manner worthy of the prescience of God, and to the service of religion. To which question, after a comparison made between the two, the answer cannot be difficult, or uncertain. The sentiment of Origen, on this head, has therefore great truth and reason in it. He says of prophecy, that it had one use in being a kind of compensation* for the prohibited rites of augury, soothsaying, and other received modes of the prognostic art; and that, whilst heathens had these rites in repute among them, if the Israelite had been indulged with no discoveries of the future, and especially on subjects affecting his present interest and experience, despising his own religion for its defect in this particular, he would have revolted to the oracles or arts of heathenism, or set up for himself something like them. A representation perfectly natural and consistent, and arguing the great reasonableness of making prophecy an instrument of Revealed Religion, which was thereby enabled to demonstrate the prescience and providence of God, and to expose and condemn the fallacies of human craft, otherwise too successfully making a prey of the world. For it is to be remembered, that Prophecy, and all the other evidence of Revealed Religion, was directed to the refutation of false systems, as well as the establishment of the true. The One God, and his exclusive truth, were the object of that evi Παραμυθία. + Contra Celsum, p. 28. dence. There is also good sense in the further observation of Origen, that by the gratification and conviction afforded by prophecy to the Israelites in some of its meaner occasional subjects, it gained, or might reasonably demand, their confidence and regard to its greater predictions, whether of a temporal, or a Christian kind, to which they might have been less disposed to pay a voluntary attention. Origen's general doctrine on this subject is adopted by Spencer; in whose hands however it has passed into a license of representation, not to be reconciled either with truth, or with the dignity of God's appointment, when he describes the various gifts of prophecy, as so many concessions in imitation of heathen practices, and in lieu of them*. There is an original and independent reason of prophecy; that reason is, to authenticate, and unfold, the Revelation of God. Collaterally prophecy is opposed to the oracles of falsehood. But had there been no false oracles in the world, Prophecy, which had its beginning in Paradise, and was anterior to their existence, would have had its office in the scheme of Revealed Religion. Consequently it is a derogation from its origin and character to view it so widely and so liberally as Spencer has done, in the secondary sense of an expedient, and an acci * De Legib. Hebr. lib. iii. cap. ii. sect. 3. Diss. I. Deum Oracula et Prophetiam seculi moribus et Hebræorum imbecillitati concessisse, &c. dental provision. But this is a kind of fault from which the theory of his celebrated work, replete, as it is, with erudition and research, cannot, in some other parts of it, be wholly excused.-It would be nearer the truth to say, that Prophecy, as it respected the arts and devices of heathenism, was framed to their condemnation and exclusion. To resume the point in hand;-When Ahaziah's messengers, going to consult the god of Ekron, received the reproof from Elijah, "Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye go to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?" the reproof was valid, (as Origen justly argues,) because in Israel they had prophets of their own: and the prophecy which Elijah delivered on the occasion, was equally to the shame of Ahaziah, and of his oracle of Ekron*.-When Daniel recalled and interpreted the vision of the king's dream, which the astrologers and the soothsayers of Chaldea, could not recall, the omniscience of God in "revealing the deep and secret things," the inspiration of Daniel, and the ignorance of the Chaldæan sages † with all their natural and mystical science, were equally illustrated.-Again: When Isaiah, foreshewing the destruction of Babylon, challenged and exposed the skill of those same sages, its inhabitants; the conclusion was evident. The prophet in Israel was the effectual witness of * 2 Kings i. 3. † Dan. ii. Chap. xliv. 25; xlvii. 11. God and his Revealed Religion; and this testimony was the most convincing, when it struck upon those subjects or cases wherein the heathen art was sure to be consulted and appealed to; which of course was generally in the concerns of those heathen kingdoms. 4. It is a material fact to be observed, that the information of Prophecy on the subject of heathen states and kingdoms, becomes most copious and explicit in the age when those states and kingdoms seemed to triumph the most, in trampling upon, and overwhelming, the adopted people of God. The most disastrous times of that people are the most largely furnished with the evidence of prophecy concerning their spoilers and invaders. The success of the Pagan was in some measure the triumph of Paganism. For we know how much of the honour of their victories they were accustomed to ascribe to their divinities: and the victor's triumphal return was commonly to the celebration of his idol's worship, or to some new improvement of it; whilst the religion of the conquered sunk in the disgrace of their defeat. Accordingly the memorials of these times of reproach and distress in Israel shew how much the faith of men, and the credit of religion, were assailed by the boasts of their alien conquerors. The cry of the oppressed Israelite was, "Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is 66 now their God*? Remember this, that the enemy * Psalms Ixxix., lxxx. &c. Lament. &c. "hath reproached, O Lord, and that the foolish people have blasphemed thy name. The ways of "Zion do mourn: her adversaries are the chief "-her enemies prosper." But the prophetic information was one relief provided under these perplexing and questionable circumstances of heathen triumph. For all those kingdoms of the East, which for a time filled the world with commotion, had their rise and their victories, their changes and downfall, delineated in the page of prophecy. The controlling Providence of God was thereby explained, when it was most liable to be called in question: his people were most directed when their sufferings and their fears were at the greatest height: his supreme moral government was elucidated equally in their own predicted afflictions, and the appointed and foretold victories of their present conquerors, or their expected deliverer. The predictions of Jeremiah, which immediately precede the Captivity, and those of Daniel, which are concurrent with it, were the witness of God, previously set up in the heart of the heathen world, and formed the most appropriate bulwark adapted to the necessities of Religion, as it then had to contend with its heaviest storm under the first dispensation of it. 5. Another fact to be remarked is, that the evidence of Prophecy gained a greater compass and clearness when the interposition of Miracles was Y |