great freedom. I think myself obliged, in conscience, to do so, and before I conclude, you shall judge of the reasons for which I think in this manner, and hold this language.

We are told, in some theological declamations, that the revelation made to the Israelites, and taught in their scriptures, corrected the false ideas of paganism, as it appears by the examples of Socrates and Plato, who borrowed from the writings of the Jews the best and soundest parts of their philosophy, which has been proved over and over by learned antiquaries*. It is a sufficient answer to this, to say, that the fact is false. Christians, as well as Jews, have asserted it; but it is false to say, that they have proved it. Neither Plato, nor Socrates, nor Pythagoras, nor the Egyptians and Chaldæans, their masters, appear to have borrowed any thing from the Jews; though Moses had been instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and though the Jews, both before and after Esdras, borrowed evidently, as evidently as any such thing can appear at this distance of time, from the Egyptians, the Chaldæans, and even the Greek philosophers, from Plato and from Zeno for instance. At other times we are told, that the soul of man knows neither whence it came nor whither it is to go, that these are points concerning which human reason must be always in doubt, and which were clearly determined by

* See Abbadie,

the

the Jewish revelation. We find this asserted very magisterially, but, if we have recourse to the Bible, we find no such thing.

Moses did

not believe the immortality of the soul, nor the rewards and punishments of another life; though it is possible he might have learned these doctrines from the Egyptians, who taught them very early, and yet not so early, perhaps, as they taught that of the unity of God. When I say that Moses did not believe the immortality of the soul, nor future rewards and punishments, my reason for it is, that he taught neither, when he had to do with a people, whom even a theocracy could not restrain, and on whom, therefore, terrours of punishments future as well as present, eternal as well as temporary, could never be too much multiplied, nor too strongly inculcated. Moses, the greatest of their prophets, knew nothing of this immortality, and Solomon, the wisest of their kings, decides against it. The texts in Ezekiel, and others, which are alleged to prove that this doctrine was part of the Jewish system, are too modern to prove it, and they admit besides of a different sense. In short, this doctrine does not appear to have prevailed among 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

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 tenour 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 it is certain, that their law, their history, and their prophecies, determined them to think themselves a chosen race,

* Abbadie.

distinct

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 interesting 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 will keep me in this

way that I go, and will 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 xxviiith 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 a higher nature

Gen. vi, 28.

than

than promises of immediate good, and the 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 go

vernment