a cross and a throne;
the scandalous death of a private man upon a gibbet, and the everlasting
dominion of a universal monarch, must be reconciled, and mean the self
same thing, before the prophecies appealed to, can do their cause any
service. Granting, then, the goodness of God (according to them,) to
have been better than his word, by giving spiritual blessings, instead
of temporal; yet, what will become of the truth of God, if He act
contrary to his word, even when it would be for our advantage, if He
misleads people by expressions, which, if they mean any thing at all,
must mean what the Jews understand by them?

In short, it seems to me, that if Providence has, in truth, any concern
with the predictions of the Old Testament, it could not have taken more
effectual care to justify the unbelief and obstinacy of the Jews, than
by ordering matters so, that the life and death of Jesus should be so
exactly, and so entirely, the very reverse of all those ideas under
which their prophets had constantly described, and the Hebrew nation as
constantly expected of their Messiah, and his coming; and to suppose
that the Supreme Being meant to describe and point out such a person as
Jesus by such descriptions of the Messiah as are contained in the Old
Testament, is certainly substantially to accuse him of the moat
unjustifiable prevarication, and mockery of his creatures.

In order that the subject we are examining, and the arguments we make
use of, may be clearly understood by the reader, he is requested to bear
in mind, that the author reasons all along upon the supposed Divine
authority of the Old Testament; which is admitted by both Jews and
Christians. Whether the supernatural claims of the Old Testament be
just, or not, is of no consequence in the world to the controversy we
are considering. For the dispute of the Jew with the Christian is one
thing, and his dispute with the sceptic is another, totally different.
For whether such a personage as the Messiah is described to be, has
appeared eighteen hundred years ago, is quite a different thing from the
question, whether such a personage will appear at all. The Christian
says, that he has appeared in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. This the
Jew denies, but looks forward to the future fulfilment of the promises
of his Bible, while the Sceptic denies that the Messiah has come, or
ever will.

But the subject at present under consideration is the dispute of the Jew
with the C