city and temple, that space of time, according to his computation, being elapsed from the second year of Darius.

But the truth is, as may be seen from our former account, from the second year of Darius Nothus to the destruction of the city was but four hundred and eighty years, [being] short of the whole sum. Besides, we have before proved from the text that the time determined was to expire in the death of the Messiah. And there are sundry other circumstances which plainly evince the inconsistency of this computation; for from the first of Cyrus, when the first command went forth for the building of the temple, whereupon the work of it was begun, unto the second year of Nothus, are fully an hundred and eight years. And it is not credible that the work of building the temple should so long be hindered, and then come to perfection by them who first began it; for on this supposition Zerubbabel and Joshua must live at Jerusalem after their return above an hundred years, and then take in hand again the work which they had so long deserted. And this is yet more incredible upon his own opinion, that Xerxes was the husband of Esther, about fifty years before the reign of Nothus, when it is not likely but the Jews would have attempted, and not have been denied, their liberty of going on with their work.

Neither is it consistent with the prophecy of Jeremiah that the temple should lie waste so long a space, that is, about a hundred and seventy years. Again, Haggai doth plainly declare that when the work of the temple was carrying on, in the second year of Darius, many were yet alive who had seen the first temple, chap. ii. 3, as multitudes were upon the laying of its foundation in the days of Cyrus, Ezra iii. 12. And this was impossible had it been in the days of Nothus, an hundred and sixty, or an hundred and seventy years after it was destroyed. And Scaliger doth plainly wrest the words of the text, when he would have them pronounced by way of supposition, "If any were then alive who saw the first house in its glory;" for Haggai doth plainly relate unto the distemper of the people upon the laying of the foundation of the house mentioned in the forenamed place of Ezra. And the words them

מִי בָכֶם הַנִּשְׁאָר אֲשֶׁר רָאָה אֶת־הַבַּיִת הַזֶּה :selves will bear no other sense

;—“Who is among you that is left, that saw this house in her glory?" He speaks of them who were yet left and remaining; and spake to them to remove and take away their complaint and repinings. Moreover, that Artaxerxes in whose days Ezra and Nehemiah went up to Jerusalem was Longimanus, who reigned before Nothus, and not Memor, who succeeded him, as will afterwards appear. Now, this Artaxerxes was long after that Darius upon whose warranty the building of the temple was finished, Ezra vii. 1, 11-26, which certainly could not be Nothus, who was his successor. 19. It appears, then, that Darius Nothus was not the author of

the decree mentioned; as also, that the times of the weeks cannot be dated from the second year of Darius Hystaspes, who was the author of it.

20. After this there is mention made of two other commands or decrees relating to the temple and people, both granted by the same Artaxerxes, one in the seventh year of his reign, unto Ezra, chap. vii. 7; the other in the twentieth year of his reign, unto Nehemiah, chap. ii. 1-9. And from one of these must the account inquired after be dated. Now, supposing that one of these decrees must be intended, it is evident that it was Longimanus, and not Memor, who was the author of it; for from the seventh year of Memor, which was the second of the ninety-fifth Olympiad, unto the eighteenth year of Tiberius Cæsar, wherein our Saviour suffered, being the third year of the two hundred and second Olympiad, are only four hundred and twenty-eight years, sixty-two years short of the whole, or four hundred and ninety. Now, these sixty-two years added to the beginning of the account from the seventh of Memor fall in exactly on the seventh of Longimanus. From the seventh of Longimanus, then, to the seventh of Memor are sixty-two years, and from the seventh of Memor to the eighteenth of Tiberius are four hundred and twenty-eight years; in the whole, four hundred and ninety,-the whole number inquired after.

21. It was this decree of Longimanus, then, that was intended by the angel Gabriel; for from the seventh year, wherein he sent Ezra unto Jerusalem, unto that work which he afterwards commissionated Nehemiah to carry on and perfect, unto the cutting off of the Messiah, are exactly seventy weeks, or four hundred and ninety years, as may appear from the accounts formerly insisted on and declared. From the first of Cyrus, supposing him to reign but three years over the whole empire, unto the death of Christ, there were, as we have proved, five hundred and sixty-two years. From the first of the same Cyrus, unto the seventh of Longimanus, were seventytwo years, which being deducted from the whole of five hundred and sixty-two years, the remainder is four hundred and ninety; which space of time, how it was apportioned between the Persian, Grecian, Asmonæan, Herodian, and Roman rule, we have before declared.

22. And there wants not reason to induce us to fix on this decree rather than any other, being indeed the most famous and most useful to the people of all the rest. By what means it was obtained is not recorded. Evident it is that Ezra had great favour with the king, and that he had convinced him of the greatness and power of that God whom he served, chap. viii. 22. Besides, it was not a mere proclamation of liberty, like that of Cyrus, which was renewed by Darius, but a decree, a law, made by "the king and his seven counsellors," chap. vii. 14,-the highest and most irrefragable legislative

power amongst the Medes and Persians. Moreover, with the decree he had a formal commission, when he is said not only to have leave to go, but to be sent by the king and his council. Besides, the former decrees barely respected the temple; and it seems that in the execution of them the people had done little more than build the bare fabric, all things as to the true order of the worship of God remaining in great confusion, and the civil state utterly neglected. But now in this commission of Ezra, he is not only directed to set the whole worship of God in order, at the charge of the king, chap. vii. 16-23, but also that he should appoint and erect a civil government and magistracy, with supreme power over the lives, liberties, and estate of men, to be exercised as occasion required, verses 25, 26: which alone, and no other, was the building of the city mentioned by Gabriel; for it is not walls and houses, but polity, rule, and government, that makes and constitutes a city.

23. And it is very considerable what a conviction of the necessity of this work was then put upon the spirits of the governors of the Persian empire. For the king himself, he calls Ezra the "scribe of the law of the God of heaven," owning him therein for the true God; for he who is the God of heaven is God alone, all others are but the dunghill gods of the earth, verse 12. Again, he declares that he was persuaded that if this work were not done, there would be wrath from heaven upon himself, his kingdom, and his sons, verse 23. The "seven counsellors" join in that law, verse 14; and the "mighty princes" of the kingdom assisted Ezra in his work, verse 28. So that no command that concerned that people before or after was accompanied with such solemnity, or gave such glory unto God as this did. Besides, the whole work of the reformation of the church, the restitution of the worship of God, the re-collection and recognition of the sacred oracles, was begun, carried on, and finished, by this Ezra, as we have elsewhere at large declared. All which considerations, falling in with the account before insisted on, make it manifest that it was this and no other decree that was intended by the angel Gabriel; and from thence unto the death of the Messiah was seventy weeks, or four hundred and ninety years, the just and true limitation of which time we have been inquiring after.

24. I declared at the entrance of this discourse, that the force of our argument from this place of Daniel against the Jews doth not depend on this chronological computation of the time determined. All then that I aimed at was to vindicate it in general from such perplexities as whereby they pretend to render the whole place inargumentative; and this we have not only done, but also so stated the account as that they are not able from any records of times past to lay any one considerable objection against it, or which may not be easily solved. Return we now to what remains of our former designed discourse.

EXERCITATION XVI.

JEWISH TRADITIONS ABOUT THE COMING OF THE MESSIAH.

1. Other considerations proving the Messiah to be long since come.

2. Fluctuation of the Jews about the person and work of the Messiah. 3. Their state and condition in the world for sixteen ages. 4. Promises of the covenant made with them of old all fulfilled, unto the expiration of that covenant. 5. Not now made good unto them-Reason thereof-The promise of the land of Canaan hath failed; 6. Of protection and temporal deliverance. 7. Spirit of prophecy departed. 8. Covenant expired. 9. Jewish exceptions-Their prosperity; 10. The sins of their forefathers; 11-13. Of themselves-Vanity of these exceptions-Concessions of the ancient Jews— Folly of Talmudical doctors. 14. Tradition of the birth of the Messiah before the destruction of the second temple. 15, 16. Tradition of the school of Elias about the world's continuance-Answers of the Jews unto our arguments, by way of concession. 17. The time prolonged because of their sins-Vanity of this pretence. 18. Not the Jews only, but the Gentiles concerned in the coming of the Messiah. 19. The promise not conditional -Limitations of time not capable of conditions. 20. No mention of any such condition. 21. The condition supposed overthrows the promise. 22. The Jews in the use of this plea self-condemned. 23. The covenant overthrown by it. 24. The Messiah may never come upon it.

1. UNTO the invincible testimonies before insisted on, we may add some other considerations, taken from the Jews themselves, that are both suitable unto their conviction, and of use to strengthen the faith of them who do believe. And the first thing that offers itself unto us, is their miserable fluctuation and uncertainty in the whole doctrine about the Messiah, ever since the time of his coming and their rejection of him.

2. That the great fundamental of their profession from the days of Abraham, and that which all their worship was founded in and had respect unto, was the promise of the coming of the Messiah, we have before sufficiently proved. Until the time of his coming, this they were unanimous in, as also in their desires and expectations of his advent. Since that time, as they have utterly lost all faith in him as to the great end for which he was promised, so all truth as to the doctrine concerning his person, office, and work, plentifully delivered in the Old Testament.

In their Talmud Tractat. Sanhed. they do nothing but wrangle, conjecture, and contend about him, and that under such notions and apprehensions of him as the Scripture giveth no countenance unto. When he shall come, and how, where he shall be born, and what he shall do, they wrangle much about, but are not able to determine any thing at all; at which uncertainty the Holy Ghost never left the church in things of so great importance. Hence some of them adhered to Bar-Cosba for the Messiah, a bloody rebel;

and some of them in after ages to David el David, a wandering juggler; and Moses Cretensis, and sundry other pretenders, have they given up themselves to be deluded by (as of late unto the foolish apostate Sabadias, with his false prophets, R. Levi and Nathan), who never made the least appearance of any one character of the true Messiah, as Maimonides confesseth and bewaileth. The disputes of their late masters have not any thing more of certainty or consistency than those of their Talmudical progenitors. And this at length hath driven them to the present miserable relief of their infidelity and despair, asserting that he shall not come until immediately before the resurrection of the dead; only they take care that some small time may be left for them to enjoy wealth and pleasure, with dominion over the Edomites and Ishmaelites,—that is, Christians and Turks, under whom they live,-as they are yet full of thoughts of revenge and retaliation in the days of their Messiah. Now, whereunto can any man ascribe this fluctuation and uncertainty in and about that which was the great fundamental article of the faith of their forefathers, and their utter renunciation of the true notion and knowledge of the Messiah, but unto this, that having long ago renounced him, they exercise their thoughts and expectation about a chimera of their own brains, which, having no subsistence in itself, nor foundation in any work or word of God, can afford them no certainty or satisfaction in their contemplation about it?

3. Again; the state and condition of this people for the space of above sixteen hundred and thirty years gives evidence to the truth contended for. The whole time of the continuance of their churchstate and worship, from the giving of the law on Mount Sinai to the final destruction of the city and temple by Titus, was not above sixteen hundred and thirty years, or sixteen hundred and forty upon the longest account, allowing all their former captivities and intermissions of government into the reckoning. They have, then, continued in a state of dispersion and rejection from God as long as ever they were accepted for his church and people. What their condition hath been in the world for these sixteen ages is known unto all, and what may be thence concluded we shall distinctly consider.

4. When God took the Jews to be his people, he did it by a special and solemn covenant. In this covenant he gave them promises, which were all made good unto them unto the utmost date and expiration of it in the coming of the Messiah. And they principally respected these three heads:-First, That they should possess the land of Canaan, and there enjoy that worship which he had prescribed unto them. See Exod. vi. 4, xxxiv. 10, 11; Lev. xxvi. 9-11; Deut. viii. 18, xxix. 13; Ps. cv. 10, 11. Secondly, That he would defend them from their adversaries; or if at any time he