sense of the contents. That the seeming, or even real occasion of an ancient prophetic writing is no mark at all to direct the interpretation to that occurrence, but rather quite the reverse, will appear from Isaiah vii. If you ponder well the occasion and circumstances, never occasion seemed to bid fairer for determining the whole of the prophet's message to itself, and present things; yet then and there, on an occasion looking quite the other way, (were human wisdom the judge,) and in the midst of a very mingled unlikely-like assemblage of things, was uttered that ever-memorable prophecy said to be fulfilled when Jesus was born of Mary the Virgin. Fix the meaning to a son of Isaiah's, and you mock the Holy Spirit, who tells us (Mat. i. 21.) nothing of Isaiah's son, but of Christ, when he explains the prophecy. If you say Isaiah's child, in his conception, birth, and infancy, was a type of Christ, and that the prophecy was literally fulfilled in him, the type, being applicable only in a very remote and figurative way to the Messiah; it is enquired of you, How could ShearJashub, or any son afterwards born to Isaiah of the prophetess, be a figure, in his conception, birth, infancy, of one who was to be born of a virgin, through the power of the Highest overshadowing, &c.

The truth is, the carnal people were always blinded, but never enlightened by the times and occasions wherein the prophecies were uttered: so that the time and occasion (as might be made

appear by a hundred instance) are so far from being a guide to find out the meaning of the Psalm or prophecy, that, if we follow them, they will land us into the very midst of falsehood; and we will find ourselves in such a situation, as the Assyrians, who, seeking the prophet, found themselves in the midst of the streets of Samaria. Would to God we may all escape as well! It was not Isaiah's prophecies alone that blinded, stopped, stupified the eyes, the ears, the hearts of the people; but those also of Moses, David, Jeremiah, and all as many as spake in the name of the Lord: therefore, if we have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to understand, let us see, hear, and understand the Spirit of God shewing the consolations, tenderness, and meaning of his own heart, by the apostles, that we may drink in the sincere milk of the word, and grow thereby; instead of sucking at the dead breasts of titles, occasions, and carnal things of carnal times: what can we receive in this way, but wind, putrefaction, and death? Truly it is the one thing needful for us, to sit with Mary at our Lord's feet, and hear his word! Observe, on every occurrence, how the Lord takes occasion from thence immediately to draw away the attention of his hearers from present things and occasions, to something quite different from those in hand, even as different as heavenly from earthly. The man would appear crazy, who should affirm, that the Lord came down from heaven to instruct the world in those things which they

60

knew as well before as since; such as the nature of bread, water, sowing, building, making of war, &c. though he applies, as the prophets had done before, all those terms in the manifestation of his witness-bearing to the truth. But why seek farther for a proof and illustration of this point, than those very Psalms in dispute? Take Psalm xviii. for an example of the weakness of your objection; the title is allowed good, 2 Sam. xxii. 1. yet you have seen the interpretation the apostle hath established, without any relation at all to the title or occasion of its being written; which should have fixed the sense to David's own circumstances, as you alledge. Indeed the title itself, wherein David is called the servant of the Lord, might have led us to think of some other one than David; for the servants or prophets of the Lord used not to be inspired to make declarations of their own sufferings and glory. What they themselves at the time understood of the meaning, is of no importance for us to know, were it in our power to search it out. Perhaps they knew little more of it than of an affecting dream or parable, whose meaning, in the time of God's good pleasure, was afterwards to be discovered by the interpretation. Peradventure, the apostles were the first who knew it. Certainly they were, in any thing of a full sense. The Holy Ghost was given in vain, if the least one in the kingdom of heaven were not to know the meaning of their prophecies better than the greatest prophet of them all, whose faith and

patience with their fellow-saints were sustained by the prospect of something afar off, carrying their eyes beyond the things which were then present, to the futurities which are now come, which they saw in the dark, like a light at a distance, pointing out their own habitation, that they might not, like bewildered, despairing, over-fatigued travellers, fall down and rest on the spot where they were, before they came to their appointed place. When David was pursued by Saul, by Doeg, by Absalom, by Shimei, when skulking in the wilderness like a partridge on the mountains of Israel, beset by the Ziphites, insulted by Nabal, hunted on every side like a wild beast, ready to fall into every snare, trembling for his father's family, and all Israel whom he loved, in jeopardy every moment of his life, entangled in the thickest thorns of perplexity, not knowing to-day how to escape to-morrow.

Was it unlike God to shew him, and by him all the twelve tribes, in the glass of a new revelation, on each of those occasions, some part of the sufferings of the Messiah and of his glory, for his and their comfort, till the desire of their hearts should come? In like manner, in the time of prosperity, lest temporal victories and deliverances should be taken for the fulness of their joy, and embraced as the accomplishment of the promises made to the fathers, they were shewed, as a proper antidote to such earthly infections, the glories of the Messiah's reign, succeeding to his sufferings. Has it not always

F

heen the way of our heavenly Father to lisp, as it were, and act the child with his children, speaking to men, in the language of men, the things of God; and to every nation and people, according to the natural confusion of their own language and apprehensions; that light, and spirit, and heaven, might arise upon them, like the sun out of darkness, by the just degrees of his own decree, till the fulness of glory should blaze out in meridian splendour? Hence, in the days of David, Saul, Doeg, Shimei, Absalom, Goliah,-dogs, bulls, lions, wolves, bears, serpents, vipers, unicorns, asps, were proper language for describing traitors and false brethren, chief priests and rulers of the people, scribes and pharisees, Herod, Pontius Pilate, soldiers, thieves, murderers, slanderers, false witnesses, devils; who all swarmed about the blessed Lord to destroy him, and in him his church.

If this way of interpretation is not allowed, you must say, the Father of our spirits has been but trifling with us; and that he only meant to shew us earthly things, because he only used, in all his revelations to us, our own earthly language, the only one he has given us to understand. Would not this way of yours make the history of the fall an old wife's tale, or something sillier; as if the serpent had been merely and literally that animal so called, without any evil spirit informing and actuating him; though the devil is called, in plain allusion to this matter, the old crooked serpent.