they were witnesses of the existence and the peculiarities of this kingdom. The captivity, first of the ten tribes by Salmanazar, afterwards of the two tribes by Nebuchadnezzar, served still more to draw the attention of the world, many centuries before the birth of Christ, to the peculiarities of Jewish manners. And there was a circumstance in the return of the two tribes from captivity, which was to those who observed it in ancient times, and is to us at this day, a singular and unquestionable voucher of the early existence of their books. Nehemiah was appointed by the king of Persia to superintend the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. He had received much opposition in this work from Sanballat, the governor of Samaria, that district of Palestine

which the ten tribes had inhabited, and into which the king of Assyria had, at the time of their captivity, transplanted his own subjects. The work, however, was finished, and Nehemiah proceeded in making the regulations which appeared to him necessary for maintaining order, and the observance of the law of Moses amongst the multitude whom he had gathered into Jerusalem. Some of these regulations were not universally agreeable; and Manasseh, a son of the high priest, who had married a daughter of Sanballat, fled at the head of the malecontent Jews into Samaria. The Law of Moses was not acknowledged in Samaria, for the king of Assyria, after the first captivity, had sent a priest to instruct those whom he planted there, in the worship of the God of the country, and for some time they had offered sacrifices to idols in conjunction with the true God. But Manasseh, emulous of the Jews whom he had left, and considering the honour of a descendant of Aaron as concerned in the purity of worship which he established in his new residence, prevailed upon the inhabitants to put away their idols, built a temple to the God of Israel upon Mount Gerizim, and introduced a copy of the law of Moses, or the Pentateuch. He did not introduce any of the later books of the Old Testament, lest the Samaritans, observing the peculiar honours with which God had distinguished Jerusalem," the place which he had chosen, to put his name there," should entertain less reverence for the temple of Gerizim. And as a farther mark of distinction, Manasseh had the book of the law written for the Samaritans, not in the Chaldee character, which Ezra had adopted in the copies of the law which he made for the Jews, to whom that language had become familiar during the captivity, but in the old Samaritan character. During the successive fortunes of the Jewish nation, the Samaritans continued to reside in their neighbourhood, worshipping the same God, and using the same law. But between the two nations there was that kind of antipathy, which, in religious differences, is often the more bitter, the less essential the disputed points are, and which, in this case, proceeded so far that the Jews and Samaritans not only held no communion in worship, but had "no dealings with one another."

Here then are two rival tribes stated in opposition and enmity five hundred years before Christ, yet acknowledging and preserving the same laws, as if appointed by Providence to watch over the corruptions which either might be disposed to introduce, and to transmit to the nations of the earth, pure and free from suspicion, those books in which Moses wrote of Jesus. The Samaritan Pentateuch is often quoted by the early fathers. After it had been unknown for a thousand years, it was found by the industry of some of those critics who lived at the beginning of the seventeenth century, amongst the remnant who still worship at Gerizim. Copies of it were brought into Europe, and the learned have now an opportunity of comparing the Samaritan text used by the followers of Manasseh, with the Hebrew or Chaldee text used by the Jews.

While this ancient schism thus furnished succeeding ages with jealous guardians of the Pentateuch, the existence and integrity of all their Scriptures were vouched by another event in the history of the Jews.

Alexander the Great, in the progress of his conquests, either visited the land of Judea, or received intelligence concerning the Jews. His inquisitive mind, which was no stranger to science, and which was not less intent upon great plans of commerce than of conquest, was probably struck with the peculiarities of this ancient people; and when he founded his city Alexandria, he invited many of the Jews to settle there. The privileges which he and his successors conferred upon them, and the advantages of that situation, multiplied the Jewish inhabitants of Alexandria; and the constant intercourse of trade obliged them to learn the Greek language, which the conquerors of Asia had introduced through all the extent of the Macedonian empire.Retaining the religion and manners of Judea, but gradually forgetting the language of that country, they became desirous that their Scriptures, the canon of which was by this time complete, should be translated into Greek; and it was especially proper that there should be a translation of the Pentateuch for the use of the synagogue, where a portion of it was read every Sabbath-day. We have the best reason for saying that the translation of the Old Testament, which, from an account of the manner of its being made, probably in many points fabulous, has received the name of the Septuagint, was begun at Alexandria about two hundred and eighty years before Christ; and we cannot doubt that the whole of the Pentateuch was translated at once. Learned men have conjectured, indeed, from a difference of style, that the other parts of the Old Testament were translated by other hands. But it is very improbable that a work, so acceptable to the numerous and wealthy body of Jews who resided at Alexandria, would receive any long interruption after it was begun; and a subsequent event in the Jewish history appears to fix a time when a translation of the prophets would be demanded. About the middle of the second century before Christ, Antiochus Epiphanes, King of Syria, committed the most outrageous acts of wanton cruelty against the whole nation of the Jews; and as he contended with the King of Egypt for the conquest of Palestine, we may believe that the Jews of Alexandria shared the fate of their brethren, as far as the power of Antiochus could reach them. Amongst other edicts which he issued, he forbade any Jews to read the law of Moses in public. As the prohibition did not extend to the prophets, the Jews began at this time to substitute portions of the prophets instead of the law. After the heroical exploit of the Asmonæan family, the Maccabees had delivered their country from the tyranny of Antiochus, and restored the reading of the law, the prophets continued to be read also; and we know that before the days of our Saviour, reading both the law and the prophets was a stated part of the synagogue service. In this way the whole of the Septuagint translation came to be used in the churches of the Hellenistical Jews scattered through the Grecian cities; and we are told it was used in some of the synagogues of Judea.

When Rome, then, entered into an alliance with the princes of the Asmonean line, who were at that time independent sovereigns, and when Judea, experiencing the same fate with the other allies of that ambitious republic, was subdued by Pompey about sixty years before the birth of our Saviour, the books of the Jews were publicly read in a language which was then universal. The diffusion of the

Jews through all parts of the Roman empire, and the veneration in which they held their scriptures, conspired to assure the heathen that such books existed, and to spread some general knowledge of their contents: and even could we suppose it possible for a nation so zealous of the law, and so widely scattered as the Jews were, to enter into a concert for altering their scriptures, we must be sensible that insuperable difficulties were thrown in the way of such an attempt, by the animosity between the religious sects which at that time flourished in Judea. The Sadducees and the Pharisees differed upon essential points respecting the interpretation and extent of the law; they were rivals for reputation and influence; there were learned men upon both sides, and both acknowledged the authority of Moses; and thus, as the Samaritans and the Jews in ancient times were appointed of God to watch over the Pentateuch; so, in the ages immediately before our Saviour, the Pharisees and the Sadducees were faithful guardians of all the ancient scriptures.

Such is the amount of that testimony to the existence of their sacred books, long before the days of our Saviour, with which the Jews, a nation superstitiously attached to their law, widely spread, and strictly guarded, present them to the world; and to this testimony there are to be added the many internal marks of authenticity which these books exhibit to a discerning reader,-the agreement of the natural, the civil, and the religious history of the world, with those views which they present-the incidental mention that profane writers have made of Jewish customs and peculiarities, which is always strictly conformable to the contents of these books-the express reference to many of them that occurs in the New Testament, a reference which must have destroyed the credit of the Gospels and Epistles, if the books referred to had not been known to have a previous existence -and, lastly, the evidence of Josephus, the Jewish historian, a man of rank and of science, who may be considered as a contemporary of Jesus, and who has given in his works a catalogue of the Jewish books, not upon his own authority, but upon the authority and ancient conviction of his nation, a catalogue which agrees both in number and in description with the books of the Old Testament that we now receive. Even Daniel, the only writer of the Old Testament against the authenticity of whose book any special objections have been offered, is styled by Josephus a prophet, and is extolled as the greatest of the prophets; and his book is said by this respectable Jew to be a part of the canonical scriptures of his nation.*

It appears, from laying all these circumstances together, that as our Lord and his apostles had a title to assume in their addresses to the Gentiles, the previous existence of the Jewish scriptures as a fact generally and clearly known, so no doubt can be reasonably entertained of this fact, even in the distant age in which we live. I do not speak of these scriptures as a divine revelation; I abstract entirely from that sacred authority which the Christian religion communicates to them; I speak of them merely as an ancient book; and I say, that while there is no improbability in the most remote date which any part of this book claims, there is real satisfying evidence, to which no

Joseph. lib. x. cap. 11, 12.