4.  Because, admitting (as indeed it never was, or can be denied) that many passages of scripture, and of prophetical scripture especially, must be figuratively taken; yet, we must always put a wide difference between a sense not just as the words in their first signification import, and a sense directly the contrary of what they import.  And yet we complain that this latter is the sense which Christians labour to obtrude upon the gainsayers.  We say, that a kingdom of this world, and not of this world; contempt and adoration; poverty and magnificence; persecution and peace; sufferings and triumph; a cross and a throne; the scandalous death of a private man upon a gibbet, and the everlasting dominion of a universal monarch, must be reconciled, and mean the self same thing, before the prophecies appealed to, can do their cause any service.  Granting, then, the goodness of God (according to them,) to have been better than his word, by giving spiritual blessings, instead of temporal; yet, what will become of the truth of God, if He act contrary to his word, even when it would be for our advantage, if He misleads people by expressions, which, if they mean any thing at all, must mean what the Jews understand by them?

In short, it seems to me, that if Providence has, in truth, any concern with the predictions of the Old Testament, it could not have taken more effectual care to justify the unbelief and obstinacy of the Jews, than by ordering matters so, that the life and death of Jesus should be so exactly, and so entirely, the very reverse of all those ideas under which their prophets had constantly described, and the Hebrew nation as constantly expected of their Messiah, and his coming; and to suppose that the Supreme Being meant to describe and point out such a person as Jesus by such descriptions of the Messiah as are contained in the Old Testament, is certainly substantially to accuse him of the moat unjustifiable prevarication, and mockery of his creatures.

In order that the subject we are examining, and the arguments we make use of, may be clearly understood by the reader, he is requested to bear in mind, that the author reasons all along upon the supposed Divine authority of the Old Testament; which is admitted by both Jews and Christians.  Whether the supernatural claims of the Old Testament be just, or not, is of no consequence in the world to the controversy we are considering.  For the dispute of the Jew with the Christian is one thing, and his dispute with the sceptic is another, totally different.  For whether such a personage as the Messiah is described to be, has appeared eighteen hundred years ago, is quite a different thing from the question, whether such a personage will appear at all.  The Christian says, that he has appeared in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  This the Jew denies, but looks forward to the future fulfilment of the promises of his Bible, while the Sceptic denies that the Messiah has come, or ever will.