of the ante-diluvians was inserted, which to the Jews was thenceforth to form a satisfactory argument against the mission of our Lord.

The first instances of this corruption began as early as A. D. 128, for it was sanctioned by the Seder Olam Rabba, the Jewish system of chronology written by Rabbi Jose, under the auspices of the celebrated Rabbi Akiba. Yet it made little progress, for Eusebius (who died A. D. 340) "found in the Hebrew copies which he consulted, different accounts of the times, some following the longer, others the shorter computation." Their contrivance for moulding the age of the world, was by taking a century from some of the generations, and adding it to the residue of the lives; thus diminishing the length of the series, while they preserved the individual longevity. An additional evidence of the corruption is to be found in their management of the later lives. If the hundred years had been abstracted from the generations of Jared, Methuselah, and Lamech, their deaths must have been placed after the DelugeJared 66 years, Methuselah 200, and Lamech 95. They therefore left those generations as they were. It subsequently became habitual to make alterations in the genealogies, according to the convenience of the moment. The Samaritan Pentateuch has changed the years of the generations several times since the days of Origen (A. D. 230.)

The weight of authority now lies on the side of the Septuagint, or computation which gives the longer periods, (generally about a hundred years additional,) to the generations of the patriarchs, as the true transcript of the Hebrew original. Still, as in all matters which rest upon authority, the opposite side finds champions; and the only hope of a final decision must rest in the discovery of some authentic evidence that the one corresponds with Scripture, while the other fails in the correspondence. If the following view of the patriarchal generations be established, this most important question in chronology is decided, and the Septuagint computation is the true one.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE ANTE-DILUVIAN PATRIARCHS.

It will be shown that a direct connection, an exact and unbroken parallelism, is maintained between the patriarchal periods from Seth to Abraham, and the periods of the Jewish and Christian history ;-that not merely the periods retain an exact coincidence, but that even the names of the patriarchs are descriptive of the characters of the corresponding periods in the Jewish annals; and, in fact, that the whole of the antediluvian and post-diluvian record, down to the calling of Abraham, is not merely a history, in the proper sense of the word, but also an actual series of prophecy.

By taking the Deluge and the fall of Jerusalem (A. D. 70) as corresponding points in the patriarchal and Jewish dispensations, (a correspondence to which the mind is naturally led alike by the circumstances, and by the allusions in the Evangelists), and tracing the series of the patriarchs upwards, their births will stand opposite to

the dates of Jewish history in the following list. The patriarchal dates are from the Septuagint. The Jewish dates are from the chronology inserted (chiefly from Usher) in our Bibles, which has thus received the sanction of the Church, and is unshaken in all its more important points from Abraham downwards. In this part there could have been no object in the corruption of the text, and it has remained pure. The system proposed by Hales, when he loses sight of the Septuagint, seems too gratuitous to be relied on.

The only difficulty lies in the instance of Abraham, we having no Scriptural evidence of his age at the time of his first call (Acts vii. 2) from Ur of the Chaldees. He was seventyfive years old when he received his second call and departed from Haran, which Usher fixes at B. c. 1922. If he had received the original call forty years before, which is not more improbable than that Moses should have been impelled into the desert, doubtless by the Divine will, and have abandoned the Egyptian court forty years before he became a declared instrument in the Divine hand, this would bring the date of his first emigration to B. c. 1962; the period corresponding to that of the commencement of the generation of Shem. But the subsequent periods are matters of more accurate knowledge.

The value of the evidence is to be found in its general view, in the extraordinary coincidence which prevails through the entire of both series, and in the striking application of the

The name of Seth is interpreted The Appointed. The period of his generation is 205 years. In the corresponding 205 years of the Jewish history (from B. c. 1962 to 1757), Abraham is called from Ur of the Chaldees; he is again called in his 75th year; and he enters into covenant with God, and is appointed the father of

patriarchal names to the fortunes of the corresponding periods of Judea. Four or five years, more or less, are nothing in a scale of hundreds, peculiarly in the general difficulty existing as to the exact dates, in all the chronological systems.

The providential reason why Seth is placed at the head of the Ante-diluvian Church seems to be, that he was given, as Eve declares, "instead of Abel whom Cain slew"- -a substitute for the former head of the line in which the Messiah was to come. Cain was lost, and for this purpose non-existent. Adam, though the universal progenitor, had been made for the head of the Paradisaic Church, probably a state of things essentially different a state of unsinning obedience, a Church without sacrifice. Of him we hear no more. Seth was the head of the

Church of sacrifice.