[26] St. Matth. xxiii. 33. [27] Ezek. xvi. 47-52. [28] Is. i. 4, 6, 15. [29] St. John viii. 9. "I cannot but speak my mind," (says Josephus, after taking a survey of the extreme wickedness of his countrymen, in connexion with the horrors of the siege of Jerusalem,) "and it is this: I suppose that if the Romans had delayed to come against these sinners, either the earth would have swallowed them up; or the city would have been swept away by another Flood; or it would have been consumed, like a second Sodom, by fire from Heaven." [30] S. John xii. 38-40. "_They have blinded_ their eyes," &c. (See the place in the LXX.:) sc. ὁ λαὸς οὗτος. [31] "Had the revelation of CHRIST been delayed till now, assuredly it would have been hard for us to recognize His Divinity.... We, of course, have in our turn counterbalancing advantages. (!) If we have lost that freshness of faith which would be the first (_sic_) to say to a poor carpenter,--Thou art the CHRIST, the SON of the living GOD,--yet we possess in the greater cultivation of our religious understanding, that which perhaps we ought not to be willing to give in exchange (!) ... They had not the same clearness of understanding as we; the same recognition that it is GOD and not the Devil who rules the World; the same power of discrimination between different kinds of truth.... Had our LORD come later, He would have come to mankind already beginning to stiffen into the fixedness of maturity.... The truth of His Divine Nature would not have been recognized." (pp. 24-5.)--Is this meant for bitter satire on the age we live in; or for disparagement of the Incarnate WORD?... But in the face of such anticipations, the keenest satire of all is contained in the author's claim to a "religious understanding, cultivated" to a degree unknown to the best ages of the Church; as well as to surpassing "clearness of understanding," and "powers of discrimination." Lamentable in _any_ quarter, how deplorable is such conceit in one who shews himself _unacquainted with the first principles of Theological Science_; and who puts forth an Essay on the Education of the World, which would have been discreditable to an advanced school-boy!