we should not count liis predictions for prophecies, but rather as comments and explications of the short and dark texts of natural causes, and acknowledge him a learned naturalist, but not deserving the name of a true prophet. Secondl}', If he hath not his hint from natural causes, then he gathers his inferences from moral and political causes, which, compared together by so deep a head as his, give him great, lielp and advantage to infer many times what in very great probability of reason will come to pass. Thus, what the devil told Saul would become of him, his army and kingdom, was nothing but what he might rationally conclude from those premises which lay before him,' in his being rejected of God, and another anointed by God's own command to be king in his stead, together with the just height and full measure to which Saul's sins might now be thought to have arrived, by his going to a witch for counsel, and a puissant army of the Philistines preparing against him ; whose wonted courage now so failed him, that he went rather like a malefactor, pinioned and bound with the terrors of his accusing conscience, to meet an executioner that should give the fatal stroke to him, than like a valiant captain to adorn and enrich himself with the spoils of his enemies: all these laid together, make it appear the devil, without a gift of prophecy, might tell him his doom. Thirdly, God may and doth sometimes reveal future events to Satan ; as when God intends him to be his instrument to execute some of his purposes, he may, and doth acquaint him with the same some time before ; and you will not say the hangman is a prophet, that can tell such a man shall on such a day be hanged, when be hath a warrant I'rom the king that ajipoints hhn to do that office. Thus Satan could have told Job beforehand what sad afflictions would certainly be- fall him in his estate, servants, children, and his own body, because God had granted him a commission to be the instrument that should bring all these upon him. But neither Satan nor any creature else are able of themselves to foretell such events, which neither arise from natural causes, nor may be rationally concluded to follow from moral and political probabilities, but are locked up in the cabinet of Divine will how they shall fall out; and such are the prophecies which we find in the Holy Scriptures, by v.diich they plainly prove their heavenly extraction. They must needs come from God, that tell us what God only knew, and depended on his will to be disposed of. Who but God could tell Abraham where his posterity should be, and what should particularly befall them four hundred years after his death ? For so long before v.ashe acquainted with their deliverance out of Egypt, Gen. xv., which accordingly came to pass punctually on the very day foretold, Exod. xii. 41. How admirable are the prophecies of Christ, the Messiah, in which his person, birth, life, and death, even to the minute, and circumstances of them, are as exactly and particularly set down, many ages before his coming upon the stage, as by the Evangelists themselves, who were upon the place with him, and saw all that was done with their own eyes ; and though some things foretold of him may be thought, because small and inconsiderable in themselves, not to deserve a mention in so high and sacred a prophecy, as our Saviour's riding on an ass, Zech. ix. 9, the thirty pieces given for him, and the purchase of the potter's field afterward with them, Zech. xi. 12, 13, and the preserving his bones whole, when they that suffered with him had theirs broken ; these, I say, and such like, though they may seem inconsiderble passages in themselves, yet upon due weighing the end for which they are mentioned, we shall find that our weak faith could not well have spared their help to strengthen it in the belief of the prophecy. Indeed, a great weight of the argument to prove the truth and divinity of the prophecy moves upon these little hinges ; because the less these are in themselves, the more admirably piercing and strong must that eye be that could see such small things at so gi-eat a distance ; none but an Infinite Understanding could do this ! And now I hope none will dare to ask, But how may we be sure that such prophecies were extant so long before their fulfilling, and not foisted in after these things were done ? seeing they were upon public record in the church of the Jews, and not denied by those that denied Christ himself. And truly this one consideration cast into the scale after all the former, doth give an over-weight to the argument we are now upon ; I mean, that these prophecies were so long and so openly read and known, and consequently impossible that Satan should be ignorant of them, and not take
AND THE SWOaU OF THE SPIRIT. 567