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 Difcourfes 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 thefe Discourses, it was with a view of fhewing the Use and Intent of Prophecy in the several Ages of the World, and the manifeft connection between the prophecies of every age. They who confider the prophecies under the Old Testament, as fo many predictions only, independent of each other, can never form a right judgment of the argument for the truth of Chriftianity, 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 leifure 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 so easy a matter to shew, 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 should have any intereft to ferve by betraying the fecret, or so much honesty and regard to truth as to discover it. The account given in the fourth Discourse of the remiffion of the curfe on the ground, by covenant with Noah and his posterity, may |