A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4651. A. C. 757. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON. 6 Jacob, and his statutes and ordinances unto Israel,' in a | which the Gentiles should seek: to break down the particular manner, yet he did not leave himself without middle wall of partition, even the law of commandments, a witness in other nations; but whenever they were contained in ordinances;' and to unite all nations in one drawing destruction upon themselves, took care to ac- communion, under one great shepherd and bishop quaint them with their impending doom. To this pur- of their souls.' pose, we may observe, that not only Isaiah, Ezekiel, and But whether God might design this call to the NineDaniel, but almost all the other prophets, do foretell the vites, as a pledge and assurance of his future admission destruction of Babylon, and publish the divine threats of the people of all nations into the privileges of the against Egypt, Edom, and the other kingdoms neighbour- Christian covenant, this certainly he might have under his ing upon Canaan; that' Jeremiah, in particular, was immediate view, namely, to show the disparity between ordered by God to make himself bonds and yokes, and his people and aliens, and upon the comparison of their send them to the kings of the Ammonites, of Tyre and several behaviours, shame them for living unreclaimed, Sidon, and other princes, by the hand of their ministers, under the constant preaching of his prophets for so who were then at the court of Zedekiah king of Judah, many years, when a people, whom they despised, as with his admonition to their masters, that unless they re-being strangers to the covenant of promise,' had, by pented of their evil ways, he would deliver them into the power of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, whom he calls his servant, even as he does Cyrus, his anointed, for being appointed to execute his will, some hundred years before he was born; and, therefore, we need less wonder, that we find God interesting himself in the preservation of the large and populous city of Nineveh, upon which depended the whole fate of the Assyrian empire, since, in all ages, he has given proofs of his protection and absolute dominion over other nations, as well as the Israelites, either in threatening their disobedience, in order to procure their amendment, or if they despised his threatenings, in punishing their obstinacy, as they deserve. the mighty power of his word, been converted in the space of three days. Nothing is more common in Scripture, than to find God complaining of his people for not attending to the messages which he sent them; since the day that their fathers came forth out of Egypt,' says God to one of his prophets, even unto this day, I have sent unto them all my servants, the prophets, daily rising up early, and sending them; yet they hearkened not unto me, nor inclined their ear, but hardened their neck, and did worse than their fathers: therefore shalt thou speak all these words unto them, but they will not hearken, and thou shalt call unto them, but they will not answer thee.' And therefore God, very well foreknowing the success that his 3 Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also prophets would meet with, might send him with commisof the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also,' says an sion to preach to the Ninevites, not only in pursuance of apostle of great authority; and, therefore, we may pre-his kind purposes to them, but with an intent likewise to sume, that as Jonah was the only prophet in the Old render his own people inexcusable, even as our Saviour Testament that was sent expressly to preach to the Gen-represents the case of the Jews in his days, who refused tiles, God might design hereby to give to his people a to hear him: The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgpremonition of his intention, in the fulness of time, toment with this generation, and shall condemn it, because raise up a root of Jesse,' as the prophet expresses they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold a 'which would stand for an ensign of the people, and unto greater than Jonah is here.' 36 4 it, And indeed some have imagined, that one great cause 1 Jer. xxvii. 2, &c. 2 Is. xlv. 1. Rom. iii. 19. of Jonah's declining the order at first, and of his going 1 Is. xi. 10. at last with so much reluctance to Nineveh, might be closure, which he supposes to answer to the palace of Nineveh, may be perfectly traced all around, and looks like an embanksome suspicion, that in case these Gentiles should listen ment of earth or rubbish, of small elevation; and has attached to to his preaching, it might be not only a lasting reproach, it, and in its line, at several places, mounds of greater size and but a means of reprobation likewise to his countrymen, solidity. The first of these forms the south-west angle; and on who, under the constant ministration of so many proit is built the village of Nebbi Yunus, where they show the tomb of the prophet Jonas. The next, and largest of all, is the one phets, were only become more obdurate in sin; and which Mr Rich supposes to be the monument of Ninus, and is therefore, jealous of the honour of his nation, and too situated near the centre of the western face of the enclosure, solicitous for their preservation, he could not prevail being joined like the others by the boundary wall; the natives with himself to accept of a commission that seemed to call it Koyunjuk Tepe. Its form is that of a truncated pyramid, interfere with this, lest a ready compliance with the with regular steep sides and a flat top; and is composed of stones and earth, the latter predominating sufficiently to admit of the divine command at Nineveh should prove the disparagesummit being cultivated by the inhabitants of the village of Koy-ment at least, if not the utter rejection of his brethren, unjuk, which is built on it at the north-east extremity. The measurements of this mound were 178 feet for the greatest height, 1850 feet the length of the summit east and west, and 1147 for its breadth north and south. Out of a mound in the north face of the boundary was dug, some time since, an immense block of stone, on which were sculptured the figures of men and animals. So remarkable was this fragment of antiquity, that even Turkish apathy was roused, and the pacha and most of the principal people of Mosul came out to see it. One of the spectators particularly recollected among the sculptures of this stone, the figure of a man on horseback, with a long lance in his hand, followed by a great many others on foot. These ruins seem to attest the former existence of some extensive buildings on the spot, but whether belonging to the ancient Nineveh will admit of considerable doubt.-Calmet's Dictionary.-ED. his kinsmen after the flesh.' 9 6 The prophet himself, however, has suggested another reason for his unwillingness to go to Nineveh, and that is, the superabundant mercy of God, which, he foresaw, would be moved to pity at the prayers and tears of the people; and therefore he remonstrates thus: 10 I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before into Tarshish: for I knew that thou are a gracious God, and merciful, 5 Eph. ii. 44. "Mat. xii. 41. 6 1 Pet. ii. 25. 9 Rom. ix. 3. 'Jer. vii. 25, &e. 10 Jon. iv. 2. A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4654. A. C. 757. 1 KINGS vii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON. 6 5 above half as much broad. Solinus makes others no less than 800 feet; and Dionysius seems to affirm of others, that they had a throat wide enough to swallow up a ship with all its rigging. But though these may pass for extravagant exaggerations, an author who has written expressly upon this subject gives us this account :-" That in the northern seas, there are whales of such a prodigious 7 left but their skeletons, they look like large vessels, or rather like spacious houses, with several chambers and windows in them, wherein a whole family might find room to live." Their mouth, every one allows, is capable of containing several men at once. We are told of one cast on the coast of Tuscany, in the year 1624, whose jaws were so wide, that a man on horseback might have ridden into them with ease and we have not much reason to doubt, but that their throat and belly are answerable to so spacious an opening. slow to anger, of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.' But how plausible soever this excuse may be, yet upon the face of the whole affair, it appears that the prophet considered himself a little too much; and therefore we may conclude, that the true reason for his declining this errand, was the hazard and difficulty of the undertaking, and the great uncertainty of its success : the very same thought that deterred Moses from apply-bigness, that when their flesh is taken off, and nothing ing to Pharaoh to grant the Israelites their liberty, and Gideon from taking up arms to rescue his country from the slavery of the Midianites: for as each of these made their several excuses; I am of uncircumcised lips,' says one, and how shall Pharaoh hearken unto me ?' and, I am the least in my father's house,' says the other, and how then shall I save Israel?' So might Jonah say within himself, I am less than the least of the prophets,' and how then can I expect that the people of so great and opulent a city will give any attention to my preaching; that they will not rather take the alarm, and fall upon me, It cannot be thought, indeed, but the esophagus in and slay me, when I come to tell them that their ruin | creatures that are dead, must be contracted to a great and destruction is so near approaching? I will get quit degree, in comparison to what it is when they are alive, of this dangerous affair, therefore, as well as I can; and and especially when they are eating; in which case it is because I conceive that the spirit of prophecy, which capable of so great dilatation, as is evident from a pike's upon this account makes me so uneasy, will not pursue sometimes swallowing another fish almost of his own me, after I am gone out of the holy land, I will make the magnitude, that we need not much fear, but that the fish, best of my way into Cilicia; for when I have got at which God had provided for that purpose, was able to some distance from Judea, God perhaps may think no gulp Jonah down at once, without ever hurting him. more of sending me, but may find him out some other For the whale, as we are told has neither teeth nor tushes, prophet, that is better qualified for this purpose.' But whereas the seadog has four or five rows of teeth in each whither shall I go from thy Spirit?' as one better in-jaw, and is therefore the much properer of the two to structed than Jonah seems to be in this article of his receive into its stomach any thing alive without the danomnipresence, addresses himself to God, or whither ger of contusion. shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I go down into hell, thou art there also; if I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there also shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me;' which no man ever so experimentally found to be true as did this prophet, while he sojourned in the deep, and took up his habitation in the whale's belly. Some learned men indeed are of opinion, that the fish which swallowed up Jonah was not a whale, because the largest of these, as they tell us, have but in proportion very narrow gullets, such as are not capable of receiving a man entirely into their stomachs: and therefore they imagine that it was what they call the lamia, or seadog, which, though less in bulk than a whale, has a gullet so vastly large, that frequently in its stomach have been found men, all whole and entire, 3 and sometimes clad in armour. 3 It must be acknowledged, that the Hebrew dag-gadol, which the text in Jonah makes use of, signifies no more than any great fish; but then it makes something for the common opinion, that the whale is the largest species we know of that swims in the sea. The ancients indeed seem to have enlarged too much in their account of this animal. Pliny talks of some that were 600 feet long, and 1 Ps. cxxxix. 7. Bochart's Sacred Zoology, part 2. b. 5. c. 12; Bartholin. on Diseases in Old Testament, art. 14. This a French author, named Rondelet, reports of one of these seadogs, which was taken near Nice, or Marseilles.-Calmet's Dissertation on the fish which swallowed Jonah. B. 38. c. 1. Thus we have conveyed Jonah safe and sound into the whale's belly; let us, in the next place, see how he is to live there for the space of three days. The Scripture indeed speaks precisely of three days and three nights; but as Jonah was a type of our Saviour, and his abode in the belly of the whale, a prefiguration of our Lord's continuance in the heart of the earth,” there is some reason to think, that the type and the antitype, in this respect, were both alike; and that as our Lord was but one whole day, and part of two more, in the grave, so Jonah might continue no longer in the deep, and yet according to the Hebrew way of computation, both might be truly said to have been three days and three nights,' in their respective confinements. But not to insist on this abbreviation of time, what some naturalists tell us of the food of the whale, namely, that it does not live on flesh, but on weeds, on the froth of the sea, on insects, and such small fish as are easy of digestion; and that, consequently, as having a colder stomach, it was a fitter receptacle for the prophet, than any other fish that was carnivorous; this might be of some consideration perhaps, were we not disposed to call in the miraculous power of God, which alone could preserve him in these circumstances. But then, we cannot but allow, that as he suspended the violence of the fire from A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4654. A. C. 757. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON. hurting the three young men that were cast into the fur- | nace; that as he made St Peter's body either so light as to walk upon the waters, or the waters so solid as to support it; so with the same facility, he might control the acid humours in any creature's stomach, and make it, for such a determinate time, lose its faculty of digestion: for in all this there is nothing that surpasses the power of the great Author of nature, who gives or suspends the activity of all bodies, who stops or controls, who changes or modifies, as he thinks fit, all the motions which he communicates to matter, of what kind soever it be. And, in like manner, though it be impossible, according to the ordinary laws of nature, for a man to breathe in the stomach of a fish, or at least to draw in such a quantity of air as is requisite to give a due circulation to his blood; yet since it is neither contrary to the nature nor superior to the power of God, by one means or other to effect the thing, if it be but agreeable to his will, we cannot see any reason why it may not be done. Bats and swallows, and other birds, which in the cold season of the year, creep into cliffs of rocks, and hollow trees, creatures that live under ground, and several others that abide at the bottom of deep water, subsist in a manner without breathing. They live, as it were in a deliquium of life, and the blood in their veins seems to move very slowly, if at all; and yet we find them revive again, upon the approach of the genial heat of the sun, to give their blood and juices a brisker fermentation; and why might not God then, during these three days and nights, put Jonah into the very same state of repose and tranquillity, that either the element they live in, or the colder season of the year, do naturally bring upon these animals, by correcting the fluidity, and retarding the circulation of his blood, so as to make frequent respiration not so necessary? We pretend not however to advance, that Jonah was one of this sort of men; but still we may affirm, that it was in God's power, during his continuance in the fish's belly, to put him in such a state of acquiescence, and his blood into such a form of circulation, as would require no more respiration than the fœtus has in the womb. In this there is nothing impossible, nothing incompatible with the laws of nature; though it must be acknowledged that strictly speaking the thing is above the ordinary and known laws of nature, and therefore miraculous: but then if we believe not this miracle, why should we believe any other, or why should it be thought a more incredible thing, that Jonah should live three days in the belly of a large fish, than that Lazarus 3 should be recalled to life again, after he had been four days buried in the grave; that the prophet should return from this sea-monster's stomach, safe and sound, than that the 4 three Jews in Babylon should escape from the flaming furnace, without having so much "as the smell of the fire pass upon them?" "But other miracles, it may be said, were done for some wise ends of providence, and when there appeared an urgent occasion for God's exerting his almighty power; whereas, in the case before us, there seems to be none at all." 56 That prophets, however, invested with great power, and sometimes intrusted with high commissions from God, were men subject to like passions' and infirmities as we are, is evident, not only from the testimony of the apostle, but from the accounts of their own behaviour likewise. The prophet that was sent to Bethel, to denounce God's judgment against the idolatrous altar, was a sad example of human frailty, in giving credit to the persuasions of another, even when they contradicted a divine command. Jonah, when he was directed to go to Nineveh, discovered the like if not greater tokens of human infirmity, when, instead of pursuing that journey, he bent his course another way, not without some vain hopes of evading, by that means, the divine presence : and therefore as God sent a lion to slay the prophet of Judah, for his too much credulity; so some have imagined, that he not only pursued this prophet of Israel with a dreadful storm, but even had him thrown overboard, and swallowed up by this sea-monster, in punishment for his perverseness and prevarication. God indeed, by his overruling power, made the belly of this monster a place of security to him; but what notions the prophet himself had of this strange habitation, where the floods compassed him about, and the billows and waves passed over him,' we may learn from his meditations in the deep, 7 when he cried, by reason of his affliction, to the Lord, and he heard him;' so that, upon the presumption that God intended not to destroy him, the primary reason, we may imagine, for his appointing this fish to swallow him up, was to stop this fugitive prophet, as he was endeavouring to make his escape: but then, in the midst of judgment, thinking upon mercy,' after a confinement of three nights and three days in the deep, whereby he both The ancient physicians were of opinion, that while the child continued in its mother's womb, it lived without breathing, so that there was no employment for the lungs, until it came into the open air; but later anatomists will persuade us, that, without some circulation of blood in the body, no animal can live; and therefore they pretend to have found out in the fœtus a considerable artery, which conveys the blood from the vena cava, without its passing into the right ventricle of the heart, into the lungs; from whence by another smaller artery, which they call the botal, it is carried into the aorta, and so continues in a perpetual circulation, without entering the lobes of the lungs, which are not replete with blood, nor begin to move, until the child is born and sucks in the fresh air. For then, say they, the blood being forced by the motion of the heart into the artery, whose orifice lies in its right ventricle, goes directly into the lungs, and is thence brought back by the pulmonary vein, so that the other vessels which help the circulation of blood in the fœtus, being now become useless, do by degrees stop and are dried up. But it may not always happen so in some particular persons nature sometimes preserves them open; and this is the reason which some give us why the divers, as they are called, who accus-taught him better obedience for the future, and rectified tom themselves to go under deep water to discover and bring up the riches of the deep, can abide so long in that element without breathing. 2 1 Calmet's Dissertation on the Fish, &c. *On this subject see the following supplement by the Editor. his notions concerning the divine omnipresence, he ordered his jailor, if we may so speak, to give him his liberty, and deliver him safe on shore. A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4654. A. C. 757. 1 KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON. The oriental traditions do vastly differ as to the place | things that they called upon him for, and had statutes where Jonah was cast upon the land. Josephus must and judgments more righteous' than any other people needs be under a gross mistake, when, to throw him upon upon earth: a nation to whom,' as the apostle expressome coast of the Euxine sea, he makes the whale, which ses it, appertained the adoption, and the glory, and could hardly be any quick mover, run 800 leagues, at the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service least, in three days and nights; neither are others, of God, and the promises :' a nation which the Lord who from the upper part of the Mediterranean, carry him had taken from the midst of another nation,' had brought into the ocean, and thence into the Red Sea, or the out of Egypt, and settled in Canaan, 'by temptations, Persian Gulf, in the like space of time, any happier in by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty their conjectures. The ship, we know, was bound for hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terTarsus 2a a great trading town in Cilicia, a province in rors; and that he, in particular, was a prophet of this Asia Minor, at the east end of the Mediterranean Sea; great God, who had made the heavens and the earth, and therefore the most probable opinion is, that some- the sea, and all that in them is,' and who, for his disowhere on this coast, the fish disembogued itself of Jonah; bedience in refusing to come upon this errand, had conand if so, the mariners, who by the time that he was set fined him in the deep for three days and nights, but now, on shore, had arrived at their port, when they heard the upon his humiliation, had set him free from his ghastly strange account of his deliverance, must have become prison, and given him courage to speak with so much converts to the worship of that God only, who, in this in- boldness; the people, I say, who were informed of all stance, had shown himself able, to do whatever he this, could not well fail of giving God the glory due pleased in heaven, and in the earth, in the sea, and in unto his name, for sending a prophet of his favourite all the deep places.' nation, and one of so distinguished a character, to give them notice of their impending doom. 4 6 3 In the storm which St Paul, in his voyage from Crete to Rome, underwent, an angel stood by him one night, and said unto him, Lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee:' and if, by the expression, we may understand the salvation of their souls, as well as their bodies, a sufficient reason it was, for God's permitting this distress to fall upon them, since eventually it proved the occasion of their conversion. And, in like manner, if the sudden ceasing of the storm upon Jonah's being cast forth into the sea,'' made so strong an impression upon the mariners that sailed with him, how can we think, but that his miraculous escape out of that merciless element, especially when he came to recount the particulars of it, would make them all proselytes to his religion? And if we may suppose further, that some of the ship's crew accompanied him to Nineveh, as knowing the purpose of his errand thither, to testify to the people that he was the same man who was in this manner delivered from the jaws of the deep, or that the Ninevites came by their intelligence of this miracle by some other means, we have here a good reason why they attended to his message, and repented at his preaching; and consequently why God wrought this wonderful work upon him, in order to give his predictions more weight and authority. Nay, farther, we may suppose, that when the people of Nineveh heard Jonah preaching about their streets, and threatening their city with so sudden a destruction, their curiosity would naturally lead them to inquire who that person was, and by whose authority it was that he took so much upon him? and being informed that he was of a nation, 6 which had God more nigh unto them in all Jewish Antiq. b. ix. c. 11. "I wrought for my name's sake,' says God, remembering the wondrous things which he had done for the children of Israel, I wrought for my name's sake, that it should not be polluted among the heathen, among whom they were, in whose sight I made myself known unto them, in bringing them out of the land of Egypt:' and therefore we may well admit, as another motive to his working this miracle, the desire he had to raise the fame of a nation he had taken so immediately under his care, as well as to have the glory of his own name magnified among the Gentiles. To which we may add that most weighty reason of all, which our blessed Saviour suggests: 10 An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.' So that the great design of God's exhibiting, at this time, this miracle in the person of Jonah, was to confirm, in future ages, the great and fundamental article of our faith, upon which the whole superstructure of the Christian religion depends, 'the resurrection of our Saviour Christ; and that whenever the reality of that fact, as it is related in the New Testament, came to be called in question, we might be furnished with a parallel instance of the mighty power of God recorded in the Old. Nor is it only in the sacred records that we meet with this history of Jonah, but in the fables, related by several heathen authors, both in verse and prose, we find evident footsteps and memorials of it. Hercules was the great champion of the Grecians, and his fame they were wont to adorn with all the remarkable exploits that they could in any nation hear of. It is not improbable "Wells' Geography of the New Testament, part 2. Ps. cxxxv. 6. Acts xxvii. 24. therefore," that the adventure of his jumping down the 5 Jonah i. throat of the seadog, which Neptune had sent to devour a Commentators are not agreed as to whether this was the him, and there concealing himself for three days, without same with Tartessus in Spain, the most celebrated emporium in any manner of hurt, save the loss of a few hairs, which the west to which the Hebrews traded, or Tarsus, the metropolis came off by the heat of the creature's stomach, of Cicilia, celebrated as the birth-place of St Paul: a consider-founded upon some blind tradition which these people 6 Deut. iv. 7, 8. 16. able number of eminent names might be adduced in support of both opinions. That it was the one or other of these places seems almost certain; but it is not of great importance that we should be assured which it was.-ED was 9 Ezek. xx. 9, 14. "Lycophron, see Grotius and Bochart, 1 A. M. 3001. A. C. 1003; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 4654. A. C. 757. I`KINGS viii. TO THE END OF 2 CHRON. might have of what happened to Jonah. Nor can the known story of Arion, thrown overboard by the seamen, but taken up by a dolphin, and carried safe to Corinth, be justly referred to any other original; since, 1 besides some resemblance in their names, and no great disparity in the times wherein they lived, which are both circumstances that make for this hypothesis, the supposed difference in their respective callings can be no manner of objection to it, because the same word in the Hebrew tongue signifies both a prophet and a musician. And therefore it is remarkable, that as Arion played the tune wherewith he charmed and allured the fish to save him, before he jumped overboard; so Jonah, when he found himself safely landed, uttered, what is called a prayer indeed, but is, in reality, a lofty hymn in commemoration of his great deliverance, as appears by this specimen: The waters compassed me about, even to the soul; the depth closed me round about, and weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth, with her bars, was about me for ever; yet hast thou brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God.' 46 CHAP. IV.-On Jonah's Mission to Nineveh, and abode in the Whale's belly. SUPPLEMENTAL BY THE EDITOR. THE author of the Fragments appended to Calmet's Dictionary, explains this, not of a living animal, but of a floating preserver, by which Jonah was saved from drowning. He remarks that the word which is used in the original,‘Dag,' signifies primarily a fish; yet, that it also signifies a fish boat, and figuratively a preserver, so that the passage will admit of being rendered thus: 'the Lord prepared a large preserver to receive Jonah, and Jonah was in the inner part,' the belly or hold, three days and nights, and then was cast up on the shore.' man might be admitted entire into the stomach of this But this fanciful interpretation cannot be adopted, because it contradicts the express declaration of our Lord. There are four objections urged to the account which is given us of this miracle: first, that the gullet of a whale is too small to admit the body of a man. Secondly, that though admitted entire into the stomach of this fish, he could not live there. Thirdly, that there are no whales in the Mediterranean sea. And fourthly, that the whole story is rendered improbable by the representation given of the character and religious princi-hypothesis is designed to meet, is frivolous: for on any ples of Jonah. The first objection is refuted by observations which have been made on the natural history of the whale. Captain Scoresby states, that when the mouth of the great common whale is open, it presents a cavity as large as a room, and capable of containing a merchant ship's jolly boat full of men, being six or eight feet wide, ten or twelve feet high, and fifteen or sixteen feet long. The objection of infidel writers, therefore, in regard to this point, is vain and unfounded. 6 But it is further alleged, that though the body of a Still, however, it is stated, by way of objection, that there are no whales in the Mediterranean sea. With the view of obviating this objection, some writers have supposed that the shark may have been the fish which is here intended. But in truth, the objection which this supposition the preservation of Jonah was owing to a miraculous interposition of providence. It is expressly asserted, that God had prepared a great fish' and who will say, that God could not by an impulse communicated bring the whale to the side of the ship, and prepare it for the purpose which it was intended to answer? But the fourth objection to the whole of this narration is, that the story is rendered improbable by the representation given of the character and religious principles of Jonah. Can we imagine that a man would have been selected, to deliver a message from God to the great city of Nineveh, who was himself so ignorant as to suppose that he could flee from the presence of the Creator • Jon. i. 17. 7 Phil. Trans. vol. lxii. p. 449. |