positions, so much better subjects to our king and laws, than servants to God. Forbid it, common sense, that we should be dissatisfied with religion, because we had not the making of it for ourselves, which indeed seems to be the wish of those, who, in every age, are for casting it over again in a model of their own, though they acknowledge that God is its author. Undoubtedly, he hath never listened either to Christ, or his gospel, who doth not, in his practice acknowledge, that peace, charity, and uniformity, compose one of its primary and most essential articles.

155. He,' saith Solomon, that oppresseth the poor, reproacheth his Maker,' the Maker of the poor, as if his poverty were a disgrace to the creation, wherein the poor man holds so low and contemptible a place, that one, who, but a man like himself, is able to tread him down into the mire. But doth not the oppressor still more flagrantly reproach and even blaspheme his own Maker, for having sent such a monster into being? God is the Maker both of the rich and poor, who meet here together for the trial of both; not but that the one frequently makes himself poor, and the other, rich; so that God having made the men, leaves them to make, in some measure, their own fortunes. It is true, however, that he who honoureth God, hath mercy on the poor, because he considers him as bearing the image of his Maker by nature, and still more by grace; for, in this very instance, his resemblance is still greater to his Saviour, who chose to be poor.

156. It is a fine saying, that it is human to err; but divine, to confess one's error. The word divine, here is taken in a qualified sense. To see truth is the highest proof of a sound understanding; but in an argument or debate, to see it, when coming from the mouth of an opponent, is yet a higher proof of this soundness; and to own it for such, proves, that, for the love of truth, the man can conquer and blow away his own pride, than which there is nothing more apt to cloud the faculties of an otherwise rational creature.

157. We are too apt to misjudge the dispensations of Providence, when we weigh them with our own wishes. The refractory heart would needs be left to its own way, though too blind to see a single step of it. A religious widow of my acquaintance, had two sons, grown up men, of whom she was very fond, and indeed a little proud; and two daughters, not much less dear to their worthy mother. Her two sons, going out one Sunday morning, with a design not justifiable on any other day, were drowned.

It was as much as her strong sense of religion could do, to carry her over this heavy affliction. Sometime after this, when her Christian resignation had began to blunt the sting of her misery, in spite of all her remonstrances, her eldest daughter married a poor profligate young man. Her second daughter, tired with the company of a too admonitory mother, as she thought her, went to live with the young couple; and soon proved with child to her brother-in-law; the married sister, dreading the tyranny of her husband, allowing them to sleep together in one room. On this, the unhappy mother said to me, 'Oh, sir! I thought death the most terrible of all things, when I lost my two fine young men in one day; but now I feel the sweetness of death. O that my two daughters had gone to the bottom with my two sons!'

158. A new and enlarged edition of Chambers's Dictionary, is now publishing here in Dublin, which, among other things, is to serve as an almanack of opinions, particularly in matters of religion. Here it is, that the readers of scraps, of newspapers, magazines, reviews, &c. apt enough to go astray without such aids afforded them, as occur in many parts of this voluminous work, find the subject of demoniacks handled as wholly fabulous, and consequently exorcism, recorded in the gospel, as an imposition on the credulity of Christians; the government of the church by bishops as nothing better than usurpation; and the proof of our religion by prophecies, though at first speciously applauded, yet, immediately afterward, whiffled away into almost nothing between Collins and Surenhusius, with the aid of Whiston. Here it is, that the giddy reader is led away by a treacherous infidel in the mask of a bigoted Presbyterian, whom he is to take for a clergyman of some sort, that his fallacies may pass the more readily in disguise. The prophecies of the Old Testament concerning Christ are artfully represented as altogether figurative, allegorical, and not applicable, but by somewhat like a cabala. That some of those prophecies are figuratively, nay even obscurely, expressed, on set purpose, and for wise and good reasons, that nothing, but the accomplishment might explain them; and that for other reasons, equally wise and good, an event, soon to happen, is pointed to, as a type of another, more important, but more distant in time; we readily acknowledge. That in some prophecies from the Old Testament, referred to in the New, it is sometimes said, that such or such a thing is done, in order that this or that prophecy might be fulfilled, hath been long ago, and now again ob

jected in this insidious book, as if Christ and his apostles had artfully thrust themselves into a specious accomplishment of the prophecy, though that accomplishment was, in most instances, a thing above the power of man to perform, and attended with numbers of other acts, far above the agency of all created beings. Allowing however, that every thing, especially of this high nature, was done only to fulfil the prophecies, how can this derogate from the proof intended to be drawn from prophecy? Is it not most reasonable, that Providence should so dispose events, as to fulfil its own predictions, especially when those predictions are promissory, the very essence of all that relate to the Messiah? The Jews had best beware of insinuating this idle objection to the evangelists, since they may see it avowed by Ezra in the very first verse of his book, that Providence concerns itself to bring about such events in the course of this world, as shall accomplish its own prophecies and promises. It would be very strange, if the Omniscient and Almighty Governor of the world should never give previous warning of what he means to do among mankind; and stranger still, if after having given such warning, he should not provide events suitable to his own predictions. It ill becomes even a pretended minister of the gospel to retail the arguments of known infidels against that gospel, especially as he must be sensible, that arguments so flimsy can serve no other purpose, but that of staggering the faith of very weak and illiterate people. This deceitful writer goes on to charge those of the New Testament, not only with accommodations, but perversions of various other prophecies; and begins with Acts iii. 23, where St. Peter cites a prophecy of Moses concerning Christ, most accurately, both in words and meaning, from Deut. xviii. Then he proceeds to Acts vii. 43, where St. Stephen quotes Amos v. 25, with equal exactness, only the Raiphan of the Septuagint is called Remphan by Stephen, a name differently pronounced by the Jews, who neither then knew, nor now know, how to pronounce a single word of the Hebrew. As to Stephen's putting Babylon for Damascus, it does not in the smallest degree alter the sense, as the prophecy hath been strictly fulfilled in regard to both places. He proceeds to 1 Cor. xv. 54, where the sense of the prophecy by Isa. xxv. is completely taken, and not a syllable altered, but what is necessary in the mere form of application. He next instances 2 Cor. viii. 15, where St. Paul, preserving the precise sense of the words, Exod. xvi. 18, abridges the expressions, but

keeps close to the principal terms. He next insists on Rom. ix. 33, where St. Paul refers to two prophecies of Isaiah, chap. viii. 14, concerning Christ as a stumbling-stone to the Jews, and chap. xxviii. 16, as a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation, both verified in fact, pursuant to the intendment of the prophecy, and the application of the apostle. What misapplication this miserable dabbler could see in St. Paul's saying, 1 Cor. xi. 9, that the man was not made for the woman, but the woman for the man,' pursuant to Gen. ii. 18, no mortal can guess. The thing set forth by Moses and him is no prophecy, but a fact. Heb. viii. 9, is so exactly, verbatim cited from Jer. xxxi. 32, and so completely fulfilled by the new covenant in Christ, that nothing less than the very distraction of this infidel could find an objection to it. Heb. x. 5, to which this deceiver ought to have added the several verses that follow, all which St. Paul applies from Psal. xl. 6, 7, &c. to Christ, and reasons from them, with the utmost precision. Acts xiii. 41. These words of St. Paul to a congregation of Jews and Gentiles are applied by Habakkuk to Gentiles only, by St. Paul to both, but more sharply to the Jews, as, on that occasion, more blind and contemptuous than the Gentiles. What an outcry of infidels, to corrupt the ignorant, about the wrong interpretation and application of prophecies to Christ! And behold these singled out by his enemy, from all the rest, as most unfairly applied by his apostles and evangelists to him and his religion, admit not of the smallest objection, in point of meaning, and of almost none even in regard to the words! All the grounds this despicable retailer of infidelity builds on, are the Hebrew points, and some alterations of Hebrew words, which men of sense and learning hold in the utmost contempt, and rely on the Septuagint, which the writers of the New Testament quote in all his catalogue of texts, and almost every where throughout that sacred volume; perhaps I ought rather to say, absolutely every where. The Septuagint is authenticated, not only by its antiquity, and its intelligible genuineness, but by Christ himself, and all his immediate followers, as incomparably preferable to the Hebrew copies, whereof hardly any thing in their time, and still less in ours, is sufficiently understood, to be depended on. It would be weakness to multiply words any farther on so scurvy an attempt; but I at the same time insist, that many of the aforesaid prophecies are too plain and literal to be mistaken as to their intendment. Of this latter sort I shall cite a few out of many, that the rational

reader may see, how unfairly and treacherously he is dealt with by such writers. In thy seed,' saith God to Abraham, 'shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.' Where is the figure, or allegory here? The sceptre,' saith dying Jacob, shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, till Shiloh, the messenger of peace, shall come.' It is true that sceptre here signifies some sort of power or government, but so familiarly, as not to need a cabalistical explication. Moses tells the Israelites that God shall send them a prophet of their brethren, like unto him, and charges them to hear that prophet. Not one of their prophets, before Christ, was a lawgiver, like unto Moses, nor inculcated any other law but that by Moses, which could not be like, because it was precisely the same. Was this promise figurative, or this prophecy allegorical? Job saith, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand upon the earth at the latter day,' &c. What figure or obscurity is found in these words? It could not be to David himself, that these words were said, 'Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son lest he be angry,' &c. In the twenty-second Psalm, where the sufferings, and in the seventy-second, where the triumphs of Christ are foreseen and described, in some extent, all is literal, and hath been literally accomplished. Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell,' or the grave, 'nor suffer thy Holy One to see corruption;' words uttered in the sixteenth Psalm in the person of Christ, and literally true of him, but not of David, or any other man. In the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, the sufferings of Christ for us are as plainly and pathetically dilated, as by any of the evangelists, who were witnesses of the facts. Daniel foretells the time of his coming and dying, by seventy weeks of years, as natural and literal a computation of time, as weeks of days, and so well understood by the Jews, contemporary with Christ, that their not universally receiving of the Messiah was by no means owing to any misconception of the time, for they all expected him at that very time, but to their ambitious opinion, that his kingdom was to be of this world. In the eleventh chapter of Zechariah, we find a literal and very particular prophecy of Christ is mentioned; They weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter, a goodly price, that I was prized at of them;' and the