PROPHECY, a prediction made by divine inspiration.
One of the strongest evidences for the truth of revealed religion is that series of prophecies which is preserved in the Old and New Testaments; and a greater service, says an excellent writer, could not be done to Christianity than to lay together the several predictions of scripture with their completions, to show how particularly things have been foretold, and how exactly fulfilled. A work of this kind was desired by the lord Bacon, and he intitles it the "History of Prophecy;" in which he proposes, that every prophecy of the scripture be sorted with the event fulfilling the same throughout the ages of the world, both for the better confirmation of faith, and for the better illumination of the church touching those parts of prophecies which are yet unfulfilled; allowing, nevertheless, that latitude which is agreeable and familiar unto divine prophecies, being of the nature of the Author, with whom a thousand years are but as one day; and therefore they are not fulfilled punctually at once, but have springing and germinating accomplishment throughout many ages, though the height or fulness of them may refer to some one age. A work of this kind has been actually executed by the learned bishop Newton, in his Dissertation on the Prophecies.
With regard to the credibility of prophecy, it may be observed in general, that it is not at all incredible that God should upon special occasions foretell future events; and, if he affords an extraordinary revelation of his will to mankind, that he should attest its divine original by this kind of evidence; an evidence which, if the prophecies point to the events, and the events correspond with the prophecies, is in the highest degree conclusive and convincing. No previous conjecture nor accidental coincidence are sufficient to counteract and invalidate this kind of evidence.
As to most of the scripture-prophecies, they comprehend such a variety of particulars; they so minutely describe distant events, to be accomplished in circumstances which no human sagacity could foresee or conceive likely to occur; and they accord so exactly with the facts to which they refer; that there is no way of evading the conclusion, but by either denying the premises, that such prophecies were ever delivered and recorded, against which fact and history militate; or by pretending, that what we call predictions are only histories written after the events had happened, in a prophetic style and manner. But it is alleged in answer to this absurd plea, that there are all the proofs and authorities which can be had in cases of this na-
ture, that the prophets prophesied in one age, and that the events happened in another and subsequent age: and we have as much reason to believe these, as we have to believe any ancient matters of fact whatever; and by the same rule which leads us to deny these, we may as well controvert and contradict the credibility of all ancient history. But, besides, Christian writers undertake to prove the truth of prophecy, and consequently the truth of revelation, not by an induction of particulars long ago foretold and long ago fulfilled, the predictions of which may be supposed to have been written after the histories, but by instances of things which have confessedly many ages ago been foretold, and have in these later ages been fulfilled, or are fulfilling at this very time: so that there is no pretence for asserting such prophecies to have been written after the events; but it must be acknowledged, that the events many ages after, correspond exactly with the predictions many ages before. The evidence, therefore, which prophecy furnishes in favour of the truth of religion, is a growing evidence; and the more prophecies are fulfilled, the more testimonies there are and confirmations of the truth and certainty of divine revelation.
One of the greatest difficulties in Christianity turns upon the manner of completion of the scripture-prophecies. In the prophets of the Old Testament are frequent predictions of the Messiah, which the writers of the New frequently urge to the Jews and Heathens as fulfilled in Jesus Christ; and on this principle evince the truth of his mission. But these texts, thus urged from the Old, in the New Testament, are sometimes not to be now found in the Old; and at other times are not urged in the New in the literal and obvious sense which they seem to bear in the Old: whence most of the Christian commentators, divines, and critics, ancient and modern, judge them to be applied in a secondary, typical, allegorical, or mystical sense. Thus, e. gr. St Matthew, after an account of the conception of the Virgin and the birth of Jesus, says, "All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel." But the words, as they stand in Isaiah, whence they are supposed to be taken, do, in their obvious and literal sense, relate to a young woman who was to bring forth a child in the days of Ahaz; as appears from the context, and is owned by Grotius, Huettius, Castalio, Curcellæus, Episcopius, Hammond, Simon, Le Clerc, Lamy, &c.
This prophecy, then, not being fulfilled in Jesus in the primary, literal, or obvious sense of the words, is supposed, like the other prophecies cited by the apostles, to be fulfilled in a secondary, typical, or allegorical sense: i. e. this prophecy, which was first literally fulfilled by the birth of the prophet's son in the time of Ahaz, was again fulfilled by the birth of Jesus, as being an event of the same kind, and intended to be signified either by the prophet, or by God who directed the prophet's speech. Grotius observes this to be the case in most, if not all, the prophecies and citations quoted from the Old in the New Testament: and Dodwell, with Sir John Marsham, refer even the famous prophecy in Daniel, about the seventy weeks,
Prophecy. to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes; showing, that the expressions taken thence by Christ, and urged by him as predicting the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, have only, in a secondary sense, a respect to that destruction.
And even that famous prophecy in the Pentateuch, "A prophet will the Lord God raise up unto thee, like unto me; to him shall ye hearken;" which St Luke refers to as spoken of Jesus Christ, is by Simon, Grotius, Stillingfleet, &c. understood to signify, in its immediate sense, a promise of a succession of prophets.
It is allowed, then, the apostles applied the prophecies which they quote from the Old Testament, in a typical sense; but, unhappily, the rules whereby they quoted them are lost. Dr Stanhope laments the loss of the Jewish traditions or rules for interpreting scripture received among the rabbins, and followed by the apostles. But this loss Surenhusius, Hebrew professor at Amsterdam, thinks he has retrieved from the Jewish Talmud and the ancient Jewish commentaries; and has accordingly published to the world the rules whereby the apostles quoted the Old Testament. But the truth is, these rules are too precarious, strained, and unnatural, to gain much credit.
Mr Whiston condemns all allegorical explanation of the prophecies of the Old Testament cited in the New, as weak, enthusiastic, &c. and adds, that if a double sense of the prophecies be allowed, and there be no other method of showing their completion than by applying them secondarily and typically to our Lord, after having been in the first and primary intention long ago fulfilled in the times of the Old Testament, we lose all the real advantages of the ancient prophecies as to the proofs of Christianity.
He therefore sets up a new scheme in opposition thereto: he owns, that taking the present text in the Old Testament for genuine, it is impossible to expound the apostles citations of the prophecies of the Old Testament on any other than the allegorical foundation; and therefore, to solve the difficulty, he is forced to have recourse to a supposition contrary to the sense of all Christian writers before him, viz. that the text of the Old Testament has been greatly corrupted since the apostolic age by the Jews. His hypothesis is, that the apostles made their quotations out of the Old Testament rightly and truly from the Septuagint version, which in their time was in vulgar use, and exactly agreed with the Hebrew original; and that as they made exact quotations, so they argued justly and logically from the obvious and literal sense of the said quotations, as they then stood in the Old Testament; but that, since their times, both the Hebrew and Septuagint copies of the Old Testament have been so greatly corrupted, and so many apparent disorders and dislocations introduced therein, as to occasion many remarkable differences and inconsistencies between the Old and New Testament in respect to the words and sense of those quotations.
As to the manner wherein these corruptions were introduced, he says, the Jews, in the second century, greatly corrupted and altered both the Hebrew and Septuagint, especially in the prophecies cited by the apostles, to make their reasoning appear inconclusive: that, in the third century, they put into Origen's hand one of these corrupted copies of the Septuagint;
Prophecy. which Origen mistaking for genuine, inserted in his Hexapla, and thus brought into the church a corrupted copy of the Septuagint; and that, in the end of the fourth century, the Jews put into the hands of the Christians, who till then had been almost universally ignorant of the Hebrew, a corrupted copy of the Hebrew Old Testament.
The disagreement, then, between the Old and New Testament, in respect to the said quotations, he contends, has no place between the genuine text of the Old Testament (now nowhere existing), but only between the present corrupted text of the Old and New Testament: and therefore, to justify the reasonings of the apostles, he proposes to restore the text of the Old Testament, as it stood before the days of Origen, and as it stood in the days of the apostles; from which text, thus restored, he doubts not, it will evidently appear, that the apostles cited exactly, and argued justly and logically, from the Old Testament. But this scheme of accomplishing prophecies labours under difficulties at least as great as the allegorical scheme. Its foundation is incredible, and its superstructure, from first to last, precarious. In effect, it is inconceivable that the Old Testament should be so corrupted; and it may even be made appear, that the Hebrew and Septuagint disagreed in the times of the apostles: add to this, that the means whereby he proposes to restore the true text will never answer that end; nor has he himself, from all the means he is yet possessed of, been able to restore one prophetic citation, so as to make that seem literally which before only seemed allegorically applied.
Upon this head it may be observed, that the double sense of prophecies, for which some have zealously contended, and which others have as strenuously opposed, ought not to be understood as if a prophecy equally and indifferently referred to many persons or events; or as if, literally referring to a lower person, it was only figuratively and allegorically to be interpreted of the Messiah, (for a passage only capable of being accommodated to him is not by any means a prediction of him): but it is to be so explained, as that it may appear the Messiah was principally intended, and the prophecy literally referred to him, though it might in part be applied to some other person; and might have been understood as referring to that inferior person alone, if farther light had not been thrown upon it by comparing other prophecies, or by the testimony of those whom on other accounts we have reason to regard as authentic interpreters. Nevertheless it must be acknowledged, that though the tracing of the Messiah in such prophecies as these may serve to illustrate the unity of design, which is a considerable additional proof of the truth of a revelation; yet the main stress is to be laid upon such prophecies as evidently and solely relate to the Messiah and his kingdom, rather than on those which are capable of reference to other persons or events.