ommentators and priests, who have foolishly employed
or wasted their time in pretending to expound and unriddle those books,
been carred into captivity, as Ezekiel and Daniel were, it would greatly
have improved their intellects in comprehending the reason for this mode
of writing, and have saved them the trouble of racking their invention,
as they have done to no purpose; for they would have found that
themselves would be obliged to write whatever they had to write,
respecting their own affairs, or those of their friends, or of their
country, in a concealed manner, as those men have done.

These two books differ from all the rest; for it is only these that are
filled with accounts of dreams and visions: and this difference arose
from the situation the writers were in as prisoners of war, or prisoners
of state, in a foreign country, which obliged them to convey even
the most trifling information to each other, and all their political
projects or opinions, in obscure and metaphorical terms. They pretend to
have dreamed dreams, and seen visions, because it was unsafe for them to
speak facts or plain language. We ought, however, to suppose, that the
persons to whom they wrote understood what they meant, and that it
was not intended anybody else should. But these busy commentators
and priests have been puzzling their wits to find out what it was not
intended they should know, and with which they have nothing to do.

Ezekiel and Daniel were carried prisoners to Babylon, under the first
captivity, in the time of Jehoiakim, nine years before the second
captivity in the time of Zedekiah. The Jews were then still numerous,
and had considerable force at Jerusalem; and as it is natural to suppose
that men in the situation of Ezekiel and Daniel would be meditating the
recovery of their country, and their own deliverance, it is reasonable
to suppose that the accounts of dreams and visions with which these
books are filled, are no other than a disguised mode of correspondence
to facilitate those objects: it served them as a cypher, or secret
alphabet. If they are not this, they are tales, reveries, and nonsense;
or at least a fanciful way of wearing off the wearisomeness of
captivity; but the presumption is, they are the former.

Ezekiel begins his book by speaking of a vision of cherubims, and of a
wheel within a wheel, which he says he saw by the river Chebar, in
the land of his captivity. Is it not reasonable to suppose that by t