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

Now, if the Old Testament was not inspired by God, what account can be given of such an agreement? for if these books were only human writings, written without any divine direction, then none of these penmen knew that there would come such a person as Jesus Christ into the world; his coming was only a mere figment of their own brain; and if so, how happened it, that this figment of theirs came to pass? How came a vain imagination of theirs, which they foretold without any manner of ground of their prediction, to be exactly fulfilled? and especially how did they come all to agree in it, all pointing exactly to the same thing, tho' many of them lived so many hundred years distant one from another?

This admirable consent and agreement in a future event, is therefore a clear and certain evidence of the divine authority of those writings.

III. Hence we may learn what a weak and ignorant objection it is that some make against some parts of the Old Testament's being the word of God, that they consist so much of histories of the wars and civil transactions of the kings and people of the nation of the Jews. Some say, We find here among the books of a particular nation, histories which they kept of the state of their nation from one age to another; histories of their kings and rulers, histories of their wars with the neighbouring nations, and histories of the ⟨p. 130⟩changes that happened from time to time in their state and government: and so we find that other nations used to keep histories of of their public affairs, as well as they; and why then should we think that these histories which the Jews kept are the word of God, more than those of other people? But what has been said, shows the folly and vanity of such an objection. For hereby it appears, that the case of the histories is very different from that of all other histories. This history alone gives us an account of the first original of all things; and this history alone deduces things down in a wonderful series from that original, giving an idea of the grand scheme of divine providence, as tending to its great end. And together with the doctrines and prophecies contained in it, the same book gives a view of the whole series of the great events of divine providence, from the first original to the last end and consummation of all things, giving an excellent and glorious account of the wise and holy designs of the governor of the world in all.