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minute predictions with great coldness and indifference, compared with the impressions which their accomplishment must have originally made.

When Nathanael expressed his wonder that Jesus knew his secret actions, our Lord said unto him, "Hereafter ye [my disciples] shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man :" meaning that, agreeably to the sense of Jacob's vision, which by action beautifully represented God's care of Jacob and his posterity, there should be an intercourse between the Son of Man and heaven, and that sometimes" angels should minister to him.

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At Capernaum our Lord foretold the treachery of Judas about a year before the event; saying in the presence of the Twelve, There are some of you who believe not :" for he knew, says the evangelist, who should betray him. And when Peter acknowledged his Messiahship, he replied, "Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a false accuser ?” And again, the same night on which he was betrayed, he alluded to the traitor's dark purpose by declaring, when he had washed the feet of his apostles, "Yey are clean, but not all :" an allusion which he went on to explain: "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. I speak not of you all : I know whom I have chosen : but that the scripture

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* John i. 51. ib. v. 19, 20. viii. 29. xiv. 10, 11. xvi. 32. Matt. iii. 16, 17. xvii. 5. John xii. 28. ■ Mark i. 13. Luke xxii. 43. xxiv. 4. Acts i. 10.

iii. 11. Rev. xii. 9, 10.

w John vi. 64.

* See 1 Tim.

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may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me. Now I tell you before it come to pass; that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am he." "When Jesus had said these things, he was troubled in spirit, and testified and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you that one of you, who eateth with me, shall betray me.” The apostles looking on each other full of doubt, inquiring among each other, and each asking with extreme sorrow whether he was the person pointed out; Jesus answered, One of the Twelve, who now at this table dippeth his hand with me in the dish and joineth in our common act of eating, even one of my associates and familiar companions shall betray me. The apostle John reclining at table near Jesus, and Peter beckoning to him that he should inquire particularly, our Lord privately satisfied John, and consequently Peter, by answering that he would give a sop to the person meant, and accordingly he delivered one to Judas, and thus addressed him, "What thou doest, do quickly:" words not immediately understood by the other apostles. Upon this Judas himself said, "Lord, is it I ?" confounded by guilt, or not yet convinced of Christ's divine knowledge: and receiving a public assurance that he was the man, he immediately went out, and executed that night the perfidious and sordid agreement which he had shortly before made with the Jewish rulers.

* John xiii. 21, &c. and p. p.

This was a circumstance

of very particular aggravation, according to the eastern customs. Matt. xxvi. 47. and p. p.

dib. 14. and p. p.

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At the same time, Jesus said to the eleven apostles, "All ye shall be offended because of me THIS NIGHT: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad." And again: "Behold the hour cometh, yea is now come, that ye shall be scattered every man to his own place, and shall leave me alone." Accordingly, when the Roman soldiers, and the servants of the Jewish rulers, seized and bound Jesus ON THAT VERY NIGHT, "all the disciples & forsook him and fled."

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Immediately after this, Peter having made earnest professions of his fortitude, our Lord foretold with wonderful precision that even à He, the boldest and most forward of his disciples, and seemingly the most unlikely to be guilty of such timidity, ON THAT NIGHT, before the cock crew TWICE, should THRICE deny that he knew him. And all the evangelists have recorded the history of Peter's three denials; together with the circumstance that, after the third denial, it was the second cock crowing, or about our three in the morning.

It was early in his ministry that our Lord obscurely prophesied of his death. At the first passover, three years before he suffered, he intimated to the Jews that the temple of his body should be destroyed. And about the same time he darkly signified the manner of his death to Nicodemus: "m As Moses

• Matt. xxvi. 31.

* Mark xiv. 30. for ὅτι
See ib. and p. p.
ib. iii. 14.

f John xvi. 32.
σήμερον read ὅτι σὺ σήμερον.
* Matt. xxvi. 69, &c. and p. p.

8 Matt, xxvi. 56.

See Wetstein, 'John ii. 20, 21.

lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be" lifted up." In the synagogue at Capernaum, when the third passover was near, he declared to the Jews that he would give his flesh for the life of the world. And after that festival, the course of his ministry being far advanced, "he began P to shew his disciples that the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and Chief Priests and Scribes, and be put to death. And he spake the word openly.” Soon afterwards, while they abode in Galilee, he repeated the prophecy on three occasions. And on his last journey to Jerusalem, he shewed his unbounded knowledge by suggesting these particular circumstances: r that the Chief Priests and Scribes, after they had condemned him to death, would deliver him to the Gentiles, who should mock him, and contumeliously treat him, and spit on him, and scourge him, and crucify him. Jesus also prophesied that he should not die out of [the precincts of ] Jerusalem. And in the parable of the wicked husbandmen, who are represented as 'casting the heir out of the vineyard and slaying him, our Lord foreshewed that he should suffer "without the gate of Jerusalem. On the Wednesday in the paschal week, he "foretold that he should be delivered up to be crucified on the day of the passover. And, when Mary anointed him

See this expression repeated to the Jews six months before the last passover John viii. 28. and to certain Greeks, five days before it ib xii. 32. 31, 32. and p. p.

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John vi. 51.

P Mark viii

and p. p. and ib. 22. and p. p. Luke xvii. 25.

9 Matt xvii. 12.
Matt. xx. 18, 19. and p. p.
Heb. xiii. 12.

Luke xiii. 33.

w Matt. xxvi. 2.

Matt. xxi. 39. and p. p

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at Bethany, he predicted the near approach of his death by observing that she had, as it were, kept the ointment to the day of his * embalming; so soon was his burial to follow. During the last paschal supper, he both mentioned his sufferings in general terms, and alluded to his crucifixion between two malefactors: "I say unto you that this which is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was numbered among the transgressors." When he instituted the communion, he brake bread, saying, This is my body broken for you. He also declared that the wine presignified his blood shed for many and, having appointed that it should be drunk in remembrance of him, he added; " But I say unto you, I shall not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom :" meaning that he should not again partake of wine till after his resurrection, when, his sufferings being past, it would be, as it were, of a new and superior kind. How the leading facts in these predictions were accomplished I need not recal to the mind of any Christian. There was also a most exact accomplishment of every inferior circumstance. When the High Priest had condemned Jesus, he was mocked of those who blindfolded him, saying, "Prophesy unto us, thou Christ, who it is that

с

b

y Luke xxii. 15.

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b Acts x. 41.

z ib. 37.

* John xii. 7. and p. p. Matt. xxvi. 29. < Vina, novum, fundam calathis Ariusia, nectar. Virg. Ecl. v. 71 : quoted by Wetstein. So again; Jam nova progenies cælo demittitur alto. Ecl. iv. 7. See also Isai. Ixv. 17. 2 Pet. iii. 13.

d Luke xxii. 63, 64.

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