LETTER CXII. Weston, Feb. 3. 1753. DEAR SIR, I AM greatly obliged for your repeated favours, and truly sensible of my obligations. I have not acknowledged them so punctually as I ought; but I hope you will excuse this neglect, and ascribe it to the real cause, ill health and weak spirits, which cramp my mind, unnerve my hand, and make me trespass upon the candour of all my correspondents. Why did I say hope? I see you do excuse me. Of this your last letter, transmitted to Mr Moses Browne, is a clear and pleasing proof, which I safely received, and for which I sincerely thank you; as I bless the God of grace, and the God of wisdom, for giving you so friendly a temper, and so discerning a judgment. * The little piece which you have so judiciously retouched and improved, was not written for public view; but I thought, after frequent prayer to God for direction, and attending to the workings of his Providence, it was his will that it should be published. I was sensible of its many defects, but upon his Almighty power I depend for its usefulness: he can bid even a worm thresh the mountains, and make his strength perfect, illustrious, triumphant, in the most abject weakness. Blessed be his holy name, that the servants of Jesus Christ, and the advocates for his sacred cause, have such an arm to rely on. If another edition should be required, I will take leave to enrich my piece with your remarks; and let me beg of you to favour me with your opinion in relation to some additions which I have occasionally penned. Page 111, after line 22, add,-But what shall we say to a mistake in the sacred chronology; a palpable mistake pointed out by his lordship, *This little piece was, Remarks on Lord Bolingbroke's Letters on the History of the Old Testament, in a Letter to a Lady of Quality, inserted Vol. V. proved to be such by the testimony of profane history-Samaria said to be taken by the king of Assyria, twelve years after the Assyrian empire was no more? For my own part, I make neither hesitation nor scruple to reply, If Isaiah and Herodotus * vary; if the authors of the Kings, the Chronicles, and several of the prophets, differ from the Greek historians, I am under no difficulty in settling my judgment and taking my side. When profane writers agree with the sacred, I admit both accounts; when they disagree, I reject the former, and acquiesce in the latter. Nor can I tax myself with any thing unreasonable or arbitrary in this proceeding; for surely those writers who are able to foretell future events, must deserve the preference in relating past. Those witnesses who dwelt on the spot, and were personally concerned in affairs, are more to be relied on than those who lived in a distant country, and wrote in a distant age. With regard to the case specified by my Lord Bolingbroke, I believe the attentive reader will find the error, not in the sacred chronology, but in his lordship's apprehension. The kingdom of Assyria was not at that period no more; but, like the Irish or Scotch crown to the English, united to the Babylonian; of which, when the holy writers treat, they call it sometimes by one name, and sometimes by the other. Page 15, after established, insert, "If Isaiah speaks by divine inspiration, when he says of the formidable Sennacherib, The Lord of Hosts shall stir up a scourge for him, according to the slaughter of Midian; surely that memorable defeat, recorded in the book of Judges, must be an undoubted fact. Could the Spirit, which is infallible, give such a sanction to a story which was fictitious?" When the same Isaiah prays in that elevated and ardent strain, "Awake, awake; put on strength, O arm of the *Herodotus does not differ from the prophet Isaiah and the Scripture account of the empire of Assyria; it is Cresias and Justin that vary from it. Lord! awake as in the ancient days, in the generations of old! Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? Art thou not it, which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep? that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?" can we reasonably imagine, that the prophet would plead lying vanities before the God of truth; that he would ground his own and his countrymen's faith on a popular romance; or on what my lord calls," a purely human, and therefore fallible," narrative? Does not the blessed Jesus describe the manner, and illustrate the efficacy of his own death, by the serpent lifted up in the wilderness, and its all-healing virtue on the wounded Israelites? Does not the holy apostle enumerate several of the most wonderful miracles, wrought for the deliverance, the preservation, the chastisement of Israel, and from these occurrences deduce the most important admonitions, urge the most forcible exhortations? Such references, made by such persons, not only suppose, but prove more than bare allusions: they are also ratifications; and demonstrate with an evidence, clear as the wisdom, firm as the faithfulness of an incarnate God, that the writers of these accounts have neither deceived us nor were deceived themselves. Should it be said, that these passages are chiefly in the Mosaical history, and therefore give no authority to the other historical memoirs; I would ask, Does not St Paul (Rom. ii. 23.) quote a passage from the book of Kings? Does he not build upon the passage as a sure and indubitable truth? Does he not dignify the book with what I may term the incommunicable character in writing; and style it, by way of superlative eminence, the Scripture? Is it not undeniably certain, that the Jewish youths, and Timothy among the rest, were instructed in the historical as well as the prophetical volumes of the Old Testament? Does not the best of judges recommend all those volumes to our highest estimation, by pronouncing ons are marked out as che several cantons men, this whole transaction is ayed, that some readers, in their disaffection to the lly opposite in their taste of ught it particularized even to ever, this particularity of descripxpedient, not only to supersede any as his lordship has raised, but also by an unalterable standard, the boune tribes; to prevent any encroachments nheritance of each other; and to demone wonderful agreement between the ancient on of Jacob, the more recent prophecy of and the situation, the limits, the produce, of itories respectively assigned to the patriarchal ob foretold, that Zebulon should dwell the sea, whose portion actually lay the sea of Galilee, and extended to m. Moses foretold, that the Lord een Benjamin's shoulders, or the |