the days fhall come upon thee, that thine enemies fhall caft a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every fide, and fhall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee, and they shall not leave in thee one ftone upon another, because thou kneweft not the time of thy visitation." These paffages are direct and explicit predictions. References to the fame event, fome plain, fome parabolical, or otherwife figurative, are found in divers other discourses of our Lord*.

The general agreement of the description with the event, viz. with the ruin of the Jewish nation, and the capture of Jerufalem under Vefpafian, thirty-fix years after Christ's death, is most evident: and the accordancy in various articles of detail and circumftance has been shewn by many learned writers. It is also an advantage to the enquiry, and to the argument built upon it, that we have

* Mat. xxi. 33-46. xxii. 1-7. Mark xii. 1-12. Luke xiii. 1-9. xx. 9-20. xxi. 5—13.

received

received a copious account of the transaction from Jofephus, a Jewish and contemporary hiftorian. This part of the cafe is perfectly free from doubt. The only question which, in my opinion, can be raised upon the fubject, is whether the prophecy was really delivered before the event. I fhall apply, therefore, my obfervations to this point folely.

1. The judgement of antiquity, though varying in the precise year of the publication of the three gospels, concurs in affigning them a date prior to the deftruction of Jerufalem *.

2. This judgement is confirmed by a strong probability arising from the course of human life. The deftruction of Jerufalem took place in the feventieth year after the birth of Chrift. The three evangelifts, one of whom was his immediate companion, and the other two affociated with his companions, were, it is probable, not much

*Lardner, vol. xiii.

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younger

younger than he was. They muft, confequently, have been far advanced in life when Jerufalem was taken; and no reason has been given why they should defer writing their hiftories fo long.

3. If the evangelifts, at the time of writing the gospels, had known of the deftruction of Jerufalem, by which catastrophe the prophecies were plainly fulfilled, it is most probable, that, in recording the predictions, they would have dropped fome word or other about the completion; in like manner as Luke, after relating the denunciation of a dearth by Agabus, adds, "which came to pass in the days of Claudius Cæfart" whereas the prophecies are given diftinctly in one chapter of each of the three firft gofpels, and referred to in feveral different paffages of each, and, in none of all thefe places, does there appear the smallest intimation that the things fpoken of were

* Le Clerc, Diff. III. de Quat. Ev. num. vii. p. 541. + Acts xi. 28.

come

come to pafs. I do admit that it would have been the part of an impoftor, who wished his readers to believe that his book was written before the event, when in truth it was written after it, to have fuppreffed any such intimation carefully. But this was not the character of the authors of the gospel. Cunning was no quality of theirs. Of all writers in the world, they thought the leaft of providing against objections. Moreover, there is no clause in any one of them, that makes a profeffion of having written prior to the Jewish wars, which a fraudulent purpose would have led them to pretend. They have done neither one thing nor the other. They have neither inferted any words, which might fignify to the reader that their accounts were written before the destruction of Jerufalem, which a fophift would have done; nor have they dropped a hint of the completion of the prophecies recorded by them, which an undefigning writer, writing after the event, could hardly, on fome or other of the many occafions that presented themselves, have miffed of doing. C 2

4. The

4.

The admonitions* which Chrift is reprefented to have given to his followers to fave themselves by flight, are not easily ac counted for upon the fuppofition of the prophecy being fabricated after the event. Either the Chriftians, when the fiege approached, did make their escape from Jerufalem, or they did not: if they did, they must have had the prophecy amongst them: if they did not know of any fuch prediction at the time of the siege, if they did not take notice of any fuch warning, it was an improbable fiction, in a writer publishing his

Luke xxi. 20, 21. "When ye fhall fee Jerufalem compaffed with armies, then know that the defolation thereof is nigh; then iet them which are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let them which are in the midft of it depart out, and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto."

Mat. xiv. 18. "When ye fhall fee Jerufalem compaffed with armies, then let them which be in Judea flee unto the mountains; let him which is on the house top not come down to take any thing out of his house, neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes."

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