717
[Prophecies.—The promise that David will always have descendants. Jer. xiii. 13.]
718
The external reign of the race of David, 2 Chron., by all the prophecies, and with an oath. And it was not temporally fulfilled. Jerem. xxiii. 20.
719
We might perhaps think that, when the prophets foretold that the sceptre should not depart from Judah until the eternal King came, they spoke to flatter the people, and that their prophecy was proved false by Herod. But to show that this was not their meaning, and that, on the contrary, they knew well that this temporal kingdom should cease, they said that they would be without a king and without a prince, and for a long time. Hosea iii. 4.
720
Non habemus regem nisi Cæsarem.[1] Therefore Jesus Christ was the Messiah, since they had no longer any king but a stranger, and would have no other.
721
We have no king but Cæsar.
722
Daniel ii.: “All thy soothsayers and wise men cannot shew unto thee the secret which thou hast demanded. But there is a God in heaven who can do so, and that hath revealed to thee in thy dream what shall be in the latter days.” (This dream must have caused him much misgiving.)
“And it is not by my own wisdom that I have knowledge of this secret, but by the revelation of this same God, that hath revealed it to me, to make it manifest in thy presence.
“Thy dream was then of this kind. Thou sawest a great
- ↑ John, xix. 15.
