! A GENERAL AND CONNECTED VIEW, &c. THE HE events of every history be come proportionally more interesting, as the chief catastrophe to be related, approaches. And when the transactions thus grow more important, the ardour of the reader encreases; and with redoubled application he peruses those pages, that immediately precede the Now sensa confummation, to the knowledge of which he is haftening. tions like these, with which, I may venture to say every reader is acquainted, and with which none is acquainted, without being pleased, cannot, surely, be unknown to those who attend to the prophetick History of the Church, Far advanced in its completion as the whole line of Prophecy is, every appearance of further accomplishment carries our thoughts rapidly forward to that glorious confummation, in which all the predictions meet; rendering us more anxious not to fuffer any incident to pass unnoticed, which by the place it holds in the course, would announce to us the still nearer approach of our redemption: and augmenting in our breasts the joyful hope of the speedy establishment of that kingdom of righteousness, in which alone we can be blessed with the en joyment of happiness unalloyed. To promote promote this vigilance among their brethren, by reminding them of what the prophets and apostles of the Lord Jesus have declared, should precede his return, is one important duty of the minifters of the church; in performing which, I am perfuaded they will both do what is highly grateful to all who have already any measure of this glorious hope; and perform a work, which (by the blessing of God on the discharge of a duty he hath enjoined) might have a most falutary effect on the minds of many, who now treat the gospel with neglect, merely from not being informed of that perpetual and encreasing teftimony, which is borne to it by the regular accomplishment of prophecies, and by the additional light almost daily thrown on those which yet remain to be fulfilled, through the more manifest probability of events, which are either A 2 openly : openly foretold, or appear to be prefignified in them. UNDER the perfuafion I have thus stated, it is, that I proceed to make public the following synopfis; conceiving that the confiftency, and uniformity existing among numerous prophecies, delivered by different persons in different ages, which are so strong as to make the whole but one fcheme, of which the ear lier prophets only sketched the outline, and the last perfected the picture, must be sufficiently striking to attract the attention of any, who do not lie under a natural imbecility of understanding, or are not rendered adverse to reflection on fubjects like these, by the confciousness, that a proof of the approach of judgement is little else than a demonstration, that their own condemnation lingereth not. THE THE questions put by his apostles to our Lord, What shall be the fign " of thy coming? and of the end of "the world?" have in substance been repeated by multitudes of chriftains in every succeeding age and the answers given to these questions have by the mercy of God been so limited, as to prevent, on the one hand, the mischiefs which would naturally arife from completely fatisfying human curiofity: and on the other, that despondency which might have invaded the breasts of the faithful, had they been left, through all the ages that have intervened since our Lord's afcenfion, unfurnished with any symptoms of the gradual approach of their deliverance. An author of our own age and nation, whom I shall now have frequent occafion to cite, has stated, "That the indisoluble A 3 |