which I owe to myself, and with the deference, so justly due to your name and abilities,

I am, Sir,

with great esteem,

your obedient humble servant,

P.S. You will be pleased, Sir, to address your answer To Daniel Freeman, Esq. at the Cocoa Tree, Pall Mall: but if you have any scruple of engaging with a mask, I am ready, by the same channel, to disclose my real name and place of abode; and to pledge myself for the same discretion, which, in my turn, I shall have a right to expect.

I had neither leisure nor inclination to enter into controversy with this stranger (for which there was the less occasion, as he had disputed no principle or opinion advanced by me in the Sermons); but, as I knew, whoever he was, that he would complain, or rather boast, of being wholly unnoticed by me, I sent him this answer.

VOL. V.

ANSWER TO THE FOREGOING

SIR,

LETTER.

Thurcaston, August 29, 1772.

Your very elegant letter on the antiquity and authenticity of the Book of Daniel (just now received) finds me here, if not without leisure, yet without books, and therefore in no condition to enter far into the depths of this controversy; which indeed is the less necessary, as every thing, that relates to the subject, will come, of course, to be considered by my learned successors in the new Lecture. For, as the prophecies of Daniel make an important link in that chain, which, as you say, has been let down from heaven to earth (but not by the Author of the late Sermons, who brought into view only what he had found, not invented) the grounds, on which their authority rests, will, without doubt, be carefully examined, and, as I suppose, firmly established.

But, in the mean time, and to make at least some small return for the civility of your address to me, I beg leave to trouble you with

two or three short remarks, such as occur to me, on the sudden, in reading your letter.

Your main difficulties are these two: 1. That the author of the Book of Daniel is too clear for a prophet; as appears from his prediction of the Persian and Macedonian affairs: And 2. too fabulous for a contemporary historian; as is evident, you suppose, from his mistakes, chiefly, I think, in the vith chapter.

1. The first of these difficulties is an extraordinary one. For why may not prophecy, if the Inspirer think fit, be as clear as history? Scriptural prophecy, whence your idea of its obscurity is taken, is occasionally thus clear, I mean after the event: And Daniel's prophecy of the revolutions in the Grecian empire would have been obscure enough to Porphyry himself, before it.

But your opinion, after all, when you come to explain yourself, really is, as one should expect, that, as a prophet, Daniel is not clear enough for you enforce the old objection of Porphyry by observing, That, where a pretended prophecy is clear to a certain point of time, and afterwards obscure and shadowy,

there common sense leads one to conclude that the author of it is an impostor.

This reasoning is plausible, but not conclusive, unless it be taken for granted that a prophecy must, in all its parts, be equally clear and precise: whereas, on the supposition of real inspiration, it may be fit, I mean it may suit with the views of the Inspirer, to predict some things with more perspicuity, and in terms more obviously and directly applicable to the events in which they are fulfilled, than others. But, further, this reasoning, whatever force it may have, has no place here; at least, you evidently beg the question when you urge it; because the persons, you dispute against, maintain, That, the subsequent prophecies of Daniel are equally distinct with the preceding ones concerning the Persian and Macedonian empires, at least so much of them as they take to have been fulfilled, and that, to judge of the rest, we must wait for the completion of them.

However, you admit that the suspicion arising from the clearest prophecy may be removed by direct positive evidence that it was composed before the event. But then you carry your notions of that evidence very far,

when you require "that the existence of such "a prophecy prior to the accomplishment "should be proved by the knowledge of it

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being generally diffused amongst an enlight"ened nation, previous to that period, and its public existence attested by an unbroken "chain of authentic writers."

What you here claim as a matter of right, is, without question, very desirable, but should, I think, be accepted, if it be given at all, as a matter of courtesy. For what you describe is the utmost evidence that the case admits: but what right have we, in this or any other subject whether of natural or revealed religion, to the utmost evidence? Is it not enough that the evidence be sufficient to induce a reasonable assent? And is not that assent reasonable, which is paid to real evidence, though of an inferior kind, when uncontrouled by any greater? And such evidence we clearly have for the authenticity of the book of Daniel, in the reception of it, by the Jewish nation, down to the time of Jesus, whose appeal to it supposes and implies that reception to have been constant and general: Not to observe that the testimony of Jesus is further supported by all the considerations that are alledged for his own divine character. To this evidence, which