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    never been disputed , and of the truth of the latter we are furnished with abundant proofs in the writings of Christian Fathers and Jewish Rabbins . Hence , then , it follows that for a period of more than eighteen centuries the best possible security against a joint fraud ! has existed in the irreconcileable

    enmity which has subsisted between the two parties ; both of whom have nevertheless preserved , with the most religious care , the books of the Old Testament , and appealed with confidence to the writings of the Prophets in . particular , as affording the strongest corroboration of their respective notions concerning the character and offices of the Messiah .

    The Jews , it is true , have sometimes been charged by Christian writers with having corrupted their prophetical books , and the charge has been maintained with great ingenuity and learning by Whiston and Dr . Henry Owen . * A summary of the arguments used by these and other writers , who have embraced the same view of the question , may be seen in " Gerard ' s Institutes of Biblical Criticism . " f From a review of these arguments , however , allowing them all the weight and importance which their advocates

    are disposed to claim for them , it appears that the alleged corruptions consist only of slight alterations in the text , and do not by any means affect the credit due to the prophetical books generally . The shape in which these books have been transmitted to us is precisely that in which they were received by Jews and Christians nearly two thousand years ago . Amidst all the differences of opinion which have existed as to the interpretation of them , and their application to particular persons and events , no writer of any

    celebrity has ever thought of calling their authenticity in question , or of assigning the composition of any one of them to a later period than that in which its reputed author lived , with the solitary exception of the book of Daniel ; and the grounds upon which the authenticity and credibility of this book have been disputed are of too singular a nature to pass entirely without notice . The prophecies of Daniel extend through a long period of history , and

    point out in the most clear and distinct manner the fall of successive kingdoms , upon the ruins of which the kingdom of the Messiah was to be erected . They contain , however , such particular allusions respecting place and time , and correspond so exactly with the events to which they refer , that Porphyry , a heathen writer of the third century , and a great enemy of the Jewish and Christian reli g ions , not being able to resist the evidence which they supplied in favour of Divine Revelation , was led to regard them as historical

    narratives , written after the events of which they contain such a minute and particular outline . This Porphyry was the author of a work , consisting of Mteen books , which had for its object a refutation of the arguments usually urged in defence of Judaism and Christianity ; and the twelfth of these books was expressly directed against the authenticity and credibility of the book of Daniel . The prophecies relating to the Persian and Macedonian kings were so exactly accomplished , that he found it impossible , in any other way , to

    overcome the difficulties which they presented . He compared them with the writings of the best Greek historians , and attempted to shew , that they corresponded so exactly with the events , as related by these writers , that they could not possibly have been written prior to the events themselves . He denied , therefore , that the book which goes under the name of Daniel was written by the Daniel who flourished during the Babylonish captivity and contended that it was the production of another Daniel , who lived in the

    * See Whiston ' s " Essay towards restoring the true Text of the O . T ., " Proposition 12 ; and Owen ' s " Enquiry into the present State of the Septuagint Version of the O . T ., " Sect . 2—9 . t Part II . Chap . I . Sect . II . § 740 .

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    Canonical Authority of the Books of the Prophets . 245

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1827, page 245, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1795/page/13/