SERMON Spect the several successive parts of one system; which, being intimately connected together, may be supposed to come within the view and contemplation of the same prophecy: whereas it would be endless, and one sees not on what grounds of reason we are authorized, to look out for the accomplishment of prophecy in any casual unrelated events of general history. The Scripture speaks of prophecy, as respecting Jesus, that is, as being one connected scheme of Providence, of which the Jewish dispensation makes a part: so that here we are led to expect that springing and germinant accomplishment, which is mentioned. But had the Jewish Law been complete in itself, and totally unrelated to the Christian, the general principle-that a thousand years are with God but as one day-would no more justify us in extending a Jewish prophecy to Christian events, because perhaps it was eminently fulfilled in them, than it would justify us in extending it to any other signally corresponding events whatsoever. It is only when the prophet hath one uniform connected design before him, that we are authorised to use this latitude of interpretation. For then the prophetic spirit naturally runs along the several parts of such design, and unites the remotest events with the nearest the style of the prophet, in the mean

time, so adapting itself to this double prospect, SERMON as to paint the near and subordinate event in terms that emphatically represent the distant and more considerable.

So that, with this explanation, nothing can be more just or philosophical, than the idea which Lord Bacon suggests of divine prophecy.

The great scheme of Redemption, we are now considering, being the only scheme in the plan of Providence, which, as far as we know, hath been prepared and dignified by a continued system of prophecy, at least this being the only scheme to which we have seen a prophetic system applied, men do not so readily apprehend the doctrine of double senses in prophecy, as they would do, if they saw it exemplified in other cases. But what the history of mankind does not supply, we may represent to ourselves by many obvious suppositions; which cannot justify, indeed, such a scheme of things, but may facilitate the conception of it.

Suppose, for instance, that it had been the purpose of the Deity (as it unquestionably was)

to erect the FREE GOVERNMENT of ancient Rome; and that, from the time of Æneas' landing in Italy, he had given prophetic inti

III.

SERMON mations of this purpose.. Suppose, further, that he had seen fit, for the better discipline of his favoured people, to place them, for a season, under the yoke of the Regal government; and that, during that state of things, he had instructed his prophets to foretell the wars and other occurrences which should distinguish that period of their history. Here would be a case somewhat similar to that of the Jews under their theocratic regimen: not exactly indeed, because prophecy, as we have seen, was essential to the Jewish polity, but had nothing to do with the regal, or any other polity of the Romans. But allow for this difference, and reason or other, suppose that, for some the spirit of prophecy was indulged to this people, under their kings, as it was to the Jews, under their theocracy; and that it was primarily employed in the same way, that is, in predicting their various fortunes under that regimen: Suppose, I say, all this, and would it surprize us to find that their prophets, in dilating on this part of their scheme, should, in a secondary sense, predict the future and more splendid part of it? That, having the whole equally presented to their view, they should anticipate the coming glories of their free state, even in a prophecy which directly concerned their regal, and much humbler

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successes? That, in commenting on their petty SERMON victories over the Sabins and Latins, they should drop some hints that pointed at their African and Asiatic triumphs; or, in tracing the shadow of freedom they enjoyed under the best of their kings, they should let fall some strokes, that more expressly designed the substantial liberty of their equal republic: the end, as we suppose, and completion of that scheme, for the sake of which the prophetic power itself had been communicated to them? Still more: supposing we had such prophecies now in our hands, and that we found them applicable indeed in a general way to the former parts of their history, but frequently more expressive of events in the latter, should we doubt of their being prophecies in a double sense, or should we think it strange that two successive and dependent dispensations in the same connected scheme should be, at once, the object of the same predictions? And lastly, to put an end to these questions, could there seem to be equal reason for applying these predictions to such events as might possibly correspond to them in some other history, the Græcian, for instance, as for applying them to similar events in the Roman history?

Let me just observe further, that, from what hath been said under these two articles,

SERMON
III.

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we may clearly discern the difference between Pagan oracles, and Scriptural prophecies. Both have been termed obscure and ambiguous; and an invidious parallel hath been made, or insinuated, between theme. The Pagan oracles were indeed obscure, sometimes to a degree that no reasonable sense could be made of them they were also ambiguous, in the worst sense; I mean, so as to admit contrary interpretations. The scriptural prophecies we own to be obscure, to a certain degree: And we may call them, too, ambiguous; because they contained two, consistent, indeed, but different meanings. But here is the distinction, I would point out to you. The obscurity and ambiguity of the Pagan oracles had no necessary, or reasonable cause in the subject, on which they turned: the obscurity and ambiguity of the scriptural prophecies have an evident reason in the system, to which they belong. As the Pagan predictions had near and single events for their object, the fate perhaps of some depending war, or the success of some council, then in agitation, they might have been clearly and precisely delivered; and in fact we find that such of the Jewish predictions as foretold events of that sort and charac

• DR. MIDDLETON, Works, vol. III. p. 177. London, 1752, 4to.