date

8 Oct 1815 Jug True 1
8 Oct 1815

Jug True

1

Ch. Prophecies

1

§. Conditions to its probativeness

§. In the part of a prophecy conditions requisite to its subserviency to the purpose of proving the existence of a commission from the Almighty.

To supply the deficiency resulting from the incapacity of miracles to afford a sufficient proof to persons other than the precipient witnesses of each miracle, and more particularly to the inhabitants of distantly posterior ages, remains the proof deducible from prophecies.

The following are the considerations that may be stated as Conditions necessary to the existence of probative force from on the part of a prophecy with reference to the existence of the object here in question.

1. That the event or state of things predicted be not of such a nature as to be capable of being and likely to be foreseen by ordinary human sagacity.

2. That it be not of the sort of those which are commonly regarded and spoken of as happening by chance.

3. With reference to every person on whom it can operate in this its probative character, it must have been an event already past: because all the event be past, the prophecy is not fulfilled.

4. If with reference to any person or number of persons it be of a calamitous or even in any degree unpleasant nature, the prediction, unless the unpleasant event be in its nature absolutely inevitable or at any rate by persons in that situation absolutely inevitable <.^.^.>—not evitable but at the expense of an event to themselves unpleasant—the prophecy must have been such <.^.^.> so expressed as not to have been intelligible to them, <.^.^.> as above it must have been intelligible to and <.^.^.> considered by men of other ages or other places.
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  • Title: [16 Jan 1814 Jug. True Ch.5]
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    Ch.5. [...?] II. Prophecies

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    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.
  • Title: [23 Sept 1815 Jug. True Ch.5]
    Description: 23 Sept 1815

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    Ch.5. Proofs

    §. Prophecies

     From Crudens Concordance. state the source of prophecy viz.

    1. Prediction 1. of ordinary occurrence

    2. of extraordinary d o

    2. Political or religious discourse without prediction

    3. Speaking out on the part of any one: after, or before the event spoken of

     Tabulate the quotations made by Jesus

    1. Ambiguous meaning of the word prophecy—To prophecy means as well to speak in public to discourse for the public ear, or more simply to speak out—and after the event has happened—as to predict. Many of the discourses cited as prophecies are not so much as predictions. Prophet, a writer at large.

    2. Incapacity of prophecy in the sense of prediction to prove commission from God. Prophecies that prove nothing are

    1. A prophecy which can never be disfulfilled: ex.gr. one for the fulfilment of which no man is particularized. ex.gr. deliverance from natural oppression

    2. A prophecy predicting in general terms, and without particularization an event belonging to any of those sorts of events which in the course of nature are continually happening—such as vicissitudes of the weather—war and peace—good and ill fortune in all shapes

    3. Any political speaker or writer of modern times better entitled to the appellative of prophet than any of the Jews so called.
  • Title: [16 Jan y 1814 Jug. True Ch]
    Description: 16 Jan y 1814

    Jug. True

    Ch.5. Prophecies [...?]

    §.2. Prophecies [...?]

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    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.