libido. But which is the fairer reasoning?-to question the general genuineness of the Pentateuch on account of a parenthesis; or to question the genuineness of the parenthesis itself?

"There is nothing new under the sun," may be especially said of the cavils of infidelity. They have been cribbed and pilfered over and over again, without acknowledgment, and (to use a phrase of Dr. Johnson's) by a perpetual repercussion from one coxcomb to another. Paine attacks Moses for speaking of himself in the third person; which would apply to the genuineness of Thucydides, Xenophon, Cæsar, and Josephus. But this was not understood by an illiterate egotist, who knew nothing about Cæsar and Xenophon, and who set himself up as wiser than the wise of eighteen centuries.

Some objections are to be ascribed to ignorance of Hebrew. 1 is not BEYOND Jordan, but literally OVER Jordan, and may be applied to either side of that river. Over is ober in German; and Aberdeen or Aberistwyth is the town built over the river Dee or Istwyth. Witsius, on a review of the whole argument, allows of only four interpolations; and these either consisting of the change of a word, or of a slight historical memorandum.

146. Inspiration of the Scriptures proved from prophecies.

Miracles and prophecy, the two external evidences of Christianity, rest their claims on an appeal-the former to the omnipotence, the latter to the omniscience of God. The working of miracles and the gift of prophecy may, it is true, be deputed to men, whom the Spirit of God may make the channels of his communications and powers; but if so, what such favoured individuals declare concerning God's dealings is to be received as absolute truth, since God is truth, wisdom, and holiness, and would never give them such powers in order to mislead mankind. Believe what I say, for my works' sake, was an unanswerable argument. Miracle proves the power of God in the moment of performance; but prophecy proves his omniscience by its fulfilment. Prophecy may have, and has in many cases, a first and inferior fulfilment, as an earnest and assurance of its

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grand and ultimate fulfilment. The prophecies of Scripture are not appendages to the narrative, which might prove, when fulfilled, their own separate inspirations, but not the general authenticity of the sacred records: they are inlaid, interwoven, and almost identified with the whole.

The prophecies of the Old Testament relate, partly to the fates of kingdoms which, from their neighbourhood, affected the fortunes of the Israelites-Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, Tyre, Edom, Arabia, and partly to the Messiah, or great Deliverer; the anticipation of whom was kept up during many centuries by a chain of prophets, writing in different styles, and different ages and circumstances, yet all taking the same view of one great subject, and perhaps some of them ignorant of the full drift of many of their expressions; too remote from each other to be in human compact, yet all marvellously consistent in their announcements. All these prophecies have been fulfilled, or are now in the course of fulfilment; yet they were too distant from the events, particularly those relating to the Messiah, to be the mere product of sagacious forecast; and they were too minute in their detail of particular circumstances, birth, character, place, time, miraculous agency, sufferings, resurrection, ascension, and the consequences of the whole, to be either conjectures, or to be fulfilled because the prediction put it into the head of an individual to accommodate his conduct to their details; for we have already shewn that iva λŋρwon has no such meaning. It was necessary and wise that some of the prophecies should be clothed in ambiguity: as an exercise of faith (our life being a probation of conviction as well as of morals, that is, of decision between probabilities and anti-probabilities); as sheltering the heralds of God's will from the personal vengeance which might be consequent upon their speaking truth; as avoiding the giving of a handle to wicked kings for gratifying their own ambition and lust of conquest by what they would consider a compliance with the word of God. These causes, together with the figurative Oriental style of many prophecies, seem to cast some cloudiness around them, but not so much as to render their meaning doubtful even to the Jews, who admitted their applicability to their Messiah, but, their minds

being darkened, denied their application to Jesus. The prophecies, therefore, were themselves inspired; and, as they were interwoven like a gold thread in the whole tissue and web of the sacred volume, prove the Divine inspiration of the Scriptures at large: they prove, that unless a man be convinced by Moses and the prophets, a miracle would not persuade his evil heart of unbelief; they prove, not only that God spake to our fathers in time past by the prophets, but moreover, that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God.

A miracle is a communication of supernatural power; a prophecy is a communication of supernatural knowledge. When a miracle accompanies prophecy, it affords ground for faith in the prediction, even before the accomplishment, soothing the impatience and quelling the doubts of expectation. A prophecy without a miracle, but delivered by a holy character, is ground of an inferior expectation of the accomplishment. Speaking of prophecy in the abstract, the issue (though far off by ages) must be abided as a seal of its truth. The fulfilment shews that the person who uttered it was inspired by God, who alone knows future events. But it is likewise a proof of that prophet having been inspired in other instances in which he claimed inspiration--a proof of his having a Divine mission for the purposes for which he asserts that he has it; for when a prediction accomplished (says Gerard, Evidences, p. 279) shews a person to have had supernatural knowledge in that instance, it would be offering violence to the understanding, not to believe such doctrines (undiscoverable by reason) as he publishes along with the prediction, and affirms to be revealed by the same God, and for the truth of which affirmation he appeals to his predictions. What this author says of doctrines, is true respecting precepts and historical narratives. He says, he is taught of God in regard to them all. The proof of fulfilment confirms his declaration as to prophecy: it thus commands implicit trust as to the whole. Therefore, either miracles, performed along with the prediction, or the predicted events happening at the time of accomplishment, being evidences of veracity in asserting prophetic inspiration, are, still farther, evidence of the veracity of the prophet in asserting the general inspiration of his writings.

147. How far was metempsychosis a doctrine of the Pharisees?

The doctrine of metempsychosis was borrowed by the Jews from paganism. It belonged to the Egyptian and Brahminical, and most probably to the Syrian and Babylonian idolatries, and was implied in the rearing of altars to the departed, and worshipping them in groves and high places. They expected Elias to return in the person of a herald of their Messiah. From the prophecy of Malachi (iv. 5), Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord the same person who is called the messenger, chap. iii. 1, -the Jews to this day earnestly pray for the coming of Elias, who is the forerunner of their Messiah, according to a form of prayer recorded in their liturgies. Elias appeared in person to fulfil, even literally, this prophecy, before three chosen witnesses, at the transfiguration. But these apostles were commanded to tell the vision to no man before the resurrection of their Master; and the other disciples asked, immediately after that vision, Why, then, say the scribes that Elias must first come? Matt. xvii. 10. Our Saviour then opens the spiritual meaning (verses 11, 12), which had been more fully, yet privately, revealed to Zacharias by the angel-that John should go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elias, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord, Luke i. 17. With truth, then, did our Saviour say that this (John) was Elias, in the spiritual sense of the Gospel, without sanctioning the Pharisaical notion of meteinpsychosis; and with equal truth did John deny he was Elias in that literal sense, while he yet pronounced himself to be the forerunner of the Messiah, whose shoes he was not worthy to bear the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord; in fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah, chap. xl. 3.

Commentators have run a parallel between Elias and John, both sent in troublous times, and commissioned to reprove wicked princes; both living sparingly in a wilderness; both clothed alike, and in emblems of poverty. Elijah, a hairy man, girt with a leathern girdle, 2 Kings i. 8; John, with a raiment

of camel's hair and a leathern girdle· the decoration or meanness of the girdle measuring in the East the condition of the wearer the outside of the purse denoting its contents. Both were jealous for the Lord of hosts, 1 Kings xix. 20; and both turned many to the Lord, Luke i. 16.

That the Pharisees held this doctrine of transmigration as confined to the souls of the good, appears from Josephus (De Bell. lib. ii. cap. 8, § 14), “They say that all souls are incorruptible, but that the souls of good men only are removed into other bodies; while the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment." Such was the doctrine of the Pharisees; and Josephus declares of himself, that he gives his hand to the Romans, not as a deserter of the Jews, but because God had chosen him to be the vehicle of a soul of prophecy; De Bell. lib. iii. cap. viii. § 3.

The question, Did this man sin, or his parents, that he was born blind? seems to intimate a belief in the penal nature of afflictions in this life for transgressions committed in a previous state of being; but Lightfoot and others deny this application.

It certainly contradicted the passages, Every one of us shall give an account of HIMSELF to God, Rom. xiv. 12; and that which all the Jews allowed, a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and UNJUST, Acts xxiv. 15, Dan. xii. 2, John v. 28, 29; wherein every man shall receive according to HIS works, Rom. ii. 6, &c.; whether good or bad, 2 Cor. v. 10.

The question of the Jews, however, seems to refer to the second commandment; and that the sins of parents are even here visited upon the children, we see to be a fact in hereditary diseases and family dishonour. Eccles. xi. 18 is cited from the Apocrypha, to shew the opinions of the Jews; but that a man is known by his children, is nothing but a truism.

We e now see the reason why the Jews asked John the Baptist whether he was Elias, or o ρоpýτηs, by which some explain Jeremiah; but from John vi. 14, and Acts iii. 23, it can signify none other than Christ in his prophetic character, THAT prophet which should come into the world. The Pharisees believed in a return to earth of Jeremiah and the other prophets, Matt. xvi. 14. Did not the exclamation of Herod, This is John the