This too is my conclusion, but (if I do not delude myself) from more evident, though not perhaps more certain, premisses.  The age of the Cyrus prophecies is the great object of attack by Eichhorn and his compilers; and I dare not say, that in a controversy with these men Davison’s arguments would appear sufficient.  But this was not the intended subject of these Discourses.

Disc.  VI.  Pt.  II. p. 289.

  But how does he express that promise?  In the images of the
  resurrection and an immortal state.  Consequently, there is implied in
  the delineation of the lower subject the truth of the greater.

This reminds me of a remark, I have elsewhere made respecting the expediency of separating the arguments addressed to, and valid for, a believer, from the proofs and vindications of Scripture intended to form the belief, or to convict the Infidel.

Disc.  VI.  Pt.  IV. p. 325.

When Cyrus became master of Babylon, the prophecies of Isaiah were shewn or communicated to him, wherein were described his victory, and the use he was appointed to make of it in the restoration of the Hebrew people. (’Ezra’ i. 1, 2.)

This I had been taught to regard as one of Josephus’s legends; but upon this passage who would not infer that it had Ezra for its authority,—­who yet does not expressly say that even the prophecy of the far later Jeremiah was known or made known to Cyrus, who (Ezra tells us) fulfilled it?  If Ezra had meant the prediction of Isaiah by the words, ‘he hath charged me’, &c., why should he not have referred to it together with, or even instead of, Jeremiah?  Is it not more probable that a living prophet had delivered the charge to Cyrus?  See ‘Ezra’ vi. 14.—­Again, Davison makes Cyrus speak like a Christian, by omitting the affix ‘of Heaven to the Lord God’ in the original.  Cyrus speaks as a Cyrus might be supposed to do,—­namely, of a most powerful but yet national deity, of a God, not of God.  I have seen in so many instances the injurious effect of weak or overstrained arguments in defence of religion, that I am perhaps more jealous than I need be in the choice of evidences.  I can never think myself the worse Christian for any opinion I may have formed, respecting the price of this or that argument, of this or that divine, in support of the truth.  For every one that I reject, I could supply two, and these [Greek:  anekdota].

Ib. p. 336.

Meanwhile this long repose and obscurity of Zerubbabel’s family, and of the whole house of David, during so many generations prior to the Gospel, was one of the preparations made whereby to manifest more distinctly the proper glory of it, in the birth of the Messiah.

In whichever way I take this, whether addressed to a believer for the purpose of enlightening, or to an inquirer for the purpose of establishing, his faith in prophecy, this argument appears to me equally perplexing and obscure.  It seems, ‘prima facie’, almost tantamount to a right of inferring the fulfilment of a prophecy in B., which it does not mention, from its entire failure and falsification in A., which, and which alone, it does mention.