Virgil the celebrated Roman poet flourished in the court of Augustus no long time before our Saviour's birth, when the general expectation of a person to appear who should abolish both physical and moral evil was at the highest.

Among his works still extant is a congratulatory poem addressed to a noble Roman, the poet's friend, who bore the high office of consul at the time when it was written. The occasion seems to have been the birth of some child, in whose fortunes Pollio the poet's friend was nearly interested. The compliment to Pollio is double, being partly drawn from a flattering prediction of the infant's future greatness, (for it is affirmed, that he will prove nothing less than the expected deliverer,) and partly from this circumstance, that the year of Pollio's consulate should be distinguished by the birth of such a child. Who

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ever should read this poem without a knowledge of the history of the times would conclude, that it was a compliment to Pollio upon the birth of his own son.

But it is a very extraordinary, but a very certain fact, that the consul had no son born in the year of his consulate, or within any short time before or after it. Nor will the history of these times furnish us with any child born within a moderate distance of Pollio's year of office, which, by its rank and connexion with his family, might seem of sufficient importance to be the subject of this congratulation, even when all possible allowance has been made for a poet's exaggeration and a courtier's flattery. But what is most worthy of remark, and the most for my present purpose, is the description which the heathen poet gives of the extraordinary person that he expected; of his origin, his achieve

ments, and the good consequences of his appearance; which is such, that if any illiterate person who was to hear this poem read in an exact translation, with the omission only of the names of heathen deities, and of allusion to profane mythology, which occur in a few passages,-any illiterate person who was to hear the poem read with these omissions, which would not at all affect the general sense of it, if he had not been told before that it was the composition of an heathen author, would without hesitation pronounce it to be a prophecy of the Messiah, or a poem at least upon that subject written in express imitation of the style of the Jewish prophets. The resemblance between the images of this poem and those in which the inspired `prophets describe the times of the Messiah, has ever been remarked with surprise by the learned, as indeed it is much too

striking to escape notice; and many attempts have been made to account for it. It has been imagined, that the poet had actually borrowed his images from the prophets. The books of the Old Testament having been translated into the Greek language long before the days of Virgil, it has been supposed, that he might have become conversant with the sacred writings in the Greek translation.

But I see no reason to believe that these books were ever in any credit among the Romans, or that the contents of them were known at all, except to some few who were proselytes to the Jewish religion.

It has been supposed, that Herod's visit at the court of Augustus might be the means of making the Roman poet acquainted with the Hebrew bards. Herod indeed was some months at Rome, but there is little probability that the king, or

any of his train, had leisure to be the poet's tutor in Hebrew learning. It is very

strange that in so many attempts to account for the extraordinary fact under consideration, more attention should not have been paid to the account which the poet himself has given of it. He refers to the oracles of the Cumaan Sibyl as the source from which he drew these predictions. And in this lay the whole force of his compliment to Pollio,-That the child whose future greatness was the object of Pollio's ambition, would prove to be that personage whom the Cumaan Sibyl had announced as a deliverer of the world from physical and moral evil: For that is the sum and substance of the character according to the poet's description. Here, then, we have the clear testimony of this heathen poet, that the oracles of the Sibyl contained a prophecy, not accomplished