could not have seen, and which cannot yet have arrived.*- -As if Christianity established by miracle, must likewise be maintained by miracle! and, as if what is foretold of Christianity in the abstract, must necessarily be fully put forth in the concrete! All this is of course very decisive; it also is, because thought by all good men to be very desirable!

It must be needless to multiply testimonies to this effect; for, to those who are disposed to evade declarations so plain, so definite, so completely restricted, and so full to the point, that the New Covenant should be,-and is,-fully and finally established; no testimony, though given by one rising from the dead for that purpose, would be deemed sufficient: and, to others who prefer the plain and obvious enouncements of God's holy Word to the weak and silly devices of men, and the policies of a party, it would be superfluous. We conclude therefore here, that the spirit of ALL prophecy is testimony to Jesus, and to His kingdom, as erected fully and finally, according to the terms of the covenant made with Abraham, and to the times fixed and determined by His servants the Prophets and Apostles; and that this affords us a full and sufficient insight into the great scheme of Scripture, as well as a complete system of evidence to the point, that it is indeed the work of God; and

*To my notions that all prophecy is fulfilled, a very popular preacher in Manchester, and indeed a very good man, though not a remarkably judicious one, offered this question; viz. Is the day of judgment then past? not aware, of course, that this had never been made matter of prophecy, but only of doctrine! I remark here, a wholesale system of indiscrimination similar to this, and hence of confusion itself confused, marks the far greater part of the inquiries of this marvellously deluded school. To the blinded Jews (Rom. xi.), for example, the promises necessarily made to the holy Remnant, or Elect, are universally ascribed by them; and the times of "the latter days," carried forward just as the fancy of the Cabbalist may be. It has been objected also-and by the writer noticed above-both to my work of 1830 and of 1849, that my system is that of Bossuet, Hammond, Grotius, &c., which is not true. Bossuet's system is that of Mede, i. e. to guess at, not to investigate, the meaning of any passage, and then to endeavour to make it quadrate with the guess. With Bossuet's results I have nothing now to do. As to Hammond and Grotius, had they but seen that the 1000 years of St. John was a mystical, not a chronological, period, they probably would also have seen that the seventy weeks of Daniel was, and would have determined every thing necessary to this question long ago. My system is not, therefore, that of these writers, and my very accurate censor has, as before, stated any thing but the truth.

that Christianity as now completely established, is adequate in its purity and powers, to the renewal of every believing heart, the saving of every renewed soul, and the full realization both in individuals and mankind generally, of all that the Prophets have said, and St. John has, in the brightest enouncements of his Revelation, taught: and further, that to a very great extent, this has been seen and felt within our own times.

I shall now add a few remarks on the claim made by the followers of Mr. Mede, viz. that they are the Orthodox and sole Protestant interpreters of Holy Writ, to shew how in this they conspire to uphold one of the main grounds of the Papacy.

On the development of the school of Mr. Mede, and of the

Pontificate.

We often hear it urged with great earnestness, that Mr. Mede's school are the Orthodox and sole Protestant interpreters of prophecy; implying of necessity, that all who differ from them are Heterodox and anti-Protestant. This they ground on the consideration that they alone make the Pope, or his system, the Antichrist of Scripture; his Church the whore of Babylon, and the like: and that, others not doing so, are justly considered as heterodox, and unfriendly to the Protestant cause. I shall now shew that the reverse of this is

the truth.

Mr. Mede's theory then, as I understand it, exhibits Christianity as in a state of progress, until it shall attain to that perfection both in power and extent, which is foretold by the Prophets, and represented in the two last chapters of the Revelation of St. John. This, I believe, is in the main the view of all that school. Nor does that of Mr. Maitland and Dr. Todd essentially differ from it, as to the far distant and final perfection of Christianity.

But this rests on the assumption, acted on as a principle, that Christianity is under the fatal necessity of such a progress. This is likewise assumed by the followers of the Pontificate; and is, in like manner, acted on as a principle: and upon it is their whole system of development essentially made to stand. The different ways, in which it is followed out by these several schools, is of no moment here: both evince nothing more in this than matter of detail, in which men equally

C

learned, able, and honest, may be fairly allowed to differ. They do so differ; but, as far as principle is concerned, they most cordially agree.

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It may therefore be fearlessly affirmed, that Protestants in general, embracing as they do the system of Mr. Mede, cannot consistently hold up their hands against the principle of development urged by Papists, and of late by father Newman in particular. They may indeed, and do, object to the detail; but this can never be thought sufficient to silence any opponents, much less such as these are; and, therefore, so long as these principles prevail, the snake of development can at best only be scotched, not killed and so far, whatever the school of Mr. Mede may bring from the Apocalypse against Romanists, and the same, and on precisely the same grounds, Romanists have brought against Protestants,*-Development, the key-stone of Popery, will continue to hold its place; and this, as far as principle is concerned, will Protestants very essentially contribute to confirm, and to perpetuate. But, let it be seen that Apostolical Christianity is complete, that nothing can be added to it as such, or taken from it, at less than the risk of damnation, and this though done even by an angel from heaven,† and the whole fabric of Romish development falls instantly to the ground: the nail, or peg, on which it hung gives way, and all that was suspended thereon receives irreparable and everlasting destruction.‡

But it has been shewn above, and in my larger work, that Christianity is complete, i. e. that the New Covenant has been fully, and finally, established: the city compact, and at unity with itself, has been built upon the foundations of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone; and the REVELATION ('ATTоKáλvis, Apocalypse) of St. John, is the DEVELOPMENT of this, as given to him for the purpose of conferring it on His Church.§ Hence he tells us, that "These sayings are faithful and true," i. e. they are the faithful and true revelations of those enigmatical and shadowy things, which had been declared by the Prophets. St. John

* I. e. as done some years ago in a work published under the feigned name of Pastorini, by Dr. Walmesly the then Roman-Catholic Bishop residing at Bath; which was circulated with great effect in Ireland.

+ Gal. i. 8, 9.

See Isaiah xxii. 24, 25.

§ See my larger work on this place.

adds: "And the Lord God of the holy Prophets sent His angel to shew unto His servants the things which must (i. e. then) SHORTLY be done. And again, that this DEVELOPMENT is a final one, is evident from what closes and seals it, viz. "If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book; and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life," &c. But, both Roman Catholics and the followers of Mr. Mede, do, upon principle-which they propound as authoritative-at once add to, and take away from, the things which are written in this book: and Protestants, how little soever they may be inclined to favour the details of these, do with both hands sanction the principle; and, what is worse, many of them actually go on from year to year, foretelling those additional things, of which neither John nor any Prophet has said so much as one word, and which they labour to have it believed shall still come to pass! And, in order to bolster this up, they tell us that Apostolical Christianity has yet wrought no deliverance in the earth; that it has only brought forth wind, and is a mere makeshift for the time being. They detract from its excellencies, ignorantly indeed, in order to exalt the very puerile figments of a Millennium,* &c., which they have had the misfortune to adopt!

Let the Reader now judge, where the Heterodoxy, and real anti-Protestantism, is found among us, with regard to this question; and whether a system so flattering, and at the same time so pernicious, ought to be continued or not.

*The period and particulars of the millennium of St. John, are discussed below.

PART II.

On the figurative and other modes of expression peculiar to Holy Scripture.

THERE can perhaps no doubt remain on the mind of any on the question, that, as the Bible is a book very peculiar in its diction, the first thing an interpreter anxious to know its meaning ought to do is, to make himself thoroughly acquainted with this. It will avail us nothing to do, as it is the practice with many, to lay down certain abstract rules for our guidance, until it shall have been ascertained that these are suitable to our purpose.

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It is very generally assumed, that, if a certain symbol or metaphor is found to designate some one person or thing on some occasions, it must do the same on all; as it also is that, if the expressions occurring in one of the parallels of a verse are to be taken literally, so must they also in the other and the consequence has been, Scripture generally, and prophecy in particular, have been very unsatisfactorily interpreted; while it must be obvious, upon a very superficial view only of the case, that, as Holy Scripture has not been committed to writing under any such laws, the results arrived at must be unworthy of confidence. It is our intention, therefore, now to offer a few remarks, and to lay down a few rules, on this subject, on which reliance may be placed; not for the purpose of following out this question to the extent that it deserves, but only to touch upon it, as far as our present researches may require: referring the Reader to such works on the Rhetoric* of Scripture as may supply the further information wanted.

We have now, therefore, four different kinds of writing briefly to consider: I. Language in its natural and proper application; II. Metaphor, in which the natural and proper

* I know nothing so full on these subjects as the Philologia Sacra of Glassius. Of this the early editions are the best, the latter ones having been altered to suit the Rationalistic system of modern Germany. See also Mr. Fairbairn's work on Typology. Clark, Edinburgh, 1847.