prophecies is the great object of attack by Eichhorn and his
compilers; and I dare not say, that in a controversy with these men
Davison's arguments would appear sufficient. But this was not the
intended subject of these Discourses.

Disc. VI. Pt. II. p. 289.

But how does he express that promise? In the images of the
resurrection and an immortal state. Consequently, there is implied in
the delineation of the lower subject the truth of the greater.

This reminds me of a remark, I have elsewhere made respecting the
expediency of separating the arguments addressed to, and valid for, a
believer, from the proofs and vindications of Scripture intended to form
the belief, or to convict the Infidel.

Disc. VI. Pt. IV. p. 325.

When Cyrus became master of Babylon, the prophecies of Isaiah were
shewn or communicated to him, wherein were described his victory, and
the use he was appointed to make of it in the restoration of the
Hebrew people. ('Ezra' i. 1, 2.)

This I had been taught to regard as one of Josephus's legends; but upon
this passage who would not infer that it had Ezra for its
authority,--who yet does not expressly say that even the prophecy of the
far later Jeremiah was known or made known to Cyrus, who (Ezra tells us)
fulfilled it? If Ezra had meant the prediction of Isaiah by the words,
'he hath charged me', &c., why should he not have referred to it
together with, or even instead of, Jeremiah? Is it not more probable
that a living prophet had delivered the charge to Cyrus? See 'Ezra' vi.
14.--Again, Davison makes Cyrus speak like a Christian, by omitting the
affix 'of Heaven to the Lord God' in the original. Cyrus speaks as a
Cyrus might be supposed to do,--namely, of a most powerful but yet
national deity, of a God, not of God. I have seen in so many instances
the injurious effect of weak or overstrained arguments in defence of
religion, that I am perhaps more jealous than I need be in the choice of
evidences. I can never think myself the worse Christian for any opinion
I may have formed, respecting the price of this or that argument, of
this or that divine, in support of the truth. For every one that I
reject, I could supply two, and these [Greek: anekdota].

Ib. p. 336.

Meanwhile this long repose and obscurity of Zerubbabel's family, and
of the whole house of David, during so many generations prior to the
Gospel, was one of the preparations made whereby to manifest more
di