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of their miffion, affords a very strong prefumptive argument that they were no impoftors. They generally exhibited their proofs without the least comment upon them, leaving them to produce their own natural effect upon the mind of the unprejudiced obferver. At other times they plainly and peremptorily affert their commiffion from God, fimply appealing to the miracles which they wrought, or to antient allowed prophecies in favour of their pretensions ; never reafoning about the force of them, or of their own accord ftarting and obviating objections, though they never declined giving plain and fatisfactory answers to all that were proposed to them.

On the other hand, impoftors, conscious of their having no fatisfactory proof of what they pretend to be, never fail to make a great parade of the little feeming evidence which they can venture to alledge; they are quick-fighted to foresee, and ready to obviate every objection to which they can make any plaufible reply, and they artfully evade fuch as they cannot answer. Such was the

conduct

conduct of Mohammed, as a perfon of any tolerable difcernment may perceive in reading the Koran; and the very reverse was the conduct of Chrift and his apoftles, as must be obvious to any person who reads the Gofpels and the book of Acts.

Upon the whole, we cannot but conclude, that the Evangelical history has all the air and the usual characteristics of truth; and that men circumftanced as the writers of the New Teftament were, fhould have written as they have done, without writing from known facts, is altogether incredible, and the whole history of mankind can exhibit nothing parallel to it.

VOL. I.

D d

CHAPTER

CHAPTER V.

THE EVIDENCE OF REVEALED RELIGION FROM PROPHECY.

HE laft courfe of arguments which I

TH

fhall produce in favour of the Jewish · and chriftian revelations is that which is derived from prophecy, which is of a mixed nature, depending in part upon the teftimony of the friends of revelation that fuch prophecies were delivered, and upon credible hiftory that they have been fulfilled. In fome cafes, however, it is a matter of public notoriety, that the books which contain the prophecies were extant long before the events to which it is afferted that they correfpond; fo that this argument borrows no aid from the teftimony of the friends of revelation only.

It must be acknowledged that God only can foresee, and with certainty foretel future events, at least such as are very remote, and which depend upon caufes which did not exift, or which could not be known by man to exift, at the time when they were foretold. It is not neceffary, however, that the event fhould correfpond to the prophecy fo 'exactly, as that it might have been diftinctly defcribed before it came to pass. For in how dark and obfcure a manner foever the prophecy be expreffed, it will be fufficiently manifeft that it came from God, if, after the event, the correfpondence between them be fo great, that human forefight could not have defcribed it in fuch a manner, and if it be highly improbable, or impoffible, that it should have been defcribed in fuch a manner at random. But many prophecies recorded in the fcriptures were as intelligible before as after the event, and yet they did not at all contribute to their own accomplishment, by inducing the friends of revelation to exert themselves, in order to bring about the thing foretold; the Dd2

event

event being produced by natural and foreign causes.

Of the many prophecies which are recorded in the books of fcripture, I shall only mention a few of the more confiderable, reciting in the first place, the words of the prediction, and then relating from hiftory the correfponding events.

SECTION I.

Prophecies relating to various nations which had connections with the Jews.

HE prophecies concerning the poste

ΤΗ

rity of Abraham by ISHMAEL, have been remarkably fulfilled; and the present ftate of the Arabs, who are chiefly defcended from Ishmael, is an atteftation of their truth and divinity.

Several of thefe predictions imply, that the pofterity of Ishmael fhould be numerous;

as

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