Behold, my servants shall drink; but ye shall be thirsty. Behold, my servants shall rejoice: but ye shall be ashamed. Behold, my servants shall sing for joy of heart: but ye shall cry for sorrow of heart, and shall howl for vexation of spirit. And ye shall leave your name for a curse unto my chosen, for the Lord God shall slay thee, and call his servants by another name;" Christians and not Jews, Isa. lxv. 12-16.

Another consequence of the excision of the Messiah, and his pouring out his soul unto death, was the calling the Gentiles into a church state. "Behold God's servant whom he upholds, his elect in whom his soul delighted, he has put his spirit upon him; and he hath brought forth judgment unto the Gentiles. He has not failed nor been discouraged, 'till he has set judgment upon the earth; and the isles have waited for his law," Isa. xlii. 1, 4. "Then did the barren sing that did not bear; she broke forth into singing and cried aloud, that had not travailed with child; and more were the children of the desolate, than of the married wife. For she brake forth on the right hand and on the left; and her seed inherited the Gentiles; and made the desolate cities to be inhabited," Isa. liv. 1, 3. Thus was our Lord Jesus Christ "given for a light to the Gentiles, that he might be for salvation unto the ends of the earth," Isa. xlix. 6. And the Gentiles came to his light, and the kings to the brightness of his rising, Isa. lx. 3.

Thus you have had a general view of our blessed Saviour's life, death, resurrection, ascension, and kingdom, out of the Jewish prophets. I have not given you all (nor indeed a tenth part) of the predictions of the Messiah, that are to be found in the Old Testament; and yet I have by these brief hints, given you the advantage to consider, whether these prophecies did not in all circumstances exactly agree to the Lord Jesus Christ; and whether they did or possibly could agree to any other person in the world.

And now, sir, I leave it to yourself to judge, whether we can either have or desire greater certainty of any past event, than that these prophecies did. directly refer to and were all accomplished in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Suppose we had a certain direction, when to begin the forty-two months, or one thousand two hundred and sixty years of Antichrist's reign, as we have with respect to the beginning of Daniel's weeks; and that you should find by calculation that they should terminate in the year 1746; and being filled with expectations of the events of that year, should (when it comes) actually see all the Popish princes of Europe brought into subjection, the Protestant princes united in confederacy, the city of Rome sacked and burnt, and the Papal hierarchy every where overturned; the Turkish empire destroyed; and the Jews collected and brought into the Christian church: would you not acknowledge these prophecies to be of divine original; and the Pope and Roman papacy to be the Antichrist therein predicted? And would you not also live in certain expectation of all the other events, which are foretold as consequences of this revolution? You certainly would. And yet I must take the liberty to tell you, that there is a much brighter light shines upon the prophecies concerning our blessed Saviour, in their exact accomplishment, than this would prove, should all these circumstances concur, as is here supposed.

That the Lord may graciously grant both you and me a sincere faith in this blessed Saviour; and prepare us both for the great events that are hastening upon us, is the prayer of Sir, Yours, &c.

LETTER IV.

THE CERTAINTY OF THOSE FACTS, UPON WHICH THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY DEPEND.

SIR-You mistake in supposing, that "my last letter has set the evidence of our Saviour's divine mission, from the Old Testament prophecies, in the strongest light." There might be much stronger light brought from the prophetic writings, in confirmation of this blessed truth; and yet you must allow me the freedom to tell you, that my letter justly demands of you a firmer assent, than you are pleased to express, to that fundamental article of our faith and hope. It represents to you more than " a strong probability, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and the Saviour of the world." Consider, I beseech you, whether it is possible, for any or for all created intelligences, to foresee and foretell such future events, as depend wholly upon the mere good pleasure of God; such events as are altogether out of the way of God's ordinary dispensations of providence; and such events as had not the least probability from the known laws of nature, to have ever come to pass; and then to overrule the various revolutions of nature and providence in such a way, as is utterly inconsistent with, and in many instances altogether contrary to, the known stated methods of God's governing the world, in order that those predictions (even in every particular circumstance) should be exactly accomplished. I entreat you, Sir, to consider the affair in this view, (for in this view it ought to be considered,) and then tell me, whether the evidences do not amount to more than a strong probability. And consider what evidence of this kind you yourself can possibly imagine, that would bring your mind into a full acquiescence in this truth, as certain and undoubted.

If there can be any reasonable doubt remaining, it must be for one of these following causes. Either,

1. It must be supposed, that the Jewish prophets had no such events in their eye; that the quoted predictions had a reference to something else; or perhaps no reference to any thing at all: but were the casual sallies of the several authors' fruitful fancies or imaginations.

But then, if this be supposed, how comes it to pass that they are so exactly verified? Certain it is, that the Jews supposed all these predictions to be divine inspirations, kept up stated memorials of them, and longed for their accomplishment. And it is equally certain, that at the very time when they ought to be expected, they were all fulfilled in every circumstance. This is an affair that demands your attention. Here are predictions of most wonderful and amazing events, such as no appearances that ever had been in the world could any way lead the minds of the prophets to think of or imagine. These events were foretold as to time, place, and many other particular circumstances, that you see a history of our Saviour's birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and future kingdom, could be made up out of these prophecies: and, to crown the whole, they have all been exactly fulfilled. Now, then, I have a right to demand, Were these from heaven or of men? Can the most licentious imagination apprehend these very numerous and various predictions to be the effects of capricious fancies; and their fulfilment a matter of mere chance or casualty? Then may the Epicurean philosophy take place again, and the world in its glory, order and symmetry, be reasonably believed to be the effect of a fortuitous concourse and jumble of atoms. I hope, this doubt is cleared out of your way, and I know of but one more that can remain; which is,

2. That there never were any such predictions of these things in the Jewish prophets; but that all of them were written since the events.

But, then, you must suppose that this was done by the Christians, without the privity of the Jews and others, who had these books in their hands; or that it was done by a joint confederacy of Christians and

Jews. If the former, you must imagine that the whole nation of the Jews, and all the other nations who had the Greek translation of the Jewish Bible in their hands, must be persuaded to believe, that they always had and always read those things in their Bible, which were never there; or else all of them to a man must be prevailed upon, out of complaisance to their greatest adversaries, to interpolate their Bibles, by inserting these predictions, and not leave to posterity' a single copy unadulterated, to discover and correct the fraud. But if you choose the latter of those suppositions, that these prophecies were added to the Jewish Bibles by a joint confederacy of Christians and Jews, you must imagine, that the whole Jewish nation, in all their most distant dispersions, united in a confederacy to furnish the world with armour against their own infidelity, and to represent themselves as the most unreasonable and wicked of all mankind. These absurdities are, I am sure, too gross for you to entertain; and yet I may venture to challenge you to think of any other way, in which it is possible this could be done.

But you tell me, "It appears the greatest difficulty to you, to come at any certainty of the truth of those facts, upon which the evidence of Christianity depends." And I readily acknowledge, that if these facts are not true, all our reasonings from prophecy, and miracles too, will come to nothing. It is therefore proper to consider this case more particularly. And in order that this may be brought into the closest view, and the conclusion necessarily force itself upon our minds, let us consider what consequences must follow upon the supposition, that these facts are not true. You can have no rational doubt of these things, but upon one of these suppositions; either,

1. That the Apostles, and other reporters of these facts, did themselves certainly know that their narratives of these miracles were all of them mere fictions and falsehoods, and that they never did in fact see any such miraculous works performed by Jesus Christ; that they never did see and converse with