In the very passages in which Mohammed condemns the doctrine of the Trinity, the same form abounds: “We have prepared for such of them as are unbelievers a painful punishment.” “We have revealed our will unto thee.” “We have given thee the Koran, as we gave the psalms to David.” “O ye who have received the Scriptures, exceed not the just bounds in your religion; neither say of God any other than the truth. Verily Christ Jesus, the Son of Mary, is the apostle of God, and his Word, which he conveyed into Mary, and a spirit proceeding from him. Believe therefore in God and his apostles, and say not, There are three Gods: forbear this; it will be better for you. God is but one God. Far be it from him that he should have a Son! Unto him belongeth whatsoever is in heaven and on earth.”—Ch. iv. pp. 80, 81.
C.
On the Prophecy of an “Immanuel.”
For the Interpretation which identifies “the Virgin” with the city of Jerusalem, I am indebted to Rammohun Roy, who has justified it by reasons which appear to me satisfactory. See his Second Appeal to the Christian Public. Appendix II. Calcutta, 1821, p. 128 seqq. The use of the definite article with the word (העלמה) points out the Virgin as some known object, who would be recognized by King Ahaz, without further description. It will hardly be maintained that this prince was so familiar with evangelical futurities, as to understand the phrase of Mary of Nazareth. Nor does it seem at all likely that either the prophet’s wife, or any other person not previously the subject of discourse, should be thus obscurely and abruptly described. But if “the Virgin” was a well-understood mode of speaking of Jerusalem, Ahaz would be at no loss to interpret the allusion. And that this metaphor was one of the common-places of Hebrew speech, in the time of the prophets, might be shown from every part of their writings. “Thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel; thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry.”[[264]] “Then shall the Virgin rejoice in the dance.”[[265]] “The Lord hath trodden the Virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a wine-press.”[[266]] And Isaiah himself uses this expression respecting a foreign city: “Thou shalt no more rejoice, O thou oppressed Virgin, daughter of Sidon.”[[267]] And expressing to the invader Sennacherib, the contempt which God authorized Jerusalem to entertain for his threats, he says, “The Virgin, the daughter of Zion, hath despised thee and laughed thee to scorn.”[[268]]
It should he remembered, however, that the establishment of this interpretation is by no means necessary to the proof of invalidity in the Trinitarian application of the prophecy. The reasons which I have adduced, together with the use in a neighbouring passage, of the phrase “over the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel,”[[269]] appear to me to point out some prince as the Virgin’s Son. But many eminent interpreters consider him as only one of the Prophet’s own children, “whom the Lord had given him, for signs and for wonders in Israel.”[[270]] And the first four verses of the next chapter certainly speak of Isaiah’s son in a manner so strikingly similar, as to give a strong support to this interpretation. But whatever obscurity there may be in the passage, the one clear certainty in it is this: that it does not refer to any person to be born seven or eight hundred years after the delivery of the prediction. And it is surely unworthy of any educated Theologian, possessing a full knowledge of the embarrassments attending the Trinitarian appeal to such texts, still to reiterate that appeal, without any specification of the mode in which he proposes to sustain it. Is it maintained that Jesus of Nazareth was the primary object of the prophecy? Or will any one be found deliberately to defend the hypothesis of a double sense? Or must we fear, that a lax and unscrupulous use is often made of allusions which sound well in the popular ear, without any distinct estimate of their real argumentative value?
It is no doubt convenient to cut the knot of every difficulty by the appeal to inspiration; to say, e.g., that Matthew applies the word Emmanuel to Christ, and with a correctness which his infallibility forbids us to impeach. But are our opponents prepared to abide by this rule, to prove its truth, to apply it, without qualification, to the New Testament citations from the Hebrew Scriptures? Will they, for instance, find and expound, for the benefit of the church, the prophecy stated by Matthew to have been fulfilled in Jesus, “He shall be called a Nazarene?”[[271]] The words are declared to have been “spoken by the prophets.” But they are not discoverable in any of the canonical prophecies: so that either the Evangelist took them from some inspired work now lost,—in which case the canon is imperfect, and Christianity is deprived of the benefit of certain predictions intended for its support; or, he has cited them so incorrectly from our existing Scriptures, that the quotation cannot be identified. I cannot refrain from expressing my amazement, that those, whose constant duty it is to expound the New Testament writings should be conscious of no danger to their authority, when it is strained so far as to include an infallible interpretation of the Older Scriptures.
D.
On Isaiah ix. 6.