1825.

Disc.  IV.  Pt.  I. .

As to systems of religion alien from Christianity, if any of them have taught the doctrine of eternal life, the reward of obedience, as a dogma of belief, that doctrine is not their boast, but their burden and difficulty; inasmuch as they could never defend it.  They could never justify it on independent grounds of deduction, nor produce their warrant and authority to teach it.  In such precarious and unauthenticated principles it may pass for a conjecture, or pious fraud, or a splendid phantom:  it cannot wear the dignity of truth.

Ah, why did not Mr. Davison adhere to the manly, the glorious, strain of thinking from (’Since Prophecy’, &c.) to . (’that mercy’) of this discourse?  A fact is no subject of scientific demonstration speculatively:  we can only bring analogies, and these Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, and others did bring; but their main argument remains to this day the main argument ­namely, that none but a wicked man dares doubt it.  When it is not in the light of promise, it is in the law of fear, at all times a part of the conscience, and presupposed in all spiritual conviction.

Ib. .

  Some indeed have sought the ‘star’ and the ‘sceptre’ of Balaam’s
  prophecy, where they cannot well be found, in the reign of David; for
  though a sceptre might be there, the star properly is not.

Surely this is a very weak reason.  A far better is, I think, suggested by the words, ’I shall see him ­I shall behold him’; ­which in no intelligible sense could be true of Balaam relatively to David.

Ib. .

The Israelites could not endure the voice and fire of Mount Sinai.  They asked an intermediate messenger between God and them, who should temper the awfulness of his voice, and impart to them his will in a milder way.

‘Deut’. xvii.  Is the following argument worthy our consideration?  If, as the learned Eichhorn, Paulus of Jena, and others of their school, have asserted, Moses waited forty days for a tempest, and then, by the assistance of the natural magic he had learned in the temple of Isis, ‘initiated’ the law, all our experience and knowledge of the way in which large bodies of men are affected would lead us to suppose that the Hebrew people would have been keenly excited, interested, and elevated by a spectacle so grand and so flattering to their national pride.  But if the voices and appearances were indeed divine and supernatural, well must we assume that there was a distinctive, though verbally inexpressible, terror and disproportion to the mind, the senses, the whole ‘organismus’ of the human beholders and hearers, which might both account for, and even in the sight of God justify, the trembling prayer which deprecated a repetition.

Ib. .

To justify its application to Christ, the resemblance between him and Moses has often been deduced at large, and drawn into a variety of particulars, among which several points have been taken minute and precarious, or having so little of dignity or clearness of representation in them, that it would be wise to discard them from the prophetic evidence.

With our present knowledge we are both enabled and disposed thus to evolve the full contents of the word ‘like’; but I cannot help thinking that the contemporaries of Moses (if not otherwise orally instructed,) must have understood it in the first and historical sense, at least, of Joshua.

Ib. .

A distinguished commentator on the laws of Moses, Michaelis, vindicates their temporal sanctions on the ground of the Mosaic Code being of the nature of a civil system, to the statutes of which the rewards of a future state would be incongruous and unsuitable.

I never read either of Michaelis’s Works, but the same view came before me whenever I reflected on the Mosaic Code.  Who expects in realities of any kind the sharp outline and exclusive character of scientific classification?  It is the predominance of the characterizing constituent that gives the name and class.  Do not even our own statute laws, though co-existing with a separate religious Code, contain many ‘formulae’ of words which have no sense but for the conscience?  Davison’s stress on the word ‘covet’, in the tenth commandment, is, I think, beyond what so ancient a Code warrants; ­and for the other instances, Michaelis would remind him that the Mosaic constitution was a strict theocracy, and that Jéhovah, the God of all, was their ‘king’.  I do not know the particular mode in which Michaelis propounds and supports this position; but the position itself, as I have presented it to my own mind, seems to me among the strongest proofs of the divine origin of the Law, and an essential in the harmony of the total scheme of Revelation.

Disc.  IV.  Pt.  II. .

But the first law meets him on his own terms; it stood upon a present retribution; the execution of its sentence is matter of history, and the argument resulting from it is to be answered, before the question is carried to another world.

This is rendered a very powerful argument by the consideration, that though so vast a mind as that of Moses, though perhaps even a Lycurgus, might have distinctly foreseen the ruin and captivity of the Hebrew people as a necessary result of the loss of nationality, and the abandonment of the law and religion which were their only point of union, their centre of gravity, ­yet no human intellect could have foreseen the perpetuity of such a people as a distinct race under all the aggravated curses of the law weighing on them; or that the obstinacy of their adherence to their dividuating institutes in persecution, dispersion, and shame, should be in direct proportion to the wantonness of their apostasy from the same in union and prosperity.

Disc.  V. Pt.  II. .

Except under the dictate of a constraining inspiration, it is not easy to conceive how the master of such a work, at the time when he had brought it to perfection, and beheld it in its lustre, the labour of so much opulent magnificence and curious art, and designed to be ’exceeding magnifical, of fame, and of glory throughout all countries’, should be occupied with the prospect of its utter ruin and dilapidation, and that too under the ‘opprobrium’ of God’s vindictive judgment upon it, nor to imagine how that strain of sinister prophecy, that forebodes of malediction, should be ascribed to him, if he had no such vision revealed.

Here I think Mr. Davison should have crushed the objection of the Infidel grounded on Solomon’s subsequent idolatrous impieties.  The Infidel argues, that these are not conceivable of a man distinctly conscious of a prior and supernatural inspiration, accompanied with supernatural manifestations of the divine presence.

Disc.  VI.  Pt.  I. .

  In order to evade this conclusion, nothing is left but to deny that
  Isaiah, or any person of his age, wrote the book ascribed to him.

This too is my conclusion, but (if I do not delude myself) from more evident, though not perhaps more certain, prémisses.  The age of the Cyrus prophecies is the great object of attack by Eichhorn and his compilers; and I dare not say, that in a controversy with these men Davison’s arguments would appear sufficient.  But this was not the intended subject of these Discourses.

Disc.  VI.  Pt.  II. .

  But how does he express that promise?  In the images of the
  resurrection and an immortal state.  Consequently, there is implied in
  the delineation of the lower subject the truth of the greater.

This reminds me of a remark, I have elsewhere made respecting the expediency of separating the arguments addressed to, and valid for, a believer, from the proofs and vindications of Scripture intended to form the belief, or to convict the Infidel.

Disc.  VI.  Pt.  IV. .

When Cyrus became master of Babylon, the prophecies of Isaiah were shewn or communicated to him, wherein were described his victory, and the use he was appointed to make of it in the restoration of the Hebrew people. (’Ezra’ , 2.)

This I had been taught to regard as one of Josephus’s legends; but upon this passage who would not infer that it had Ezra for its authority, ­who yet does not expressly say that even the prophecy of the far later Jeremiah was known or made known to Cyrus, who (Ezra tells us) fulfilled it?  If Ezra had meant the prediction of Isaiah by the words, ‘he hath charged me’, &c., why should he not have referred to it together with, or even instead of, Jeremiah?  Is it not more probable that a living prophet had delivered the charge to Cyrus?  See ‘Ezra’ v. ­Again, Davison makes Cyrus speak like a Christian, by omitting the affix ‘of Heaven to the Lord God’ in the original.  Cyrus speaks as a Cyrus might be supposed to do, ­namely, of a most powerful but yet national deity, of a God, not of God.  I have seen in so many instances the injurious effect of weak or overstrained arguments in defence of religion, that I am perhaps more jealous than I need be in the choice of evidences.  I can never think myself the worse Christian for any opinion I may have formed, respecting the price of this or that argument, of this or that divine, in support of the truth.  For every one that I reject, I could supply two, and these [Greek:  anekdota].

Ib. .

Meanwhile this long repose and obscurity of Zerubbabel’s family, and of the whole house of David, during so many generations prior to the Gospel, was one of the preparations made whereby to manifest more distinctly the proper glory of it, in the birth of the Messiah.

In whichever way I take this, whether addressed to a believer for the purpose of enlightening, or to an inquirer for the purpose of establishing, his faith in prophecy, this argument appears to me equally perplexing and obscure.  It seems, ‘prima facie’, almost tantamount to a right of inferring the fulfilment of a prophecy in B., which it does not mention, from its entire failure and falsification in A., which, and which alone, it does mention.

Ib. .

  ’Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and
  dreadful day of the Lord.’

Almost every page of this volume makes me feel my own ignorance respecting the interpretation of the language of the Hebrew Prophets, and the want of the one idea which would supply the key.  Suppose an Infidel to ask me, how the Jews were to ascertain that John the Baptist was Elijah the Prophet; ­am I to assert the pre-existence of John’s personal identity as Elijah?  If not, why Elijah rather than any other Prophet?  One answer is obvious enough, that the contemporaries of John held Elijah as the common representative of the Prophets; but did Malachi do so?

Ib. .

I cannot conceive a more beautiful synopsis of a work on the Prophecies of the Old Testament, than is given in this Recapitulation.  Would that its truth had been equally well substantiated!  That it can be, that it will be, I have the liveliest faith; ­and that Mr. Davison has contributed as much as we ought to expect, and more than any contemporary divine, I acknowledge, and honor him accordingly.  But much, very much, remains to be done, before these three pages merit the name of a Recapitulation.

Disc.  VII. .

If I needed proof of the immense importance of the doctrine of Ideas, and how little it is understood, the following discourse would supply it.

The whole discussion on Prescience and Freewill, with exception of the page or two borrowed from Skelton, displays an unacquaintance with the deeper philosophy, and a helplessness in the management of the particular question, which I know not how to reconcile with the steadiness and clearness of insight evinced in the earlier Discourses.  I neither do nor ever could see any other difficulty on the subject, than what is contained and anticipated in the idea of eternity.

By Ideas I mean intuitions not sensuous, which can be expressed only by contradictory conceptions, or, to speak more accurately, are in themselves necessarily both inexpressible and inconceivable, but are suggested by two contradictory positions.  This is the essential character of all ideas, consequently of eternity, in which the attributes of omniscience and omnipotence are included.  Now prescience and freewill are in fact nothing more than the two contradictory positions by which the human understanding struggles to express successively the idea of eternity.  Not eternity in the negative sense as the mere absence of succession, much less eternity in the senseless sense of an infinite time; but eternity, ­the Eternal; as Deity, as God.  Our theologians forget that the objection applies equally to the possibility of the divine will; but if they reply that prescience applied to an eternal, ‘Entis absoluti tota et simultanea fruitio’, is but an anthropomorphism, or term of accommodation, the same answer serves in respect of the human will; for the epithet human does not enter into the syllogism.  As to contingency, whence did Mr. Davison learn that it is a necessary accompaniment of freedom, or of free action?  My philosophy teaches me the very contrary.

Ib. .

He contends, without reserve, that the free actions of men are not within the divine prescience; resting his doctrine partly on the assumption that there are no strict and absolute predictions in Scripture of those actions in which men are represented as free and responsible; and partly on the abstract reason, that such actions are in their nature impossible to be certainly foreknown.

I utterly deny contingency except in relation to the limited and imperfect knowledge of man.  But the misery is, that men write about freewill without a single meditation on will absolutely; on the idea [Greek:  katt’ exochaen] without any idea; and so bewilder themselves in the jungle of alien conceptions; and to understand the truth they overlay their reason.

Disc.  VIII. .

It would not be easy to calculate the good which a man like Mr. Davison might effect, under God, by a work on the Messianic Prophecies, specially intended for and addressed to the present race of Jews, ­if only he would make himself acquainted with their objections and ways of understanding Scripture.  For instance, a learned Jew would perhaps contend that this prophecy of Isaiah (c. i-4,) cannot fairly be interpreted of a mere local origination of a religion historically; as the drama might be described as going forth from Athens, and philosophy from Academus and the Painted Porch, but must refer to an established and continuing seat of worship, ‘a house of the God of Jacob’.  The answer to this is provided in the preceding verse, ’in the top of the mountains’; which irrefragably proves the figurative character of the whole prediction.

Ib. .

One point, however, is certain and equally important, namely, that the Christian Church, when it comes to recognize more truly the obligation imposed upon it by the original command of its Founder, ’Go teach all nations’, &c.

That the duty here recommended is deducible from this text is quite clear to my mind; but whether it is the direct sense and primary intention of the words; whether the first meaning is not negative, ­(’Have no respect to what nation a man is of, but teach it to all indifferently whom you have an opportunity of addressing’,) ­this is not so clear.  The larger sense is not without its difficulties, nor is this narrower sense without its practical advantages.

Disc.  IX. , 4.

The striking inferiority of several of these latter Discourses in point of style, as compared with the first 150 pages of this volume, perplexes me.  It seems more than mere carelessness, or the occasional ’infausta témpora scribendi’, can account for.  I question whether from any modern work of a tenth part of the merit of these Discourses, either in matter or in force and felicity of diction and composition, as many uncouth and awkward sentences could be extracted.  The paragraph in page 453 and 454, is not a specimen of the worst.  In a volume which ought to be, and which probably will be, in every young Clergyman’s library, these ‘maculae’ are subjects of just regret.  The utility of the work, no less than its great comparative excellence, render its revision a duty on the part of the author; specks are no trifles in diamonds.

Disc.  XII. .

Four such ruling kingdoms did arise.  The first, the Babylonian, was in being when the prophecy is represented to have been given.  It was followed by the Persian; the Persian gave way to the Grecian; the Roman closed the series.

This is stoutly denied by Eichhorn, who contends that the Mede or Medo-Persian is the second ­if I recollect aright.  But it always struck me that Eichhorn, like other learned Infidels, is caught in his own snares.  For if the prophecies are of the age of the first Empire, and actually delivered by Daniel, there is no reason why the Roman Empire should not have been predicted; ­for superhuman predictions, the last two at least must have been.  But if the book was a forgery, or a political poem like Gray’s Bard or Lycophron’s Cassandra, and later than Antiochus Épiphanes, it is strange and most improbable that the Roman should have escaped notice.  In both cases the omission of the last and most important Empire is inexplicable.

Ib. .

  Yet we have it on authority of Josephus, that Daniel’s prophecies were
  read publicly among the Jews in their worship, as well as their other
  received Scriptures.

It is but fair, however, to remember that the Jewish Church ranked the book of Daniel in the third class only, among the Hagiographic ­passionately almost as the Jews before and at the time of our Saviour were attached to it.

Ib. -3.

But to a Jewish eye, or to any eye placed in the same position of view in the age of Antiochus Épiphanes, it is utterly impossible to admit that this superior strength of the Roman power to reduce and destroy, this heavier arm of subjugation, could have revealed itself so plainly, as to warrant the express deliberate description of it.

‘Quaere’.  See Polybius.

Ib.

  We shall yet have to inquire how it could be foreseen that this
  fourth, this yet unestablished empire, should be the last in the line.

This is a sound and weighty argument, which the preceding does not, I confess, strike me as being.  On the contrary, the admission that by a writer of the Maccabaic aera the Roman power could scarcely have been overlooked, greatly strengthens this second argument, as naturally suggesting expectations of change, and wave-like succession of empires, rather than the idea of a last.  In the age of Augustus this might possibly have occurred to a profound thinker; but the age of Antiochus was too late to permit the Roman power to escape notice; and not late enough to suggest its exclusive establishment so as to leave no source of succession.