A history of the work of redemption. Containing the outlines of a body of…

Another reason that may be given why there was so great a part of this period left without an historical account in scripture, is, that God in ••is providence took care, that there should be authentic and full accounts of the events of this period preserved in profane history. It is remarkable, and very worthy to be taken notice of, that with respect to the events of the five preceding periods, of which the scriptures give the history, profane history gives us no account, or at least of but very few of them. There are many fabulous and uncertain accounts of things that happened before; but the beginning of the times of authentic profane history is judged to be but a little before Nebuchadnezzar's time, about an hundred years before. The learned men among the Greeks and Romans, used to call the ages before that the fabulous age; but the times after that they called the historical age. From about that time to the coming of Christ, we have undoubted accounts in profane history of the principal events; accounts that wonderfully agree with the many prophecies that we have in scripture of those times.

Thus did the great God, that disposes all things, order it. He took care to give an historical account of things from the beginning ⟨p. 102⟩of the world, though all those former ages which profane history does not reach, and ceased not till he came to those later ages in which profane history related things with some certainty: and concerning those times, he gives us abundant account in prophecy, that by comparing profane history with those prophecies, we might see the agreement.

2. This period being the last period of the Old Testament, and the next to the coming of Christ, seems to have been remarkably distinguished from all others in the great revolutions that were among the nations of the earth, to make way for the kingdom of Christ. The time now drawing igh, wherein Christ, the great King and Saviour of the world, was to come, great and mighty were the changes that were brought to pass in order to it. The way had been preparing for the coming of Christ from the […] of man, through all the foregoing periods: but now the time drawing nigh, things began to ripen apace for Christ's coming; and therefore divine providence wrought wonderfully now. The greatest revolutions that any history whatsoever gives an account of, that ever had been from the flood, fell out in this period. Almost all the then known world, i. e. all the nations that were ound about the land of Canaan, far and near, that were within the reach of their knowledge, were overturned again and again. All lands were in their turns subdued, captivated, and as it were emptied, and turned upside down, and that most of them repeatedly in this period; agreeable to that prophecy, Is. xxiv.1. "Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty; he maketh it wastes, and turneth is upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.