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The Use and Intent of Prophecy in the several

Ages of the World;

IN

SIX DISCOURSES,

DELIVERED AT

THE TEMPLE CHURCH,

IN APRIL AND MAY, 1724,

PREFACE

TO THE

Discourses on the Use and Intent of Prophecy, and the Dissertations.

I HAVE nothing more to say for the publi

cation of these Difcourfes, than what appears in the title page.

But, that the reader may not be deceived, it is proper to tell him here, that he is not to expect in the following Discourses an answer to a book lately published, entitled, Grounds and Reasons, &c. That work was undertaken, and has been discharged to the fatisfaction of the public, by a much abler hand. When I entered upon the defign of forming these Discourses, it was with a view of fhewing the Use and Intent of Prophecy in the several Ages of the World, and the manifest connection between the prophecies of every age. They who confider the prophecies under the Old Teftament, as fo many predictions only, independent of each other, can never form a right judgment of the argument for

the truth of Christianity, drawn from this topic; nor be able to fatisfy themselves, when they are confronted with the objections of unbelievers. It is an eafy matter for men of leisure and tolerable parts to find difficulties in particular predictions, and in the application of them made by writers who lived many hundred years ago, and who had many ancient books and records of the Jewish church, from which they drew many paffages, and perhaps fome prophecies; which books and records we have not to enable us to understand, and to justify their applications. But it is not fo eafy a matter to fhew, or to perfuade the world to believe, that a chain of prophecies, reaching through several thousand years, delivered at different times, yet manifeftly fubfervient to one and the fame administration of providence, from beginning to end, is the effect of art, and contrivance, and religious fraud: that, for fo many ages fucceffively, proper persons should be found to carry on the cheat; and that none of them fhould have any interest to serve by betraying the secret, or so much honesty and regard to truth as to discover it.

The account given in the fourth Difcourfe of the remiffion of the curfe on the ground, by covenant with Noah and his pofterity, may

be treated perhaps as the effect of mere fancy and imagination; for there are many prejudices which lie in its way. All that I shall say more upon that subject, is only this: if you allow the account, it carries on the series of God's difpenfations towards mankind in a natural gradation, and opens a new scene of providence, where there feems to be great reafon to expect one, at the beginning of the new world: if you reject this account, there seems to be a great gap in the facred history, and the new world sets out just where the old one left off; and yet who would not expect that fo great a change fhould be attended with fome new degree of light, to comfort and support the poor remains of mankind? If the notion is not approved, it is at least an innocent one; and I am not fo fond of it as to enter further into the defence of it.

As to the Differtations which I have added, the relation they have to the subject of the Discourses will appear to those who think them worth the reading; and there is no reafon to trouble others with any account of them.

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