The next part of the prophecy is, "And after threescore and two weeks shall sacrifices cease;" this means in the course of the week that succeeds the 62. And, no doubt, Antiochus Epiphanes abolished them in the seventh year of his reign, as we read in I Maccab. chap. i. "And the people of the prince that shall come, shall destroy the city and the sanctuary." This Antiochus most certainly did, "and went up (Antiochus) against Israel and Jerusalem with a great multitude, and entered proudly into the sanctuary, and took away the golden altars, also he took the hidden treasures, and there was great mourning in Israel," 1 Maccab. J. "And the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined." The coming of Antiochus into Jerusalem is pompously detailed in the first book of Maccabees: the Jews compared a great calamity, or an invading and irresistible army, to a flood. Let us proceed with the remainder: "And he shall confirm the covenant with many for a week," this alludes to the first seven years of the reign of Antiochus, during which he did not interfere with the worship of the Jews, although he gave liberty to those who chose to be heathens to follow their respective worship: it was in the end of the sixth, and in the beginning of his seventh year that he attacked the Jews, destroyed the temple, plundered it of its riches, and made himself the tyrant of Judea.
The last part of the passage is as follows: "And in the half of a week he shall cause the oblation and sacrifice to cease," and, I have only to observe, that, from the taking of the city by Antiochus, to the absolute forbidding Jewish worship, there elapsed about three years and a half, or half a week, for he came to Jerusalem in the 143d year of the kingdom of the Greeks, and the erecting of idols was in the year 145; after which, he continued to persecute the Jews, and promote idolatry, until the year 148. Now Antiothus attacked Jerusalem at the end of his sixth year, to which, if we add two years and three months, we have pretty exactly the period of half a week, or three years and a half. The expression, "the spreading of abominations," evidently alludes to what is said in Maccabees, chap. i. ver. 34. "Now the fifteenth day of the month Casleu, in the 145th year, they (the followers of Antiochus) set up the abomination of desolation upon the altar, and builded idol altars throughout the cities of Judah, on every side." Daniel says, chap. xii. ver. 11, speaking of his vision, "and from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that: maketh desolate set up, there shall be (that is between the first interdict of Antiochus, and the setting up of idols) 1290 days;" which is a little more than three years and a half. The wonderful prophecy is then unriddled, it becomes a contemptible piece of history in an affected style. I trust the explanation which I have given, after Marsham, will appear satisfactory. I challenge Bishop Watson to produce a plausible explanation of the passage according to the sense of the church. It may not be improper to observe, that Clemens Alexandrinus, many of the fathers, Calmet, and other persons of great knowledge, have flatly denied the application of the weeks of Daniel to Jesus. Those who espouse your cause lose sight of the context of Daniel, they forget chronology, and evince to what a pitch of delusion their minds have arrived.
This is the famous prophecy that silenced the Jewish rabbins of Venice; it is of a pattern with Daniel's four beasts; the fourth is also a story of Antiochus Epiphanes and Judas who slays the beast. Judas is the son of man coming in clouds; he is the person of whom the prophets speak, and who has most ridiculously been distorted to Jesus Christ. This farrago of prophecies seems to have been the production of Esdras or some very late writer; and I am not sure, but the doctrine of the Pythagorean millennium gave rise to some of the expressions in both writers, about the beasts: they seem to have sprung from the same origin with those of the Apocalypse; and with the four Indian horses, they crept among the Jews, together with many other Chaldean mythological ideas: the Ancient of Ancients appears in his fiery car as Osiris triumphant, or Chreeshna conquering Chiven; the books are opened before him, as his kingdom is everlasting, like that of Vishnu with the Vedams. But visions so ridiculous as that of Daniel deserve not our consideration; whatever be their source they are but reveries, and may serve to amuse idle people in their ridiculous speculations about the world's end. Like Swedenburgh, men may dream, and interpret their own dreams, and like him have the mortification to be laughed at for the non-accomplishment of their predictions. We have had of late another Daniel in Mr. Brothers; he too saw beasts, and, what is more, he understood their meaning; but unfortunately we are not Jews, and he is cruelly imprisoned in a madhouse.
I have now followed your animadversions on the objections of Thomas Paine upon the Old Testament; and I trust I have shown that you have in no degree been a more successful labourer in the cause of Judaism than your predecessors; even your wonderful prophecy of Daniel is converted into a mere historical tale, and the application Jesus Christ makes of it to himself is accordingly proved to be ridiculous, the more so, as it comes from the Son of God. I have a few more observations to make, before I leave this book. I cannot pass in silence the gross blunder you have committed, when you refer Mr. Paine to Ferguson for an astronomical proof of the miracle of the total darkness at the crucifixion of Jesus. An odd conceit, upon my word! You might know that the event is omitted by all the authors of eminence who wrote at that time; that even Pliny passes it unnoticed. Lest you should mislead the reader with your groundless assertions, I shall state the matter as it stands in reality. You avoid learned disquisitions to be intelligible, but you ought not to have been so deficient of authority, where it is most needed. Besides the gospels, the darkness is not mentioned in any author; but divines have attempted to prove the event from a supposed passage of Phlegon, related by Eusebius; it is in the following words: "In the fourth year of the two hundred and second Olympiad, there was the greatest eclipse ever seen; it was night at six, and even the stars could be seen." This passage has long been disregarded by men of knowledge; it alludes to an eclipse, not to a miraculous darkness. Both Mr. Ferguson and you have blundered in chronology and astronomy. It is certain, in the year of Christ's crucifixion, according to the common chronology, there could have been no eclipse of the sun visible at that time at Jerusalem; Ferguson, therefore, concludes it a miracle. But you ought to have known, that the fourth year of the two hundred and second Olympiad, is not the year of the crucifixion in any system of chronology; that there was an eclipse of the sun, in the year mentioned by Phlegon, in the month of November, which, however, was not central; and you know that Jesus is said to have died at the time of the full moon in March, or in the beginning of April. Besides, had even such a darkness taken place, are you ignorant of the existence of comets, and would not one passing between the earth and the sun eclipse that luminary? Have not such miracles taken place if we credit historians? The death of Caesar was preceded by wonderful prodigies, and a comet made its appearance immediately after. The supposed miraculous influence of comets, and their being prophetic signs, was once an article of faith throughout all Europe, and the ancient history of every country records many events which the authors maintain arose from comets.
Your reflections on prophets I cannot pass unnoticed. You pretend to make a distinction between dreamers, and impostors, and true prophets. You acknowledge the number of soothsayers and fortunetellers among the Jews; but you maintain that they were altogether distinct from the true prophets, and appeal to Jeremiah, who puts the Jews on their guard against false prophets. Does not every quack, every impostor, do the same, and caution the world to beware of counterfeits? You might have saved a great deal of trouble, had you condescended to produce your proofs of the genuineness of the writings of the prophets; and then we might enquire concerning the works of these augurs. You pretend that a sure mark of the reality of a prophet is his predicting bad things, for a fortune-teller always prophecies good. Pardon me if I suppose you a follower of Mr. Brothers. For surely the destruction of London was not a most desirable event. It is in vain you attempt to turn Mr. Paine into ridicule for his definition of a prophet. He most justly calls them strolling-poets, fortune-tellers; being in Judea what the gipsies, the augurs, and the astrologers have been in other nations. The Hebrew word Navi signifies nothing but an orator, a public speaker, and is by the Jews applied, in a forced way, to soothsayers and diviners. It is incontrovertible that they existed among the Jews in colleges, and were brought up to the business. Their chief employment was to write the chronicles of the times. The name prophet is given in the Bible indiscriminately with that of holy man. Among the Hebrews, the first book of Kings was called the prophecy of Samuel. Abel is called repeatedly in the New Testament a prophet, (see Matth. chap. xxiii. ver. 31 and 35, and Luke chap. xi. ver. 50 and 51), although we have no account of his having predicted any. Among the Jews there certainly were fortune-tellers, necromancers, and witches, all of which you rank among the impostors. But had not the witch of Endor a real power of incantation? Did she not most wonderfully raise up the spirit of Samuel? Or are we to look upon the story of the witch of Endor in the same light as those of modern witches? That the prophets of the Jews were repeatedly deceived, we cannot have the smallest doubt when 400 of these gentlemen told a downright lie to Ahaz. But you have a very easy expedient in all these cases. When a prophet tells a lie, you may, as was done in this particular case, attribute it to a design of God to cheat the person who consults his oracles, just as Jupiter did of old to Agamemnon when he sent him the false dream.
You reproach Thomas Paine for want of candour. He has not, you say, examined the general design of the Old Testament There he would find the benevolence of the God of the Jews, and his infinite goodness in selecting them from among the nations, in preserving them from idolatry. If he chose this people he has certainly exposed them to continual sufferings, and all for no other purpose than to teach mankind that idolatry is the greatest of crimes; that to avoid it, murder, plunder, the crusades, the inquisition, persecution, may all be laudable means for the preservation of the faith of nations. Thus, the cherished people, who were most intimate with their God, committed the most enormous crimes, under the pretence of preserving pure their adoration of the implacable God Jehovah. Did not all the endeavours of Jehovah to rescue nations from idolatry prove fruitless? This despicable creature man has been able to effect what mighty Jehovah never accomplished. Science is the only antidote against all kinds of superstition. Did Cicero adore stocks or stones? Or did ever any learned man among the heathens humble himself before idols? Has not the principal branch of the church of Christ been notorious idolaters? But what avails all this? Have you proved that the Heathens "emulated in the transcendent flagitiousness of their lives, the impure morals of their gods?" You assert it; but unluckily it is one of the many unsupported and assumed propositions in your pamphlet. Did nations necessarily imitate the conduct of their gods, I would tremble at being among the followers of the bloody Jehovah. The heathens were certainly dreamers in their adoration of the planets; we are taught by science, that these bodies resemble our earth in the general laws that govern them. It was natural for rude men to gaze at the sublimity of the stupendous fabric, the refulgency of the sun; the blessings derived from his genial influence could not be contemplated without admiration by the amazed and fearful savage. Idolatry is ridiculous: but have you proved that Jehovah deserves more to be revered than the Great Whole of nature, whether called Pan, or otherwise disguised in emblems, than the harmony of the planets designed by symbols, the generative powers by Venus, or the vivifying light emanating from the bright orb of Apollo? Confess at least, that the allegorical adoration of nature could only deceive the multitude who were kept in ignorance by their priests. If you are candid, you must acknowledge, that the Polytheists were tolerant, that the Atheists or Deists lectured close, to the temple. They did not exterminate nations, establish inquisitions, murder unbelievers as the Jews, and the Christians; although, as you observe, they received the gift of God through Jesus Christ, and were made alive by the covenant of grace.
In what consists the superiority of the Jewish or Christian notions of God? Jehovah is a being incomprehensible; he is a jealous and a revengeful God, he hardens men's hearts, and sacrifices whole nations to a particular people, who, in their turn, are sacrificed for the boasted scheme of general good, which is never the nearer being accomplished. He must be adored and revered, and yet he does not make himself known to man. He does not even show himself face to face to any but Moses. You pay no great compliment to his omnipotence, when you observe, that "probably he could not give to such a being as man a full manifestation of the end for which he designs him, nor of the means requisite for that end;"—and, "that it may not be possible for the Father of the universe to explain to us, infants in apprehension, the goodness and the wisdom of his dealings with the sons of man." Jehovah, in short, equally the offspring of fancy with the Heathen Jupiter, is as cruel as Moloch, and, like other productions of the brain, an invisible phantom, to which priests give the passions of a tyrant; and, in their desire that he should reign alone, that men should not worship other deities, his ministers have preached up this God, and the multitude, eager to admire what they cannot comprehend, have followed the mandates of the pretended interpreters of his will. Still, however, the greatest number of ignorant men are, and will ever be, idolaters; in vain their spiritual guides preach up incomprehensible and ideal beings in an unintelligible jargon; man will always seek to satisfy his senses. Even the immediate presence of Jehovah, and his horrid massacres, could not prevent the favourite nation from following other gods. Even the inspired, the wise, the royal Solomon forsook "the God of Israel, holy, just, and good," for "the impure rabble of heathen Baalim."
According to your nations, according to the doctrines of the Jewish and the Christian churches, the sole aim of God has been to be exclusively adored, and jealousy is his prominent feature. It is not in the pursuit of knowledge, or in the practice of morality that he delights. The precepts of social virtue occasionally scattered through the Old, as well as the New Testament, can make little impression when contrasted with the vindictive cruelty of the Deity. The Jewish Jehovah requires nothing of his followers but their compliance in executing his bloody commands against nations whom he calls impious, because he has not revealed himself to them. The man after his own heart, is the murderer of thousands of innocent people. Christ orders his followers to despise the reason he has given them, to avoid pleasure, to hate the world, and to love pain, to pray, and to spend their lives in continual mortification, and in gazing over unintelligible mysteries to acquire his kingdom. If they fail to believe in him, whether from ignorance or from conviction, he punishes them with eternal damnation, or as Saint Athanasius emphatically expresses it in his celebrated creed, "Whosoever believeth in these things shall be saved; and whosoever believeth not shall be damned."