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prove it, and they admit, besides, of a different sense. In short, this doctrine does not appear to have prevailed amongst them, till they became acquainted with Greek philosophy, and instead of lending to Plato, borrowed from him. This pretended mark of divinity may be ascribed therefore, if it be one, to pagan philosophy, but it cannot be so to Jewish theology; and, I cannot help using an expression of one of these declaimers, who write as if they were preaching, and to apply it to the whole tribe. They would do well to think a little better beforehand, and to respect their readers a little more.

*

When these men talk of the characters of a divine original, which are to be found in the books of the Old Testament, they must mean nothing, or they must mean to say, that these books are more perfect, according to our ideas of human perfection, whether we consider them as books of law or of history, than any other writings that are avowedly human. Now if this be what they mean, nothing can be more false. They cannot deny that pagan philosophers enjoined a general benevolence, a benevolence not confined to any particular society of men, but extended to the great commonwealth of mankind, as a first principle of the law of our nature. The law of the Jews exacted from them all the duties necessary to maintain peace and good order among themselves, and if this be a mark of divinity, the laws, which rapparees and banditti establish in their societies, have the same. But the first principles, and the whole tenor of the Jewish laws, took them out of all moral obligations to the rest of mankind, and if Moses did not order them to have no benevolence for any, who were not Jews," erga nullum hominem benevolos esse," as Lysimachus pretended, yet is it certain, that their law, their history, and their prophecies, determined them to themselves a chosen race, distinct from the rest of mankind in the order of God's providence, and that they were far from owing to other men, what other men owed to them and to one another. This produced a legal injustice and cruelty in their whole conduct, and there is no part of their history wherein we shall not find examples of both, authorised by their law, and pressed upon them by their priests and their prophets.

In the systems of pagan philosophy we are exhorted, says another of these declaimers, to love virtue for her own sake; but the Jewish divines, rising much higher, exhorted us to love virtue for the sake of God. But can there be any thing so impiously interested and craving, as the sentiments ascribed to the patriarchs by Moses, and the principles of his own law? "If God will be with me, and keep me in this way that I go, and will

* Abbadie.

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give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God, and this stone which I have set for a pillar shall be God's house, and of all that thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee." This was Jacob's vow, and the conditional engagement which he took with God. If we turn to the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, we shall find that Moses on the renewal of the covenant between God and the people, employs no arguments, to induce the latter to a strict observation of it, of an higher nature than promises of immediate good, and threatenings of immediate evil. They are exhorted to keep the law; not for the sake of the law, not for the sake of God, but for considerations of another kind, and wherein not only their wants were to be supplied, but all their appetites and passions to be gratified. If they hearkened diligently to the voice of the Lord, they were to be set on high above all the nations of the earth; they were to be the head, and not the tail; to be above only, and not beneath; all the people of the earth were to fear them; all their enemies were to be smitten before their face, and they who came out against them one way, were to fly before them seven. These were objects of ambition. Their basket and their store were to be blessed, they were to grow rich, they were to lend to many nations, and to borrow from none. These were objects of avarice. They were to be blessed every where, in the city and in the field, in the fruit of their bodies, in the fruit of their ground, and in the fruit of their cattle, and of their flocks of sheep. These were objects of all their other appetites and passions. God purchased, as it were, the obedience of a people, he had chosen long before, by this mercenary bargain. It was ill kept on their part; and the law, with all these sanctions, was continually violated, sometimes rejected, and had in no degree a force sufficient to maintain itself in observation and reverence.

The most excellent constitutions of human government and systems of human law become often useless, and even hurtful, either in a natural course of things, or by extraordinary conjunctures, which the wisdom of legislators could not foresee. One of the most conceivable perfections of a law is, that it be made with such a foresight of all possible accidents, and with such provisions for the due execution of it, in all cases, that the law may be effectual to govern and direct these accidents, instead of lying at the mercy of them. Such a law would produce its effect, by a certain moral necessity resulting from itself, and not by the help of any particular conjuncture. We are able to form some general notions of laws thus perfect; but to make them is

* Gen. vi, 28.

above humanity. Another of the most conceivable perfections of a law consists in the clearness and precision of its terms, and, even in this, the greatest legislators have often failed. The terms become equivocal or obscure, if they were not so originally, by the endeavors of those who fear the law, to elude it, and of those who get by their explanations or judgments, to perplex the meaning of it. But that which is ideal perfection not real among men, will be found, no doubt, and ought to be expected, when God is the legislator. If it is not so found, all that can be said about marks of divinity in any law, that pretends to be revealed and enacted by God, is mere cant.

To apply these reflections the more strongly, it will be proper to consider the law of Moses, relatively to the first of the perfections mentioned, as a law given to the Israelites alone, and to consider, relatively to the second, the whole body of their law, and their history, which is a sort of commentary on their law, not only as given to them, but as given to all mankind, for purposes the most important to their common welfare. If eternal Wisdom dictated the laws and inspired these historians and prophets, in all their writings, eternal Wisdom knew all the uses they were to serve in time; and by consequence, whether we regard the Jewish economy alone, or that of Judaism and Christianity together, the whole system of law, history, and prophecy, must be exactly proportioned, as the means to all these ends.

On the first head we cannot read the Bible without being convinced, that no law ever operated so weak and so uncertain an effect, as the law of Moses did. Far from prevailing against accidents and conjunctures, the least was sufficient to interrupt the course and to defeat the designs of it; to make that people not only neglect the law, but cease to acknowledge the legislator. To prevent this, was the first of these designs, and if the second was, as it was no doubt, and as it is the design or pretence of all laws, to secure the happiness of the people, this design was defeated, as fully as the other; for the whole history of this people is one continued series of infractions of the law and of national calamities. So that this law, considered as the particular law of this nation, has proved more ineffectual than any other law, perhaps, that can be quoted. If this be ascribed to the hardness of heart and obstinacy of the people, in order to save the honor of the law, this honor will be little saved, and its divinity ill maintained. This excuse might be admitted in the case of any human law; but we speak here of a law supposed to be dictated by divine wisdom, which ought, and which would have been able, if it had been such, to keep in a state of submission to it, and of national prosperity, even a people rebellious and obstinate enough to break through any other. If it be said, that the law

VOL. III.-4

became ineffectual by the fault of those who governed the people, their judges and their kings, let it be remembered that these judges and kings were of God's appointment, for the most part at least; that he himself is said to have been their king, during several ages; that his presence remained amongst them, even after they had deposed him; and that the high priest consulted him, on any emergency, by the Urim and Thummim. Occasional miracles were wrought to enforce the law, but this was a standing miracle that might serve both to explain and enforce it, by the wisdom and authority of the legislator, as often as immediate recourse to him was necessary. Can it be denied, that the most imperfect system of human laws would have been rendered effectual by such means as these?

It may not be amiss here to compare the effect of this law, before the captivity of Babylon, with that which it had afterwards. Ten tribes of this chosen people had been, for their disobedience, dispersed, and, we may say, lost in the east, long before the reign of Nebuchodonosor. This prince completed the ruin of the whole nation. He burned their temple, and their city, and carried the two remaining tribes into captivity. This captivity is said to have lasted but seventy years, and the Jews had carried into it so little respect for their law, so little regard to their history, and so little trust in the prophecies, which had been published both before and during this time, that they seemed to have forgot them all when Cyrus gave them permission to return to their country, and to rebuild their temple. He did more than give them permission; he gave them encouragement, and, among other instances of it, he restored the sacred vessels, which had been taken from them. What happened on this great revolution? Zorobabel gathered, with much trouble, a small number of the Jews, who were willing to return into their own country on this great revolution, and even these were the dregs of the people. The most considerable of them, and, among these, twenty of the four-and-twenty orders of priests that had been carried to Babylon, chose rather to stay there than to return to the holy city, though that was the place appointed by God for their sacrifices, and the most august ceremonies of their religion. Fourscore years intervened between the return of Zorobabel and the arrival of Esdras at Jerusalem. The temple and the city, probably, had been rebuilt, but the law cannot be said to have been restored. Many things, directly contrary to it, were practised openly and without scruple. Thus, for example, not only the people, but the Levites and the priests, married strange women, women who were not of their own country. Esdras, and Nehemias after him, neglected nothing to restore and preserve the observation of the law; and for this purpose they took means

very different from those which Moses had instituted, and much more effectual. One of these means, and perhaps the most effectual, was the institution of synagogues, which became so numerous, that wherever there were ten Jews, it is said, there was a synagogue. In these the law was read and explained once every week; whereas it was to be read but once in seven years, and the people were obliged to go up to Jerusalem to hear it, according to the Mosaic institution. The consequence was, that, notwithstanding some schisms, some apostacies, and other revolutions, which happened in the church and state, the Jews, in general, signalised themselves by a greater and more constant attachment to their religion and law.

Another perfection of the law consists in the clearness and precision of the terms; and, in these respects, we propose to consider this body of history, of prophecy, and of law, relatively not to the Jews alone, but to the rest of the world likewise. Now the language in which this law was given, and in which we must suppose that the histories and prophecies were written, as well as the law, unless we suppose these to have been written in, or after the time of Esdras, is, the learned say, of all languages the most loose and equivocal; and the style and manner of writing of the sacred authors, whoever they were, or whenever they lived, increase the uncertainty and obscurity even of any other language. How should it be otherwise, when the same passages may be taken in historical, mystical, literal, and allegorical senses, and when those who wrote them knew so little what they wrote, that they foretold some future, when they imagined they were relating some past, event? Lord Bacon, indeed, says that the sacred authors had a special privilege of recording the future, as well as the past, in history. But I suppose his lordship to have been no more in earnest when he said this, than he was in writing his Christian paradoxes, To supply these defects, the Jews have recourse to an oral law, and Christians to the decisions of councils. Strange methods indeed! History may explain or control tradition, but it is quite absurd to explain or control history by tradition. Councils were composed of men, whose pretensions to inspiration deserve nothing but our contempt, and, therefore, it is equally absurd to explain or control the word of God, by the judgment of these men, whether in their assemblies, or separately. St. Jerome complains, in one of his letters, that they dragged the text to favor their particular sentiments, how repugnant soever to it. But this text does not seem to want so much dragging. The ambiguity of it makes it supple enough, and sentiments the most contrary to one another

* Ad Paul.

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