harp of gold was given to the redeemed on the right, and the song of praise arose. But in deeper and more impressive tones, the voice continued, "Son of perdition! offspring of iniquity! De - Horror indescribable was painted in the look of the criminal—the eternal fire was already kindling round his heart-the worm that, will not sleep, and cannot die, was coiling there-with groans which cannot be uttered, he sank to the regions of outer darkness! ́ ́ The angel turned to Zahid, and thus addressed him-"Presumptuous mortal! murmur no more at ing him to follow proceeded towards a mountain, whose summit was covered with eternal verdure. Having ascended, the Angel desired Zahid to cast his eyes towards the left-He perceived a vast land, apparently almost bar-part from me, ye cursed, into everren and desolate-few flowers and lasting misery-for I was an huntrees refreshed the eye, in this gered, and ye gave me no meatwilderness-The sun shone but naked, and ye clothed me notdimly on it-Whilst he was musing oppressed, and thou wast the opon this scene, thick darkness over-pressor!-evil intreated-despitespread it-the sun's disk was ob- fully used, and thou wast the perscured by clouds-the spirit of secutor !" the storm shrieked wildly-Ocean had burst its banks, and in its car of foam rolled along, threatening utter destruction to this devoted land.—He turned, wondering to his guide for an explanation, and casting his eyes again on the scene, a fair and lovely country was presented to his view-Its plains were enamelled with innumerable, flowers, and as the stream murmured gently in its course, the the merciful decrees of infinite overhanging trees kissed the clear Wisdom-the wide torrent of woe and lucid surface-Rejoicing Na- must desolate the fair field of ture seemed to proclaim that the existence-it must be torn up with time of the singing of birds was the plough of affliction-Darkness, and the thick clouds of The Prince gazed with rapture winter must surround it, ere it and sank into gentle and pleasing be blessed with eternal spring meditation, when the solemn and and summer. Through the gates lengthened tone of a trumpet of tribulation, man must enter the caused him to start from his reverie. abode of happiness. Human life, Looking round, he beheld on the short and uncertain, is but a state right, a figure clothed in shining of preparation for a final state of garments, whose head was bent existence-"But rest thou in the downwards, in deep humility. To-Lord, and wait patiently for him— wards the left was seen to ap- fret not thyself because of him proach, a figure, erect and stately, who prospereth in the way-bewith a robe of flowing sable-A cause of the man who bringeth voice issued from the invisible-wicked devices to pass--For yet a That which was proclaimed on little while, and the wicked shall earth was ratified in heaven. not be-Thou shalt diligently con"Blessed are they that mourn, sider his place, and it shall not for they shall be comforted; be-but those that wait upon the Blessed are the dead that die in Lord, they shall inherit the earth.” the Lord-they rest from their labours and their works follow them-Come, ye blessed of the Highest, inherit the kingdom, preperad for you from the foundation of the world." A crown and a come. Zahid awoke from his slumber— praised, with his whole heart, Him, who liveth and reigneth for ever— and wrapt in meditation, pursued his journey. W. V. Nov. 18, 1815. Theological Review. these various postulata; the disquisition is highly curious and interesting. The state of religion among the antediluvians; and from the days of Noah to Abraham; to Nine Sermons on the Nature of the Evidence by which the Fact of our Lord's Resurrection is established; and on various other subjects. To which is prefixed a Dissertation on the Prophecies of the Messiah dis-gether with the peopling of the persed among the Heathen. By SAM. HORSLEY, LL.D. F.R.S. F.A.S. Late Lord Bishop of St. Asaph. [Concluded from p. 316.] WITH great pleasure do we now resume the consideration of Dr. Horsley's valuable "Dissertation on the Prophecies of the Messiah dispersed among the Heathen.” Having shewn that the Gentile world in the darkest ages was in possession of explicit written prophecies concerning the Messiah; the learned writer next proceeds to consider what was the actual state of revealed religion in the interval between the first appearance of idolatry in the world, and the institution of the Jewish church under the ministry of Moses. And here he shews that though the rise of idolatry through human depravity was earlier than might have been expected, its progress was slower than is generally believed. That for some ages after it began, the world at large enjoyed the light of revelation in a very considerable degree: That, while the corruption was gradually rising to its height, Providence was taking measures for the general restoration at the appointed season: That the gift of prophecy was vouchsafed long before the institution of the Jewish church: That letters being in use in the east long before that epoch, the ancient prophecies were committed to writing: and that, by the mysterious operation of that Providence which directs all temporary and partial evil to everlasting and universal good, the blind superstition of idolaters was itself made the means of preserving these writings, not pure, but in a state that might serve the purpose for preparing the Gentiles for the advent of Christ, and maintaining a religious veneration .for them. We cannot afford room to follow the Bishop in all his illustrations of VOL. I. world, and the progress of idolatry, are sketched with a masterly hand; and the perusal of the whole will amply compensate any labour that is bestowed upon it. He judiciously discriminates between the patriarchal church and the state of Pagan idolatry; and endeavours to shew that these differed from each other as widely as the corrupt church of Rome now differs from pure and primitive Christianity: and that, as in these days the church of Rome, though corrupted with idolatry, still maintains some regard to the worship of the one true God, though debased by numerous corruptions, so the patriarchal church, even when she became corrupted with a similar idolatry, had her priests and her prophets priests who offered sacrifices to the true God, and prophets who were commissioned to resist the prevailing corruption, and to prophesy of the great redemption. In noticing the priests of the patriarchal church, his lordship remarks that, of a Canaanitish nation, Melchizedek, "In the days of Abraham, a prince king of Salem, was the priest of the Most High God. He was, as Josephus the learned historian of the Jews candidly acknowledges, a prince of Canaan. Yet was he no self-constituted usurping priest, but a priest by divine appointment and commission, as appears by the deference which Abraham paid him; For consider how great this man was, unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils.' This tenth of the spoils was no payment to Melchizedek in his temporal capacity as king of Salem for any assistance he had given Abraham in the battle; for he went out to meet him when he was returning from the slaughter of the kings. The king of Salem therefore had taken no part in the expedition; he had remained at home inactive, and went out to meet the patriarch upon his return, in the quality of God's high-priest, to pronounce God's blessing upon him, to bear his public testimony to Abraham as God's chosen servant, and to 3 B proceeds to establish the fact, that, even amongst the idolatrous nations, there existed true prophecies, that is, we have unquestionable proof that prophecies of divine original; and consequently that certain persons had declare that it was by the immediate succour of the arm of the Most High God, whose priest he was, that Abraham's little army had overthrown the confederate kings; and the tenths being no payment for a military service, could be nothing else than a religious offering on the part of Abraham, by which he ac-lived amongst them who were gifted knowledged the protection of the Most by the Spirit of God, and favoured High God, and acknowledged the autho- with divine communications: that of rity of Melchizedek's priesthood. The this order, we have two undoubted divine authority of which appears again instances, the one in Job, the other more strongly in this circumstance, that in Balaam. this priest Melchizedek was no less than the type of that High-Priest who now standeth at God's right hand making intercession for the sins of all mankind. Of his universal everlasting priesthood, the priesthood of Melchizedek was the type. The prophet David declares the nature of Christ's priesthood, by the analogy it bears to the priesthood of Melchizedek. And from this analogy Paul builds his great argument for the superiority of Christ's priesthood above the Levitical. Christ is for this reason a priest for ever, because he is after the order of Melchizedek. From all this it appears, that in the days of Abraham, at least, there was a priesthood among the Canaanites of higher rank than the Levitical, and more exactly typical of the priesthood of the Son of God. 66 Again, in the days of Joseph we find in Egypt a Potipherah a priest of On, whose daughter Joseph married; and in the days of Moses, a Jethro a priest of Midian, whose daughter Moses married. It has been made a question concerning both these persons, whether they were priests at all. The doubt arises from the ambiguity of the Hebrew word, which is used in some parts of Scripture for a prince or magistrate. But it is to be observed, that not a single passage is to be found in the books of Moses where it is used in these senses, except it be in these two instances. That they were both priests, was clearly the opinion of the Jews who made the first Greek translation of the Pentateuch, of the Jewish historian Josephus, and of St. Jerome. 66 "Job, by the consent of the learned of all ages, was no Israelite. He was certainly of the family of Abraham; for whatever difficulties may be raised about his particular country, none will deny that it lay in some part of that region. of which the whole was occupied by Abraham's descendants. He was not however of the elected branch of the family, and was probably of that stock which became at last the worst part of idolaters, the Edomites. That the country in which he lived was in his time infected with an incipient idolatry, appears from the mention that he makes of the worship of the sun and moon as a crime with which he was himself untainted; a circumstance from which he could have pretended no merit, had not the prevailing fashion of his country and his times presented a strong temptation to the crime. And as there is no mention of any other kind of idolatry in the book of Job, it is reasonable to conclude that in his time the corruption had gone no greater length. Now, that Job was a prophet is so universally confessed, that it is needless to dwell upon the proof of it. He was a prophet in the declining age of the patriarchal church, in the interval between Esau, from whom he was descended, and Moses, whose time he preceded; and he prophecied in an idolatrous country where the sun and moon were worshipped. "Ir this idolatrous country he prophesied of the Redeemer: and it is a circumstance that deserves particular attention, that he prophesies of the Redeemer, not without manifest allusion to the divinity of his nature, and express mention of the resurrection of the body as the effect of his redemption;-two articles of our creed which we are told with great confidence are modern innovations; whereas we find them not only in the Jewish prophets, but in far more ancient prophets of a more ancient church. And if they were priests at all, they were priests of the true God, the one in Egypt in the town of On in the days of Joseph, the other among the Midianites in the days of Moses. For it is hardly credible, that Providence should have permitted either Joseph or Moses to contract an alliance by marriage with a priest of any idolatrous temple. Thus it appears, that the true God had an order of priests in the Gentile world down to the time of the Mosaic institution. These priests were the corrupt remains of the ancient priest-He describes the Redeemer, you see, in hood of Noah's universal church." Thus having shewn that the patriarchal church had its divinely instituted priesthood, Dr. Horsley next 6 "I know,' saith Job, that my Redeemer liveth; I know that he now liveth; that is, that his nature is to live. language much allied to that in which Jehovah describes his own nature in the the conference with Moses at the bush. Jehoveh describes himself by his uncaused existence; Job describes the Redeemer by a life inseparable from his essence. I know that in the latter days this everliving Redeemer shall stand upon the earth. He shall take up his residence among men in an embodied form; God shall be manifested in the flesh to destroy the works of the Devil: He shall stand upon the earth in the latter days; in the last period of the world's existence;' which implies that this standing of the Redeemer upon the earth will close the great scheme of Providence for man's restoration; And although he shall not stand upon the earth before. the latter days, yet I know that he is My Redeemer; that my death, which must take place many ages before his appearance, will not exclude me from my share in his redemption. For though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. Though nothing will be then remaining of my external person, though the form of this body will have been long destroyed, the organization of its constituent parts demolished, and its very substance dissipated, the softer part become the food of worms bred in its own putrefaction, the solid bones moulded into powder: notwithstanding this ruin of my outward fabric, the immortal principle within me shall not only survive, but its decayed mansion will be restored. It will be reunited to a body, of which the organs will not only connect it with the external world, but serve to cement its union with its Maker. For in my flesh, with the corporeal eye, with the eye of the immortal body which I shall then assume, I shall see the divine Majesty in the person of the glorified Redeemer." Such, according to his lordship's illustration of this memorable passage, was the tenour of Job's prophecies; of a prophet of the Gentiles; and such the light which God granted to the Gentile world in the first age of its corruption. He next proceeds to investigate the claims of Balaam to be a prophet of the true God, in attempting which he is aware that he has many objections to obviate and difficulties to encounter; but his lordship is far from shrinking from the discussion. He has devoted more than a dozen pages to the consideration of this intricate question-has examined the character of Balaam, and the tenour of his propheties and if his illustration of the subject do not carry with it all the force of demonstration, we confess that we find it difficult to withhold our concurrence from his conclusions, which we shall lay before the reader in his own words. 66 Now, when all these circumstances are put together; the age of Balaam, that he lived within a century after Job? his country, which was in the neighbour hood of Job's,-part at least of a tract which was occupied by descendants of Abraham, or by collateral branches of the family; his open acknowledgment of Jehovah as his God; that both in his ordinary state of mind and under the divine impulse he refers his prophetie talent to the inspiration of Jehovah; that he disclaims any power of his own to bless or to curse, otherwise than as the interpreter of the counsels of Heaven; that he prac tises no magical enchantment, but offersacrifices to God after the patriarchas rites; that in uttering his predictions he appears not to have been more a necessary agent than every other prophet; when to all these circumstances we add, that he uttered a true prophecy extending, if I read its meaning aright, from his own time to the Messiah's second advent; a prophecy which in every part relates to times which are now gone by, hath been fulfilled with wonderful exactness, and in other parts which relate to ages yet to come, harmonizes with the predictions of the Jewish prophets and and of the Apocalypse; -can a doubt remain, that the man who to all secondary characters of a prophet added this greater character, that by a divine impulse. as is confessed, he delivered a prophecy of things too distant to fall within any man's natural foresight; a prophecy which the world hath seen in part accomplished, and which in its other parts resembles other prophecies not yet accomplished, but confessedly divine; a prophecy, which for the variety of its composition in its various parts, for the aptness, the beauty, the majesty, the horror of its images, may compare with the most animated elusions of the Hebrew bards; can a doubt remain whether this private character, was a true prophet? man, with all the imperfections of his Dr. Horsley does not overlook the fact, that Origen and other divines of ancient and modern times, have been unwilling to acknowledge the pretensions of Balaam to be a true prophet, but to their authority he very properly opposes that of the apostle Peter, who, alluding to this story, says, "The dumb ass, speaking with man's voice, forbade the madness of the prophet;" in which words he acknowledges him for a prophet, though, for the folly of loving the wages of unrighteousness, he calls him mad. In Balaam, Dr. H. conceives the prophetic order without the pale of the Mosaic church to have been extinguished. His critical remarks and reflections upon those prophecies are inimitably striking and beautiful, and extort from us regret that we cannot lay them be- the superstions of the people for the tem fore our readers, who must rest satis-poral advantage of the priesthood, supfied with the following short paragraph, concerning which we cannot forbear to add, that in our view, its beauties are so many and fascinating that, were we challenged to produce any thing superior to it in the whole round of English literature, we should despair of success. "In this Balaam set the sun of prophecy in the horizon of the Gentile world, and yet a total night came not, For some ages a twilight glimmered in their sky, which gradually decayed and became at last almost insensible, but began to brighten again during the captivity of the Jews under the Babylonian monarchs, and from that period continued to gather strength, till at length the morning star took its station over the stable at Bethlehem. The sun of righteousness arose to set no more, and the light again was clear, and universal." -- The remainder of this excellent Dissertation is occupied in proving, or at least in shewing the probability, that the predictions which the patriarchal church had among them concerning the Messiah, were committed to writing, and that those of Balaam in particular existed in that permanent state among the Moabites and Midianites, to whom they were delivered, and not within hearing of the Israelites; that Moses obtained them from this source and not from immediate inspiration, as many suppose; for, as the Bishop remarks, the latter opinion supposes an unnecessary miracle; for a miracle is always unnecessary where natural means might serve the purpose. Hence, from the admitted principle, that the Gentiles had their sacred records, their inspired predictions, or divine oracles committed to writing, it is natural to infer that they would be held in religious veneration, and entrusted, as we know to have been the case with the Sibylline oracles in Pagan Rome, to the care of priests, to be preserved in their temples. His lordship has many ingenious remarks on this subject, among which we were struck with the following distinction between priestcraft and superstition. poses a priesthood itself free of superstition, and was never known in the world till the Gentile priests of sincere lowed) became infidels. Simple superidolaters (if the expression may be alstition was the first stage of the corruption among priests, no less than laics; and simple superstition hath no freedom in the pursuit of ends, no determination in the choice of means, but is the slave of fear and habitr”. But we must draw this article towards a close, which, however, wé cannot do without extracting the paragraph in which the author recapitulates the substance of his most ingenious Dissertation. "It was to the remains of these books which I have shewn you to have been in fact the corrupted and mutilated records of the patriarchal church, that the Greek philosophers were probably indebted for from which they drew the just notions those fragments of the patriarchal creed, that we find scattered in their writings, of the immortality of the soul, a future retribution, the unity of the divine substance, and even of the trinity of persons. For of this the sages of the Pythagorean and Platonic schools had some obscure other source can we reefr the expectation and distorted apprehensions. And to no that prevailed in the heathen world at large, of a great personage to arise in some part of the East for the general advantage of mankind." "And in this I think you will now agree with me, if you bear in mind the fact that I set out with proving from historical evidence, that certain books which heathen temples, contained explicit prowere preserved as asacred treasure in the phecies of Christ; which are more likely to have been ancient prophecies preserved in the manner I have described, though not without a mixture of corruption, for which too I have accounted, than the involuntary effusions of impostors of later ages, occasionally uttering true predictions under a compulsive inwhich, I am persuaded, would never fluence of the divine Spirit: an opinion have been adopted, had not the severe notions that too long prevailed of an original reprobation of the greater part of mankind, made men unwilling to believe that heathens could be in possession of the smallest particle of true prophecy, and of course cut off all inquiry after the means by which it might be conveyed to "Priestcraft indeed is politic and difficulty, as this must be confessed to be, them. Beside that, in all questions of daring, but simple superstition is both timid and indiscreet. men are apt rather to consult their ease, Priestcraft was by taking up with the first plausible so the growth of later ages, and the consequence of a further corruption. For priest-submit to the labour of an accurate inveslution their invention may devise, than to craft, which is a cunning management of tigation ot facts, and a circumspect des |