non's ill treatment, affures him "There shall come a time, when Agamemnon will feek and folicit your favour and friendship by magnificent prefents;" which prophecy was fulfilled in the ninth book, 115, very fimilar to the promise given to Abraham, Gen. xv. 13. "Know of a furety, faid God, that thy feed fhall be a stranger in a land, that is not theirs, and fhall ferve them, and they fhall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation whom they shall serve, will I judge, and afterward shall they come out with great fubftance" which promise was accomplished Exod. xii. 35." And the Lord gave the people favour in the fight of the Egyptians, fo that they presented unto them fuch things as they would, jewels of filver, and jewels of gold, and raiment." 36. Another moft remarkable inftance of poetic prophecy is in the beginning of the fifteenth Iliad, when Jupiter in difcourfe with Juno foretells the progrefs of the war, its termination in the death of Hector, and ruin of the Trojan kingdom, very fimilar again to the prediction in Pfalm Ixix. 25. and Pfalm cvii. 7. befpeaking the death of the traitor Judas, and destruction of the Jewish ftate: Judas acting under the countenance, protection and authority of the High Prieft and Jewish Sanedrim perfonates the whole; his fin is the fin of the nation; fo the crime of Paris defended by Priam and Hector, was the crime of Troy. Let us next look into Virgil's Poetic Prophecies. When Alexander, after he had fubdued his neighbours, entered Jerufalem, he was received by the High Prieft and his Brethren with great pomp and ceremonious gratulations; they fhewed him their temple and the place in the book of Daniel, which prophefied, that he should be the founder of the third great monarchy. From this time Alexander fhewed the Jews great favour, and encouraged many of them to fettle in Macedonia and Alexandria; where afterwards, under the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, they had their fcriptures tranflated into Greek, called the Septuagint, or Seventy translation. K 4 When When the Roman power, following the conquests of Alexander, began to lift up its mighty head over Greece, Syria and Egypt, many of the Jews retired into Italy, and took up their habitations in Rome. Curiofity would naturally lead the men of letters, fuch as Ovid, Horace and Virgil, who were about the court of Augustus, to converfe with these travellers, and inquire into their notions, customs, manners and writings; and the Jews would as naturally court their good opinion and recommendation to Auguftus by civil receptions and communications, and might point out to them, as their forefathers did to Alexander, the prophecy of Mofes, Deut. xxviii. 49. and of Dan. ii. 40. and vii. 7. that Rome should be the head of the fourth great monarchy. They might go farther and poffefs them with a notion, that Auguftus fhould be that univerfal prince, which they looked for in the perfon of their Meffiah. The Jews at Rome might thus look up to Auguftus with adulation, as their brethren did at Jerufalem, when they cried out with one voice, John xix. 15. "We have no king but Cæfar"-making him what he certainly was, the temporal Meffiah. Nothing less than fuch communications and flattering impreffions of the Jews, could poffibly lead Virgil to speak fo openly and plainly of Augustus, Æn. VI. 786. as a divine offspring and the perfon promised to restore the golden age, and reign univerfally over all the then known world: Hic vir, hic eft, tibi quem promitti fæpius audis, Virgil had before, Æn. I. 238. opened this prophecy in the person of Venus to Jupiter, calling to his memory the promise he made, that the Romans fhould bear univerfal fway : Qui mare, qui terras omnes ditione tenerent The machinery of a cloud, so often made ufe of by Homer and Virgil in guiding, protecting, protecting, and carrying off the heros from the field of battle, looks very much like that of Exod. xiv. 19. and 2 Kings ii. 11. and may the fuppofition be excufed, fhould it not be approved, that the children of Ifrael's triumphant paffage through the Red Sea gave Homer the extraordinary thought of making Achilles fight with the two rivers, Seamander and Xanthus, in the twenty-firft Iliad: Homer did not think the hero of the Iliad complete, unless he encountered the elements as well as men. What could have enabled Virgil, Æn. VI. 719. and Ovid, in the beginning of his Metamor. to speak fo correctly and philofophically of the creation, except the first chapter of Genefis? What again could have given Virgil the thought, Æn. I. 592-3. of presenting Æneas to Dido with his face and shoulders in refplendent glory, and Horace, Ode II. 31. to defire Apollo that he would come with his fhoulders veiled, but the paffage in Exod. xxxiv. 29? Reflitit Eneas, claraque in luce refulfit; Os bumerofque deo fimilis -tandem venias, precamurs Nube candentes bumeros amicus Augur Apollo. 2 Homer, |