hat Antiochus; nor can it be proved to have existed
earlier: nor is there in it one word of prophecy which can be shown to
have been fulfilled in regard to any later era. Nay, the 7th chapter
also is confuted by the event; for the great Day of Judgment has not
followed upon the fourth[19] Monarchy.

Next, as to the prophecies of the Pentateuch. They abound, as to the
times which precede the century of Hezekiah; higher than which we
cannot trace the Pentateuch.[20] No prophecy of the Pentateuch can be
proved to have been fulfilled, which had not been already fulfilled
before Hezekiah's day.

Thirdly, as to the prophecies which concern various nations,--some of
them are remarkably verified, as that against Babylon; others failed,
as those of Ezekiel concerning Nebuchadnezzar's wars against Tyre
and Egypt. The fate predicted against Babylon was delayed for five
centuries, so as to lose all moral meaning as a divine infliction on
the haughty city.--On the whole, it was clear to me, that it is a vain
attempt to forge polemical weapons out of these old prophets, for the
service of modern creeds.[21]

V. My study of John's gospel had not enabled me to sustain Dr.
Arnold's view, that it was an impregnable fortress of Christianity.

In discussing the Apocalypse, I had long before felt a doubt whether
we ought not rather to assign that book to John the apostle in
preference to the Gospel and Epistles: but this remained only as a
doubt. The monotony also of the Gospel had often excited my _wonder_. But
I was for the first time _offended_, on considering with a fresh mind an
old fact,--the great similarity of the style and phraseology in the third
chapter, in the testimony of the Baptist, as well as in Christ's
address to Nicodemus, that of John's own epistle. As the three first
gospels have their family likeness, which enables us on hearing a text
to know that it comes out of one of the three, though we perhaps know
not which; so is it with the Gospel and Epistles of John. When a verse
is read, we know that it is either from an epistle of John, or
else from the Jesus of John; but often we cannot tell which. On
contemplating the marked character of this phenomenon, I saw it
infallibly[22] to indicate that John has made both the Baptist and
Jesus speak, as John himself would have spoken; and that we cannot
trust the historical reality of the discourses in the fourth gospel.

That narrative introduces an entirely new phraseology