The Appeal

Let us, then, if we are christians indeed, offer up our grateful acknowledgments to the Almighty, who hath laid such firm foundations for our faith. Let us exult in the inviolable certainty of his holy word, and assure ourselves that his promises are as infallible as his predictions: to “the witness“^[1] within us, and to an acquaintance with the interior excellence of the gospel, let us labour to add a more perfect knowledge of the historical and moral evidence which defends it; that thus we may be better qualified to convince gainsayers. More particularly, let us attend to that “sure word of prophecy, whereunto we shall do well to take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place.“^[2]

If we are christians in name only, let us receive a salutary admonition from that exemplary vengeance which was inflicted by the Almighty upon the whole Jewish nation; who, while “they professed that they knew God, in works denied him;” and while they boasted that they were his peculiar people, remained “strangers to the covenant of promise.” Let us also seriously reflect, that, as then he was not a Jew who was only one “outwardly,” “in the letter” merely, and whose praise was of men—so now, in like manner, he only is a christian who is one “inwardly,” whose religion is seated in the heart; “in the spirit and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men but of God.^[3]”

Let the unbeliever, for whose benefit, chiefly, the preceding pages were written, seriously ponder their contents. Should the evidence which they contain in favour of christianity fail to convince him of its divine origin, it may be important for him to ask himself the following questions: “Can I reasonably require, for that purpose, stronger moral evidence than this? Can I conceive it possible that stronger evidence of this kind should be afforded? Am I capable of forming a scheme, of historical and moral proof, which shall not be liable to greater and more numerous objections? If I imagine myself equal to a task, at once so comprehensive and profound, have I also the resolution to enter upon it, to publish the scheme, which I shall construct, for the decision of the world, and to stake the credit of my infidelity upon it?”

But it may be proper to inform the deist, that the faith which we wish him to possess is not merely an admission upon evidence, that “all scripture is given by inspiration of God” (which, standing alone, has no higher moral value than the faith of education which he ridicules), but a vital, active principle, a faith that will “purify his heart;” that “works by love;” that will enable him to “fight the good fight,” “to overcome the world,” and to obtain “a crown of life,” and “an incorruptible inheritance” in heaven.^[4] It may be proper also to remind the unbeliever, that the evidence which has been adduced constitutes one only of those numerous bulwarks, more impregnable than the towers of Jerusalem, which encompass and defend christianity. But if this be the fact —and is it not? how great must be his temerity! how hopeless his warfare! how certain his defeat!

To the Jew we would say—Suspend, if it be practicable, the prejudices which you inherit from your forefathers, whilst you ponder, for one hour, the important and interesting subject of these pages—to you peculiarly interesting and important. Is it possible that you can attentively reflect upon the destruction of “the beloved city,” the dispersion of your nation into all countries—the terrible calamities which have every where pursued them, for nearly 1800 years, even unto this day—and not trace therein the condign and predicted punishment of their original rejection, and continued contempt of that very Messiah whose character your own scriptures so faithfully pourtray,^[5] and whose advent, precisely at the time of his actual appearance, they as clearly foretold^[6]? But your ancestors did not only reject, they also slew their Saviour. “His blood,” said they, when calling upon Pilate to crucify him, “his blood be on us and upon our children.” “A most fatal imprecation, and most dreadfully fulfilled upon them at the siege of Jerusalem, when the vengeance of heaven overtook them with a fury unexampled in the history of the world; when they were exposed at once to the horrors of famine, of sedition, of assassination, and the sword of the Romans.^[7]” Observe, too, the striking correspondence which marked their crimes in their punishment: “They put Jesus to death when the nation was assembled to celebrate the passover; and when the nation was assembled for the same purpose, Titus shut them up within the walls of Jerusalem.^[8] The rejection of the Messiah was their crime, and the following of false Messiahs to their destruction was their punishment.^[9] “

They bought Jesus as a slave; and they themselves were afterwards sold and bought as slaves at the lowest prices^[10]: they preferred a robber and a murderer to Jesus, whom they crucified between two thieves; and they themselves were afterwards infested with bands of thieves and robbers^[11]: they put Jesus to death, lest the Romans should come and take away their place and nation; and the Romans did come and take away their place and nation^[12]; and what is still more striking, and still more strongly marks the judgment of God upon them, they were punished with that very kind of death which they were so eager to inflict on the Saviour of mankind, the death of the cross; and that in such prodigious numbers, that Josephus assures us, there wanted wood for crosses, and room to place them in^[13].

Now, according to your own scriptures, that fatal catastrophe which involved your ancestors in all these miseries, was not to take place until after the coming and crucifixion of their Messiah: for thus spake the prophet Daniel, prophesying almost five hundred and forty years before the birth of the Messiah: “Know and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem (i. e. after its destruction by the Babylonians) unto Messiah the prince, shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks^[14]: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself; and the people of the prince that shall come, shall destroy the city and the sanctuary, and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.^[15]”

Such is the prediction of one of your own prophets; which not only proves that the appearance and death of the Messiah were to precede the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, but also marks the precise time when, in the person of Jesus Christ, he actually did appear. The same prophet also thus describes the great purposes of his advent; viz. to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness. And are not these precisely the very purposes for which, according to the writers of the New Testament, Jesus Christ came into the world, and which, before his departure out of it, he fully accomplished? Daniel predicted, moreover, that the Messiah should “cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease:” and accordingly, still to use his language, has not “the daily sacrifice been taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate been set up?” and has not your nation (to use the words of another of your prophets) abode “many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim?^[16]”

It was likewise foretold by Daniel, that the Messiah would “seal up the vision and prophecy;” and accordingly this prediction, like all the rest in your scriptures relating to the Messiah, was accomplished in Jesus Christ; for is it not clear that his favourite disciple St. John was the last inspired prophet? Did not the prophetic vision close with his “Revelations?” and hath any one since prevailed to unloose the mysterious and inviolable seal? It may further be proper to remind you, that precisely at the period of Christ’s advent, a lively expectation of the appearance of your Messiah in Judea, was not only current throughout your own nation, but even obtained in many parts of the Roman empire. Hence the rise of those “false Christs” and “false prophets,” which we have described, and the credulity of your ancestors in believing their declarations. They promised temporal deliverance, dominion, and glory; therefore they were regarded. The true Messiah offered a release from the captivity of sin and Satan, a spiritual salvation, and everlasting glory.

Finally, The catastrophe which we have described is pregnant with the most important instruction to the whole world. From amidst the ruins of Jerusalem, a voice may be heard calling loudly and incessantly in the ears of all nations, and saying, “Beware that ye depart not from the living God!” whilst the insulted descendants of Abraham, scattered over the face of the earth, re-echo, in despite of themselves, the solemn admonition, and, in effect, exclaim, “Behold! pictured in our fate the awful consequences of apostacy, and especially of our rejection of the Messiah, the Redeemer of the world!”

To the British nation, between which and the kingdom of Israel, during the period of its prosperity and glory, there are so many striking features of resemblance, these solemn warnings come with peculiar emphasis and import. May the Almighty mercifully incline us, as a people, to regard them with due seriousness and attention, lest, after having been exalted like the Jews, by our civil and religious privileges, to the highest distinction among the nations, we at length fall, like them, into proportional ruin and disgrace. The progress of iniquity in our country is already sufficiently great, notwithstanding a variety of encouraging considerations^[17] to excite in the mind of the serious christian very alarming apprehensions concerning the final issue of the contest in which we are at present engaged. Alternately he trembles and weeps while he contemplates the impiety and dissoluteness of our national manners, and the dreadful insensibility which every where prevails, both as it respects our deserts, and the successive manifestations of the divine displeasure against us. Without any invidious comparison between the moral state of the present and that of former generations, we would ask, what is the fact concerning ourselves?

Can any one say, that a pious, devout, and humble demeanour is the characteristic of our times, or that every species of wickedness does not alarmingly prevail throughout the land? So far from the pure spirit of christianity animating, directing, and governing our conduct, is there a principle or maxim of common morality that is not generally and habitually outraged among us? What is the national feeling upon sacred things? How beats the pulse of society here? Talk of religion; make only a distant allusion to it; what is the effect? A repulsive silence, a frown, a sneer, perhaps an insult. What is the national sentiment? What are the constant topics of discourse? to what principles do we make our appeal? By what maxim do we regulate our actions? Are they the principles and maxims of a spurious philosophy, of an arbitrary system of morals, of public opinion, of custom, or the fashion of the day? or are they the principles and maxims of the religion of Jesus? Let daily experience reply to these questions.

What, also, is our colloquial phraseology? Are not words and phrases, prophane, immoral, and antichristian in their spirit and tendency, interwoven in its very texture? and are not such as convey ideas of the first importance to mankind almost totally excluded from it? The word holiness, for instance, which is descriptive of the “highest style of man” here, and the brightest jewel in his crown of glory hereafter, is almost banished from conversation; and the appropriate expressions by which the progress of christianity in the heart (and what is a christianity that does not obtain dominion here?) are contemned and ridiculed as fanatical! Nay, even an allusion to a general or particular providence, if it be made with becoming seriousness, is frequently conceived to indicate an offensive degree of religion. If these remarks are unfortunately but too applicable to the community at large, it is at least consolatory to reflect, that in all classes of it there are many bright and excellent examples of genuine piety and virtue. Still it may be said, what are these among so many? yet few as they comparatively are, they constitute the salt^[18] of our country; and

This ‘salt preserves us; more corrupted else,
And therefore more obnoxious at this hour
Than Sodom in her day had pow’r to be,
For whom God heard his Abra’m plead in vain.^[19]’

The truly pious of the land, indeed, after all that can be said of our fleets and armies, and that is not a little, are the grand bulwarks of our national security; and the regard of Heaven to them and to their prayers, is the surest ground of hope that we shall be protected against the overwhelming destruction with which we are threatened by the great scourge of modern Europe. It becomes us, however, to “stand in awe,” to cease from sin, “to repent and do works meet for repentance;” for, although our existence as a nation, and our institutions, may be preserved, we have still just reason to apprehend the less signal marks of the divine displeasure. It is not, indeed, for blind and erring man to estimate the proportions of national delinquency, or to fix the time, the mode, or the severity of national chastisements. Generally, however, it may be observed, that the number, value, and duration of the moral advantages which a nation enjoys, constitute the equitable measure of its guilt. Judging ourselves upon this principle, how malignant does our depravity appear! how greatly aggravated our transgressions, how deeply stained our ingratitude!

Still we seem insensible to our deserts. The sky gathers blackness; we hear ‘the distant thunder that forebodes approaching storms;’ but no salutary dread prevails, no radical, no general reformation is discernible. An atheistical dissipation of mind, a sensualizing gaiety of manners pervade, and awfully infatuate the country. Dark and threatening clouds, at intervals succeeding each other, have hung over us for a time, and then dispersed; and we flatter ourselves, therefore, that we shall continue to remain unpunished.^[20] Nay, from a consideration of our national means of defence and security, we grow presumptuously confident; and, regardless of the divine judgments, which are so evidently “abroad in the earth,” we in effect say, like the Jews, “none evil can come upon us.“

The finger of prophecy points to the destruction of a second Tyre, distinguished above the nations for her commercial grandeur and prosperity; and Britain, unawed, appropriates the description to herself, saying not merely “in her heart,” but by positive declarations, I sit as a queen, and shall see no sorrow! But how rash and presumptuous is such language! For shall not He who sustains and controuls the universe, “whose power no creature is able to resist,” and “who is the only giver of all victory;” shall not he make vain the strength even of the proudest and mightiest kingdoms? “He that chastiseth the heathen, shall not he punish” nations who apostatize from him, under countless obligations to love, duty, and allegiance, with which the heathen are totally unacquainted? From this vain-glorious spirit, so fatal to the stability of empires, may the Almighty mercifully deliver us!

The evils of this spirit are incalculable. It dissipates that salutary fear of providential retribution, which keeps nations in awe. It generates that headlong presumption which rushes into dangers, and that haughtiness which precedes a fall. It throws wide open the flood-gates of iniquity, and paves the way to a radical and universal corruption of public morals. If, in the revolution of years, under the influence of such a principle of pride and vain confidence, this last state of degeneracy become ours, it requires no spirit of divination to perceive, that the awful doom of all great and ancient empires, whose dissolution and ruin the voice of history deplores, must await us also. Then, indeed, the measure of our iniquities being once filled up, “He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth,” and before whom “the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers,” may render our national bulwarks, vainly deemed impregnable, as ineffectual for defence as “the small dust of the balance,“—and, as a final display of his vengeance against inveterate and incorrigible apostacy, may send forth His commission to some great and powerful nation, which, copying the example, and emulating the fame of the ancient Romans, may convert our territory into a waste like Judea, and our capital into ruins like Jerusalem.

For “that effeminacy, folly, lust,
Enervates and enfeebles, and needs must,
And that a nation shamefully debas’d,
Will be despis’d and trampled on at last,
Unless sweet Penitence her pow’rs renew,
Is truth, if history itself be true.
There is a time, and justice marks the date,
For long forbearing clemency to wait;
That hour elaps’d, th’incurable revolt
Is punish’d, and down comes the thunderbolt.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

‘The word once giv’n,’ “and mutiny soon roars
In all her gates, and shakes her distant shores;
The standards of all nations are unfurl’d,
She has one foe, and that one foe, the world.
And if He doom that people with a frown,
And mark them with the seal of wrath, press’d down,
Obduracy takes place; callous and tough
The reprobated race grows judgment-proof;
Earth shakes beneath them, and heaven roars above,
But nothing scares them from the course they love;
To the lascivious pipe and wanton song,
That charm down fear, they frolic it along,
With mad rapidity and unconcern,
Down to the gulf from which is no return.
They [—] [—]
But all they trust in withers, as it must,
When He commands, in whom they place no trust.
Vengeance at last pours down upon their coast,
A long despis’d but now victorious host;
Tyranny sends the chain that must abridge
The noble sweep of all their privilege,
Gives liberty the last, the mortal shock,
Slips the slave’s collar on, and snaps the lock.”
——COWPER, Table Talk

FINIS.

1. 1 John 5:10. (↩)
2. 2 Peter 1:19.(↩)
3. Romans 2:28,29.(↩)
4. Acts 15:9; Gal v. 5:6; 2 Tim. 4:7; 1 John 5:4,5; James 1:3,12; 1 Peter 1:4,5. (↩)
5. Isaiah 53. (↩)
6. Dan. 9:26,27. (↩)
7. See the Bishop of London’s Lectures, vol. ii. page 284; and Bishop Newton on the Prophecies, Diss. 21. (↩)
8. Page 63 of this Treatise. (↩)
9. Ibid. 22. (↩)
10. Ibid. 19. (↩)
11. Ibid. 57. (↩)
12. See page 59 of this Treatise. (↩)
13. See the Bishop of London’s Lectures, and Bishop Newton, as before quoted; and this Treatise, page 63. (↩)
14. In prophetical language, a day is reckoned for a year, or seven years to every prophetical week. This key is given us by Moses, Lev. 25:8, and Numbers 14:34; and also by Ezekiel 4:5,6; and by this it appears, that from the commission granted to Ezra to rebuild Jerusalem, until the complete restoration of the city, there were exactly 49 years or seven weeks. From this period until the first proclamation of the Messiah by John the Baptist, there were exactly 434 years, or sixty-two weeks. John’s ministry terminated at the end of 3 years and a half, when our Lord began to preach “the kingdom of God,” and thus virtually, “in the midst of the week, caused the sacrifice and oblation to cease” (see Daniel 9:27); for he himself declared that “the law and the prophets (i. e. the ceremonial law—or law of sacrifices, &c. and the prophets under it) were until John; since that time the kingdom of God is preached.” And exactly at the end of this prophetical week, i. e. at the expiration of the remaining 3 years and a half, he confirmed the abolition of the Levitical law by the “one offering of himself” upon the cross. This ever-memorable event happened precisely in the very month which completed the 490 years, or whole period of seventy weeks, mentioned by Daniel in the 24th verse of the above cited chapter; and it deserves the particular attention of the reader, that Ferguson, the celebrated astronomer, who applied the principles of his favourite science to this very prediction of Daniel, declares, as the result of his calculations, that the “prophetic year of Messiah’s being cut off was the very same as the astronomical cal.” (↩)
15. Daniel 9:23,26. (↩)
16. Hosea 3:4. (↩)
17. The excellent character of our beloved monarch—the wisdom and harmony of his councils—the moderate, just, and humane temper of our government—the purity and equity with which justice is administered in our courts of law, and by our magistrates in general—the spirit of loyalty and unanimity which pervades the country—the patriotic ardour which is displayed in its defence—an evident revival of the spirit of religion in our national church, and also among those who dissent from it—the decline of bigotry—the cordial union of pious individuals belonging to different religious communities, and their friendly co-operation in the same benevolent undertakings—the erection of societies “for the suppression of vice,” and the increase of schools for the religious instruction of indigent children—the establishment of many other institutions for the more general diffusion of religious knowledge in our land, and for imparting the blessings of christianity to heathen nations: and, above all, the formation of societies for the more extensive dispersion of the holy scriptures in the world, and for promoting their translation into languages through which revelation hath not permanently spoken to man—all these considerations, and a variety of others which might be enumerated, we admit are not the features of a country forsaken by the Almighty, and given up to be a prey to its enemies, but are rather encouraging indications of his gracious and paternal favour towards us.
    Still, when we reverse the picture, and seriously reflect upon the spirit of infidelity which pervades, and the abominable immoralities which overspread our country, it is impossible not to feel that we are justly exposed to the wrath and indignation of heaven. The profanation of the name of God, sabbath-breaking, neglect of religious ordinances, contempt of genuine piety, swearing, perjuries, drunkenness, adultery, prostitution, &c. and such an inordinate pursuit of earthly things as absorbs all due regard to those of a future state, are impieties and vices that dreadfully prevail in the different classes of the community; and which, while they exclude from the divine favour the individuals who are justly chargeable with such enormities, are secretly operating as so many principles of dissolution in the great social edifice of our country, tending to diminish the security of our civil and religious privileges, and to expose us to the dangers of an external hostility, against which our powerful means of national defence, under the blessing of divine providence, might otherwise prove an impregnable barrier.(↩)
18. Matt. 5:13.(↩)
19. Cowper’s Task, book iii. (↩)
20. Eccl. 8:11. (↩)