several events; but all who carefully examine the history will come near to an agreement in the general result. By pursuing the same process in an opposite direction we have before arrived at the same conclusion, which therefore stands doubly founded upon the basis of strong probability. Upon the whole it has now been proved, that the covenant of grace promised to the patriarchs was confirmed to Jews alone, and to many of them for the space of three years and an half, or one half week, by the personal ministry of our blessed Saviour: that in the end of that half week, by the offering of himself once for all, he caused the sacrifice and offering, and therewith all the ceremonial and typical institutions of the law of Moses, virtually to cease: that the covenant went on to be confirmed to many Jews, and to Jews only, by the ministry of his apostles, for three years and an half, or half a week more: and that the end of that half week, and consequently of the whole supplementary week, is marked and signalized by the preeminent event of St. Paul's conversion, from being an enemy and persecutor of the christian church to be the Apostle of THE GENTILES; though not exelusively, yet peculiarly and emphatically, of the GENTILES. The covenant being thenceforth virtually opened, the effects of that opening were made actually manifest not long after, in the reception of the converted Gentiles, Cornelius and his family, into the number of the people of God, by baptism. Then also, and not till then, the sixth particular predicted in the twenty fourth verse received its completion: for then the Gentile portion of the christian holy of holies was joined to the Jewish and made one therewith, by receiving the common unction of the Holy Ghost descending upon it with sensible tokens of his presence. It must be confessed that the proof of the accomplishment of the prophecy, with respect to the week of the covenant confirmed, rests chiefly on a calculation of probabilities. But there are many dates in chronology, in which an higher sort of certainty is not attainable, and among such there are few, in which we can rise to so high a degree. For by settling the date of Agabus's prophecy at the latter end of the year 40, we put only nine years and three quarters between that period and the time of our Lord's passion. Of these, after reckoning, upon an accurate examination and deduction of historical facts, three years and a quarter up to the time of Paul's visit to Peter after his escape from Damascus, and taking three more on his own authority for the interval between the period of his conversion and his return to Jerusalem, there remain no more than three years and an half to be accounted for; and these the history itself enables us to arrange in due order, by supplying such a continuous narrative of facts, as affords sufficient grounds for laying down a series of highly probable dates. CHAPTER IV. SECTION VI. The last clauses of the Prophecy concerning the continuance of the Desolations, the end of the Desolator, and the exhaustion of the divine Judgments upon Jerusalem. AFTERWARDS UPON THE BORDER OF ABOMINATIONS SHALL BE THE DESOLA- The first clause of the supplemental verse fills up, as we have seen, the vacancy between the twenty fifth and twenty sixth verses. The second, now before us, belongs to the latter part of the twenty sixth verse and gives us one principal feature in the character of that desolating agent, by whose hands Messiah was to "destroy the city and the sanctuary with the prince that cometh." In translating the passage into English, it is requisite to mark the transition from the former clause by rendering the connective particle afterwards, or moreover. To render it and, as in our English version, produces confusion, because it thus seems to connect what follows with the latter half week, as if it were something appointed to take place within that period; whence also arises a manifest inconsistency, because the desolator is made to do the work of destruction during the very week, in which the covenant is confirmed. The connective is not intended to denote any thing more than bare succession, as it very frequently does in other places. The interpretation of this clause has been unavoidably forestalled in some measure by the discussion, into which it was necessary to enter in the first chapter*, of the effect which the evangelical citations† of it would have on the reading of the Hebrew text. It is there shewn, that those citations do not support the Greek, Latin, and Arabic versions, in rendering the temple, instead of the border; while they are easily and entirely reconcileable with the reading of the printed Hebrew text, which is truly and literally rendered, afterwards upon the border of abominations shall be * Page 29. † Matthew, xxiv. 15, Mark, xiii. 14, Luke, xxi. 20. |