e interpreted according
to circumstances. This for the sake of saving time I will
acknowledge. But the circumstances in which this phrase is used in
the passages already adduced, and in a number of others of similar
import which might be adduced, clearly indicate, that it is to be
understood in those passages to mean a period as long as the
duration of the Israelitish nation, which elsewhere is said to
continue to the end of the world.

For this reason, among others, this final return of the Jews from
their present dispersed state, cannot at any rate be said to have
been accomplished at their return from the Babylonish captivity.

For that captivity was not by any means such a total dispersion of
the people among all nations, as Moses, and the later prophets
have foretold. Nor does their possession of the country subsequent
to it, at all correspond to that state of peace, and prosperity, which
was promised to succeed this final return.

Figures of speech must, no doubt, be allowed for. But if the whole
of the Jewish polity was to terminate at the destruction of
Jerusalem by Titus, (as is maintained by Christians,) while the
world is still to continue, the magnificent promises made to
Abraham, and his posterity, and to the nation, in general,
afterwards, have never had any proper accomplishment of all.
Because with respect to external prosperity, which is contained in
the promises, many nations have hitherto been more distinguished
by God, than the Jews. Hitherto the posterity of Ishmael has had a
much happier lot than that of Isaac. To say, as Christians do, that
these prophecies have had a spiritual accomplishment in the spread
of the Gospel, when there is nothing in the phraseology in which
the promises are expressed, that could possibly suggest any such
ideas, nay, when the promise itself in the most definite language
expresses the contrary, is so arbitrary a construction as nothing
can warrant. By this mode of interpretation, any event may be said
to be the fulfillment of any prophecy whatever.

Besides, it is perfectly evident, that these prophecies, whether they
will be fulfilled, or not, cannot yet have been fulfilled. For all the
calamity that was ever to befall the Jewish nation is expressly said
to bear no sensible proportion to their subsequent prosperity:
whereas, their prosperity has hitherto borne a small proportion to
their calamity; so that had Abraham really foreseen the fate of his
posterity, he