nour to elect you their pastor, believing you to be the only man
worthy to succeed the learned, eloquent and lamented
Buckminster? This abandonment of your station took place after
you had engaged yourself in the examination of the question
between me, Mr. Cary, and Mr. Channing. If you felt doubts of the
validity of the Christian religion, and were therefore scrupulous
about going into your pulpit every Sunday to preach Christianity in
the name of the God of Truth, and therefore resigned your post,
your conduct thus far does you honour and not shame. But if, after
this, you have allowed yourself to be overcome by the solicitations
of interested friends (who might have been anxious that you
should publish something, that would allay the suspicions and
silence the rumours your conduct had occasioned) to give to the
world your very singular book, you have acted a part unjust
towards me, and injurious to yourself, for you now see the
consequence. You are taken in the snare you had laid for me, and
your violent dealing has come down on your own head.

I come now to the examination of the celebrated prophecy of the
seventy weeks. This prophecy has always run [fn69] the crux
Criticorum. It is unquestionably a very ambiguous one, since Mr.
Everett himself informs us in a note, p. 167 of his work, that
"Calovius whose day has passed a century ago, in a dissertation
upon the mysteries of the seventy weeks, numbers twenty-five
different Christian hypotheses," to which may be added at least
two more, those of Michaelis and Blayney.

If so, I would ask what stress a reasonable man can lay upon a
simple [fn70] prophecy which is allowedly so ambiguous, as to
have led Christians, sincerely disposed to make a prophecy of
Jesus Christ out of this passage, to interpret it at least twenty-
seven different ways?

There appears to me to be a mistranslation at the root of the
prophecy, which vitiates and confounds all the systems of
interpretation; applied to it that I know of. I conceive that the
prophecy should be translated thus.

"Seventy times seven [fn71] are determined upon thy people, and
upon thy holy city, to finish transgression and to make an end of
sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in
everlasting righteoussness, and to seal [up] the vision and
prophecy, and to anoint the most holy things."

"Know therefore, and understand that from the going forth of the
commandment to restore, and to build Jeru