JB_806_244.xml

Title: [12 Jan y 1814 Jug True Ch.5]

Description: 12 Jan y 1814

Jug True

Ch.5. II Prophecies [...?]

2

§.2. Prophecies

2

If in itself a miracle at large—meaning always a report made of a miracle, a report made or supposed to be made at an anterior and very remote point of time, is in its MS alt. ‘not’. own nature incapable of affording any sufficient proof of the verity of any religious system, no less incapable of serving in that character is every thing that has ever been brought forward in that character under the name of a prophecy—i.e. a miraculous prediction a prediction of the miraculous kind.

Not miraculous or miraculous—to one or other of these classes will every discourse be seen to belong which ever has been or ever can be held up to view in the character of a prophecy. If it be not miraculous, it then amounts to nothing: the condition in which its probative force depends is altogether wanting. If it be miraculous, then by this its alledged miraculousness a more strongly probative proof is afforded of its spuriousness than any that can be found to operate in favour of its genuineness. In the supposition of its spuriousness —i.e. of its not having been in fact delivered at the time when (as alledged)/ it was delivered, by the person by whom (as alledged) it was delivered—there can not be any thing in any degree unconformable to the notoriously ordinary course of nature: whereas in the supposition of its genuineness, it being by the same supposition of the miraculous cast in this supposition is included ex [...?] that of no unconformableness to the ordinary course of nature.

JB_806_242.xml

Title: [16 Jan 1814 Jug. True Ch.5]

Description: 16 Jan 1814

Jug. True

Ch.5. [...?] II. Prophecies

Ch.5.

2. Prophecies

II. Prophecies and Miracles—under one or other of these two heads have been ranked whatsoever supposed manifestations in the character of extraordinary or supernatural proofs of the verity of the religion of Jesus.

The character in which they have thus been brought to view is that of two species or classes of proofs distinct from one another.

Upon a closer examination, this distinctness will however be seen to vanish: a prophecy being no more than a particular species of miracle.

A prophecy is a sort of miracle of which the completion does not take place, till the fulfilment of the prophecy till the point of time is come at which the prophecy has been fulfilled: till that time the miracle is a sort of miracle as it were in abeyance. A prophecy in a word is a miraculous prediction, this is the short definition of a prophecy.

Of a miraculous nature it is necessary that the prophecy the prediction should be: on its miraculousness its probative force is plainly/ and universally understood to depend: take away the miraculousness, the prediction, be it ever so compleatly fulfilled is not what on the sort of occasion in question is meant by a prophecy.

 For the incapacity of Miracles to serve as proofs see the lately written sheets and see Rudiment Sheet.

JB_806_245.xml

Title: [16 Jan y 1814 Jug. True Ch]

Description: 16 Jan y 1814

Jug. True

Ch.5. Prophecies [...?]

§.2. Prophecies [...?]

[rubbed out]

3

Bt the mere circumstance of coincidence—viz. between some event or state of things which has actually had place and the fact of one assertion uttered at some anterior point of time affirming that an event of that description will at the time in question be seen actually to have taken place, there is no such probative force or tendency. In a multitude of instances coincidences of this sort are continually seen to take place: in any such coincidence there is nothing more miraculous, nothing more unconformable to the ordinary course of nature than in this or that tickets being that one out of thirty thousand which is the first drawn of the whole.

To the miraculousness of the concurrence of these two conditions will be seen to be absolutely necessary.

1. That the event foretold be of such a description that the probability of its taking place at the time in question should be a state of things such as no human reason could not at the time in question have been capable of presenting to itself.

2. That it be itself of the miraculous cast i.e. not capable of being made to take place but in virtue of an arrangement in a momentous degree unconformable to the ordinary course of nature: for if in itself it have not any thing in it of the miraculous character, the coincidence between the fact and the antecedent discourse by which it is predicted may be in any degree remarkable, but as above observed is not in that account any more of the miraculous account, than any of those coincidences which every day may be seen to take place.