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EXERCITATION 16

JEWISH TRADITIONS ABOUT THE COMING OF THE MESSIAH.

1. Other considerations proving the Messiah to be long since come. 2. Fluctuation of the Jews about the person and work of the Messiah. 3. Their state and condition in the world for sixteen ages. 4. Promises of the covenant made with them of old all fulfilled, unto the expiration of that covenant. 5. Not now made good unto them - Reason thereof - The promise of the land of Canaan hath failed; 6. Of protection and temporal deliverance. 7. Spirit of prophecy departed. 8. Covenant expired. 9. Jewish exceptions - Their prosperity; 10. The sins of their forefathers; 11-13. Of themselves - Vanity of these exceptions - Concessions of the ancient Jews - Folly of Talmudical doctors. 14. Tradition of the birth of the Messiah before the destruction of the second temple. 15, 16. Tradition of the school of Elias about the world’s continuance - Answers of the Jews unto our arguments, by way of concession. 17. The time prolonged because of their sins - Vanity of this pretense. 18. Not the Jews only, but the Gentiles concerned in the coming of the Messiah. 19. The promise not conditional - Limitations of time not capable of conditions. 20. No mention of any such condition. 21. The condition supposed overthrows the promise. 22. The Jews in the use of this plea self-condemned. 23. The covenant overthrown by it. 24. The Messiah may never come upon it.

1. UNTO the invincible testimonies before insisted on, we may add some other considerations, taken from the Jews themselves, that are both suitable unto their conviction, and of use to strengthen the faith of them who do believe. And the first thing that offers itself unto us, is their miserable fluctuation and uncertainty in the whole doctrine about the Messiah, ever since the time of his coming and their rejection of him.

2. That the great fundamental of their profession from the days of Abraham, and that which all their worship was founded in and had respect unto, was the promise of the coming of the Messiah, we have before sufficiently proved. Until the time of his coming, this they were unanimous in, as also in their desires and expectations of his advent. Since that time, as they have utterly lost all faith in him as to the great end for which he was promised, so all truth as to the doctrine concerning his person, office, and work, plentifully delivered in the Old Testament.

In their Talmud Tractat. Sanhed. they do nothing but wrangle, conjecture, and contend about him, and that under such notions and apprehensions of him as the Scripture giveth no countenance unto. When he shall come, and how, where he shall be born, and what he shall do, they wrangle much about, but are not able to determine any thing at all; at which uncertainty the Holy Ghost never left the church in things of so great importance. Hence some of them adhered to Bar-Cosba for the Messiah, a bloody rebel; and some of them in after ages to David el David, a wandering juggler; and Moses Cretensis, and sundry other pretenders, have they given up themselves to be deluded by (as of late unto the foolish apostate Sabadias, with his false prophets, R. Levi and Nathan), who never made the least appearance of any one character of the true Messiah, as Maimonides confesseth and bewaileth. The disputes of their late masters have not any thing more of certainty or consistency than those of their Talmudical progenitors. And this at length hath driven them to the present miserable relief of their infidelity and despair, asserting that he shall not come until immediately before the resurrection of the dead; only they take care that some small time may be left for them to enjoy wealth and pleasure, with dominion over the Edomites and Ishmaelites, - that is, Christians and Turks, under whom they live, - as they are yet full of thoughts of revenge and retaliation in the days of their Messiah. Now, whereunto can any man ascribe this fluctuation and uncertainty in and about that which was the great fundamental article of the faith of their forefathers, and their utter renunciation of the true notion and knowledge of the Messiah, but unto this, that having long ago renounced him, they exercise their thoughts and expectation about a chimera of their own brains, which, having no subsistence in itself, nor foundation in any work or word of God, can afford them no certainty or satisfaction in their contemplation about it?

3. Again; the state and condition of this people for the space of above sixteen hundred and thirty years gives evidence to the truth contended for. The whole time of the continuance of their church-state and worship, from the giving of the law on Mount Sinai to the final destruction of the city and temple by Titus, was not above sixteen hundred and thirty years, or sixteen hundred and forty upon the longest account, allowing all their former captivities and intermissions of government into the reckoning. They have, then, continued in a state of dispersion and rejection from God as long as ever they were accepted for his church and people. What their condition hath been in the world for these sixteen ages is known unto all, and what may be thence concluded we shall distinctly consider.

4. When God took the Jews to be his people, he did it by a special and solemn covenant. In this covenant he gave them promises, which were all made good unto them unto the utmost date and expiration of it in the coming of the Messiah. And they principally respected these three heads: - First, That they should possess the land of Canaan, and there enjoy that worship which he had prescribed unto them. See Exodus 6:4, 34:10, 11; Leviticus 26:9-11; Deuteronomy 8:18, 29:13; <19A510>Psalm 105:10, 11. Secondly, That he would defend them from their adversaries; or if at any time he gave them up to be punished and chastised for their sins, yet upon their repentance and supplications made unto him, he would deliver them from their oppressors, Deuteronomy 30:1-5; Nehemiah 1:9; Deuteronomy 32:35, 36; 1 Kings 8:33, 34. Thirdly, That he would continue prophets among them, to instruct them in his will, and to reclaim them from their miscarriages, Deuteronomy 18:18. The whole Pentateuch, all their divine writing, are full of promises about these things; and, as we said, until the time limited for the expiration of that special covenant, they were all made good unto them. That it was to expire themselves are forced to acknowledge, because of the express promise of a new or another covenant to be made, not like unto it, Jeremiah 31. The land given them for inheritance, and the place designed for the worship of God therein, were continued in their possession, notwithstanding the mighty attempts made by the nations of the world for their extirpation. And when at any time he gave them up for a season unto the power of their adversaries, because of their sins and provocations, - as unto the Babylonians in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, and afterwards unto the Grecians or Syrians in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, - yet still he foretold them of their condition, promised them deliverance from it, and in a short time accomplished it, though it could not be done without the ruin of other kingdoms and empires, The oppression of the Babylonians continued but seventy years; and the persecution of Antiochus prevailed only for three years and a half. Prophets also he raised up unto them in their several generations, yea, in the time of their great distress; as Jeremiah at the time of their desolation, Ezekiel and Daniel in Babylon, Haggai and Zechariah in their poverty after their return: which dispensation ceased not until they pointed out unto them the end of the covenant, and told them that the Messiah should come speedily and suddenly unto his temple, Malachi 3:1.

5. The present Jews, I hope, will not deny but that God is faithful still, and as able to accomplish his promises as he was in the days of old. Let us, then, inquire whether they enjoy any one thing promised them in the covenant, or any thing relating there unto, or have done so since the days wherein, as we have proved, the Messiah was to come. First, For the country given unto them by covenant, and the place of God’s worship therein, the whole world knows, and themselves continually complain, that strangers possess it, they being utterly extirpated and cast out of it. It is with them all as it was with Abraham before the grant of the inheritance was accomplished, - they have not possession of one foot in it in any propriety, no, not even for a burying-place. Their temple is destroyed, and all their attempts for the restoration of it, which God so blessed of old, frustrated, yea ceased. Their daily sacrifice is ceased; and whatever they substitute in the room of it is an open abomination unto the Lord. We need not insist on these things. The stories of their ruin, exile, vain attempts to recover the land of their forefathers, and of the utter pollution of the place of their worship, are known to themselves and all men that take care to know aught of these things. Where is now the covenant of the land of Canaan? Was it to be absolutely everlasting? Whence comes it to pass that the great promise of it doth utterly fail? Was it to expire? What period can be assigned unto its duration but only that of the coming of the Messiah, and the establishment of a new covenant in him? Is not the denial hereof the ready way to make the men of the world turn atheists, and to look upon the scriptures of the Old Testament as a mere fable, when they shall be taught that the promises contained in it were but conjectures, deceitful words, that came to nothing?

6. Again; how are they delivered from their adversaries? how are they defended from their oppressors? There is not a known nation in the world wherein they live not, either openly or privately, in exile and banishment from their own land. About their oppressions and against their oppressors they have cried out and prayed after their manner, for many generations. Where is the protection, the deliverance promised? If the time be not yet expired for the coming of the Messiah, why are they not delivered? What word is there in the Law or the Prophets, that they shall not be delivered out of temporal distresses any other way but by the Messiah? Hath it not been otherwise with them? Were they not delivered from former oppressions and captivities by other means? Could not God of old have dispossessed the Romans of the land of Canaan, and afterwards the Saracens? and can he not now the Turks as easily as he did the Babylonians, Persians, and Grecians? If the covenant of those promises be not expired in the coming of the Messiah, what account can they give of these things?