Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/153

 the most part in the northern hemisphere and in some very small part of the aforesaid lands of Africa and Peru in the southern, and that in the remainder of the world there is no population or discovered land-surface uncovered by water where there could be populations or habitations, and thus that the voice of the gospel has already run its course as far as it can, and that in the rest of the southern hemisphere there is no provision for it. To all this I reply, that these words of the Psalmist were a prophecy of the preaching of the gospel, speaking out of the past into the future with the infallible certainty of prophecy. And although the Apostle, in quoting the said passage of the Psalmist, seems to affirm that already in his time the preaching of the gospel had had its course throughout the world, it is to be understood that he speaks in the sense of the aforesaid prophecy; that the preaching and the voice of the gospel had to run, and not that it had already run throughout the whole of the globe, since his quotation of the said passage of the Psalmist was made at so early a period that the gospel was then preached only in a small part of the northern hemisphere. The passage of the Apostle where he so speaks may be also thus understood: he could not say that the gentiles did not hear the voice or word of the gospel to their conversion, because already it has gone forth from the apostolic seminary for the conversion of all the earth; and in order that it may reach to its boundaries, so that no portion of the gentiles throughout the whole world should remain to which it should not reach, and into which it should not penetrate. Moreover it may be understood in this sense, that he speaks of the gentiles (after the consummation of the preaching of the gospel) as placed at the divine tribunal, and as giving to understand that those who would not be converted should have no remission; and on this point the Apostle puts the following question: "Haply all have not heard the word of the gospel, else if they had heard it would they not have