which that issue should take effect-by a succession of predictions commencing even in the prosperous reign of Hezekiah, and copiously and perspicuously delivered in proportion to the perplexity in which the fortunes of Judah were involved at that period of their history.

Some considerations are then suggested on the singular character of this predicted restoration of Judah-on its use for the purposes of piety, as appears in the case of Daniel, while yet it was in prospect-and its service in shewing that the ruin foretold in the earlier prophecy of Moses was not consummated in the disaster of the captivity. In concluding this part of the subject, Mr. Davison impresses upon his reader the evidence of prophetic wisdom arising from this combination of predictions bearing on the respective fortunes of the two kingdoms.

"Here I would put the question to any person acquainted with the history of those times and countries, as preserved in independent heathen writers; and enough is preserved for the purpose of the inquiry; whether there existed in the age of the prophet Isaiah the most remote preparations discernible by human foresight for the conclusion of this order of things which is so described by him. In particular, whether the Medo-Persian victories by Cyrus, or by any other person either of Median or Persian race, as the means of releasing Judah from Babylon, could have been foreseen, when the Median power, as we know, much more the Persian, had no existence; when there was neither captivity in Babylon, nor victories of Babylon to produce it: when in fact the Assyrian power was yet in vigour, the subversion of which was only the opening to the possibility of the several distant changes and events foretold. One prediction of this prophet penetrates through another, and each stage of the anticipated course of things leads to more remote positions of prophecy. There is a depth and a combination of prescience in the prolonged succession of his predictions which oblige us to ask, whence it came, whenee it could come, if not from the revelation of Him,' who calleth the things that are not, as though they were?"" P. 351.

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We enter on the second part of this Discourse, that which treats of the contemporary Christian Prophecy. While the Christian and temporal predictions had their greatest increase together, there was an intermission of the Christian until after the ministry of both Elijah and Elisha. The last chapter of Amos is conceived by Mr. Davison to be the beginning of the Evangelical Prophecy contained in the prophetic Canon. And the great propriety with which it is there introduced is argued from the greatness of the consolation which it would afford to the devout of that age, when contrasted with the desolation and rejection described in the earlier parts of the same book. The same sort of consolation, it is further shewn, must have arisen from the prediction of Hosea xiii. 14. "I will ransom them X

VOL. VII. NO. III.

from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. O Death, I will be thy plague; O Grave, I will be thy destruction:" a text, which it is very forcibly reasoned, cannot be restricted to promises of national happiness. But these are only selected out of the mass of similar predictions scattered through the prophets, and above all in Isaiah, as being probably the earliest in the Canon.

But instead of pursuing the investigation through the prophets whose writings are confessedly evangelical, Mr. Davison takes the other side of the question, and examines the predictions of Jonah, Nahum, and Habakkuk, the three prophets who may be regarded as bearing "no distinct reference to Christ or his religion." Jonah, the oldest of all the prophets, he describes as compensating for the absence of any direct Christian prediction, by the typical prophecy embodied in his personal history; his mission to the Ninevites as a preacher of repentance; and the hope in death expressed in his prayer. Nahum he considers as furnishing an illustration of the divine judgment in contrast with the divine clemency preached by Jonah, but not as containing even any typical Christian prophecy. To Habakkuk also the same remark is applied, though there are one or two passages in his book which must be allowed to relate to the Gospel, such as that "the just shall live by faith;" the description of his patient watching for the vision; and in par ticular the conclusion of his prophecy in which is a confession of his own faith.

"The conclusion of Habbakuk is in fact a beginning of Christ's proper doctrine, and whoever will read it, and then pass to the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, will see in both the sanctions of Canaan recede, and the vision of the better kingdom opened." P. 372.

The important service rendered by the Evangelical prophecy during this period, is then shewn in its adaptation to the declining state of the Temporal Covenant;-as the fall of Israel and of Judah approached, God vouchsafing a fuller insight into the greater deliverances yet in store, through the sacrifice of a Redeemer; whence both his unchanged Providence was manifested, and his mercy towards those who trusted in Him, whose hearts must have sunk at the miseries before their eyes-God also at the same time opportunely declaring by his Prophets the value of spiritual obedience, as the possibility of discharging the duties of a ceremonial religion was endangered.

The third part-the consideration of Pagan Prophecy during this period next ensues. On this part of the subject Mr. Davison dwells but briefly, referring to the well-known works on prophecy, in which it is more amply unfolded.-First,

he notices the analogy observable from the time of Abraham throughout the succeeding æras of Prophecy,-in the constant union of the three heads of prediction,-the Christian, the Jewish, and the Pagan; and then illustrates the moral use of the Pagan predictions thus given,-in demonstrating the universality of the providence of God,-in refuting and excluding the pretences of heathen soothsayers, so prevalent in the world, and thus affording a compensation for the excluded rites of human craft, in its greater copiousness and explicitness in the most perplexing circumstances of heathen triumph, when the religion of the Israelites was exposed to the severest trials,—in its fuller effusion also, when the interposition of miracles was with drawn, and particularly in the case of Daniel's prophecies, delivered in the depths of bondage, and thus strikingly adapted alike, to uphold the Jewish religion, and to sustain the expectation, and complete the prophetic evidence, of the Christian.

We proceed to the fourth part of this Discourse,--the last age of ancient Prophecy,-viz. from the end of the Babylonian Captivity, to its final cessation, prior to the Gospel.

After some remarks, pointing out the striking completion of Prophecy displayed in the singular facts belonging to the restora tion of the Jews, Mr. D. adverts to the capture of Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes, and its final desolation by Titus, as the only two visitations of divine judgment, (though the Jews experienced altogether six captures of their city,) which formed the themes of prediction;-Prophecy thus exactly corresponding with the essential history of the people, in dwelling on the only impor tant events which befel them. Accordingly, it is observed, there ensued the long silence of 400 years, immediately preceding the coming of Christ. Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, were the only Prophets belonging to this period, and the subjects of their predictions are stated to be, 1st, The re-establishment of the Hebrew people and their Temple, 2ndly, The annunciation of the Gospel. Prophecy, by discoursing on these subjects supplied the encouragement needed by the people in that peculiar emergency, assuring them of the repression of their enemies, the complete re-establishment of their city, temple, and public peace, while it suggested under the same form the analogous subject of the Christian Priesthood and Church. In particular, the oracle of Zechariah, (vi. 10.-15.) which speaks of

the man, whose name is the Branch," is selected, and shewn to be incapable of full and correct application to any other person but Christ,-and then the predictions relative to the Second Temple are contrasted with those delivered respecting the first, and their greater typical import is demonstrated. But the remarkable text of Haggai, xi. 6. declaring the greater glory

of the latter temple, having been controverted, both as to the correctness of its translation and its fulfilment in Christ, Mr. Davison, under an impression of its great importance, enters into an elucidation of its meaning,-arguing, that impossible as it may be upon principles of philology to decide the exact sense of the text, yet the Christian application of it is sufficiently apparent from collateral arguments-and in regard to the objection that it was a third temple built by Herod which Christ visited, and not the second mentioned by Haggai, shewing that, in point of historical importance, the second and third temples are identified, as appears from Josephus ;-as well as that the peculiar circumstances of the prophecy will not admit of application to the structure considered as Herod's.Another prophecy of Haggai is next examined, that of chap. xi. 21, 22., addressed to Zerubbabel, and restricted to his person by Archbishop Newcome, but improperly, according to Mr. D.'s juster estimate of it; by which it is carried forward to Christ as the lineal descendant of Zerubbabel, in whom the house of David was raised up again, and the succession of the promises restored, at a crisis which signally required such an interposition of prophecy, in strict analogy to the former Gospel predictions, delivered contemporaneously with the emergencies of the temporal covenant.-Lastly, the prediction of Malachi, uttered after the rebuilding of the temple, come under review, and the characteristic of these is noted in the prophetic parallel drawn between the Jewish and Christian Priesthood, wherein the grace and sanctity of the Christian is opposed to the ignorance and corruption of the Jewish. The light afforded by prophecy, as it sunk beneath the horizon of the old dispensation, is thus beautifully described :

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"And now when Prophecy was to be withdrawn from the ancient church of God; its last light was mingled with the rising beams of 'the sun of righteousness.' In one view it combined a retrospect to the Law with the clearest specific signs of the Gospel advent. member ye the Law of Moses my servant, which I commanded him in Horeb, for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet, before the great and dreadful day of judgment. Prophecy had been the oracle of Judaism and of Christianity, to uphold the authority of the one, and reveal the promises of the other. And now its latest admonitions were like those of a faithful departing minister, embracing and summing up its duties. Resigning its charge to the personal precursor of Christ, it expired, with the Gospel upon its tongue." P. 456.

So far Mr. Davison has been employed in giving an account of the structure of Prophecy. In the seventh Discourse he takes up the question arising out of his subject, respecting

the liberty of human action in connection with the Divine foreknowledge. Stating the opinion of Augustine and the ancient fathers to have wisely asserted the existence of both principles,and the true notion of liberty to be, not an entire freedom of the will of man, but only "so much freedom and power of rational election left to him as to be a subject of probation, and within the limits of that probation, to be responsible for his actions,"-he goes on to observe that the difficulty of reconciling the two principles cannot justify us in rejecting either, whilst both rest most strongly on their proper proofs-suggesting however, as he proceeds, some considerations in order to diminish the difficulty and reduce it within its proper bounds.-These are the distinctions between the divine foreknowledge and causation-between certainty and necessity.-Two classes of writers are noticed who have disjoined the principles-speculatists, such as Hobbes, Bayle, and Collins, who have argued from the divine prescience against human freedom-the older Socinian writers who have denied the divine prescience of free undetermined actions. To deny the freedom of man, it is remarked, is natural to the sceptic, as the foundation of religion is thus overthrown; but the character of Scriptural Theology, it is added, is no less subverted by those who on the pretension of a more exalted piety hold that God is the sole doer of all things, and in opposition to a mistaken sentiment of Lord Bacon on this subject, it is argued, that the divine knowledge and divine agency are not inseparable, as the power of God may be exerted, not in the causation of some actions, but in the moral government of them-he may controul and appoint the effects of evil actions without producing the evil actions themselves, as is apparent from the whole scheme of the prophetic volume. We are referred also to the text of Romans viii. 29, and that of Acts iv. 28, as according with this view of the subject.

The opinion that the free actions of men are not within the divine prescience (as recently advocated by Dr. Pearson) is next canvassed. This opinion so far as it claims the authority of Scripture is disproved by the fact, that there are express predictions in Scripture of judicial visitation for voluntary sin, and some "including equally the particular sin and its punishment;" so far as it rests on the abstract reason of an inherent impossibility, has been already disproved in the previous part of the Discourse in which the distinction between certainty and necessity has been shewn.

The right mode of considering the subject is suggested to be that which begins from ourselves; with the supposition of our own freedom; and so rises to an acknowledgment of the Divine prescience; instead of taking the reverse order:-and the Discourse concludes with observations of the great import