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this discourse, how exactly the beginning and the ending of another great event is determined. Then, with respect to person, Cyrus is named by his proper name in the prophecies of Isaiah, and both the Persic and the Greek empires are named by name in the prophecy of Daniel. Then, with respect to place, the place of Messiah's birth was so well known and decided upon from the prophecy, that the chief priests at once agreed upon it when asked by Herod; and every burden of Isaiah is directed, with the exactness of a letter, to the city for which it was intended, and to which doubtless, in some way or other, it was made known. But it is endless to contend with ignorance in its dark places; and it may serve a better end, to point out the evil of concealing the prophecy from the eye of the church.

This notion which generally prevails concerning prophecy, that it is not to be searched into with the desire of understanding, nor set forth with the spirit of interpretation, but left to the discovery of time, and the fulfilment of events, not only contradicts all the declarations of scripture which concur in commending it to our utmost heedfulness; but, in the end, works the baneful effect of withdrawing the faith of all, except a few, (who are by the rest straightway accounted fools) from a large portion of Holy Scripture, whereof every part was given for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. Now, as no part of scripture can be wanted for the complete furnishing and perfect strength of the man of God, it cometh to pass, that when these divine landmarks, and leading signals of the future, are removed out of his sight, he is obliged to look out, by the help of his own natural foresight, and to calculate by the rules of political sagacity, those things which are to happen to the church. For it is as impossible that we should cease to expect, as that we should cease to remember, and that which we expect, must be either after a spiritual or carnal way expected; after a spiritual when we submit our hopes to the teaching of the Spirit; after a carnal, when we submit them to the teaching of human wisdom. So that every man must either be a prophet unto himself, or God must be his prophet; for prophesy every man doth who hopeth, prophecy being but the object for hope, as history is for memory. Whence, the

church, if she be not looking steadfastly unto the sure word of prophecy, which God hath given as the fixed polar star to guide her through the anxious night, till the day dawn, and the daystar arise, will surely be trusting in the fluctuations of state policy, or in her own skill and management, or resigning herself wholly to the ebbs and flows of things, the chances and occurrences of the world; for in Providence she cannot be trusting, if she refuse to study, and care not to understand the comfortable words which the kind foresight of Providence hath accorded to her. A very silly and shallow-minded thing it is, therefore, and no less wicked than vain, for lazy and incurious ignorance to seal the book which with such strength the Lion of the tribe of Judah prevailed to unloose, and which was forbidden to be ever sealed again; a thing it is most stupid and preposterous, to study the prophecy with reference only to the part which is fulfilled, which hath become history, and is no longer prophecy, and remains but as an empty vessel, in which the odour of the rich contents may yet remain, but from which the sluggard and tasteless owners have allowed the spirit to escape. And if they would but give diligent and faithful study to the part fulfilled, they could not hinder themselves from passing onward into the unfulfilled, which is written in the same language, and by the same rules to be interpreted. So that whoso affirms that he useth prophecy only with application to the past, doth merely confess that he useth no part of it in the way in which it ought to be used.

And if any individual member of Christ remain in the dark with respect to the future condition of the church, he must be the prey of a thousand fears and false apprehensions, of a thousand hopes and false anticipations, from which a little light would have altogether delivered him; and if he have any thing in hand or in mind towards the advancement of the church, he may, in his ignorance, be working or designing against the purposes of God: which are revealed for this very end, to give a right direction to our hopes, and thereby a right scope to our undertakings. For the prophecies, being never so minute as to point to individual members of the church, and therefore said by Peter not to be of any private interpretation, can never supplant those personal principles of faith, which are the rule of our

present action. They do but affect us in our common incorporated capacity, as members of Christ's body, and being impressed upon the church, give a steadiness to her expectations, a consent and harmony to her ideas and schemes, which sustain her much in the difficult and tedious warfare which she hath to carry on. Opening and clearing more and more, as they approach to fulfilment, they come at length to be indeed principles of action, and sanctuaries of safety, as the church experienced at the destruction of Jerusalem by the armies of Rome; and, as if the Lord were preparing her for some such signal judgments again, he is beginning to stir up the supineness of her mind with respect to the prophecies still unfulfilled; attention is becoming awake, and expectation is excited concerning the second coming of Christ, and the kingdom of the saints, which is to abide for a thousand years.

There can be no doubt, therefore, of its being the good will and pleasure of God, that the ministers of his word, and the stewards of the mysteries thereof, should feel the obligations of their high and holy calling, to search into the prophetical with no less care and diligence, than into the historical, or doctrinal, or practical parts of scripture; and that his Spirit, being rightly entreated and received, will interpret to them the meaning and purport of the one, no less than of the others: which having obtained, to the satisfaction of their own souls, it is their bounden duty and importunate business to make the same known unto the church, that her hope and expectation may be established upon the sure and steadfast basis of faith; likewise unto the world, that it may know the counsels of God, stand in awe of his approaching judgments, and, when his judgments are abroad upon the earth, learn wisdom, repent, and haply be preserved by the longsuffering mercy of our God. And the servant of the Lord who shrinks from this part of his ministry, because it is difficult, and exacts much careful study, is guilty of self-indulgence and slothfulness in the house of God; or if he think he can fulfil or magnify his ministry, without coming to resolution in regard to the interpretation of prophecy, let him know, that he cannot demonstrate the first proposition of his ministry, That Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, without such a resolution; nor interpret the

seventy weeks of Daniel, which determine the time of his coming; nor handle the word of life contained in the book of Isaiah, or the other prophets; nor sing the Psalms of David with the understanding; nor interpret church history as it ought to be interpreted; nor be redeemed in his own soul from political forecast, and worldly wisdom, or deliver the church from the same enthralments; no, nor say the Lord's prayer as it should be said, nor pronounce the creed as it should be pronounced:-in short he is unfurnished, wholly unfurnished, for the interpretation of scripture is blind, and cannot see afar off-is full of doubt, and full of error in all his statements respecting the future wellbeing of the church. And he is, and can be, no churchman; he may be a statesman, a politician, but a churchman he cannot be; that is, he cannot cast his political being into the vessel of the church, concerning whose future prospects he is altogether in the dark, and desireth not to be enlightened.

Now, for as much as to my mind it is a fixed and certain principle of Christian doctrine, that the church is a polity, a separate and distinct polity in the midst of the nations, wherein each several Christian is to embark the wealth of his whole soul, and wherewith he is to implicate all his hopes, desires, and prayers, preferring Jerusalem to his chiefest joy; it is not a matter of choice with me, but a matter of necessity, to study what God hath done in the past, for this our commonwealth, and what, in the time to come, he purposeth to do; to discover those good and gracious destinies, those high and holy privileges which she possesseth, her. nearness to his heart, her dearness to his sight, her security in his pledged truth; in order that I may be redeemed by the knowledge, and assured faith of these things, from my bondage to worldly polities, and to particular countries, and feel of a surety that I have no continuing city, nor place of abode, in all the earth, but seek a city whose builder and whose maker is God. From the personal bondage in which I am to selfishness I cannot be redeemed, save by the revelation of the great doctrines of my union with Christ; no more can my soul be redeemed from political bondage unto Cæsar, but by the revelation of the great doctrines concerning the kingdom of Christ, and the glorious privileges of every one who is a denizen thereof. perceive indeed, that while the church abides in sickly

and degenerate dependance upon civil power, and acknowledgeth the headship of kings, and is content to look for patronage to men of worldly rank, and ministers of the political state, not feeling such a condition to be a bondage, but regarding it as a high prerogative, it must needs be that the prophetic parts of scripture which define her separateness, and foreshow her triumph over policy, and the submission of political states to her righteous law, must fall into neglect, disrelish, and disrepute; as they must also, in another condition of the church, when she leans to the management and popularity of her ministers, and to the number of her people, and to the multitude of her assemblies, and to the public opinion of the plebean estate of a nation. Which being the precise condition at this day of the chief parties of the church of Christ, doth account for that remissness to study, and backwardness to interpret the prophecies; which are intended by God to be unto his church, instead of dependance upon the powers, and dependance upon the people, a sure foundation of trust, which will accept no prop nor buttress of man's addition, but will sustain every thing that is good, and, in the end, like a millstone, crush every thing that is evil into powder.

Which state of opinion is the more to be regretted, because I question much whether there ever was a time in the history of the church, which needed more the guiding eye of prophecy, seeing the Lord hath now begotten, out of her past lethargy, a spirit of zeal to propagate his kingdom upon the earth, by the circulation and preaching of his word; for which end great and powerful societies are established, like to that which I now address, each labouring in its corner of the great harvest field. Which societies must either act by the principles of human sagacity, or by faith in the promises and prophecies of the word of God; either by the direction and guidance of their own good sense, or by the direction and guidance of the Holy Spirit. It is not enough that they look to the law and the testimony for a warrant to undertake the work, but also for instructions to carry on the work, for hopes against its distresses, for the resolution of its difficulties, and every other help which the Lord hath vouchsafed in his gracious word. In the apostolic council of Jerusalem, James brought the question to an issue, by the quotation of a prophecy, and the demon

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