of the first Empire, and
actually delivered by Daniel, there is no reason why the Roman Empire
should not have been predicted;--for superhuman predictions, the last
two at least must have been. But if the book was a forgery, or a
political poem like Gray's Bard or Lycophron's Cassandra, and later than
Antiochus Epiphanes, it is strange and most improbable that the Roman
should have escaped notice. In both cases the omission of the last and
most important Empire is inexplicable.

Ib. p. 521.

Yet we have it on authority of Josephus, that Daniel's prophecies were
read publicly among the Jews in their worship, as well as their other
received Scriptures.

It is but fair, however, to remember that the Jewish Church ranked the
book of Daniel in the third class only, among the Hagiographic
--passionately almost as the Jews before and at the time of our Saviour
were attached to it.

Ib. p. 522-3.

But to a Jewish eye, or to any eye placed in the same position of view
in the age of Antiochus Epiphanes, it is utterly impossible to admit
that this superior strength of the Roman power to reduce and destroy,
this heavier arm of subjugation, could have revealed itself so
plainly, as to warrant the express deliberate description of it.

'Quaere'. See Polybius.

Ib.

We shall yet have to inquire how it could be foreseen that this
fourth, this yet unestablished empire, should be the last in the line.

This is a sound and weighty argument, which the preceding does not, I
confess, strike me as being. On the contrary, the admission that by a
writer of the Maccabaic aera the Roman power could scarcely have been
overlooked, greatly strengthens this second argument, as naturally
suggesting expectations of change, and wave-like succession of empires,
rather than the idea of a last. In the age of Augustus this might
possibly have occurred to a profound thinker; but the age of Antiochus
was too late to permit the Roman power to escape notice; and not late
enough to suggest its exclusive establishment so as to leave no source
of succession.

[Footnote 1: Discourses on Prophecy, in which are considered its
structure, use and inspiration, being the substance of twelve Sermons
preached in the Chapel of Lincoln's Inn in the Lecture founded by the
Right Rev. William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester. By John Davison,
B.D. 2nd edit. London, 1825.]

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