tly subvert a very considerable part of
your system, by which you endeavour to account for the discrepancies
which you do allow as yet to subsist between the prophecies of the
Messiah, and Jesus of Nazareth. I beseech you therefore to heed me
carefully.

In Luke i. verse 32. The angel tells Mary that her son Jesus should be
great, and be called: the son of the Highest and the Lord God shall
give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over
the house of Israel forever and to his kingdom there shall be no end,
and in verse 67, &c. Zachariah, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost
too, thus praises God concerning Jesus "Blessed be the Lord God of
Israel, because he hath visited and redeemed his people, and he hath
raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant
David; as he spake by the month of his holy prophets which have been
since the world began, that we should be saved from our enemies and
from the hand of all that hate us, &c. that we being delivered from the
hand of our enemies should serve him with holiness and righteousness
before him all the days of our lives." [See the Original.] You see,
sir the notion that these words allude to, they certainly appear to me
to mean something else than deliverance from spiritual foes. See also
in the 2d ch. 25 verse, where Simeon a man who was "looking for the
consolation of Israel" and was full of the Holy Ghost, expresses
similar sentiments. And Anna the prophetess also spake concerning Jesus
to all who "were expecting deliverance in Jerusalem," i.e. undoubtedly
deliverance from the Romans. The carnal ideas of the Apostles with
regard to the nature of their Master's Kingdom, and their consequent
expectations with regard to Jesus, before his crucifixion, are
acknowledged; and in the 24th chapt. of Luke 21st v. they say in
despair, "But we trusted that it had been he who should have redeemed
Israel." And after the resurrection, and just before the ascension of
Jesus, after they had been for forty days "instructed in the things
pertaining to the kingdom of God," which was the same as that of the
Messiah, by Jesus himself, they do not seem to have had the least idea
of the metaphysical kingdom of modern Christians, for they ask him,
"Lord wilt thou now (or at this time) restore the kingdom to Israel?"
And his answer is, not that it should never be restored, but that "it
was not for them to know the times, and the seasons," see Acts 1. And
ev