hearts, a sincere desire to seek the truth. Pray, pray; and lay your theories aside: a heart unhallowed is not prepared for divine researches. Then the promise is yours; The meek he will guide in judgment, the meek he will teach his way.' Psalm xxv. 9. Isaiah, speaking likewise of future things as present, says, unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given.' Surely this is not a mere metabole: here is a double geniture foretold, a child born of a Virgin, a Son given to us, for God gave his only begotten Son; and thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift.'

"Have you yet à doubt of the divine and human nature of Christ? Go again to the sacred text. When the stoning of Achan is recorded Joshua vii. 18. it is said, that he was the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah; but when Isaiah describes the sufferings of the great teacher in whose presence kings shut their mouths, the Lamb of God led to the slaughter, he asks, who shall declare his generation? for his life was taken from the earth.' Chap. lii, liii. Oh yea, yea, you say; who shall describe the wickedness of the age in which he lived.' Have you learned this turn of the Jews, for since the crucifixion, they give it that gloss? Why then was Isaiah so obscure in his words? Can this prophet who gave them the severest of appellations, be suspected of fearing to describe the errors of a future age? Do you defend error by saying that dor signifies, a man's house, children, or posterity, as Noah's, Gen. vii. 1. or Abraham's seed, Gen. xvii.

7,9; then it was not the wicked generation who crucified him, but the Messiah's posterity, his own generation or progeny, even the virgin church that had not defiled her garments. When Moses uses the word of the wicked, it is with the epithets, a crooked generation, a generation in which is no faith.' Deut. xxxii. 5, 20. So is the opinion of Ireneaus, when speaking against the errors of the Gnostics, Propheta quidem ait de eo, [the Son of God] Generationem ejus quis enarrabit ? Vos autem generationem ejus ex patre divinantes, et Verbi hominum per linguam factam prolationem transferentes in Verbum Dei, justè detegimini à nobis, quòd neque humana, nec divina noveritis, &c. So Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. lib. i. cap. 2.

"But hear another prophet, that in the mouth of many witnesses, every word may be established. Gather thyself together, O Babylon, daughter of troops; he hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod on the cheek. But thou Bethlehem Ephrata, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me, that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from old, from everlasting.' The manner of the prophet should here be our guide. When Isaiah had foretold the Babylonian captivity, chapter 39th, he immediately cries, comfort ye, comfort ye my people,' with all the evangelical comfort which the Messiah should bring. So here: when Micah has foretold the loss of the regal power, he turns all his hope to Messiah the prince. Whose goings forth have been from everlasting,' and yet born in Bethlehem,

The ancient Rabbins have all understood this passage of the Messiah, of whose pre-existence and eternity they never had either doubt or dispute; and they have given him those titles on the authority of Daniel. Conformably to which it has been their constant hope and prayer, that he would rend the heavens, and come down; that he would come down as rain upon the mown grass. Have the Hebrews any better word than oulam to designate eternity? Is it not twice used by Moses in one verse, when he says, From everlasting to everlasting thou art God? Does not the Chaldee paraphrast often say, that these prophecies (permanentis in secula, Messias, in cujus diebus pax multiplicabitur nobis?) belong to the ages of the Messiah, in whose days peace shall be multiplied to us,

"On the subject of our Saviour's mysterious and holy incarnation, the ancient Rabbins form the connecting link between the prophets and the evangelists, Rabbi Jotten, on the 85th psalm says, Truth shall spring out of the earth;' it is not said truth shall be born, but shall spring out, because the generation of the Messiah is not as with other creatures: he shall be begotten without carnal coition; therefore no one has named his Father, who must be concealed till he himself shall declare him.' He says also on Genesis, Ye have said, we are orphans, such a one, saith the Lord, shall your Redeemer be, whom I will give unto you.' On Zachariah, the same Jotten adds, Behold my servant whose name is the branch,' On the 110th psalm, he cites Rabbi

Berachiah as delivering the same thing, that the Messiah should be a priest after the order of Melchizedeck.' And Rabbi Ben Jochai, on Genesis speaks yet more plainly, That the Spirit, by an impulse of a mighty power, shall come forth of the womb, though shut up, that will become a mighty prince. The king Messiah.' Dr. John Lightfoot, vol. ii. p. 385, fol. ed. Morney De Verit. Christ. Relig. cap. xxviii.

"If these ancient doctors have spoken these things, (and the correctness of Dr. Lightfoot's readings have hitherto passed undisputed); if they have regarded the then expected king Messiah, as the mighty power of God, the priest who should abide for ever, and yet an orphan, whose incarnation was purely divine; why have you deviated from a faith so unsuspected? Why have you not to a man detested the Birmingham philosophy, which calls the HOPE of all the earth, "the legitimate son of Joseph and Mary?!! Why not allow us to retain the faith of the Jews, the devout men and proselytes out of every nation under heaven,' Acts ii. 5. Philo, the learned Jew of Alexandria; Philo distinguished as a Pythagorean, a Peripatetic, and a Platonist; Philo who flourished during the reign of Caligula, of Claudius, and of Nero, after treating of God with just propriety, proceeds to speak of the λογος Logos, whom he denominates the Great Power of God, and gwróyovov íov, first begotten Son, by whom all things were made,-the everlasting and eternal Word of God. Eusebius De Præp, Evang, lib. vii. cap. xiii. Ed. Vigeri, Parisi, 1628,

This same author treats also of another person, whom he denominates The Second Power of God,' which can be no other than the Holy Spirit. Rabbi Simeon has similar ideas. p. 50.

"I would here add, that the learned reader on turning to Eusebius, and carefully studying his work, will be delighted to find the prophets, the apocryphal writers on wisdom, Philo, St. John, and St. Paul, harmoniously using the same words; he will find a full rebut of those modern airs which affect to treat the New Testament as a book but partially inspired, a book of very great uncertainty, a book of whose authors, and of the time of their writing, we are altogether uncertain. Such and such a book, we are told, was not accounted canonical; such and such a text is not in any ancient manuscript; such and such a reading is wanting in some particular version; it is either an interpolation or a mistake of the transcriber. In fact, though both the Hebrew and the Christian scriptures have been preserved land watched with unexampled care, we have now no Bible on which the least reliance can be placed. Why not add, that our monks never built abbies nor our barons castles?

"Were it in your power to prove these things, and thank God nothing is proved but your confusion, we should have just cause of complaint that you had destroyed one sanctuary before you have provided us another. Your improved version, the oracle for the temple of reason, we neither deem a safe guide, nor think your temple a safe retreat. It has no priest; for you blush