description all which happened to Jerusalem at its overthrow in like manner, as the prophecies in the Old Testament concerning the present dispersion and captivity of Judah, and its deliverance thence in the great day of recompence, do contain under them, and do distinctly announce, as it were, in the overture of the prophetic burden, their temporary captivity in Babylon, and their deliverance by the hand of Cyrus. But as no just interpreter of Scripture prophecy, or intelligent observer of the providence of God, doubteth that their present long and grievous dispersion, and their future mighty and terrible deliverance, is that which is chiefly the object of the prophecy; so neither will any fair and just interpreter of the Lord's prophecies, and the prophecies of the apostles, doubt that the judgment of the world, and his second glorious advent, are the great end and object of which the judgment on Jerusalem was but the type and the foreshowing. And the reason why the destruction of Jerusalem can typify and foreshow the destruction of Gentile Christendom is, that they are both the acts of God's véngeance upon a backsliding and incorrigible Church. And therefore I make no doubt that the Lord and his apostles had both in their eye, keeping the one in a subordinate place to the other. But any one who would go about to maintain upon this account that the destruction of Jerusalem is the main or the only end of these prophecies, must indeed exercise great ingenuity, and incur great guilt in wresting the plain meaning of God's word, before which every one who readeth it should tremble, and lay himself prostrate.

I am willing to admit, for example, that those persons mentioned from the 6th to the 10th verse, and compared to Jannes and Jambres, the magicians of Pharaoh, who withstood Moses, were perhaps Jews, who had taken on the profession of Christ, being all the while of that synagogue of Satan which our Lord so frequently mentions in his Epistles to the Seven Churches, and that they, with other Judaizers, met their punishment in the miserable judgments which in those times were inflicted upon the Jewish people. But that the first five verses, in which the term "men" is used generally and largely, and in which they are said to have a form of godliness, and that the expression," the last times," and the expression, "the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine," and the expression, "evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived;" that such expressions of the Holy Ghost shall be restricted to an event which happened only five years after this epistle was written, (for within five years Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed,) is such a stultifying, not to say falsifying of all language, that I can by no means admit it for a moment. Besides, the judgment upon Jerusalem did not affect the Christian Church at all, to whose apostasy the whole context hath reference; for the Christians were saved from that judgment. And to guard against the progress of this apostasy in the Christian Church, the Apostle instructs Timothy (ii. 2): "The things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others

also;" thereby making provision for a succession and enlargement of teachers and preachers in the Christian Church. Furthermore, when warning him against strifes of words, he saith (ver. 16, 17), " that they will increase unto more ungodliness: and their word will eat as doth a canker" or gangrene-which, beginning in any part of the body, ceases not till it hath corrupted the whole, to the very vitals, and so produceth death. Thereby meaning, that the apostasy which he saw, like the plague-spot just beginning, would not cease till it had spread over the whole Church, and brought it to a violent end. These remarks I make in general, upon that low and unworthy interpretation which would limit these last days to the five years next to come of the Christian Church, which hath been in being now for nearly two thousand years. Its foolishness will more fully appear as we proceed with our inquiry into the true meaning of the last days in which these perilous times are to come.

The first time that this expression occurreth is in that passage already referred to (Gen. xlix. 1), where Jacob gathers the twelve patriarchs together, in order to teach them what should befall them in the last days. Now, if these predictions be fulfilled, then the last days are past: if they be not fulfilled, they are yet to That they are not at all fulfilled as yet, in order to be convinced, you have only to take some of the more conspicuous of them. I do not say but that they have received a partial fulfilment; but the substance of the blessings yet remaineth unaccomplished. For example, Judah is in captivity, and hath none of

come.

that power and glory which is described in the 9th verse; and though the 10th verse, which contains the coming of Shiloh, be fulfilled, so far as his appearance is concerned, yet in no wise hath it been fulfilled as to his acts, described in that and the following verse; for the gathering of the people hath not been to him: whether that word "people" be taken of the Jews or of the Gentiles, he scattered the Jewish people, and he took out an election from the Gentiles, but that election is in a dispersed, not a gathered state. The gathering of the nations is from him, not to him. He hath not yet received the congregation, nor will he until the present foundations of the earth be dissolved -(Psa. lxxv). Neither hath he bound his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the chosen vinewhich is an emblem of his coming in royal state to the vineyard of the Church: neither hath he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes-which taketh place at the treading of the wine-press upon his second coming-(Isa. lxiii. 1-7; xxxiv. 8; Rev. xix. 13-15). In like manner of Joseph's blessing, nothing of all that occurreth from verse 24 to 27 hath ever been accomplished, especially that interjection" hence is the Shepherd and Stone of Israel;" for Christ, as the Shepherd or the gatherer, as the Stone or the breaker of his enemies, hath not yet appeared out of Joseph. Neither doth Naphtali give goodly words, nor Dan judge his people; nor hath Gad overcome at the last; nor hath Benjamin ravened as a wolf, in the morning devouring the prey, and at night dividing the spoil; nor indeed,

as I judge, hath any one of these fates in its spirit been fulfilled. It may be said that Levi hath been scattered in Israel, but Simeon hath not; and though Zebulun dwelt at the haven of the sea, we hear not of any great maritime distinction which he attained. That nothing hath happened to the tribes of Israel to fulfil these great characteristic distinctions, every one who interpreteth according to the words, will easily perceive. That they will be fulfilled, and be the characteristics of the twelve tribes in the last days, every one who believeth Scripture will believe. I conclude, therefore, that the last days which are to bring out the veracity of these distinctions are not yet arrived, but will begin to run from the time of God's appearing for his ancient people, and gathering them together to the work of destroying all Antichristian nations, of evangelising the world, and of governing it during the Millennium; very manifest it is, that the last days of the Jewish dispensation did least of all accomplish any part of any of these predictions, except the coming of Shiloh-which indeed they did see, but none of the mysteries for which he came. Now, the coming of Shiloh is introduced into the blessing of Judah, for the sake of the exaltation which Judah, through him, was to receive, which Judah hath not received, but contrariwise, evil, and captivity, and disgrace—in which dishonour and weakness Benjamin did then partake, instead of that rampant might and joyful triumph which is foreshown to him. And seven hundred years before these last days of the Jewish dispensation, all the other tribes had been lost, and