John Calvin · 2 of 200

Translator's Preface · Part 1

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

The Prophecies Of Daniel are among the most remarkable Predictions of The Elder Covenant. They are not confined within either a limited time or a contracted space. They relate to the destinies of mighty Empires, and stretch forward into eras still hidden in the bosom of the future. The period of their delivery was a remarkable one in the history of out race. The Assyrian hero had long ago swept away the Ten Tribes from the, land of their fathers, and he in his turn had bowed his head in death, leaving magnificent memorials of his greatness in colossal palaces and gigantic sculptures. The Son of the renowned Sardanapalus, the worshipper of Assarac and Beltis, had already inscribed his name and exploits on those swarthy obelisks and enormous bulls which have lately risen from the grave of centuries. The glory of Nineveah, passed away, to be restored again in these our days by the marvelous excavations at Koyunjik, Khorabad, and Nimroud. Another capital had arisen on the banks of the Euphrates, destined to surpass the ancient splendor of its ruined predecessor on the banks of the Tigris. The worshipper of the eagle-headed Nisroch — a mighty leader of the Chaldean hordes — had arisen, and gathering his armies from their mountain homes, had made the palaces and halls of Nineve a desert, had marched southwards against the reigning Pharaoh of Egypt — had encountered him at Carchemish — hurried on to The Holy City, and carried away with him to his favorite capital the rebellious people of the Lord. Among them was a captive of no ordinary note. He was at that time a child, yet he lived to see this descendant of the hardy Chasdim grow great in power and fame — to hear the tale of the fall of Tyre, and “the daughter of the Zidonians,” and of the triumph over Pharaoh Hophra, whom modern researches have discovered in the twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt’s kings. At length the haughty conqueror returns, and dreams mysteriously. This forgotten prisoner becomes the only interpreter of wondrous visions of Empires about to arise and spread over distant centuries. The dreamer is at length gathered to his fathers, yet the interpreter lives on through the reign of the grandson, and explains a mysterious writing on the palace wall, amidst revelry which ends in the city’s overthrow. Cryus and his Persians, Darius and his Medes rise rapidly to power, and the Prophet rises with them — till envy throws the aged Seer into a lion’s den. But he perishes not till he has seen visions of the future history of mankind. The triumphs of Pitasia and Macedon are revealed — the division of Alexander’s Empire — the wars of his successors — the wide-spread dominion of Rome — the overthrow of the Sacred Sanctuary by Titus — and The Coming Of Messiah to regenerate and to rule the world when the seventy weeks were accomplished.

The Roll of the Book, containing all these surprising announcements, has naturally excited the attention of the Scholars and Divines of all ages. Among the voluminous Comments of the laborious Calvin, none will be received by the British public with more heartfelt interest than his Lectures upon Daniel. The various illustrations of Daniel and the Apocalypse with which the press has always teemed, display the hold which these Divine Oracles have taken of the public mind. Various theories of interpretation have been warmly and even bitterly discussed. The Praeterist, and the Futurist, the German Neologian, and the American Divine, have each written boldly and copiously; and the public of Christendom have read with avidity, because they have been taught that these predictions come home to our own times, and to our modern controversies. Abstruse arguments and historical discussions have been rendered popular, through the expectation of seeing either Pope or Turk, or, perhaps, the Saracen in The Willful King, and The Little Horn. If Napoleon the First, or Napoleon the Second, if an Emperor of Russia, or a Pharaoh of Egypt, can be discovered in the King of the South, pushing at the King of the North — then the deep significance of the Prophecy to us is at once acknowledged, and the intensity of its brightness descends directly upon our own generation. If the “twelve hundred and ninety Days” of the twelfth Chapter be really years, then the blessing of waiting till “The Time of The End” seems to be upon us, since The French Revolution, and the waning of the Turkish sway, and the Conquests of Britain in the East, are then foretold in these “words” which have hitherto been “closed up and sealed.”

Whether any of these theories be true or false, they have exercised a mighty power over the imaginations of modern Writers on Prophecy, and have so attracted the minds of Theologians to the subject, as to give force to the inquiry, What was Calvin’s view of these stirring scenes? Without anticipating his Comments, it may be replied, that he disposes of the important question in a few lines. “In numeris non sum Pythagoricus,” is the expression of both his wisdom and his modesty. In attempting, however, a solution of these great problems in Prophecy, the opinions of The Reformers are most important, and among them all none stands higher as a deep and original thinker than the Author of these Explanatory Lectures. It is enough for this our Preface to remark, that the bare possibility of the contents of this Book corning home to the daily politics of Europe and the East, adds a charm and a zest to the following pages, which no infirmity in the Commentator can destroy.

In these Introductory Remarks, we shall allude to the present state of opinion respecting the Genuineness and Authenticity of the Book itself, touching upon some of the conjectures advanced since Calvin’s time to the present, and adverting to the skepticism of German Neology and the bold speculations of the amiable Arnold. In confutation of all Infidel Objections, we shall next give a general sketch of the History of Assyria and Babylon, as it has been lately disentombed by the labors of Mm. Botta and Layard, and rescued from the intricacies of the Cuneiform Inscriptions by Hincks and Rawlinson. By these means, the Nimrod Obelisk in the British Museum — the palatial chambers of Khorsabad and Koyunjik — the Winged Bull of Persepolis — the statue of Cyrus, Moorghab — and the magnificent sculpture of Darius at Behistun — all become vocal proofs of the truthfulness of Daniel’s predictions. A visit to the East India House in London will make us acquainted with the Standard Inscription of Nebuchadnezzar, containing a list of “all tire temples build by the king in the different towns and cities of Babylonia, naming the particular gods and goddesses to whom the shrines were dedicated: a journey from Baghdad to the Bier’s Nimrod, would shew us every ruin to be of the age of Nebuchadnezzar:” the testimony of experience is here decisive. “I have examined the bricks in situ,” says Major Rawlinson, “belonging, perhaps, to an hundreds of towns and cities within this area of about 100 miles in length, and thirty or forty in breadth, and I never found any other legend than that of Nebuchadnezzar, the son of Nabopalassar, king of Babylon.” These interesting researches into The Times Of Daniel will be followed by some criticism or The Book Of Daniel Here we might enlarge to an overwhelming extent, but we are necessarily compelled to confine our remarks to Calvin’s method of interpreting these marvelous Prophecies. It will next be desirable to point out how succeeding Commentators have differed from our Reformer, while we must leave the reader to form his own opinion of his merits when he has compared his views with those of his successors. We shall present him, however, with sufficient data for making this comparison, and by references to some modern Writers of eminence; and by short epitomes of their leading arguments, we hope to render this edition of these celebrated Lectures as instructive and as interesting as the limit of our space will allow.

AUTHENTICITY OF THE BOOK OF DANIEL

The Third Century Of Christianity had scarcely commenced, when the Authenticity of this Book was fiercely assailed by the vigorous skepticism of Porphyry; and it would be totally unnecessary to allude to so distant an opponent, had not his arguments been reproduced by the later scholars of Germany, and adopted by one of our noble spirits, whom in many things we delight to honor. Although the Jews admitted this Book into their Haiographa, and our Lord referred to its contents when predicting Jerusalem’s overthrow, yet these self-sufficient critics of our day have repeated the heathen objection which Jerome so elaborately refuted. If we inquire into the reason for the revival of such obsolete skepticism, we shall find it in the pride of that carnal mind which will not bow down submissively to the miraculous dealings of the Almighty. The Prophecies concerning the times of the Seleucidae and the Lagidae are found to be exceedingly precise and minute hence it is argued, “they are no prophecies at all — they are History dressed in the garb of Prophecy, written by some pseudo-Daniel living during their supposed fulfillment.” The Sacred words of Holy Writ become thus branded with imposture the testimony of the Jews and of our Lord to the integrity of the Sacred Canon is set aside, and the simple trust of the Christian Church both before and since the Reformation is asserted to be a baseless delusion. The judgment and labors of Sir Isaac Newton, the chronological acumen of Faber and Hales, are nothing but “the foolishness of the wise,” because Bertholdt and Bleek, De Wett, and Kirmis, have repeated the cry “vaticinia post eventurn!” And why this eagerness to degrade this Book to a fabulous compilation of the Macabian times? Simply because its reception as the Word of God would overthrow the favorite theories of the Rationalists respecting The Old Testament. We cannot undertake to reply to such objections in detail; we can only furnish the reader with a few references to those Writers by whom they have been both propagated and refuted. We shall first indicate and label the poison. The proscenium of Rosemuller a furnishes us with a succinct abstract of the assertions of Eichhornas in his Einleit. in das A. T., of Bertholt in his Histor. krit. Einleit, of Bleek in his Theolog Zeitschr., and of Grissinger in his Neue, ansicht der auffatze im Buche Daniel. The antidote to these conjectures is contained in Havernick’s article on Daniel, in Kitto’s Cyclopmdia of Biblical Literature, and also in his valuable “New Critical Commentary on the Book of Daniel.”

Professor Hengstenberg of Berlin has ably refilled the Neologian objections of his predecessors the American reader will find the subject ably treated in the Biblical Repertory of Philadelphia; and the English student may obtain an abstract of the points in dispute from the elaborate “Introduction” of Hartwell Horne. The various theories of these Neologists imply that the Book was written during the Machabean period, by one or more authors who invented the earlier portions by mingling fable with history in inextricable confusion, and by throwing around the history of their own age the garb of prophetic romance! The reception of any such hypothesis would so completely nullify the whole of Calvin’s Exposition, that we feel absolved from the necessity of entering into details. No disciple of this school will even condescend to peruse these Lectures. It is enough for us to know, that these unworthy successors of the early German Reformers have been met with ability and research by Luderwalk, Staudlin, Jahn, Lack, and Steudel. The unbelief of a Semler, and Michaelis, and a Corrodi, will seem to the follower of Calvin the offspring of an unsanctified reason which has never been trained in reverential homage to the inspired. Word. The keenness of this perverse criticism has attempted to explain away two important facts; first, that Ezekiel mentions Daniel as alive in his day, and as a model of piety and wisdom, (Ezekiel 14:20, and Ezekiel 28:3, ) and secondly, that the Canon of the Hebrew Scriptures was finally closed before the times of the Maccabean warriors. Havernick also treats with the greatest erudition the linguistic character of the Book as a decisive proof of its authenticity. He reminds us that the Hebrew language had ceased to be spoken by the Jews long before the reigns of the Seleucid, that the Aramaean was then the vernacular tongue, and yet still there is a difference between the Aramaean of Daniel and the late Chaldee Paraphrases of the Old Testament. Oriental scholars have pronounced this testimony to be decisive. Interesting as his illustrations are, the numerous subjects which demand our immediate notice will only admit of our referring the reader to the Professor’s “New Critical Commentary on the Book of Daniel.”

Happily there exists a strong conservative protection against the injury arising from such speculations. They are perfectly harmless to us when locked up in the obscurity of a foreign language and of a forbidding theology. But it grieves the Christian mind to find a writer worthy of being classed among the boldest of Reformers giving the sanction of his authority to such baseless extravagances. There are many points of similarity between the characters of Arnold and Calvin. Both were remarkable for an unswerving constancy in upholding all they felt to be right, and in resisting all they knew to be wrong. Both were untiring in their industry, and marvelously successful in impressing the young with the stamp of their own mental rigor. Agreeing in their manful protest against the impostures of priestcraft, they differed widely respecting the Book of Daniel. Our modern interpreter, in a letter to a friend, writes as follows concerning “the latter chapters of Daniel, which, if genuine, would be a clear exception to my canon of interpretation, as there can be no reasonable spiritual meaning made out of The Kings of the North and South. But I have long thought that the greater part of the Book of Daniel is most certainly very late work, of the time of the Maccabees; and the pretended Prophecy about the Kings of Grecia and Persia, and of the North and South, is mere history, like the poetical prophecies in Vigil and elsewhere. In fact, you can trace distinctly the date when it was written, because the events up to the date are given with historical minuteness, totally unlike the character of real prophecy, and beyond that date all is imaginary.” It is not difficult to detect the leading fallacy of this passage in the phrase “my canon of interpretation.” This original thinker, with a pertinacity equal to that of Calvin, had adopted his own method of explaining Prophecy, and determined at all hazards to uphold it. As the writings of this accomplished scholar have been very widely diffused, it will be useful to notice the arguments which he has employed. His “Sermons on Prophecy” contain the dangerous theory, which has been fully and satisfactorily answered by Blake in his chapter on “The Historical Reality of Prophecy.”

Dr. Arnold’s statements are as follow Sacred Prophecy is not an anticipation of History. For History deals with particular nation, times, places, and persons. But Prophecy cannot do thief, or it would alter the very conditions of humanity. It deals only with general principles, good and evil, truth and falsehood, God and his enemy. It is the voice of God announcing the issue of the great struggle between good and evil. Prophecy then, on this view, cannot be fulfilled literally in the persons and nations mentioned in its language, it can only be, fulfilled in the person of Christ. Thus, every part is said to have a double sense, “one Historical, comprehended by the Prophet and his own generation, in all its poetic features, but never fulfilled answerably to the magnificence of is language, because that was inspired by a higher object the other Spiritual, the proper form of which neither the Prophet nor his contemporaries knew, but fill-filled adequately in Christ, and his promises to his people as judgment on his enemies.” “It is History which deals with the Twelve Tribes of Israel; but the Israel of Prophecy are God’s Israel really and truly, who walk with him faithfully, and abide with him to the end.” Twice the Prophecies have failed of their fulfillment, first in the circumcised and then in the baptized Church. “The Christian Israel does not answer more worthily to the expectations of Prophecy than Israel after the flesh. Again have the people whom he brought out of Egypt corrupted themselves” and hence Predictions relating to the happiness of the Church, both before and since the times of the Messiah, have signally and necessarily failed. We cannot undertake the refutation of this general theory, we must refer the reader to the satisfactory arguments of Birks. We can only quote his clear exposition of the manner in which the Visions of Daniel confute these crude speculations — “Instead of a mere glimpse of the sure triumph of goodness at the last, we have most numerous details of the steps of Providence which lead to that blessed consummation. The seven years madness of Nebuchadnezzar, and his restoration to the throne; the fate of Belshazzar, and the conquests of the Medes and Persians; the rise of the Second Empire, the earlier dignity of the Medes, and the later pre-eminence of the Persians over them; the victories of Cyrus westsyard in Lydia, northward in Armenia, and southward in Babylon; the unrivaled greatness of his Empire, and the exactions on the subject provinces; the three successors of Cyrus, Cambyses, Smerdis, and Darius; the accession of Xerxes, and the vast armament he led against Greece, are all predicted within the time of the two earlier Empires. In the time of the Third Kingdom a fuller variety of details is given. The mighty exploits of Alexander, his total conquest of Persia, the rapidity of his course, his uncontrolled dominion, his sudden death in the height of his power, the fourfold division of his kingdom, and. the extinction of his posterity; the prosperous reign of the first Ptolemy, and of the great Seleucus, with the superior power of the latter before his death; the reign of Philadelphus, and the marriage of Berenice his daughter with Antiochus Theus; the murder of Antiochus and Berenice and their infant son by Laodice; the vengeance taken by Euergetes, brother of Bernice, on his accession to the throne; his conquest of Seleucia, the fortress of Syria, and the idol gods which he carried into Egypt; the earlier death of Callinicus; the preparations of his sons, Seleucus, Ceraunus, and Antiochus the Great, for war with Egypt, are all distinctly set before us. Then follows the history of Antiochus. His sole reign after his brother’s death, his eastern conquests and recovery of Seleucia; the strength of the two rival armies and the Egyptian victory at Raphia; the pride of Ptolomy Philopater and his partial conquests, with the weakness of his profligate reign; the return of Antichous with added strength after an interval of years, and with the riches of the East; his victories in Judea and the capture of Sidon; the overthrow of the Egyptian forces at Panium, the honor shewn by Antiochus to the Temple, and his care for its completion and beauty; his treaty with Egypt, the marriage of his daughter Clopatra with Ptolemy Philometor, and defection from her father’s cause; his invasion of the Isles of Greece; his rude repulse by the Roman Consul, and the reproach of tribute which came upon him through his defeat; his return to Antioch and speedy death, are all described in regular order. Then follow the reigns of Seleucus and Antiochus Ephphanes, given with an equal fitness of prophetic detail, and close the narrative of the Third Empire. Even in the time of the Fourth and last Kingdom, though more remote from the days of the Prophet, the events predicted are not few. We find there, distinctly revealed, the iron strength of the Romans, their gradual subjugation of other powers, their fierce and warlike nature, their cruel and devouring conquests, the stealthy policy of their empire, and its gradual advance in the direction of the East, southward and eastward towards the land of Israel, till it had cast down the noblest Kings, and firmly ingrafted its new dominion on the stock of the Greek Empire. We have next described its oppression of the Jews, the overthrow of their City and Sanctuary by Titus, the Abomination of Desolation in the Holy Place, and their arrogant pride in standing up against Messiah, the Prince of princes.”

If the latter portion of these predictions were really written previously to the, events, they must be inspired; and if a writer of the Maccabaean period could thus accurately predict the Conquests of Rome in the East, the whole question is decided there is no reason whatever why the events of the Second and Third Empire should not have been foretold as clearly as those of the Fourth. Thus the very existence of the Book before the Jewish Canon was closed is fact which proves all that is required. These Visions then become “the voice of Him who sees the end from the beginning, and pronounces in his secret, council, even on the destiny of the falling sparrow. They are designed to stoop to the earthly estate of the Church, while they exalt her hopes to the glory that shall be revealed. They range through everlasting ages; but they let fall in passing a bright gleam of light that discovers to us the ass’s colt, tied at the meeting of their ways, on which the Lord of glory was to ride into Jerusalem. Every step in the long vista of preparation lies before them, from the seven months reign of Smerdis and the marriage of Berenice with Antiochus, (Daniel 11:2-6,) to the seven months burial of (corpses) in days to come in the land of Israel, and the marriage supper of the Lamb. They touch, as with an wand, the perplexed and tangled skein of human history, and it becomes a woof of curious and costly workmanship, that; bespeaks the skill of its Divine Artificer an outer hanging, embroidered by heavenly wisdom, for that glorious tabernacle in which the God of heaven will reveal himself for ever.”

THE DIVINES OF GERMANY

Throughout this Preface and the subsequent Dissertions the reader will find frequent reference to The Divines or Germany. Some of these have proposed explanations of our Prophet which appear to the English readers manifestly erroneous, that he may fancy we have spent too much space in confuting them. But he who would keep pace with the Theological Investigations of the day, may derive improvement from perusing the hypothesis of Bertholdt and De Wette, and rejoice that they have elieked the able replies of Havernick and Hengstenberg. In truth, the reader Of Daniel must put aside for a while the laudable prejudices which he has been taught to cherish from his earliest days, and descend into the arena where the contest is fiereest, — whether our Prophet was contemporary with Nebuchadnezzar or Antiochus. To many the question itself is startling, and that we may be prepared to meet it, thoroughly furnished with available armory, let us glance over the wide field of Continental Rationalism as far as it concerns the Authenticity of Daniel.

The system under review is a melancholy off-shoot from the teaching of Luther and his intrepid followers. They led men away from form, and ceremony, and imposture, to rely upon one Book as their Rule of Faith and Duty. They did more — they sifted the chaff from the wheat, and by discarding the Apocrypha, placed before the eager attention of mankind the pure word of heaven. Luther and Calvin held very distinct ideas about Revelation and Justification, and enforced very boldly their views of the only Books which were written by the penmanship of the Almighty. Theirs was a work of purification and of reconstruction on the assertion of the existence of a Divine Revelation, of its being contained in the Old and New Testaments, and of these documents being the only Inspired Records of what we are to believe, and how we are to live. In process of time, each Boole became the subject of separate study — its history, its criticism, and its preservation were respectively examined with intense eagerness — and a vast amount of information was collected, which was totally unknown to the Early Reformers. It soon became apparent that the Reformed Churches were living under a totally different state of things from theft described in the Old Testament. The events, for instance, of this Book of Daniel all seemed so mingled and so intertwined; the ordinary occurrences of every-day life are so interlaced with marvelous dreams and visions, and the conduct and passions of monarchs seem so singularly controlled by an unseen Mind, that the question occurs, Is all this literally true? Did it all actually come to pass exactly as it is recorded? Or, Is it allegorical, or a historical romance, or only partially inspired by Jehovah, and tinged in its style and diction with the natural exaggeration of Oriental imaginary? Such inquiries shew us how the mind seeks to fathom the mysteries of what is offered to its veneration, and have led to the conclusion, that the Sacred Books of the Hebrews are not all pure revelation, but that they contain it amidst much extraneous matter. The writers to whom we refer have ever since the sixteenth century been attempting to define how much of the Hebrew Scriptures is the pure and spiritual Revelation of the Divine Mind to us, and how much is the unavoidable impurity of the channel through which it has been conveyed. With the names of some later critics, the modern Theologian is familiar. Gesenius, Wegscheider, And Rohr, yet retain a powerful influence over the minds of later students, while Schultz at Breslau, Gieseler at Gottingen, Allmann at Heidelberg, Bretschneider at Gotha, De Wette — lately deceased — at Basle, hare at Jena, and Weiner at Leipsic, are writers who worship irreverently at the shrine of human reason, and either qualify or deny the Inspiration of Revelation.

FALSE SYSTEMS OF SCRIPTURE EXPOSITION

An important change was necessarily made on the minds of the successors of the Reformers, by the more general spread of Classical Literature, and a far better acquaintance with Hebrew philology. Here, we must allow, that some of the disciples of Luther and Calvin were better furnished for the work of Interpretation than their more Christian-minded masters. Ernesti, the learned philologer of Leipsic, in 1761 laid down “The Laws of a wise Interpretation,” and has ever since been considered as the founder of a scholar like system of Scriptural Exposition. His principles are now universally admitted, viz., that we must make use of history and philology of the views of the period at which each Book was written, and of all those appliances which improved scholarship has provided in the case of the Classical Authors of Greece and Rome. Every attentive reader of German Theology must perceive, that too many of their celebrated Critics have rested in this outward appeal to mere reason and. research. Semler and Tittmann, Michaelis and Henke, have pursued this system of accommodation so far, that they have destroyed the very spirit and essence of a Divine Revelation. In the Prophets, and especially in Daniel, whom Semler includes among the doubtful Books, timre is a spiritual meaning only to be comprehended by the moral and religious faculties; and except this spirit be elicited, the merely outward form of prophetic dictation can effect no religious result. Let ROHR and Paulus sneer as they please, at the mysticism and pietism of the Evangelic Reformers, we must still contend, that without a spirituality similar to theirs, all comments are essentially lifeless and profitless to the soul of man. The may display erudition, but they will not aid the spirit which hungers and thirsts after righteousness on its way towards heaven.

Every student who desires to become familiar with these discussions, may consult with advantage the Dissertations of Hengstenberg, who has written fully and ably on The Genuineness of our Prophet. He has sketched, historically, the attacks which have been made, and has answered every possible objection. The impurity of the Hebrew, the words supposed to be Greek, the silence of Siraeh, the disrespect shewn by the Jews, and the position in the Canon of Scripture, are all ably discussed. The miracles have been called “profuse in number and aimless in purpose;” historical errors have been asserted, and statements called contradictory, or suspicious, or improbable; many ideas and usages have been said to belong to later times. These and similar arguments are used to shew the Book to be the production of the times of Antiochus Ephphanes, but they have been fully treated by this orthodox Professor at Berlin. He discusses most ably, and with the most laborious erudition, those marvelous Prophecies of this Sacred Book, which have necessarily provoked a host of assailants. He reminds us that in the earliest ages, Porphyry devoted his twelfth book to the assault upon this Prophet, and that we are indebted to Jerome for a knowledge of his objections as well as for their refutation. He asserted that the Book was composed during the reign of Antiochus Ephphanes in Greek, “and that Daniel did not so much predict future events as narrate past ones.” Though the imperial commands condemned his works to the flames, yet Eusebius of Caesarea, Methodius of Tyre, and Apollinaris of Laodicea, have ably refuted them. In later times, the first scholar-like attack upon the genuineness of various portions was made by J. D. Michaelis. Collins and Semler, Spinoza and Hobbes, had each condemned the Book after his own manner but it was left for Eichorn to lead the host of those later theologians who have displayed their vanity and their skepticism, by the boastfulness of their learning and the emptiness of their conclusions. Hezel and Corrodi treat it as the work of an impostor; while Bertholdt, Griesinger, and Gesenius, have each their own theory concerning its authorship and contents. Other Critics have followed the footsteps of these into paths most dangerous and delusive.