11. But as many future events have been revealed by the Holy CHAP. I. Spirit, under mysterious figures or natural appearances, the natural man must naturally form some ideas in his mind concerning them. The question then is, whether his ideas are true or false? 12. This matter may be at once decided; for if his ideas are fixed upon natural objects, because the similitudes are familiar to his natural senses, his ideas must be false; and it is evident, that, until the substances themselves are actually manifested, he can have nothing to contemplate them by, but natural similitudes. 13. And, although the Spirit of Revelation is true, yet, the natural man's ideas concerning the real substances of the things, can be no other than false; and whether the similitudes are to be literally, or spiritually fulfilled, it is not for him to know or determine, seeing that God has reserved to himself alone, the times and seasons, and of course, the manner of their accomplish ment. 14. The whole Jewish state, was, as it were, converted into natural similitudes and shadows of good things to come, which were confirmed to the heirs of promise from time to time, by the most evincing evidences; yet, how long has that nation persevered in the fatal delusion, that they are the only people of God, and true seed of promise; while bondage, captivity, death, and the curse of being scattered among the nations, are their most distinguishing evidences! 15. And how many hundreds of years has the name Christian, bound whole nations under the same strange delusion, and furnished them with a pretext for filling the earth with the most horrid crimes! 16. Thousands, no better by nature or practice than others, by virtue of this distinguishing name, have assumed the character of God's children, laid claim to the earth as their lawful inheritance, taken up arms against every other name and character, as usurpers; and, by such acts of cruelty and outrage as are shocking to nature itself, have given their fellow creatures the greatest occasion to blaspheme the God of heaven, for sending into the world such a person as Jesus Christ. 17. These fatal mistakes among mankind, evidently arose from their taking the shadow for the substance; claiming a right to Revelation, the spirit of which they possessed not; proposing the manner of God's work, and limiting or extending the times and seasons, which Divine Power and Wisdom had reserved from the Acts, i. 7. knowledge of mortals, until revealed in their own time; and fixing their own natural and carnal ideas to the language of the Holy Ghost, by virtue of stolen words; to the true sense of which, consequently, they could never agree. 18. Hence came confusion, contentions, and debates without number; an incontestable evidence that the Holy Spirit never CHAP. I. Isa, i. 9. gave 19. The error of deception, therefore, is not in the mysterious language of inspiration, nor in those who were simply moved to foretell, under sublime figures, what God would bring to pass in future days; but in the minds of natural and carnal men, who take upon themselves to limit or extend those times and seasons, which, in the mind of wisdom, were determined to be out of their reach until the times appointed. 20. Nor could those sublime figures in prophetic language, ever be really and truly understood, or explained, until the very times of their fulfilment; and even then, by those only, who come into the very spirit of the work, at the day in which it is wrought. 21. Whatever may be said in opposition to divine revelation, or the spirit of prophecy, certain it is, that fallen man never could have had any sense of his future existence, or the prospects of immortality, but through this medium, whether he received it by tradition or otherwise. 22. And it is equally certain, that nothing else has ever kept the world in awe, or given any lasting energy to the impulse of human laws: and nothing but that religion, which contemplates the objects and scenes of the present life, as the prolonged shadows of a never ending eternity, could ever have exhibited them to the mind, and prolonged those shadows to so great an extent. 23. It must, therefore, be ascribed to the wisdom of God, in revealing a future state, successive to the present, that man has been excited to that degree of natural virtue, through which his natural state has continued to such a length of time, as to overtake that new creation, which the divine counsel had determined. For if the lawless passions of CAIN and the Canaanites, had universally prevailed, no flesh could have been saved; this world would long ago, have been like Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities round about. 24. Much was said by the witnesses of truth, particularly in later ages, concerning that day in which the mystery of God was to be finished in relation to man; but after all those prophecies, and all the reasonings of natural men, concerning their accomMat. xxiv. plishment, the words of Jesus Christ comprehend the whole: But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. 36. 25. Previous to the commencement of that day, there were three things respecting it, which mankind could not possibly CHAP. I. know. First, the time; second, the place; third, the manner in which it was to commence. 26. FIRST. The time could not possibly be ascertained, except by Divine wisdom, although it was fixed in definite numbers, by various Prophets. As nothing inferior to man can know the 1 Cor. ii. things of man, save by the spirit of man; so no man can know the things of God, but by the Spirit of God, by which the prophecies were given. 27. Man, as a rational creature, has fixed the times and seasons, according to the changes of this globe, in relation to the sun and moon, and has thereby established the day, the month, and the year; but inferior beings are not confined to those calculations of man; much less beings of a superior rank. 28. Again, man has been accustomed to calculate times by a variety of objects in nature, and to distinguish those calculations by various names, as generations, ages, years, months, weeks, days, hours, and seasons; but what can he certainly know beyond the limits of his own age? Nothing at all. Yet the Spirit spake of ages of ages; he may call this eternity, or what he pleases, it alters it not; he is certainly lost in the thought, because it exceeds his narrow limits. 29. Again, in the language of the Spirit, A thousand years are with the Lord as one day. I have appointed thee each day for a year. And these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. 30. Therefore, the natural man may calculate the times to suit his own pleasure; he may comprise the greatest numbers in a few hours of the natural day, and prove the time of the promise to have been past thousands of years ago. Or if he chooses to continue in his sins during life, he may put far away the evil day, even to a future period of twenty-five millions of common years; by either of which he will also prove himself to be totally ignorant of the matter, and altogether in nature's darkness. 11. 2 Pet. ii. 8. Jer. xxv. Ezek. iv. 6. 11. 14. 31. Again, an angel set the time for cleansing the sanctuary, Dan. viii. at two thousand three hundred days. But can the natural man certainly tell whether the Spirit meant the days of man, or of the Lord; or a medium between, that is, two thousand three hundred of his natural years ? * 32. Which ever way he may take, it can profit him little. He may out-live the first period of six or seven years, and all the good it may bring. The second is entirely out of his reach; nor can he tell where it began, or where it will end: and the third is infinitely beyond his comprehension, being not less than two million, or twenty-three hundred thousand years. There can be no consistent data for this period, but the date when given: all other calculations will fail. CHAP. J. 33. The natural man, or the inspired man (if he chooses to denominate himself so because he has the Scriptures before his eyes) may acknowledge that he knows nothing about the time, because the spirit of prophecy, by express declarations, obliges him so to do; yet he imagines that he can tell the event whenever it shall appear; but in this he is equally mistaken. 34. To whom were the prophecies first given? To whom were given the types and shadows of the Law and the Prophets? Was Rom. ii. 2. it not to the Jews? Much every way they had the advantage, says the Apostle. Dan. ix 25. See Mat. xxii. and χχίν. 35. What then? The Prophet Daniel, had told them that it should be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks unto Messiah, the Prince. But how would the Scripture-inspired Jew calculate this? Would he call it four hundred and eighty-three natural days? or four hundred and eighty-three years? or four hundred and eighty-three thousand years? Without the very same Spirit which dictated those numbers, and that in the time of their accomplishment, either way, darkness must be his portion. 36. Upon the first calculation, he finds nothing to satisfy his mind; his natural senses comprehend all he beholds. The second calculation, he thinks, will bring the Messiah; and the plan which he has laid out by his understanding, he thinks, will determine the event whenever it comes to pass. 37. But instead of the Messiah, and the great event he looks for, there comes one Jesus of Nazareth, whom they know, and who is more like a beggar than a prince; who called them a generation or brood of vipers, denounced woes upon them, foretold the destruction of their city and temple, the abolition of their whole religious system, and their final extinction as a nation. 38. Thus the events of his most reasonable calculations take place, and he knows them not; and beyond this, the calculation of the sixty-nine or seventy weeks must out-run the most distant conception of either Jew or Gentile. 39. The truth is, natural men could never calculate God's times and seasons, they either come too soon or too late; and thus, in all their calculations, they have always placed God at a great distance from the calculator, either in the past or future tense; at so great a distance at least, that there remained no probability of his seeing the day of God's power; and the world have been best satisfied to have it so. 40. They shrink from the thought of their days being numbered, and their enjoyments in nature, being included within the small compass of a generation; and yet, upon their own calculation, themselves being judges, men in a state of nature cannot know the day of God's power; it is out of their sight, as far as eternity is out of sight of time. 41. They cannot see that to which the prophecy alludes, and therefore cannot interpret it. The vision of all is to them like a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee; and he saith, I cannot, for it is sealed. And the unlearned cannot read it because they are not learned. CHAP. II Isa. xxiv. 11. vol. i. p. 174. 42. It is therefore justly observed by Newton, "It is no Diss. xiv. wonder that the fathers, nor indeed that any one should mistake in particularly applying prophecies, which had not then received their completion. The fathers might understand the prophecies so far as they were fulfilled, but when they ventured farther, they plunged out of their depth, and were lost in the abyss of error. Such prophecies can be explained only by the events." 43. All this is strictly true; to which may be added, that when the prophecies received their completion, none could make the just application but such as were in the spirit and truth of their fulfilment. 44. The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, neither can it be accomplished by his will, nor agreeable to it; and consequently the time of its accomplishment cannot be dated by man's wisdom, nor interpreted to serve his private views; but must be ascertained first of all by the event, and then understood by those who are in it. See 2. Pet. 1,21, and Dan. xii. 10. CHAPTER II. THE PLACE OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM, AND MANNER OF HIS WORK. 7. SECONDLY. The place, in which the work of Christ's kingdom was to be exhibited, is also entirely out of sight of men in a state Ezek. xliii. of nature, and in its real and full sense cannot possibly be communicated to the natural understanding, even by the spirit of prophecy, any faster than they become truly enlightened by the Spirit. 2. The Prophets spoke of the Lord's descending from heaven; but natural men cannot call Jesus, Lord, because his kingdom is not of this world; for no man, in truth, can say that Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy Spirit. 3. Again, they spake of Jerusalem, as being the place where the kingdom of God was to appear; and of a descendant from 1 Cor. xil |