strange to them to be restrained from naming it at present to any one; and it is thus that they express their surprise upon the occasion: "His disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come?" q. d. Why should you give us such a prohibition, when our learned ment each, and it is gerally believed, that our famous prophet Elijah will come down from heaven to do honour to the Messiah? And since this very thing has now happened, if we are permitted to publish it, it will be a prevailing argument to bring men to believe in you.

Although we cannot account for all our Lord's conduct at all times, who was in many things under an immediate divine direction, we may perceive a wisdom, in many respects, in the silence which he enjoined his disciples to observe for the present with regard to this heavenly vision.

For as the Jewish nation were most uneasy under the Roman yoke, and had their minds inflamed with the notion of a great temporal prince and deliverer to be raised up for them by Almighty God, had such an immediate declaration from heaven, of Jesus being the Messiah, and so highly favoured of God,

coun

countenanced and confirmed by their great prophets Moses and Elijah revisiting this earth, been made known to them, there would have been hardly any possibility of hindering them from taking him by force, as they were once attempting, and setting him up for a king against Cæsar; a thing so totally contrary to the design of his divine mission, and which it became him by all means to guard against.

Besides, as all private miracles are liable to suspicion, and give room for just objections, our Lord did not choose to have this made known to his enemies at the time, that he might not excite their bad passions, and furnish them with a plausible handle of decrying his disciples as impostors, for inventing what they would call such incredible stories, of which no proof appeared but their own words.

And this was but agreeable to what is observable concerning our Lord, that in general, whenever he performed a miraculous cure on any one privately, he enjoined them not to divulge it, because he would as much as possible avoid the least shadow of imputation of falsehood and imposture, to which things done in secrecy are more or less open.

And although it has been insinuated by

VOL. II.

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those

those who are no friends to the gospel, that it would have been better contrived, and more successful, if, besides these three disciples, numbers of the Jewish nation at large, believers and others, had been spectators of so glorious a scene, and heard the voice from heaven declaring the divine testimony to the blessed Jesus,

To this it is easy to reply, that those men who would give no credit to our Lord for a miracle so clearly proved to them, as his healing and giving sight (John ix.) to the man that was blind from his birth, would much more easily have satisfied themselves, and triumphed in setting aside a voice from heaven, and construing it into mere delusion.

Moreover, it is not the method of the divine dealing with men, to astonish and overpower their senses all at once with irresistible evidence of a divine authority, and compel them as it were to submit to it.

To produce an effectual persuasion in the mind, and a sincere attachment to truth, there must be a gradual process and preparation. Men must be left in some measure to themselves, to the exertion of their own powers, to honest inquiry, and cool reasoning; by which

means

means a lasting conviction will be generated, and good principles formed and established.

Such private miracles as this divine appearance were wrought for particular purposes, and are not proposed, or to be produced, as being themselves proofs of Christ's divine authority, but derive their credibility from such miracles as were public and evident.

After Christ was risen from the dead, and thereby (as the apostle speaks, Rom. i. 4.) declared or demonstrated to be the Son of God, the Messiah, with power, by such a wonderful act of divine power; this would give weight and confirmation to all the other miraculous accounts of him that were well authenticated.

Therefore the three apostles were ordered to keep the vision secret till that time. And then also there would be no danger of worldlyminded men abusing such a discovery of the high dignity of the Lord Jesus, and his favour with God, to serve their present ambitious purposes.

His sufferings and death fully evinced that his kingdom was not of this world, and that the salvation and deliverance he was to bring to mankind were of a moral and spiritual nax 2 ture;

ture; a deliverance from the chains of ignorance and vice, and recovering them to the liberty of the children of God; to assist them by the most efficacious motives to become habitually and unalterably determined to virtue and holiness, and fitted for the immortal happiness designed for them.

II.

It may be presumed, that this common persuasion of the Jewish nation concerning Elias or Elijah coming from heaven to prepare things for the reception of the Messiah, was grounded on what the Almighty speaks in Malachi iv. 5; Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.”

But their expectation thence of Elijah himself coming in person, was owing to their not attending to the peculiar style of their prophets; whose manner sometimes was to speak of those who were destined by Almighty God in future times to fulfil great purposes in his moral government, and to describe them under the name of famous persons who had in former times been remarkable in their history, whom they had some relation to or resembled.

Thus