PREFACE.

THE main pillars of the Christian Faith which have been rested in Miracles and Prophecy, have suffered so extensively from the designing and deluded; that every effort to rescue them from the pollution of the rude and unhallowed hands by which they have been assailed must be entitled to approbation. The opposite parties, popish or puritanical,-between which the adherents of sound and rational religion are placed,— actuated by an assumed or misguided zeal, have shaken them to the foundation. While the formalist, on the one hand, sustains an usurped authority by false miracles; the fanatic on the other, supports his spiritual pretences, by lying prophecy. By the imposture and illusion, on either side, it is unavoidable, that the miraculous powers and divine inspiration should be brought into disrepute, by which our faith is established. As no discriminating or reflecting mind can be influenced by the evidence, which enables the fanatic to deceive himself and the hypocrite to impose upon others; it is left no resource from the bondage in which the uninformed and un

suspecting are enslaved, but to seek refuge in hardened and contemptuous infidelity.

Under either description a large class of expositors may be reduced, who undertake the interpretation of the prophetical writings, without a solitary qualification to fit them for the office. Unversed in the opinions, customs and antiquities of earlier ages, and unacquainted with the language of the writer, whom they pretend to interpret, it can be little matter of surprise that they should mistake his meaning. If they do not succeed in the evil purpose of perverting what they are unable to comprehend, it is often to be imputed to the want of power rather than of inclination. Little content with the endeavour to mistate their author's views, by wresting his words into a description of some trivial and recent occurrence; they humbly take upon themselves the office of prophets, and profanely deduce, from the sacred oracles, authority for their dreams of the past and their visions of the future. Making the language of inspiration a vehicle for disseminating their revolutionary and levelling principles; they labour to produce "the crisis" which they desire and predict, by representing it as intended and while they pretend to diffuse a religion of peace, sound the trumpet of sedition.

It is only reasonable to conclude, that the method of misinterpretation, under which these illusory or pernicious purposes are effected, de

pends for its success upon the loosest analogies. By the employment of such vague and forced resemblances, infidels have found little difficulty in sapping the foundation of all Revelation; having undertaken to shew that religion and superstition have a common basis in traditionary error. Nor can it be disproved, that those conclusions, which are brought out by similar methods of proof, are attended with equal force of conviction.

Unless when thus grossly perverted and misapplied, the system of Prophecy has been so wisely constituted, as to furnish the means within itself whereby the purposes of those weak or wicked empirics may be defeated. By its unerring authority, the succession of those great empires has been determined, through which the sovereignty of the earth has been transmitted, and which are generally known as the four prophetical monarchies. But what falls more immediately within my province to insist upon; in the prophecies usually termed chronological, a series of dates is established, by which the application of the predictions to the events chosen at the will or caprice of the expositor is for ever precluded. By the landmarks thus fixed, a line of demarcation is drawn, which cannot be transgressed, without involving the guide and his followers in irretrievable perplexity and error.

It might be almost determined a fortiori, that Prophecy, in establishing its claims to inspira

tion, would have revealed the great revolutions, of which this earth was destined to be the scene of action. In order to preclude the possibility, as far as was consistent with the moral freedom of man, that the anticipation of future events should be perverted to favour the schemes of the ambitious and designing: care was providentially taken, in the delivery of the revelation, that the changes predicted should not only be upon a scale which would require more than ordinary means to effect them, but be defined by such circumstances of time and place as would render them impossible to be wilfully mistaken.

The

foresight of the prophet was consequently directed only to those vast political changes, in which the establishment of universal empire would be attempted. Under these provisions, the destiny of the four great monarchies was revealed; the expectation of a subsequent, of the same character, being obviated by the express prediction, that a fifth would arise, with the extent and permanence of which all further assumption of universal sway would be inconsistent. Other and subordinate changes were indeed foreshewn, but as of a moral rather than a political nature, they were calculated to afford no pretext to the revolutionist in his schemes of interest or ambition: which, though qualified to extend the dominion of "the prince of this world," are subversive of his authority who has declared, that his "kingdom is not of this world."

The prophecies, which revealed the destiny of the four great monarchies, have been so ably explained and applied; that, after the learned pains of their expositors, scarcely a gleaning, from the harvest which they reaped, remains to requite the toil of future labourers. Since the lettered and judicious dissertations of Bishop Newton, little has been effected in the field, which received his care, where the fruits of it have not been appropriated: nor have his steps been deserted, from an ambition of originality, or desire of novelty, where the effort at success has not proved abortive. He has indeed left the peculiar province of chronological prophecy unessayed: in asserting a prior claim to which, he would have left little occasion for the subjoined disquisitions. As the principal of the prophecies of Daniel are of that description; it seems not to have fallen within his design to have undertaken their exposition or application. And as the predictions of St. John, which are of the same description, are founded on the revelations and coincide with the periods of Daniel; the author of the following Discourses was consequently left unembarrassed in his choice of a subject, from the appropriation of it by a writer of so justly deserved reputation.

By the friends of the late learned Archbishop of Dublin, high expectations were formed, that the Prophecies of Daniel would derive every ac