Third Vifion.-The RAM and the HE-GOAT, in- cluding "the LITTLE HORN of the Eaft," Fourth Vifion."The KING" of the Weft, p. 347. The INFIDEL POWER a third Branch or Form of Antichrift fhewn to be predicted by Daniel, VOLUME II. CLASS II. CHAPTER THE FIRST. The Rife, Progrefs, Eftablishment, and Decline of p. 1-65. CHAPTER THE SECOND. CHAPTER THE THIRD. The Rife and Progress of the INFIDEL Power of Antichrift, P. 113-286. CHAPTER THE FOURTH. PROPHECIES WHICH REMAIN ΤΟ BE FUL FILLED-RECAPITULATION, and CONCLU SION of the whole Work, p. 287-401. UNIVERSITY CALIFORNIA INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. No O one, who believes in the existence of a God, can doubt the Divine Knowledge of all Things paft, prefent, and to come, or the Divine Power to reveal those things to men in fuch measure, and on fuch occafions, as Divine Wisdom directs. To God, the past, the prefent, and the future, must be the fame. -He views the greatest and most wonderful events in their remotest causes; the longest feries appears but as one object to his allfeeing eye, and the whole scheme of those events is altogether prefented to the Divine Mind, of which mortals only catch a glimpfe, and furvey the broken parts. But while the prescience of the Almighty is univerfally acknowledged, his fuperintending Providence is frequently denied. Plunging into the abyss of metaphysical abstraction, man tries in vain to fathom its depth with the short line of his finite understanding; and, unable to reconcile the fuperintending and directing Providence of God with his ideas VOL. I. B ideas of the free will of man, the mists of doubt conceal this rock of confolation, hope, and joy, to which the Scriptures point as his fecurity; and he either struggles comfortless against the ills of life, or coldly refigns himself to the laws of fate, or the fluctuations of chance. To believe, that the Almighty Creator is alfo the constant Governor of the universe, is a point of considerable importance to human happiness; and to establish this doctrine upon folid ground is of confiderable importance to the interests of Religion. It is the defign of this work to draw conviction from the facred fource of Prophecy. But here it may be asked by those who freely acknowledge the power of God to declare his will to mankind by a fpecial Revelation, whether it clearly appears, that he actually has done fo? A fatisfactory answer to this very ferious queftion will be found in an attentive examination of those writings, which the Jewish and the Chriftian Church agree in believing to be prophetic. And many others have been given.--The certainty of Revelation has been variously as well as repeatedly proved. It is not the defect in proof, but the want of investigation, that produces infidelity. For notwithstanding the pretenfions of the prefent age to zeal for for truth, who now will even read the laborious researches of her faithful advocates, Chillingworth, Stillingfleet, Pearfon, Hooker, Warburton, Cudworth, Leland, or Butler? Even Maurice is neglected, though the charms of novelty, of poetic fiction, and of a florid style unite to decorate the pillar, which he has patiently built up in her fupport, from a quarry, which her enemies have long confidered as their exclusive property. It is forgotten, that while nothing is more easy, than to bring forward a multitude of objections in a very fmall volume, it is abfolutely impoffible to answer them within the fame compass; and the generality of readers, it is to be feared, imagine that those objections, which almost daily iffue from the prefs, in the form best calculated for extenfive circulation, are the discoveries of this enlightened age; whereas they are in fact only old arguments and objections, furbished up with the polish of modern writing, or the spirit of modern wit and falfehood, and have long ago been proved to have neither weight nor value. Let it however be remembered, that a truth once proved, is * Since the first publication of this work, the neglect abovementioned has ceafed to be fo great a fubject of complaint. |