none should have taken effect.  In Deuteronomy, chapter 28, verse 64, where Moses explicitly foretells the dispersion, he states that they shall there serve gods of wood and stone:  ’And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even to the other; AND THERE THOU SHALT SERVE OTHER GODS, WHICH NEITHER THOU NOR THY FATHERS HAVE KNOWN, EVEN GODS OF WOOD AND STONE.’  The Jews are at this day remarkably tenacious of their religion.  Moses also declares that they shall be subjected to these curses for disobedience to his ritual:  ’And it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all the commandments and statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee.’  Is this the real reason?  The third, fourth, and fifth chapters of Hosea are a piece of immodest confession.  The indelicate type might apply in a hundred senses to a hundred things.  The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is more explicit, yet it does not exceed in clearness the oracles of Delphos.  The historical proof that Moses, Isaiah, and Hosea did write when they are said to have written is far from being clear and circumstantial.

But prophecy requires proof in its character as a miracle; we have no right to suppose that a man foreknew future events from God, until it is demonstrated that he neither could know them by his own exertions, nor that the writings which contain the prediction could possibly have been fabricated after the event pretended to be foretold.  It is more probable that writings, pretending to divine inspiration, should have been fabricated after the fulfilment of their pretended prediction than that they should have really been divinely inspired, when we consider that the latter supposition makes God at once the creator of the human mind and ignorant of its primary powers, particularly as we have numberless instances of false religions, and forged prophecies of things long past, and no accredited case of God having conversed with men directly or indirectly.  It is also possible that the description of an event might have foregone its occurrence; but this is far from being a legitimate proof of a divine revelation, as many men, not pretending to the character of a prophet, have nevertheless, in this sense, prophesied.

Lord Chesterfield was never yet taken for a prophet, even by a bishop, yet he uttered this remarkable prediction:  ’The despotic government of France is screwed up to the highest pitch; a revolution is fast approaching; that revolution, I am convinced, will be radical and sanguinary.’  This appeared in the letters of the prophet long before the accomplishment of this wonderful prediction.  Now, have these particulars come to pass, or have they not?  If they have, how could the Earl have foreknown them without inspiration?  If we admit the truth of the Christian religion on testimony such as this, we must admit, on the same strength of evidence, that God has affixed the highest rewards to belief, and the eternal tortures of the never-dying worm to disbelief, both of which have been demonstrated to be involuntary.