and explicit predictions. References to the same event, some plain, some
parabolical, or otherwise figurative, are found in divers other
discourses of our Lord. (Matt. xxi. 33-46; xxii. 1-7. Mark xii. 1-12.
Luke xiii. 1-9; xx. 9-20; xxi. 5-13.)

The general agreement of the description with the event, viz. with the
ruin of the Jewish nation, and the capture of Jerusalem under Vespasian,
thirty-six years after Christ's death, is most evident; and the
accordancy in various articles of detail and circumstances has been
shown by many learned writers. It is also an advantage to the inquiry,
and to the argument built upon it, that we have received a copious
account of the transaction from Josephus, a Jewish and contemporary
historian. This part of the case is perfectly free from doubt. The only
question which, in my opinion, can be raised upon the subject is,
whether the prophecy was really delivered before the event? I shall
apply, therefore, my observations to this point solely.

1. The judgment of antiquity, though varying in the precise year of the
publication of the three Gospels, concurs in assigning them a date prior
to the destruction of Jerusalem. (Lardner, vol. xiii.)

2. This judgment is confirmed by a strong probability arising from the
course of human life. The destruction of Jerusalem took place in the
seventieth year after the birth of Christ. The three evangelists, one of
whom was his immediate companion, and the other two associated with his
companions, were, it is probable, not much younger than he was. They
must, consequently, have been far advanced in life when Jerusalem was
taken; and no reason has been given why they should defer writing their
histories so long.

3. (Le Clerc, Diss. III. de Quat. Evang. num. vii. p. 541.) If the
evangelists, at the time of writing the Gospels, had known of the
destruction of Jerusalem, by which catastrophe the prophecies were
plainly fulfilled, it is most probable that, in recording the
predictions, they would have dropped some word or other about the
completion; in like manner as Luke, after relating the denunciation of a
dearth by Agabus, adds, "which came to pass in the days of Claudius
Caesar;" (Acts xi. 28.) whereas the prophecies are given distinctly in
one chapter of each of the first three Gospels, and referred to in
several different passages of each, and in none of all these places does
there appear the smallest intimation that the things spoken of had come