more particularly and plainly concerning our Saviour and the future state, than any of the prophets of the Old Testament do, that we must conclude St. Paul, who was the apostle of the Gentiles, guilty not only of a very great omission, (that in all his preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles, and in all his epistles to the Gentile churches, he never so much as mentions the prophecies of the Sibyls, nor vouches their authority, as he does that of the Old Testament prophets, in his preaching and writing to the Jews,) but likewise of a very great mistake, in making it the particular advantage which the Jews had above the Gentiles, that to them were committed the oracles of God, (Rom. iii. 1, 2.) and that they were the children of the prophets, while he speaks of the Gentiles as sitting in darkness, and being afar off. We can not conceive that heathen women, and those actuated by demons, should speak more clearly and fully of the Messiah than those holy men did, who, we are sure, were moved by the Holy Ghost; or that the Gentiles should be instructed with larger and earlier discoveries of the great salvation than that people of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ was to come. But enough, if not more than enough, of the pretenders to prophecy. It is a good remark which the learned Gallæus makes upon the great veneration which the Romans had for the oracles of the Sibyls, for which he quotes Dionysius Halicarnassæus, Οὐδὲν ̓ȣ́τε Ῥωμαῖοι φυλάτρȣσιν, ̓ȣ́τε ὅσιον κτῆμα ȣτε ἱερὸν, ὡς τὰ Σιβύλλεια θέσφατα—The Romans preserve nothing with such sacred care, nor do they hold any thing in such high estimation, as the Sibylline oracles. Hi si pro vitreis suis thesauris adeò decertarunt, quid nos pro genuinis nostris, à Deo inspiratis!—If they had such a value for these counterfeits, how precious should the true treasure of the divine oracles be to us! Of these we come next to speak.
Prophecy, we are sure, was of equal date with the church; for faith comes, not by thinking and seeing, as philosophy does, but by hearing, by hearing the word of God, Rom. x. 17. In the antediluvian period Adam received divine revelation in the promise of the Seed of the woman, and, no doubt, communicated it, in the name of the Lord, to his seed, and was prophet as well as priest, to his numerous family. Enoch was a prophet, and foretold perhaps the deluge, however, the last judgment, that of the great day: Behold, the Lord comes, Jude 14. When men began, as a church, to call upon the name of the Lord, (Gen iv. 26.) or to call themselves by his name, they were blessed with prophets, for the prophecy came in old time; (2 Pet. i. 21.) it is venerable for its antiquity.
When God renewed his covenant of providence (and that a figure of the covenant of grace) with Noah and his sons, we soon after find Noah, as a prophet, foretelling, not only the servitude of Canaan, but God's enlarging Japhet by Christ, and his dwelling in the tents of Shem, Gen. ix. 26, 27. And when, upon the general revolt of mankind to idolatry, (as, in the former period, upon the apostacy of Cain,) God distinguished a church for himself by the call of Abraham, and by his covenant with him and his seed, he conferred upon him and the other patriarchs the spirit of prophecy; for when he reproved kings for their sakes, he said, Touch not mine anointed, who have received that unction from the Holy One; and do my prophets no harm, Ps. cv. 14, 15. And of Abraham, he said expressly, He is a prophet; (Gen. xx. 7.) for it was with a prophetic eye, as a seer, that Abraham saw Christ's day, (John viii. 56.) saw it at so great a distance, and yet with so great an assurance triumphed in it. And Stephen seems to speak of the first settling of a correspondence between him and God, by which he was established to be a prophet, when he says, The God of glory appeared to him, (Acts vii. 2.) appeared in glory. Jacob upon his death-bed, as a prophet, told his sons what should befall them in the last days, (Gen. xlix. 1, 10.) and spake very particularly concerning the Messiah.
Hitherto was the infancy of the church, and with it of prophecy; it was the dawning of that day; and that morning light owed its rise to the Sun of righteousness, though he rose not till long after; but it shone more and more. During the bondage of Israel in Egypt, this, as other glories of the church, was eclipsed; but as the church made a considerable and memorable advance in the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt, and the forming of them into a people, so did the Spirit of prophecy in Moses, the illustrious instrument employed in that great service; and it was by that Spirit that he performed that service; so it is said, Hos. xii. 13. By a prophet the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet was he preserved through the wilderness to Canaan, by Moses as a prophet. It appears, by what God said to Aaron, that there were then other prophets among them, to whom God made known himself and his will in dreams and visions, (Numb. xii. 6.) but to Moses he spake in a peculiar manner, mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches, Numb. xii. 8. Nay, such a plentiful effusion was there of the Spirit of prophecy at that time, (because Moses was such a prophet as was to be a type of Christ the great Prophet,) that some of his Spirit was put upon seventy elders of Israel at once, and they prophesied, Numb. xi. 25. What they said, was extraordinary, and not only under the direction of a prophetic inspiration, but under the constraint of a prophetic impulse; as appears by the case of Eldad and Medad.
When Moses, that great prophet, was lying down, he promised Israel that the Lord God would raise them up a Prophet of their brethren like unto him, Deut. xviii. 15, 18. In these words, says the learned Bishop Stillingfleet,* [1] (though in their full and complete sense, they relate to Christ, and to him they are more than once applied in the New Testament,) there is included a promise of an order of prophets, which should succeed Moses in the Jewish church, and be the Λόγια ζῶντα—the living oracles among them, (Acts vii. 38;) by which they might know the mind of God. For, in the next words, he lays down rules for the trial of prophets, whether what they said was of God or no. And it is observable, that that promise comes in immediately upon an express prohibition of the Pagan rites of divination, and the consulting of wizards and familiar spirits; "You shall not need to do that," (said Moses,) "for, to your much better satisfaction, you shall have prophets divinely inspired, by whom you may know from God himself both what to do, and what to expect."
But as Jacob's dying prophecy concerning the sceptre in Judah, and the lawgiver between his feet, did not begin to be remarkably fulfilled till David's time, most of the Judges being of other tribes, so Moses's promise of a succession of prophets began not to receive its accomplishment till Samuel's time, a little before the other promise began to emerge and operate; and it was an introduction to the other, for it was by Samuel, as a prophet, that David was anointed king; which was an intimation that the prophetical office of our Redeemer should make way, both in the world, and in the heart, for his kingly office; and therefore when he was asked, Art thou a king? (John xviii. 37.) he answered, not evasively, but very pertinently, I came to bear witness to the truth; and so to rule as a king, purely by the power of truth.
- ↑ * Orig. Sacr. B. 2. c. 4.
