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

This translation of the scriptures into a language commonly understood through the world, prepared the way for Christ's coming, and setting up his kingdom in the world, and afterwards did greatly promote it. For as the apostles went preaching through the world, they made great use of the scriptures of the Old Testament, and especially of the prophecies concerning Christ that were contained in them. By means of this translation, and by the Jews being scattered every where, they had the scriptures at hand in a language that was understood by the Gentiles: and they did principally make use of this translation in their preaching and writings where-ever they went; as is evident by this, that in all the innumerable quotations that are made out of the Old Testament in their writings in the New-Testament, they are almost every where in the very words of the Septuagint. The sense is the same as it is in the original Hebrew; but very often the words are different, as all that are acquainted with their Bibles know. When the apostles in their epistles, and the evangelists in their histories, cite passages out of the Old Testament, it is very often in different words from what we have in the Old Testament, as all know. But yet these citations are almost universally in the very words of the Septuagint version; for that may be seen by comparing them together, they being both written in the same language. This makes it evident, that the apostles, in their preaching and writings, commonly made use of this translation. So this very translation was that which was principally used in Christian churches through most nations of the world for several hundred years after Christ.

XVI. The next thing is the wonderful preservation of the church when it was imminently threatened and persecuted under the Grecian empire.

The first time they were threatened was by Alexander himself. When he was besieging the c•ty of Tyre, sending to the Jews for assistance and supplies for his army, and they refusing, out of a conscientious regard to their oath to the king of Persia, he being a man of a very furious spirit, agreeable to the scripture representation of the rough he goa, marched against them, with a design to cut them off. But the priests going out to meet him in their priestly garments, when he met them, God wonderfully turned his ear to spare them, and favour them, much as he did the heart of Esau when he met Jacob.