as if

Moses, Jesus, Mohammed: Jew, Christian, Turk, begin, continue, and end the whole; altogether independent of God, who is not at all mentioned, except as the law of Moses is called 'the law of God.'-But this is not the worst. What shall we say to such language as this? If 'Moses should one day come to visit his castle, he 'would be surprised to find two castles built on the top of his and in a great rage, he would command one of his tempests, saying, Go ye and pluck 'them both off, and cast them away, and let me 'see no more of them.' How different the language of prophecy! "Thus saith the Lord God; "I will even rend it with a stormy wind in my fury, and there shall be an overflowing shower "in mine anger, and great hailstones in my fury 66 to consume it. So will I break down the wall ye "have builded with untempered mortar," &c. 1 Are the tempests at the command of Moses? Are they his tempests? Surely this language is as contrary to the Old Testament as to the New. Let us at least, in pleading our several causes, not forget, that "the Lord reigneth."-Mr. C. makes the word Turk to mean the same as Mohammedan: (p. 29. 1. 22. 23.) but Turk is the name of a nation, not of a religious body. Probably, the Turks in general are Mohammedans: but the Mohammedans in Persia, the East Indies, and the interior of Africa, are not Turks.

P. 31. 1. 6. The castle of Moses will stand ' for ever.'-What says Jeremiah on this subject?

Ez. xiii. 10-16. Job xxxviii. 22-25. Ps. cvii. 25. Jer. x. 13. Jon. i. 4.

"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I "will make a new covenant with the house of "Israel, and with the house of Judah. Not "according to the covenant which I made with "their fathers, when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my "covenant they brake, although I was a husband "unto them, saith the Lord. And this shall be

"the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, saith the Lord, I will

put my law in their hearts, and write it in their "inward parts; and I will be their God, and they "shall be my people. And they shall teach no

more every man his neighbour, and every man "his brother saying, Know the Lord: for they "shall all know me, from the least of them unto "the greatest of them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember "their sin no more." Was not the apostle "warranted by this prediction to say, "In that "he saith, a new covenant, he hath made the "first old: now that which decayeth, and waxeth

old, is ready to vanish away?" Even the letter and form of the law of Moses, as it relates to ritual observances, has not only in its most important requirements been rendered impracticable, ever since the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, that is for above seventeen hundred years; but it has also been disregarded in many things practicable, by the Jews in their dispersions.

P. 31. 1. 8. 'It was ordained that there should

Jer. xxxi. 31-34. Heb. viii. 8-13.

'be four empires,' &c. The Messiah is predicted by Daniel as coming under the fourth kingdom, made known by Nebuchadnezzar's dream:1 but his coming was predicted under the emblem of "a stone cut out without hands ;" evidently intimating the feeble beginnings of his kingdom; being of the same import with the parables of the grain of mustard-seed, and of the leaven, by which Jesus Christ predicted the nature and progress of his gospel.2 Its original was small, and its success gradual, and at first unobserved by the rulers of the world: it proceeded without any human help, or power, and amidst great opposition from man. The coming of the Messiah must indeed be under the fourth kingdom; and so was the coming of Jesus: but it is his final success, when" the stone cut out without hands became "a great mountain, and filled the whole earth," which is predicted as taking place when the fourth kingdom was divided into ten kingdoms. There is no intimation that the Messiah should not come till that time: on the contrary the same prophet predicted that he should come before the desolations of Jerusalem.3 "Of the increase of his

government and peace there shall be no end," says Isaiah. Jesus came when the fourth kingdom had attained to its height of power and dominion: and by the influence of his gospel, and by those weapons of warfare" which have been described, he undermined and subverted the pagan idolatrous

power of Rome; and its temporal dominion at length was enfeebled, till ten kingdoms were formed out of that unwieldy fabric; the legs and thighs of iron terminated in the ten toes of the image and in this form, "the stone cut out "without hands shall smite the image," and fully dissipate it" as chaff," and " shall become a great "mountain, and fill the whole earth." This remains to be fulfilled; but it is connected with the last victories, and largest increase of the kingdom, of the Messiah, and not with his first coming, and his feeble beginnings. Indeed nothing in the whole prophecy is at all spoken concerning the coming of the Messiah; but merely about the fifth kingdom, and its final prevalence, and its filling the whole earth."

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P. 31. 1. 18. Messiah to come twice?' Christians do not suppose that the Messiah will come twice, in that sense in which Mr. C. seems to propose the question: or a second time, until he shall come in glory to judge the world: except in that sense, in which it has been shewn, that he came in the early times of the gospel, to set up his kingdom, to rescue his persecuted church, and to take vengeance on his crucifiers, by destroying Jerusalem and the temple, and inflicting the most tremendous judgments on the Jews; even by the power of his providence, and by the sacred influence of his holy Spirit. He will also come again ere long, to dissipate all remains of the Roman, antichristian, persecuting empire, and "to fill the "earth with his glory." He came once "as a "child born, as a son given;" "as a root out of a

dry ground, without form or comeliness, or any beauty that men should desire him :" but he shall come again gloriously, as Lord of all, as King of kings and Lord of lords," to take to himself the kingdom over all the earth.

Some Christians indeed expect his personal appearance and reign on earth: but this seems, to me at least, not capable of proof, either from the Old Testament or the New: and the first verses of the sixty-third chapter of Isaiah, clearly predict his coming as a conqueror, to destroy his enemies, and rescue his people; indeed as clearly as any part of the New Testament.

Thus Daniel also says, " I saw in the night visions, " and behold one like the Son of man came with "the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient "of days; and there was given to him dominion, "and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, na

tions, and languages should serve him: his "dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall "not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall "not be destroyed." 2 "The Son of man" is here spoken of, not as coming from heaven to earth, to receive this kingdom; much less as born on earth, and coming as "a child born, and a son given;" but as ascending from the earth into the presence of "the Ancient of days," and receiving from him this kingdom. This then, however interpreted, must be distinct from his first coming, as "a child "born." Though the immediate ruler of this kingdom be called "the Son of man:" yet it is 'obvious that there is something amazing in the

'Is. ix. 6, 7. liii. 1, 2.

VOL. IX.

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Dan. vii. 13, 14