serious and considerate to discern in past events the hand of Providence.

Thus, you see, the apostle, while he seems only to guard against a manner of interpretation which would perpetually mislead, in effect directs us to that which will seldom fail. Every particular prophecy is to be referred to the system, and to be understood in that sense which may most aptly connect it with the whole; and the sense of prophecy in general is to be sought in the events which have actually taken place, the history of mankind, especially in the article of their religious improvement, being the public infallible interpreter of the oracles of God.

I shall now proceed, in this and some other discourses, to explain these rules somewhat more distinctly, to illustrate the use of them by examples of their application, and to show you how naturally they arise out of that principle which is alleged by the apostle as their foundation, and how utterly they overthrow the most formidable objection that the adversaries of our holy faith have ever been able to pro

duce against that particular evidence of our Lord's pretensions which the completion of the Scripture prophecies affords.

In the first place, for the more distinct explication of the apostle's maxim, nothing, I conceive, is requisite, but to mark the limits within which the meaning of it is to be restrained.

And first, the subject of the apostle's negative proposition, prophecy. Under this name is not to be included every thing that might be uttered by a prophet, even under the Divine impulse; but the word is to be taken strictly for that which was the highest part of the prophetic officethe prediction of the events of distant ages. The prophets spake under the influence of the Spirit, upon various occasions, when they had no such predictions to deliver. They were in the Jewish church the ordinary preachers of righteousness; and their lessons of morality and religion, though often conveyed in the figured strains of poetry, were abundantly perspicuous. They were occasionally sent to advise public

measures, in certain critical situations of the Jewish state. Sometimes they gave warning of impending judgments, or notice of approaching mercies; and sometimes they were employed to rebuke the vices and to declare the destiny of individuals. What they had to utter upon these occasions had sometimes, perhaps, no immediate connexion with prophecy, properly so called; and the mind of the prophet seems to have been very differently affected with these subjects and with the visions of futurity. The counsel he was to give, or the event he was to announce, were presented naked, without the disguise of imagery, to his thoughts; and he gave it utterance in perspicuous phrases, that carried a definite and obvious meaning. There are even predictions, and those of very remote events, and those events of the highest moment, which are not properly to be called prophecies. Such are those declarations of the future conditions of the righteous and the wicked, which make a principal branch of general revelation, and are propounded in such clear terms that none can be at a loss to apprehend the general purport of them.

These are indeed predictions, because the events which they declare are future; yet they do not seem to answer to the notion of prophecy in the general acceptation of the word. What then, you will ask me, is the distinction between these discoveries of general revelation and prophecy properly so called? The distinction, I think, is this: An explicit declaration of the final general event of things, and of whatever else may be the immediate effect of the will and power of the First Cause, or the purport of any original decree of God, is revelation: Prophecy is a disguised detail of those intermediate and subordinate events which are brought about by the regular operation of second causes, and are in part dependent upon man's free agency. Predictions of these events are prophecies, in the proper meaning of the word; and of these prophecies alone, St. Peter's maxim, "that no prophecy is its own interpreter," is to be understood.

Again, the word "interpretation" is not to be understood without much restriction. Interpretation, in the largest sense, consists

of various branches, the greater part of which it were absurd to include in the negation of the text. Such are all grammatical interpretations of an author's language, and logical elucidations of the scope, composition, and coherence of his argument. Such interpretations may be necessary for prophecies, in common with every other kind of writings; and the general rules by which they must proceed are the same in all: But the interpretation of which the apostle speaks is that which is peculiar to prophecy; and it consists in ascertaining the events to which predictions allude, and in showing the agreement between the images of the prediction and the particulars of the history; and this particular sort of interpretation, distinct from any other, is expressed by that word which we find in this place in the original text of the apostle. The original word hath not the extensive signification of the English word "interpretation;" but it is the specific name of that sort of exposition which renders the mystic sense of parables, dreams, and prophecies.

Having thus defined in what sense the