PROPOSITION X.

The prophecies delivered by our Saviour himself, prove that he was endued with the foreknowledge of future events; which belongs. only to God and to those inspired by him.

HE did very particularly, and at several different times, foretel his own death, and the circumstances of it; that the chief priests and scribes should condemn him to death, and deliver him to. the Gentiles, that is, to Pilate and the Roman soldiers, to mock, and scourge, and crucify him; that he should be be-.. trayed into their hands; that Judas Is-. cariot was the person who should betray him; that all his disciples would for- . sake him, and flee; and that Peterwould particularly thrice deny him in one night. He foretold further, that he

would rise again the third day; that after his ascension, he would send down the Holy Ghost on his apostles, which should enable them to work many mir.. acles. He foretold, likewise, many par ticulars concerning the future success of the gospel, and what should happen to several of his disciples; he foretold what opposition and persecution they should meet with in their preaching;. he foretold what particular kind of death Peter should die, and intimated that St. John should live (as he did) till after the destruction of Jerusalem; he foretold that, notwithstanding all opposition and persecution, the gospel should yet have such success as to spread itself over the world; and, lastly, he foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, with such very particular and minute circumstances, in the 24th chapter of St. Matthew, the 13th of St. Mark, and the 21st of St. Luke, that no one who reads the

description of that event, in the historians of those times, can have the smallest doubt of our Saviour's divine foreknowl edge. We have a most authentic, exact, and circumstantial account of the siege and destruction of that city by the Romans, written by Josephus, a Jewish and contemporary historian; and the description he has given of this terrible calamity so perfectly corresponds with our Saviour's prophecy, that one would have thought, had we not known the contrary, that it had been written by a Christian, on purpose to illustrate that prediction.

This power of foretelling future events is a plain proof that Christ came from God, and was endued with this power from above.

PROPOSITION XI.

The miracles performed by our Lord, demonstrate him to have possessed divine power.

ALTHOUGH the preceding

propositions contain very convincing proofs of the divine mission of Christ, and the divine authority of his religion, yet, undoubtedly, the strongest evidence of this arises from the wonderful and well attested miracles which he wrought from the beginning to the end of his ministry. He cured the most inveterate diseases; he made the lame to walk; he opened the eyes of the blind, and the ears of the deaf; he cast out devils; he walked upon the sea; he fed five thousand persons with a few small loaves and fishes, and even raised the dead to life again. These miracles.

were all wrought in open day, in the sigght of multitudes of witnesses, who Could not be imposed upon in things

which they saw plainly with their own eyes, who had an opportunity of scrutinizing them as much as they pleased, and who did actually scrutinize them with a most critical exactness, as appears from the very remarkable instance of the blind man restored to sight by our Lord, in the ninth chapter of St. John, a transaction which I recommend very earnestly to the attention of my readers.

It is true, that miracles being very unusual and extraordinary facts, they require very strong evidence to support them; much stronger, it must be owned, than common events, that are recorded in history; and accordingly, the miracles of Christ have this very strong and extraordinary evidence to support them; evidence such as is not to be equalled in any other instance, and such as is fully