the exact periods and the particular circumstances of the events destined to take place. That would have afforded to mortals an opportunity of intermeddling in God's providential arrangement of human affairs, either by audaciously opposing their puny efforts to the purposes of his wisdom, or by awkward endeavours, less impious indeed, but hardly less rash, to facilitate or accelerate their accomplishment. This consideration applies especially to chronological prophecies, or the predictions of fixed terms; which, if exactly ascertained, would bear the appearance of a fatal necessity: and thereby, as the hour of accomplishment drew nigh, the course of things would be exposed to a twofold disorder. Weak and timid minds* would sink listless and passive in the contemplation of an inevitable event; while fierce and audacious spirits would rend heaven and earth in their interested strifes to avert the threatened danger or secure the pre-determined blessing. But

Prudens futuri temporis exitum

Caliginosa nocte premit Deus.

* It is of such minds that Lucan so powerfully expresses the feelings in the opening of the second book of his Pharsalia:

Sit subitum quodcunque paras: sit cœca futuri
Mens hominum fati: liceat sperare timenti.

Accordingly, although we do find in holy writ many chronological prophecies and predictions of fixed terms, yet it is observable, that they are constructed with such skilful management, as to give to mankind little or no opportunity, or even temptation, to act upon them in the way either of prevention or of promotion. This was peculiarly necessary in the case of a prophecy, that should fix a period for the coming of Messiah. For if the Jews had been able to calculate the times with precision, would not the worldly turn and the ardent spirit of their expectations, combining with their impatience of the Roman yoke, have interfered with the designs of heaven? If it could have been proved to full conviction, that the time of our Lord's appearance coincided exactly with the predictions in the seventy weeks, would not the whole nation have risen up, as one man, to do, what without such instigation some of them were well nigh doing,-" have taken Jesus by force to make him their king?" Doubtless in such case the humility of his character and the anti-secularity of his pretensions, in the minds even of the most wordly-minded, would not have availed to cast a shade over his mighty works; nor, in the absence of other and preferable competitors, have prevented the general acknowledgment of him, as the expected Messiah,

and the violent consequences, which, unless checked by such a manifest interposition, as might have seemed to look too favourably to the heathen domination, would have ensued on that acknowledgment. The Jewish history may suggest to the reader other arguments to the same purpose. But enough has been said to shew, that the state of opinions and of feeling prevalent among that nation at our Lord's appearance was such, as to render it highly advisable, and even necessary, to prevent a too close and decisive application of the prophecy to events, while they were either nearly pending or actually passing.

The mode, in which it has pleased the divine wisdom generally to prevent the certain computation of prophetical fixed terms previously to their expiration, is by throwing a degree of uncertainty about their commencement. I can

recollect only one exception to this remark, which is to be found in the prediction of the one hundred and twenty years given to Noah, for that, provided we be correct in reckoning those years from the period of its delivery, seems to be as clear and decisive in its beginning as it doubtless was in its termination. But perhaps the knowledge of it was confined to Noah and his family, or if it were published, it was published to

a faithless and perverse generation, who would take no account of it: besides, the event was to be brought about, not by human instruments or through moral causes, but by such only as were placed above the reach of mortal interference. Another period prophetically fixed in scripture is that of the four hundred years, during which the patriarch Abraham and his seed were to be strangers, sojourners, and servants in a land of foreigners. Here, if the annunciation of the term be compared with the declaration of its conclusion, it will be found, that the commencement of it is involved in a great degree of doubt and difficulty; such as must have disabled any uninspired mortal from computing with exactness the date of its termination, until it actually arrived. In like manner the term of the seventy years captivity of Judah might have been uncertainly reckoned from more dates than one, until their return in the first year of Cyrus shewed, that it was to be computed from the first siege and capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. A similar obscurity rests upon the long terms, which are predicted both by Daniel and by St. John, and which are yet in progress over us. We are unable, as to me at least it appears, notwithstanding all the efforts of commentators, to fix with satisfactory accuracy the beginnings of

those terms; and therefore we cannot argue with certainty to the time of their expiration.

Since then the attempt to fix the beginning of a prophetic term is by the direct act of the Divine Spirit himself made a matter of such serious difficulty, as almost to look like a prohibition, while the term itself is in transitu, it would be rash to affirm, that every degree of doubt ought at once and necessarily to vanish so soon as it has reached its conclusion. The event intended to mark its commencement cannot in itself do that office more perfectly than before, so that whatever degree of additional light and certainty may now be cast upon it, must be borrowed by a retrograde reckoning from its ascertained end. If indeed that point be clearly made out, and the reckoning lead back to a fact answerable to that, from which the term is dated, there can be no farther question upon the subject: the whole term stands fully disclosed before us; and nothing is left, but to examine, whether the events, by which it is filled up, correspond to those, which are predicted to take place in its passage. But if there happen to be more than one event, that can advance plausible pretensions to be the intended mark of the end, then it is evident, that the point of commencement also must remain undecided, until more accurate and more successful