1. THERE remains yet one place more, giving clear and evident testimony unto the truth under demonstration, to be considered and vindicated ; and this is the illustrious prediction and calculation of time granted unto Daniel by the angel Gabriel : Chap. ix. 24-27, “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins,
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and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy. Kmow therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the ‘commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary ; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. And he shall confirm the cove- nant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the over- spreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the de- solate.” So our translation reads the words, how agreeably unto the original we shall consider and examine particularly in our progress. 2. Of what importance this testimony is in our present cause and contest, as Christians generally acknowledge, so the Jews them- selves are in a great measure sensible, as we shall see in the con- sideration of those manifold evasions which they have invented to avoid the efficacy and conviction of it. But before we engage into its management and improvement, an attempt against our appre- hension of the whole design, intendment, and subject-matter of the prophecy itself, must be removed out of our way. A reverend and learned person, in a late exposition of the visions and prophecies of Daniel, endeavouring to refer them all unto the state of the churches of Christ in these latter days of the world, with their sufferings under and deliverance from the power of Antichrist, amongst the rest contends expressly that this prophecy, prediction, and compu- tation, doth not relate unto the coming and suffering of the Messiah, but only unto the state of the churches before mentioned. Hence, he who published those discourses declareth, in the title of the book, that “anew way is propounded in it for the finding out of the determinate time signified unto Daniel in his seventy weeks, when it did begin, and when we are to expect the end thereof.’”’* And a NEW WAY it is indeed, not only diverse from, but, upon the matter, contrary unto the catholic faith of the church of God, both Judaical and Christian, ever since the first giving out of the pro- phecy. And such a way it is as is not only groundless, as we shall discover in the examination and trial of it, but also dangerous unto the Christian faith, if received. Yet, because the author of it (if he be yet alive) is a person holy, modest, and learned, and proposeth
1 He refers to “The Visions and Prophecies of Daniel Expounded,” by Thomas Parker a Puritan divine, who went to New England in 1634, and died in 1677.—Ep.
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“his conjectures with submission unto the judgment of others, not peremptorily determining what he says,” p. 51, his discourse de- serves our consideration, and a return unto it, with a sobriety answerable unto that wherewith it is proposed. And herein we shall attend unto the method chosen by himself; which is, first, to give reasons and arguments to prove that this prophecy cannot be applied unto the coming of the Messiah; and then those which countenance, as he supposeth, the application of it unto these latter days; both which shall be examined in their order.
3. That which in general he first insisteth on as a reason to abju- dicate this prediction from the times of the Messiah, is the differ- ence that is among learned men about the chronological computation of the time here limited and determined. The variety of opinions in this matter he terms “ monstrous;” and the difficulties that attend the several calculations, “ inextricable.’ But whether this reason be cogent or no unto his purpose is easy to determine, yea, it seems to have strength on the other side; for notwithstanding the diffi- culties of the exact computation pretended, not one of them whom he mentions, nor scarce any other person, ancient or modern, before him- self, or a very few besides, did ever doubt or call in question whether the time designed did concern the coming of the Messiah or no. And it seems to be a great evidence of the truth thereof, that no difficulty in the computation did ever move them to question the principle itself.
Besides, that this is indeed no tolerable argument, namely, that learned men cannot agree in the exact computation of any time appointed unto such an end, to prove that it was not designed unto that end, is evident, from other instances in the Scripture to the same purpose. Thus, God tells Abraham that his seed should sojourn in a strange land “ four hundred years,” Gen. xv. 13; which Stephen repeats, Acts vii. 6. After this, Moses, with some differ- ence in the years themselves, affirms that their sojourning in Egypt was “four hundred and thirty years,’ Exod. xii. 40; which St Paul repeats, Gal. iii. 17. Now, learned men greatly differ about the right stating of this account, and from what time precisely the computation is to be dated, and that on the very same reason which divides their judgments in the stating of these weeks in Daniel: for as in this place of Daniel, the angel fixing the beginning of the time limited unto “the going forth of the decree to build Jerusa- lem,” there being several decrees at several seasons, made as it should seem to that purpose, they are not agreed from which of them precisely to begin the account; so Paul affirming that the “four hundred and thirty years” began with the giving of the pro- mise unto Abraham, it having been several times and at several - seasons solemnly given unto him, there is great question from which