nant: and besides, we know that that dispensation of providence soon' ceased after the re-establishment. The meaning therefore must be, that he would still continue to be their KING as well as God. Yet at the same time, when this theocracy was restored, it was both fit, on account of its own dignity, and necessary for the people's assurance, that it should be attended with some unusual display of divine favour. Accordingly, prophets were raised up; and an extraordinary providence for some short time administered, as appears from many places in those prophets.* III. That the theocracy continued even to the coming of CHRIST, may be seen from hence

1. Whenever it was abrogated, it must needs be done in the same solemn manner in which it was established; so that the one might be as well known as the other: because it was of the highest importance to a people so strictly bound to obedience, not to be mistaken concerning the power under which they lived. Natural equity requires this formality as a necessary concomitant in the imposing and abrogating of all civil laws and institutions whatsoever. Now the theocracy having never been thus abolished till the coming of Christ, we conclude that it continued to subsist till that time.

2. Nor, indeed, could it have been abolished without dissolving the whole frame of the republic; since all the laws of it, whether as to their equity, force, or fitness, as well as the whole ritual of worship, respected, and referred to God as civil governor. But neither by the declaration of any prophet, nor by the act of any good king, did the institution suffer the least change in any of its parts, from the time of its establishment by Moses to its dissolution by JESUS CHRIST, either by addition, correction, or abrogation. Consequently, the theocracy was existing throughout that whole period: nothing being more absurd than to suppose that national laws, all made in reference to the form of government, should remain invariable, while the government itself was changed. For, what the author of the epistle to the Hebrews says of the PRIEST (in a constitution where the two societies were incorporated) must be equally true of the KING. THE PRIESTHOOD BEING CHANGED, THERE IS MADE ALSO, OF NECESSITY, A CHANGE OF THE LAW.† And now it was that JESUS, the MESSIAH, who is here spoken of as making this change, in quality of PRIEST, made it likewise in quality of KING. For, as we learn from the history of his ministry, he came as heir of God, to succeed immediately without any interregnum, in his Father's kingdom: GOD having DELIVERED UP to his Son the kingdom, of which the Father was, till then, in possession. And this change in the government, from the temporal theocracy of God the Father, to the spiritual kingdom of GOD the Son, was made in the same solemn and authentic manner in which that theocracy was introduced. God raised up from amongst his chosen people, a prophet like unto Moses, who exercised the legislative power, like Moses; and assumed the regal power, like GOD. He gave * Hag. i. 6—11 ;—ii, 16—19; Zech. viii. 12; Mal, iii. 10, 11. + Chap. vii. ver. 12.

a NEW LAW to be administered in a NEW KINGDOM, and confirmed the divinity of the dispensation by the most stupendous miracles. Thus, we find, the theocracy did indeed subsist till the coming of Christ.

And this ABOLITION of it by the Son of God, I take to be the true completion of that famous PROPHECY of Jacob, of which so much hath been written and disputed. THE SCEPTRE SHALL NOT DEPART FROM JUDAH, NOR A LAWGIVER FROM BETWEEN HIS FEET, UNTIL SHILOH COME, * i. e. the THEOCRACY shall continue over the Jews† until Christ come to take possession of his Father's kingdom: for there was never any lawgiver,‡ in Judah, but God by the ministry of Moses, until the coming of his Son.

JESUS the MESSIAH, the best interpreter of the oracles of God, of which he himself is the capital subject, and for whose sake the chain of prophecies was so early drawn out, and extended to such a length, seems to have paraphrased and explained the words of Jacob concerning the departure of the sceptre from Judah, by his declaration recorded in St Matthew, THE PROPHETS AND THE LAW PROPHESIED TILL JOHN,§ i. e. "The Mosaic law, and the theocratic government by which it was dispensed, continued in being till the approach of this harbinger of Christ, John the Baptist; but was then superseded by the promulgation of a new law and the establishment of a new kingdom."

But as this interpretation is so different from the common, and understands the prophecy as foretelling that the Jewish nation should not be bereft of sovereign power, by falling under a foreign yoke, till the advent of the MESSIAH, the reader will excuse me, if I detain him a little longer on so important a subject.

The common notion of the sceptre of Judah, is explained three different ways, each of which has its particular followers.

1. Some suppose the sceptre of Judah to signify the SOVEREIGNTY OF THE JEWISH NATION at large.

2. Others again suppose it to signify the SOVEREIGNTY OF THE TRIBE OF JUDAH.

3. And a third sort contend that it signifies not a sovereign or regal, but a TRIBAL SCEPTRE only.

In the sense of a sovereignty in the Jewish people at large, which is the most general interpretation, and, in my opinion, the most natural of the three (as the whole people were long denominated from that tribe), the pretended prophecy was not only never fulfilled, but has been directly falsified: because long before the coming of Shiloh, or of Christ,

Gen. xlix. 10.

Who took their name from the tribe of Judah; the rest being incorporated in that tribe, or extinguished in captivity.

Mhhokek, legislator, aut legis interpres. But the first is its original and proper signification. And thus Isaiah [chap. xxxiii. ver. 22], "The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our LAWGIVER [mhhokekenou], the Lord is our king, he will save us." Where the word ahhokek is used in its proper signification of lawgiver; the other sense of dispenser or interpreter of the law being contained in the titles of judge and king.

Mat. xi. 13.

VOL. II.

T

the sceptre or sovereignty in the Jewish people was departed. During the Babylonian and Persian captivity, and while afterwards they continued in a tributary dependence on the Greeks, they could, in no reasonable sense, be said to have retained their sceptre, their sovereignty, or independent rule. But it may be replied, "that the prophecy by departure, meant a final departure; and in these instances it was but temporary: for CYRUS restored the sceptre to them; and when it was again lost in the Grecian empire, the MACCABEI recovered it for them." Though this be allowed, yet we must still confess, that the Romans, who under Pompey reduced Judea to a dependent province, effectually overthrew the prophecy. POMPEY took Jerusalem; and left to Hyrcanus, the last of the Asmonean family, only the office of high priest. From this time, to the birth of Christ, it was ever in dependence on the Romans, who disposed of all things at their pleasure. The senate gave the government of Judea to Antipater; and then to Herod his son, under the title of king. And Archelaus, on the death of his father, did not dare to take possession of this subject kingdom, till he had obtained leave of Augustus; who afterwards, on complaint of the Jews against him, banished him into the west, where he died. Now the precarious rule of a dependent monarch could no more be called a sceptre (which, in the figurative mode of all languages, signifies sovereignty) than the condition of the Jews could be said to be sovereign, when this Archelaus was deposed, and Coponius a Roman knight made procurator of Judea, at that time which the supporters of this interpretation fix for the departure of the sceptre.

I reckon for nothing another objection which has been made to the common interpretation, "That after the return from the captivity, the Jews were, from time to time, under a form of government resembling rather the aristocratic than the monarchic;" because the sceptre, or soveThis then makes no more reignty, belongs equally to all those forms.

against the common interpretation, than the other, I am now going to mention, makes for it, namely, that the senate of Rome the gave government of Judea to Herod under the title of KING; since the dependent rule of this roitelet was as certainly the departure of a sceptre, as a sovereignty under an aristocratic government was the continuance of it.

The learned father Tournemine was so embarrassed with these difficulties, that in a dissertation on the sceptre of Judah, he endeavours to show, that the proof of the predicted birth of Christ from this prophecy arises not from the departure of the sceptre, but from its re-establishment under the Messiah. * Which thesis (as the intelligent reader may observe) fairly put him in the road; and, had it been pursued, would have led him to the sense I am here endeavouring to establish.

The second branch of the common interpretation is, That by the sceptre is signified a civil sovereignty in the tribe of Judah. This, in my opinion, has still less of stability than the other. It supposes that

* Journal de Trevoux, Mars 1705, et Feb. 1721.

the sceptre, or the supreme rule of the Jewish people, remained in natives of that tribe, from the time of David to the coming of Christ. But Petavius hath shown, that from the giving of the prophecy to the time of David (a space of above six hundred years), there was but one or two rulers descended from the time of Judah: and that from the death of Sedecias to the birth of Christ (a space of near the same number of years) all the rulers of the Jewish people were of other tribes; the Asmonean princes particularly being all of the tribe of Levi. The Abbé

de Houteville, who, at a very easy rate, hath obtained the reputation of an able defender of revelation,† hath indeed invented a curious expedient to evade this difficulty. His system is, that the rulers of the tribe of Levi (and so I suppose of the rest) exercised this sovereignty by leave, or deputation from the tribe of Judah. To such wretched shifts are learned men reduced, when they have reversed the order of things, and made truth to wait upon their systems; instead of making their systems subservient to truth.

These two senses (by one or other of which the common interpretation hath been long supported) being found on a stricter scrutiny, to be untenable, men cast about for a third; and a happy one it was thought to be, which contrived, that sceptre should signify a domestic, not a civil rule; a TRIBAL, not a SOVEREIGN sceptre; and of which, they say, JUDAH, at the giving of the prophecy, was already possessed. This expedient, the learned Dr Sherlock, bishop of London, has honoured with his support and protection.‡

It would be want of respect to so eminent a person, to pass over this refinement with the same slight notice that has been given to the other two. I shall therefore do myself the honour to consider his Lordship's reasoning more at large.

His Lordship's first argument in support of a tribal sceptre is-That the sceptre's not DEPARTING from Judah shows plainly that Judah had a sceptre when the prophecy was given." Is there any sense," says his Lordship, "in saying that a thing shall not depart, which never was yet in possession? The prophecy is not a grant of the sceptre, but a confirmation of it. Now a confirmation of nothing is nothing: and, to make it something, the possession of the thing confirmed must be supposed. I know not by what rules of language or grammar, these words can be construed into a grant of the sceptre. And though so many writers and

At complures antiquorum recentiorumque qui in illa Jacobi sententia Judam peculiari de tribu intellexerunt, id sibi patriarcham voluisse credunt, ex stirpe ac progenie Juda filii ipsius perpetuo Judæis præfuturum aliquem eorumque fore principem, donec Christus adveniat. Sed in hujus reddenda dicti ratione multum æstuant, siquidem vetustatis omni teste memoriâ refelluntur, quæ non solum ante Davidem unum alterumve duntaxat ex illa tribu rexisse populum ostendit, annis circiter 675 ab edita prophetia; sed etiam post Sedecías necem, occasumque urbis et templi ad Christum usque de alia quam Judæ stirpe duces extitisse annis 588; etenim Machabæos constat ex Levitica et sacerdotali progenie descendere. Ration. Temporum, Par. II. lib. iii. cap. 16.

See his book, entitled, Religion preuvée par les Faits. ‡ Use and Intent of Prophecy, Dissert. III. 5th ed. 1749.

interpreters have followed this sense, yet I do not remember to have seen one passage or parallel expression from the scripture, or any other author, produced to justify the interpretation."-Pp. 326, 327.

Is there any sense, his Lordship asks, in saying a thing shall not DEPART which never was yet in possession? Yes certainly, a very good one, in a PROPHECY, where the subject is not of a present but of a future possession; and where the Holy Spirit is wont to call the things that are not, as though they were. The subject is a sceptre, which could in no sense, not even in the sense of a tribal sceptre, be in possession of Judah before he became a tribe. His Lordship, indeed, supposes he became a tribe immediately after the death of Jacob.-This power in the hands of the tribes took place immediately upon the death of Jacob. -P. 323. But if it did? Was not that accession as properly future, as if it had been a thousand years after? Judah then, at the time of this prophecy, not being in possession of his sceptre, a confirmation of nothing is nothing, &c., so that all the absurdities here imagined stick to his Lordship's era of the sceptre, as well as to the common one. But let us suppose that Jacob's prophecy and death were individual; and then see how he proves his assertion, that Judah and the rest became tribes immediately on the death of Jacob. His proof is a little extraordinary-When Moses and Aaron led them into the wilderness, says his Lordship, we hear of the ELDERS of the people, and the RULERS of the congregation.-P. 323. His assertion is, that the tribal sceptre sprung up from the ashes of Jacob; and his proof, that it arose and flourished in the wilderness. This is indeed the truth; it was a native of that place; as may be fairly presumed from the occasion which the Israelites had of a tribal rule (namely, to fit them for the warfare they were now about to undertake), and as may be fairly proved from the first chapter of the book of Numbers" And the Lord spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai: Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers-all that are able to go forth to war in Israel; thou and Aaron shall number them with their armies. And with you, there SHALL be a MAN of every tribe; every one HEAD OF THE HOUSE of his fathers and they assembled all the congregation; and they declared their pedigrees, after their families, by the house of their fathers-these were those which were numbered: and the PRINCES OF ISRAEL BEING TWELVE MEN, EACH ONE WAS FOR THE HOUSE OF HIS FATHERS. And the children of Israel shall pitch their tents, every man by his own camp, and every man by his own standard, throughout their hosts-and the children of Israel did according to all the Lord commanded them." Then follows the order of the tribes in their tents. Now, surely, this detailed account of these tribal sceptres hath all the marks of a new institution.

The Bishop's hypothesis therefore is without foundation: the sceptre was something in reversion. Indeed the particular words, as well as the * Num. i. 4, 5, 18, 44, 52, 51. Num. chap. ii.