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vine prophecies concerning the paft first advent of your Meffiah, and your understandings inveloped in a thick mist, raised by the prejudices of education, to difpel the intellectual darkness occafioned thereby muft neceffarily be a work of time. In fhort, your clear perception of the truth of Christianity, and of the meaning of the prophecies, its infallible vouchers, must be gradually, and cannot be inftantaneously, effected. When the day-fpring from on high first vifits men long accustomed to night, either in a corporeal, or in a spiritual fenfe, the glorious burst of light rather dazzles than illuminates; and they muft, in fome degree, be familiarized to the enjoyment of the bleffing of eye-fight, before they can, eagle-like, fteadily fix their eyes. on the fun, in its meridian fplendor. However, I am not without hopes, that this affectionate address to you may, in a conjunction with a favorable train of other second causes, proceeding from the God of your fathers, the one firft caufe, and great arbiter of human events, infenfibly induce. you to examine the Chriftian Scriptures, and compare them with the Jewish prophecies, and, confequently, to difcover, contemplate,

contemplate, acknowledge, and admire, the goodness and wifdom of God in establishing the happinefs of man, by the iuftrumentality of a crucified Savior.

All fuch portions, of the prefent established canon of the Chriftian Scriptures, refpecting Jefus as your Meffiah, which expressly militate against the defcription of him as foretold in your divine prophetic writings, you are bound to reject as fpurious; but you will find the general tenor of the former representing, in perfect harmony with the latter, Chrift Jefus as 'a man, the fon of man, the fon of David, of the feed of David, the fruit of his body, and the fon of Jofeph,' and fpeaking of David as knowing this before', viz. by the gift of prophecy, that of his loins God would raise up Chrift to fit on his throne. These are expreffions, containing a defcription of the birth of the Meffiah, which flatly contradicts the account of his merely maternal nativity. Hence, as Jefus the Meffiah was a man, of the feed of David, fo alfo was he a man of the feed of Abraham, because his royal progenitor, David, was lineally defcended from that Patriarch, by Ifaac, in whofe pofterity God's G 3 gracious

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gracious promife to Abraham, as yet but partially fulfilled, In thy feed shall all the nations of the earth be bleft,'was continued, In Ifaac fhall thy feed be called.' A promise this, which waits your general converfion to a faith in Jefus as your Meffiah, before it can receive its intire final accomplishment. At that bleffed period, which I fhould be truely happy to behold, if,' as Paul fays, in the 11th chap. of his Epistle to the Romans, the fall of them,' the Jews, be the riches of the world, and the diminishing,' or decay or lofs, of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?' The fame Apoftle compares the advantageous change of ftate which God in his 'infinite wifdom and goodness, ordains the world fhall then undergo, to

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life from the dead ;'fo fignal and univerfal will be the bleffings, which God will be pleased to bestow on all nations through the Jews, the feed of Ahraham in general, and through their prince, the Meffiah, the feed of Abraham in particular. His words are, If the cafting away of them,' the Jews, 'be the reconciling of the world, what fhall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?' He then proceeds, under the

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beautiful allufions of a good and a wildolive-tree, to caution his gentile converts

not to boast against his rejected Jewish brethren, at the fame time affigning the cause of the rejection, unbelief in Jefus as their Meffiah, and affuring them of their acceptance with God, if they abide not ftill in unbelief,' which he infinuates will continue till the Chriftian church of the Gentiles be fully completed, blindness in part,' fays he, is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.' The whole of what he delivers on this fubject, to the conclufion of the chapter is fo much in point, and fo much concerns you, my Jewish friends, to know, that I could wifh your learned Rabbis would give it one ferious perufal.

Now the man may reasonably hope to prove an happy inftrument, in the hands of God, to effect your converfion, who, like myself, labors the point, by vindicating the ftrict literal manhood of Jefus, by proving that genuine Chriftian Scripture intirely accords with the Jewish prophecies, in reprefenting him as a very man, of the feed of David, man-begotten, and woman-born;

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and by candidly confeffing, that it is mere labor-in-vain, to endeavor to establish an harmony between those discordant passages in the Gospels, which in Matthew i. 18, &c. and Luke i. 34, 35. reprefent Chrift Jefus, or the anointed Savior, the inftrumental Savior of mankind, fo appointed by God, as the fon of Mary alone, found with child of the Holy Ghoft;' and which in Matthew xiii. 55. Luke iv. 22. and John i. 45. and vi. 42. flatly contradict this account of his birth, by defcribing him as the fon of Jofeph, or of the carpenter, and himself

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a carpenter,'till he was called on by God to enter on his facred miniftry. But the numerous clafs of theologians, abfurdly enough ftiled divines, however good their intentions may be, muft neceffarily retard, instead of promoting, your conviction of the Meffiahfhip of Jefus, fo long as they perfift in their fruitless attempts to reconcile, by futile arguments, the vain philofophy of the Chriftian Platonifts, Juftin Martyr, Tertullian, and the reft of the fophiftical gentry, those fathers of the monftrous metaphyfical offsprings, the feveral Trinitarian abfurdities, with the fimple truth of the Gofpel, and refufe to adopt that fole crite

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