488 Deuteronomy, Xxxii. 21. [233.

repent of it. All preceding judgments were removed, when your fathers repented of the crimes on account of which they had been inflicted : and the reason that your present judgments are not removed, is, that your enmity against the Lord Jesus is at this hour as strong as ever; and, if he were to put himself in your power again, you would conspire against him as before, and crucify him again. Yet, if He was not the Messiah, your Messiah is not come ; and, con- sequently, those prophecies in your inspired volume which foretold his advent at that time, are falsified. Your Messiah was to come before the sceptre should finally depart from Judah, and while the second temple was yet standing, and about the time that the seventy weeks of Daniel should expire : but the sceptre is departed, and the temple is de- stroyed; and Daniel's weeks are expired; and nearly eighteen hundred years have elapsed, since the period fixed by these prophecies for his appearance. It is evident therefore that all these prophecies have failed of their accomplishment, if your Messiah is not yet come. As for saying, that the coming of the Messiah was deferred by God for the wickedness of your nation, what proof have you of it ? Where has God threatened that, as a consequence of your wickedness ? No : your Messiah is come ; and has been treated in the manner which your own prophe- cies foretold, and as Jesus himself foretold : and though you, like your forefathers, in order to set aside the testimony of his resurrection, have recourse to that self-destructive falsehood of his being taken away by his own disciples, whilst a whole guard of Roman soldiers were asleep, you know that his dis- ciples did at the very next festival, on the day of Pentecost, attest that he was risen, and attest it too in the very presence of the people who had put him to death, no less than three thousand of whom were converted to him on that very day : you know too, that in a short time mvriads of Jews believed in Jesus ; and that his Gospel continued to prevail throughout the known world, till the judgments threatened