REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Discourses on Prophecy; in which are considered its Structure, Use, and Inspiration: being the Substance of twelve Sermons, preached in the Chapel of Lincoln's-Inn, in the Lecture founded by the Right Reverend William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester. By John Davison, B.D. 8vo. pp. 672. Murray. 1824.

THE expectation of prophecy in any revelation from God to man, is amongst the most natural feelings of the mind. There has been always among mankind a proneness to believe in any assumed intimations respecting the future; instanced sometimes in the credit given to omens and auspices-sometimes in the eagerness with which the rhapsodies of the Sibyl, or the mysterious responses of the oracular shrine and the professed Diviner have been explored, and adopted as practical guides of conduct. Human nature is not satisfied with that unambiguous oracle which it has in its past experience. Perhaps the apparent anomalous course of the moral world may be the reason why man is not disposed to rest exclusively on the admonition of the past. There appears so great an irregularity in the events which we have already experienced, that we find it difficult to deduce any general rules on which we may implicitly rely for our direction. And the difficulty itself of deducing these rules, even on the supposition that we could obtain such as would suffice for our safe conduct, diverts the generality from attempting to explore them. Ἐπὶ τὰ ἕτοιμα μᾶλλον τρέπονται. The seer and the soothsayer who come forward to solve the perplexity of our situation, and save us the irksomeness of painful investigation, appear as welcome auxiliaries; and we receive accordingly the ready knowledge which they profess themselves able to impart, with a very strong predisposition to believe it. Some weight also must be attributed to the appearance of friendly inclination towards us, by which the guides of our future conduct come recommended to our notice. To ask and to give advice is the beginning of friendly intercourse; and the oracular counsellor has the advantage of supplying advice inaccessible from any other source; and hence an additional sanction is given to his intimations. Especially is this observable in the ready belief which a prophet of good obtains, compared with the reluctant credit bestowed on the denouncer of woe. "I hate him," said Ahab of Micaiah, "for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil." "Ah, Lord God, they say of me, doth he not speak parables?" is a feeling expression of the taunt with which the prophets of Israel were greeted, because they did not prophesy "smooth things" to those to whom they were sent. And in Homer we find Agamemnon vehement in rage against Chalcas, because, as "a

prophet of evil, he had never told him (rò xpyvov) that which was after his heart.". But, from whatever cause it may arise, the tendency among men to resort to some oracular direction for their future conduct, is indisputably clear from history, as well as from our own experience. If amongst the unenlightened and ignorant it has displayed itself in absurdities and impieties, the tendency is not to be reprobated on that account. We may only infer from this the deep seat which it has in our nature, and that accordingly it was destined by Him who implanted it, at some time to have its appropriate gratification. And, if any where, we should expect this in an authentic Revelation of his will. In this Revelation, as an authoritative guide of human conduct, proceeding from Him, unto whom all his works are known from the beginning, we should expect that that infirmity with which we are beset in all our anticipations of the future issue of events would be mercifully helped, and some insight vouchsafed into those hitherto unvisited shadowy regions into which our hopes dart forward with such trembling zeal. A Revelation without prophecy would be but a cold gleam of light shed on us; it might be enough to disclose the secrets of our dark prison-house, in which we are doomed to sojourn, as inhabitants of the world; whilst we want rather a view beyond it, to make us forget its discomfort and its gloom.

But in proportion to the natural credibility which attaches to the prophetic part of revelation, is the necessity of defining the character of those predictions which are the authentic expositors of the future, and those which are only the reveries of fanatical or mercenary imposture. It is of the utmost importance for the Christian to be able to shew, in opposition to that cavil of the sceptic, which, instead of regarding the circumstance as a presumption in favour of the revelation, perversely argues from the tendency itself to believe in predictions against the revelation which contains them, that our scriptural prophecies, so far from being mere conformities to the general appetite for the marvellous, as the unbeliever terms them, are, on the contrary, the faithful transcripts of Divine suggestions, imparted to the prophet.

The difficulty which is thus cast in our way, in verifying the authentic records of prophecy is further increased, when on entering into the examination of them, we find them for the most part overspread with a similar obscurity to that which pervades the false assumptions of predictive inspiration. The alokov σrópa of the Pagan oracles avoids any specification of circumstances which might detect the fraud, and indulgeş accordingly in general expressions, which leaving the exact event undecided admit of qualification according to the result. The Pythian, indeed, told Croesus, when he sent to complain of her fallacious direction respecting his projected expedition, that he should have

sent again to consult, whether the great power whose destruction she foretold, was his own, or that of Cyrus; but it was only when it was too late for such a consultation, that the oracle ventured thus to descend to particulars. The priests of superstition were obliged to adopt an ambiguity, which at least might admit the exercise of hope in their deluded votaries; and then they obtained a ready credence: the mind itself supplying, in its willingness to believe in the way which it wished, what was defective in the evidence of the prophecy. So also the Scripture prophecies display an ambiguity which may be construed into an effect of the like artful design. The believer, however, discerns a very different character of ambiguity in these, from that which attaches to the dubious responses of the self-constituted interpreter of the future. The obscurity of both indeed is the result of design; but while in the false pretences to inspiration we perceive only the workings of priestcraft, in the genuine effusions of the Spirit we detect the counsel of heavenly wisdom. The design of the Scripture prophecies is to be traced in their evident adaptation to the mind and the condition of man in the world; from the joint estimate of which it appears that no greater certainty of knowledge with respect to future contingencies would at any time be imparted by the Divine Wisdom, than served to preserve that equilibrium with which they are admirably adjusted to each other. If the mind of man were illumined in a degree beyond the actual exigencies of his condition, at any particular period of the world, he would be unfitted for the part which he has to perform on that stage of things which is immediately present to him-or again, if a more advanced state of the world were respected in the nature of the intimations revealed, his mind would only exhaust itself in vain aspirings after that condition of light and knowledge which was so removed from its reach. Hence, then, the evident obscurity of many of the Scripture prophecies-an obscurity which, if we regard them as historical facts, is the strongest symptom of their veracity. For they thus occupy that precise point in history to which they claim to belong. But though the believer easily discriminates between those prophecies which he is concerned to uphold, and those which are objected to him by the infidel, as bearing similar marks of infirmity, he will not so easily induce his adversary to concede the prejudice which arises from this accidental conformity, without a more minute examination into the causes of that ambiguity which is characteristic of a true prediction, as it is distinguished from that which is the test of falsehood. For this task accordingly, much patient and sober investigation is needed. Prophecy must be viewed in its relation to the progressive state of religion through the whole reach of the divine dispensations, and

shewn to be progressively increasing in brightness as the dayspring has risen on the world.

Thus will the alleged vagueness of the prophecies be effectually converted into a real argument for their credibility. It will appear not to belong to them, as they are prophecies, and therefore not in that respect in which the reputed predictions of Pagan superstition compete with them; and, consequently, that no inference can be derived from the fallacious obscurity of the latter to that of the former-the ambiguity of heathen prophecy consisting in its relation to the event predicted-the ambiguity of the scriptural, in its relation to those to whom it is delivered.

It is important also that the Scripture Prophecies should be shewn to be of a distinct character from those which have been fortuitously struck out by a happy ingenuity. There is a natural foresight, which discerning the real tendency of affairs from their past and present appearances, pronounces the result which shall take place at some future period of time. And, if we regard the power of mind by which the future event is thus ascertained, it will appear indeed to merit, in one sense, the title of prophetic. It was through such a predictive sagacity that, in some cases, the ancient oracles successfully declared, with more than usual precision, the issue of affairs on which they were consulted; and thus Themistocles, who was eminent in this talent, (τῶν μελλόντων ἐπιπλεῖστον τοῦ γενησομένου ἄριστος Eixaorns, is the character which Thucydides gives him in this respect,) was the means of redeeming the Delphic Oracle from its apparent perplexity, as to the result of the struggle between Greece and Persia, by affixing to it that sense which his own foresight of the future maritime strength of Athens discovered to be the correct view of the case. The foresight manifested in the scriptural predictions is of an opposite character to this. It bears a creative energy impressed on it, as calling the future event into being without any previous materials from which it may be constructed. Appealing to the faith of those to whom they are addressed; they are often opposed to probability, and sometimes to the whole course of nature itself. The promise of a son to be born to Abraham and Sarah, when they had past all hope of such a blessing, is, to the eye of reason, altogether improbable-and the prediction which announced that a Virgin should conceive and bear a Son, humanly speaking, we should pronounce antecedently to be impossible. There can be no suspicion, then, in these instances, that a successful sagacity enabled the prophet to conjecture the occurrence of the facts so confidently predicted. The same observation may be extended to other prophecies of the Bible. But, in order justly to set them forth on this ground of advantage, a cursory survey of them will not suffice It requires the hand of a master to touch those points which give a

divine expression to the shadowy portrait of the future event, and thus fully to disclose to view the secret wisdom of God, setting at nought the counsels of men.

Again, if we consider Prophecy as an essential portion of that miraculous attestation, upon which the whole truth of the Revelation ultimately rests, we shall see still further the necessity of establishing its reality on the surest arguments of credibility. As an original evidence of the truth revealed, it labours under a disadvantage with which miracles in general are not encumbered. A miracle, which effects some alteration in the course of nature, works its own credibility by the act of its performance-but a prophecy, being only an insight into the regular course of nature, requires time to develope its miraculous character, and to carry the mind of man to God, as the author and giver of it. It is a miracle diffused over a continued period of time, and which must wait the evolution of years to render it complete. The original hearer of it, consequently, has no direct proof from the prediction itself that the Lord hath spoken by the pretender to divine inspiration. It requires, therefore, some extrinsic evidence to itself in order to give credibility to its own evidence. This need of additional confirmation appears to have been felt even in the case of the superstitious devotee at the shrine of Pagan prophecy. Croesus, before he could trust the responses of the oracles, made experiment of their veracity, by the test of their true or false report of the past. The same necessity of proof is illustrated in the Prometheus of Eschylus, where Prometheus, announcing to lo the course of her future wanderings, in order to verify his predictions of her fate, recounts to her the toils and vexations by which she had already been harassed*. In the Scripture itself it is particularly shewn, in the conversation between our Lord and the woman of Samaria, in which the exclamation of the woman, "Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet," is immediately subjoined to the discovery which he had made to her of his knowledge of the events of her former life. When accordingly, in exploring the prophetic part of the evidence of Revelation, we have arrived at the proof of the actual delivery of any particular prediction, much still remains to be done. When we have verified the account of a miracle by which some positive and immediate effect has been produced on the face of nature, our labour is accomplished; but it is not so with prophecy-after that we have ascertained its genuineness and authenticity, we only bring ourselves by such a process to the situation of those who actually heard the predictions delivered, and even in such case we find there is a need of some extraneous confirmation.

But here we stand on a ground of advantage above those in whose ears the accents of prophetic inspiration resounded.

* See also the speech of Cassandra. Agam. 1189-1208.