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ble sense of Ezekiel's vision of dry bones, which immediately precedes the prophecy of Gog, and also of those prophecies which succeed it, has been already evinced. And that it exists in the prophecy itself is not only proved by prophetic analogy, and by historical fact, but it has the suffrage of antiquity on its side; it having been the early tradition and general apprehension of the church, that the Scythians would invade the Roman empire, subvert both its religion and its laws, and entirely overwhelm both church and state: as may be seen in Andreas Cæsariensis on the Apocalypse, and St. Jerome on Daniel. Lactantius, at a still earlier period than either, had announced "That a most powerful enemy will arise out of Scythia; he will afflict the world with intolerable oppression; he will confound things human and divine; he will perpetrate things not to be named; he will pollute, he will plunder, he will rob, he will kill.” The 16th chapter of his 7th book is an amazingly exact forebodement of future calamities, and exhibits almost throughout an interesting, particular, and extraordinary anticipation of the unparalleled and almost inconceivable barbarity and cruelty of Gog, that is of the Turks or Ottomans. If the Saracens inflicted the first woe of the church, which had been typified by the bondage in Egypt, the Turks have been the authors of its longest and worst woe, which had been pre

figured by its captivity in Babylon, and have nearly completed its utter ruin and extinction in many parts of their dominions. That, indeed, it has survived at all such diversified calamities, and such systematic and protracted persecution, is a miracle of mercy and of Providence: and furnishes no dubious hope, nor uncertain pledge of its ultimate and complete deliverance even in this world; and an unquestionable foretaste and assurance of its final victory and glory in that which is to come.

These two woes put together, or in general the sufferings and wrongs of the saints, from the various and successive Mahometan peoples and powers, which have for twelve centuries so ruthlessly oppressed and savagely tortured and butchered them, seems to be the long captivity of Israel in the celebrated prophecy of Tobit, in P. Fagius's edition and Mr. Mede. The saints and temple of that prediction, if they have any meaning at all, being the saints and temple of St. Paul, "Ye are God's temple, ye are God's building," for no other people are now the people of God, no other SAINTS shall ever be delivered, and no other temple shall ever be rebuilt. Ezekiel's prophecy of dry bones, together with that of Gog and Magog, and his subsequent ones, are resumed in the Apocalypse, where the primary and literal object and completion, as being past, are omitted, and their secondary and true sense and bearing are

alone considered and regarded. And the great similarity and close correspondence in language and in manner, as also in object and meaning, between the last chapters of those books, must be at once perceived and acknowledged by all who will carefully compare them together. Zechariah also foreshows the havock and desolation of the church by Gog. His two last chapters have been always referred by the Jews, according to St. Jerome, to the period of their third temple, that is, of Ezekiel's temple, or Messiah's church. If, indeed, the prophets had no more important sense, nor more glorious object, than the literal and visible Jerusalem, their prophecies lose much of their value, and sink down into trifling and insignificant fortune-tellings. But if the Jews were the types and forerunners of Christians, and their temple and city were the adumbrations and preludes of the universal church, if Judea was the whole Roman empire, and the world itself in embryo and in miniature, then the Jerusalem also of Zechariah's two last chapters is the same true and spiritual Zion, whose children are not the literal, but the true Israel, and not the children of the bond woman, but of the The prophet had in his xith chapter suitably and intelligibly foresignified that destruction of the typical and literal temple and city of Jerusalem, which was afterwards so exactly and awfully completed by Titus and the Romans; and

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his language was so well adapted to that subject and purpose, as to be in no danger of any more remote reference, or of any more important and more spiritual application. And it was so understood by the Jews themselves according to Josephus; as appears moreover from the well-known story of Rabbi Johanan; when he heard that the brazen gate of the temple, as recorded by Josephus, had opened of itself, he immediately observed, "Now I know that thy destruction is at hand, according to Zechariah, 'O Lebanon, open thy doors." And this prediction, which intimated the ruin of the literal city and temple of Jerusalem, naturally and fitly preceded Zechariah's prophecies of the preaching of the Gospel, and the establishment of the church, in the subsequent chapters, when Jerusalem no longer denoted the Jewish capital, but the city of apostles and prophets, the true city of God, the new and spiritual Jerusalem come down out of heaven, or Messiah's church, the true kingdom of heaven, and indeed heaven itself upon earth. And agreeably to this train of reasoning, and this system of interpretation, the prophecy in the 2nd verse of the xivth chapter, "I will bring all nations against Jerusalem, half of the city shall go into captivity, and the residue shall not be cut off from the city," was not truly and adequately completed in and by that destruction of the Jewish capital, which was accomplished by Antiochus, or that by the Romans. For the Jews, who

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would in that case be the objects of the prophecy, were all destroyed or banished by the Romans, and were prohibited from returning to their city, and re-occupying their country; and the 40,000 who escaped during the siege were Idumeans, as is stated by Josephus; but the Jerusalem whereof the prophet speaks, was neither to be destroyed itself, nor to be entirely deprived of its former inhabitants. Houbigant's remark is acute and well founded: "If they who shall remain after the taking of the city shall not be destroyed, then the city itself shall not be destroyed *:" but the literal city was destroyed with a vengeance, and its inhabitants miserably slaughtered or led captive into all lands; and therefore the prophecy must have some other more appropriate sense and application, and some other more adequate object and fulfilment. Moreover, the Lord did not fight against Antiochus or the Romans; who are the supposed objects and victims of divine indignation; so that "their flesh consumed when they stood upon their feet, and their eyes in their holes, and their tongues in their mouths." And much less did " HIS," that is our blessed Lord's, "feet stand upon the Mount of Olives, and the mount cleave in the midst of it." Archbishop Newcome, Burkii Gnomon, and, above all, Dr. Blaney in his Zechariah, have appeared

Si illi qui post urbem expugnatam superstites erunt non delebuntur ex urbe, ergo ipsa urbs non delebitur."

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