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Exercitatio XVI. (Book 16)
Other Considerations proving the Messiah to be long since come. Fluctuation of the Jews about the Person and Work of the Messiah. Their state and condition in the world for sixteen Ages. Promises of the Covenant made with them of old. All fulfilled unto the expira∣tion of that Covenant. Not now made good unto them. Reason thereof. The Promise of the Land of Canaan failed. Of protection and Temporal deliverance. Spirit of Prophecy departed. Covenant expired. Jews exceptions. Their prosperity. Their sins. Of their fore-fathers; of themselves. Vanity of these exceptions. Concessions of the Antient Jews. Folly of Talmudical Doctors. Traditions of the Birth of the Messiah before the destruction of the second Temple. Tradition of the School of Elias; about the worlds continuance. Answers of the Jews unto our Arguments, by way of concession. The time prolonged, be∣cause of their sins. Vanity of this pretence. Not the Jews only but the Gentiles con∣cerned in the coming of the Messiah. The Promise not Conditional. Limitations of time not capable of conditions. No mention of any such condition. The condition supposed overthr••ws the Promise. The Jews in the use of this plea, self condemned. The Covenant overthrown by it. The Messiah may never come upon it.
UNto the invincible Testimonies before insisted on, we may add some other [§ 1] considerations taken from the Jews themselves, that are both suitable unto their conviction, and of use to strengthen the faith of them who do believe. And the first thing that offers its self unto us, is their miserable fluctuation and uncertainty in the whole Doctrine about the Messiah ever since the time of his coming and their rejection of him.
That the great fundamentall of their profession from the dayes of Abraham, and that [§ 2] which all their Worship was founded in, and had respect unto, was the promise of the coming of the Messiah, we have before sufficiently proved. Untill the time of his coming, this they were unanimous in, as also in their desires and expectations of his Advent. Since that time, as they have utterly lost all faith in him, as to the great end for which he was promised, so all truth as to the Doctrine concerning his Person, Office and Work plentifully delivered in the Old Testament.
In their Talmud. Tractat. Sanedr. they do nothing but wrangle, conjecture and con∣tend about him, and that under such notions and apprehensions of him as the Scrip∣ture giveth no countenance unto. When he shall come, and how, where he shall be born, and what he shall do, they wrangle much about, but are not able to deter∣mine any thing at all; at which uncertaintie, the Holy Ghost never left the Church in things of so great importance. Hence some of them adhered to Barcosby for the Messiah, a bloody Rebel; and some of them in after ages to David el David a wandring Jugler, and Moses Cretensis, and sundry other pretenders have they given up them∣selves to be deluded by (as of late unto the foolish Apostate Sabadia with his false Prophets, R. Levi and Nathan) who never made the least appearance of any one character of the true Messiah, as Maimonides confesseth and bewaileth. The Disputes of their late Masters, have not any thing more of certainty or consistency, then those of their Talmudical Progenitors. And this at length hath driven them, to the pre∣sent miserable relief of their infidelity and d••spair, asserting that he shall not come untill immediately before the Resurrection of the dead, only they take care that some small time may be left for them to ••njoy wealth and pleasure, with dominion over the Edomites and Ishmalites, that is, Christians and Turks under whom they live, as yet full of thoughts of revenge and retaliation in the dayes of their Messiah. Now where∣unto can any man ascribe this fluctuation and uncertainty, in and about that which was the great fundamental Article of the faith of their Fore-fathers, and their utter renuntiation of the true Notion and Knowledge of the Messiah. But unto this, that having long ago renounced him, they exercise their thoughts and expectation about a Chimoera of their own Brains, which having no substance in its self, nor found••tion