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    before Christ * Nor will it be an easy matter to evade the force of the argument arising from the orthography of the name David s establishing , as it does , in so satisfactory a manner , a criterion for determining whether anyparticular book of the Old Testament , in which it may chance to occur , was written before or after the time of Ezra . It may nevertheless be thought , and has in feet been openly contended by some , that the whole of the pro-.

    phetical books are from beginning to end a mere fabrication ; but before such charges as these can be alleged against them with any show of reason , it behoves the person who is bold and reckless enough to prefer them to shew by what miraculous combination of circumstances the supposed fraud escaped detection ; to point out how it happens that each separate book is written in a style altogether peculiar to itself ;* to ascertain whether these suspected forgeries were the work of a single individual , or of a number of

    individuals ; and to bring to light the model after which each particular book was framed . In the mean time we may stand excused in the eye of the less fastidious reader if we take the liberty of assuming every book to be the production of a separate writer , and consider the authenticity of each as resting on grounds entirely peculiar to itself ; assumptions which we are fully warranted , by the circumstances of the case , in making , and which nothing short of actual demonstration can subvert or set aside .

    It was a very ancient custom among the Jews to adopt the words with which any particular book of Scripture began as a title to that book . Thus Genesis was called JTitftCO , In the beginning , and Exodus niDUJ nVttl , Now these are the names ; because the books so denominated began with these particular words , f Upon the same principle the book of Isaiah was called The vision of Isaiah the son of Amos , not , as the words at first view seem to import , because the subject matter of that book was originally confined to a single vision of the prophet , but because these words

    happened to stand at the head of that collection of prophecies which the Jews attributed to Isaiah ; and under this very title we find it quoted in the second book of Chronicles ( xxxii . 32 ) . " Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah , and his goodness , behold they are written in ' The Vision of Isaiah , the prophet , the son of Amos . ' , '" The portion of Hezekiahs history to which the author of the second book of Chronicles refers in this passage , is found

    in the 36 th , 37 th , 38 th , and 39 th chapters of Isaiah . We are fully warranted , therefore , in concluding , that the book which we now have under the name of Isaiah , was known to the author of the second book of Chronicles , and , consequently , received as the undisputed production of that prophet , at least as early as the end of the fourth century before Christ , if not a century and a half earlier .

    In the book of Daniel mention is tnade of certain volumes or rolls containing the celebrated prophecy of Jeremiah concerning the destruction of Jerusalem , from which Daniel himself is said to have ascertained the exact period at which the captivity was to terminate ; and , although no direct

    quotation is made , in this passage , from the book of Jeremiah , the similarity of the expressions used by both writers is too close to have been the result of mere accident . " In the first year" of Darius , the son of Ahasuerus , " I , Daniel , understood by books the number of years whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet , that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem . " ( Dan . ix . 2 . ) If the reader will now be

    * Hierou . Prasf . in xii . Proph . —Lowth , Dc Sacra Poesi Hcbraeorum . Prasl xxi . t Hicron . Prologus Galeatus .

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    Canonical Authority of the Boohs of the Prophets . 661

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1827, page 661, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1800/page/29/