fall of A

Theology wife the faith of the earlier Egyptians. It was therefore from the with wifdom truly divine, that God, to fhow the vanity of dan to the their imaginations, brought upon thofe votaries of light, coming of who fancied themselves the offspring of the fun, a preterChrist. natural darkness, which, for three days, all the powers of their fupreme deity and his fubordinate agents could not difpel.

The tenth and last plague brought upon this idolatrous people was more univerfally and feverely felt than any which had preceded it. It was likewife, in fome fenfe, an inftance of the lex talionis, which requires an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, &c. Mofes was commanded, at his firft interview with Pharaoh, to say, "Thus faith the Lord, If rael is my fon, even my firft-born. Let my fon go that he may ferve me and if thou refufe to let him go, behold, I will flay thy fon, even thy first born." Before this threat was put in execution, every attempt was made to foften the hardened heart of the obflinate tyrant. The waters of his facred river were turned into blood, and all the fishes that it contained flain; frogs were brought over all the land to pollute the people; the minifters of religion were rendered fo impure by vermin, that they could not discharge their wonted offices; the animals most revered as gods, or emblems of gods, were cut off by a murrain; the elements, that were everywhere worshipped as divinities, carried through the land a devaftation, which was completed by fwarms of locufts; the afhes from the facred furnace, which were thought to convey bleffings whitherfoever they were wafted, were made to communicate incurable difeafes; a thick and preternatural dark nefs was spread over the kingdom, in defiance of the power of the great Ofiris; and when the hearts of the people and their fovereign continued ftill obdurate, the eldeft fon in each family was flain, because they refufed to let go Ifrael, God's firft-born. From this univerfal peftilence the Ifraelites were preferved by fprinkling the doorpofts of their houfes with the blood of one of the animals adored in Egypt; a fact which, as it could not be unknown to Pharaoh or his fubjects, ought to have convinced that people of the extreme abfurdity of their impious fuperftitions. 'I'his effect it seems not to have had; but the death of the first-born produced the deliverance of the Hebrews; for when it was found that there was not a houfe where there was not one dead, "Pharaoh called for Mofes and Aaron by night, and faid, Rife up, and get you forth from among my people, both you and the children of Ifrael; and bless me alfo. And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, that they might fend them out of the land in hafte; for they faid, We be all dead men (y)." The wonted obftinacy of the monarch indeed very foon returned; and his fubjects, forgetting the lofs of their children, joined with him in a vain attempt to bring back to bondage the very people whom they had been thus urgent to fend out of the land; but their attempt was defeated by Jehovah, and all who engaged in it drowned in the Red Sea.

The God of Ifrael having thus magnified himself over the Egyptians and their gods, and refcued his people from bondage by fuch means as muft not only have ftruck terror and aftonishment into the whole land, but also have spread his name through all the countries which had any communica

fall of A.

Christ.

Reafon of

in the wil

tion with that far-famed nation, proceeded to inftru&t and Theology exercise the Hebrews for many years in the wilderness. from the He inculcated upon them the unity of the Godhead; gave dam to the them ftatutes and judgments more righteous than thofe of coming of any other nation; and by every method confiftent with the freedom of moral agency guarded them against the conta gion of idolatry and polytheifm. He fent his angel before, 149 them to keep them in the way, took upon himself the of detaining fice of their fupreme civil governor, and by his prefence di- the Ifraelrected them in all their undertakings. He led them with ites fo long repeated figns and wonders through the neighbouring na derness. tions, continued to try and difcipline them till they were tolerably attached to his government and eftablished in his worship, and introduced them into the Promised Land when its inhabitants were ripe for deftruction. At their entrance into it, he gave them a fummary repetition of their former laws, with more fuch ordinances, both of a ceremonial and moral kind, as were both fuited to their temper and circumftances, as well as to prefigure, and by degrees to prepare them for, a more perfect difpenfation under the Meffiah.

The Jewish law had two great objects in view; of which 150 Great ob the first was to preferve among them the knowledge of the; jects of the true God, a rational worship fpringing from that know-Jewish law. ledge, and the regular practice of moral virtue; and the fecond was to fit them for receiving the accomplishment of the great promise made to their ancestors, by means analogous to thofe which a schoolmafter employs to fit his pupils for difcharging the duties of maturer years. Every thing in that law peculiar to itfelf, its various ceremonies, modes of facrificing, the fanctions by which it was enforced, and the theocratic government by which it was administered, had a direct tendency to promote one or other of these ends; and keeping thefe ends in view, even the minuteft laws, at which impious ignorance has affected to make itself merry, will be difcovered by those who shall study the whole system, and are at the fame time acquainted with the genuis of ancient polytheifm, to have been enacted with the moft confummate wisdom.

It is not easy for us, who have been long bleffed with the light of revelation, and who have cultivated our minds by the ftudy of the sciences, to conceive the propenfity of all nations, in that early age of the world, to the worship of falfe gods, of which they were daily adding to the number. It is indeed probable, from many paffages of Scripture, as well as from protane authors of the greatest antiquity, that one fupreme numen was everywhere acknowledged; but he was confidered as an extramundane being, too highly exalted to concern himself with the affairs of this world, the government of which, it was believed, he had delegated to various orders of fubordinate deities. Of thofe deities, fome were supposed to have the charge of one nation and fome of another. Hence it is, that we read of the gods of Egypt, the gods of the Amorites, and the gods of the different nations round about Paleftine. None of thofe nations denied the existence of their neighbour's gods; but all agreed, that while the Egyptians were the peculiar care of Ofiris and Ifis, the Amorites might be the favourites of Moloch, the Phoenicians of Cronus, and the Philistines of Dagon; and they

fall of A

Theology they had no objection occafionally to join with each other from the in the worship of their refpective tutelary deities. Nay, it thought impiety in foreigners, while they fojourned in coming of a ftrange country, not to facrifice to the gods of the place. Chrift. Thus Sophocles makes Antigone fay to her father, that a ftranger fhould both venerate and abhor those things which are venerated and abhorred in the city where he refides; Cellus a- and another author*, who, though comparatively late, drew pud Aug. much of his information from ancient writings, which are now loft, affures us, that this complaifance proceeded from the belief that the "feveral parts of the world were from the beginning diftributed to several powers, of which each had his peculiar allotment and refidence."

* Exod. xix. 5.

151

other

From this notion of local divinities, whofe power or partial fondnefs was confined to one people, the Ifraelites, at their exodus from Egypt, appear not to have been free (z). Hence it is, that when the true God first tells them, by their leader Mofes*, that if they would obey his voice in deed and keep his covenant, then they fhould be a PECU LIAR TREASURE to him above all people: to prevent them from fuppofing that he fhared the earth with the idols of the heathen, and had from partial fondness chofen them for his portion, he immediately adds, for ALL THE EARTH IS MINE. By this addition he gave them plainly to underftand that they were chofen to be his peculiar treasure for Purpofe of fome purpose of general importance; and the very firft artheir feparation from ticle of the covenant which they were to keep was, that they should have no other gods but him. So inveterate, people. however, was the principle which led to an intercommunity of the objects of worship, that they could not have kept this article of the covenant but in a state of feparation from the rest of mankind; and that feparation could neither have been effected nor continued without the vifible providence of the Almighty watching over them as his peculiar treafure. This we learn from Moies himfelf, who, when interceding for the people after their idolatrous worship of the golden calf, and intreating that the prefence of God would ftill accompany them, adds thefe words §: "For xxxiii. 16. wherein fhall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy fight? Is it not in that THOU GOEST WITH US? So fhall we be SEPARATED, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth." Upon this feparation every thin depended; and therefore to render it the more fecure, Jehovah, who in compliance with their prejudices had already affumed the appellation of their tutelary God, was graciously pleased to become likewife their fupreme Magiftrate, making them a "kingdom of pricfts and a holy nation," and delivering to them a digeft as well of their civil as of their religious laws.

+1 Sam. xvi. 19.

Exod.

152 Of their

government.

The Almighty thus becoming their King, the governheocratic ment of the Ifraelites was properly a THEOCRACY, in which the two focieties, civil and religious, were of courie incorporated. They had indeed after their fettlement in the Promifed Land, at first, temporary judges occafionally raifed up; and af ar... ermanent magiftrates called kings, to

from the

lead their armies in war, and to give vigour to the admini. Theology ftration of justice in peace: but neither thofe judges nor fall of Athofe kings could abrogate a fingle law of the original code, dam to the or make the smalleft addition to it but by the fpirit of pro- coming of phecy. They cannot therefore be confidered as fupreme Christ. magiftrates, by whatever title they may have been known; for they were to go out and come in at the word of the pricfts, who were to afk counfel for them of the Lord, and with whom they were even affociated in all judicial proceedings, as well of a civil as of a spiritual nature *.* Under* Num. any other than a theocratic government the Hebrews could xxvii. 21. and Deut. not have been kept feparate from the nations around them ; xvii. 8-13 or if they could, that feparation would not have answered the great purpofe for which it was eftablished. "The people, on their leaving Egypt, were funk into the lowest practices of idolatry. To recover them by the difcipline of a feparation, it was neceffary that the idea of God and his attributes fhould be impreffed upon them in the most fenfible manner. But this could not be commodiously done under his character of God of the univerfe: under his character of King of Ifrael, it well might. Hence it is, that we find him in the Old Teltament fo frequently reprefented with affections analogous to human paffions. The civil relation in which he stood to the Ifraelites made fuch a representation natural; the groffnefs of their conceptions made the re prefentation neceffary; and the guarded manner in which it was always qualified prevented it from being ifchievous*." Warbur Hence too it is, that under the Mofaic difpenfation, ido ton's Div. latry was a crime of ftate, punishable by the civil magi-eg, b. v. ftrate. It was indeed high treason, against which laws were enacted upon the jufteft principles, and carried into effect without danger of error, Nothing lefs indeed than penal laws of the feverest kind could have reftrained the violent propenfity of that headstrong people to worship, together with their own God, the gods of the Heathen. But penal laws enacted by human authority for errors in religion are manifeftly unjuft; and therefore a theocratic government feems to have been abfolutely neceffary to obtain the end for which the Ifraclites were feparated from the surround. ing nations.

fec. 2.

153

It was for the fame purpose of guarding them against ido. And of the latry, and preventing all undue communications with their ritual-law, Heathen neighbours, that the ritual law was given, after their prefumptuous rebellions in the wilderness. Before the bufinefs of the golden cal, and their frequent attempts to return into Egypt, it feems not to have been the Divine in tention to lay upon them a yoke of ordinances; but to make his covenant depend entirely upon their duly practifing the rite of circumcifion; obferving the feftivals inftitu ted in commemoration of their deliverance from bondaṛe,, and other fignal fervices vouchfafed them; and keeping in violate all the precepts of the decalogue (A), which, if they had done, they fhould have even lived in them *. But af- Diving ter their repeated apoftacies, and impious wishes to mix Leg. b. iva with the furrounding nations, it was neceflary to lubject fec. 6.

them

from the

154 Inftanced in their facrifices.

Num. xix.

thens deemed facred.

Theology them to a multifarious vitual, of which the ceremonial parts f1l of A- were folemn and fplendid, fitted to engage and fix the atdam to the tention of a people whofe hearts were grofs; to infpire them coming of with awful reverence, and to withdraw their affections from Chrift. the pomp and pageantry of thofe idle fuperftitions which they had fo long witneffed in the land of Egypt. To keep them warmly attached to their public worship, that worship was loaded with operofe and magnificent rites, and fo completely incorporated with their civil polity as to make the fame things at once duties of religion and acts of state. The fervice of God was indeed fo ordered as to be the conftant buliness as well as entertainment of their lives, fupplying the place of all other entertainments; and the facrifices which they were commanded to offer on the moft folemn occafions, were of fuch animals as the Egyptians and other HeaThus a heifer without blemish was in Egypt held facred to the goddess Ifis, and actually worshipped as the reprefentative of that divinity; but the fame kind of heifer was by the ritual law of the Hebrews commanded to be burnt without the camp, as the vileft animal, and the water of separation to be prepared from her afhest. The goat was by the Egyptians held in great veneration as emblematical of their ancient god Pan, and facrifices of the most abominable kind were offered to the impure animal (fee P'AN); but God, by his fervant Mofes, enjoined the Ifraelites to offer goats themselves as facrifices for fin, and on one occafion to difmifs the live animal loaded with maledictions into the wilderness *. The Egyptians, with fingular zeal, worshipped a calf without blemish as the fymbol of Apis, or the god of fertility; and it appears from the book of Exodus, that the Ifraelites themselves had been infected with that fuperftition. They were, however, fo far from being permitted by their Divine lawgiver to confider that animal as in any refpect facred, that their priests were commanded to Lev. ix. offer for themselves a young calf as a fin offering ||. No animal was in Egypt held in greater veneration than the ram, the symbol of their god Ammon, one of the heavenly conftellations. It was therefore with wildom truly divine, that Jehovah, at the inftitution of the paffover, ordered his people to kill and eat a young ram on the very day that Spencer the Egyptians began their annual folemnities in honour of de Legibus that animal as one of their greatest gods; and that he en lib. ii. cap. joined the blood of this divinity to be fprinkled as a fign upon the two fide pofts and upper door poft of the house in which he was eaten. Surely it is not in the power of imagination to conceive a ritual better calculated to cure the Ifraelites of their propenfity to idol worship, or to keep them separate from the people who had firft given them that propenfity, than one which enjoined them to offer in facri. fice the very creatures which their fuperftitious mafters had worshipped as gods. "Shall we (faid Mofes) facrifice the abominations of the Egyptians before their eyes, and will they not ftore us?"

*Levit. zvi.

Heb. Rit.

But it was not against Egyptian idolatry only that the ritual law was framed: the nations of Syria, in the midft of whom the Ifraelites were to dwell, were addicted to many cruel and abfurd fuperftitions, against which it was as neceffary to guard the people of God as against the bruteworship of Egypt. We need not inform any reader of the books of Mofes that thofe nations worshipped the fun and moon and all the hoft of heaven; or that it was part of their religion to propitiate their offended gods by occafionally facrificing their fons and their daughters. From fuch worfhip and fuch facrifices the Ifraelites were prohibited under the fevereft penalties; but we cannot confider that prohibition as making part of the ritual law, fince it relates to practices impious and immoral in themselves, and therefore de

full of A

155

+ Deut.

Levit. I. 2, &c.

clared to be abominations to the Lord. The Phoenicians, Theol gy however, and the Canaanites, entertained an opinion that from t every child came into the world with a polluted nature, and to de that this pollution could be removed only by a lufiral fire. coming Hence they took their new born infants, and with particu- Chri lar ceremonies made them pafs through the flame of a pile facred to Baal or Moloch, the fymbols of their great god And in the fun. Sometimes this purgation was delayed till the lawer fpe children had arrived at their tenth or twelfth year, when ting eat ra they were made either to leap through the flame, or run fe- and drin ing, and veral times backwards and forwards between two contiguous agricu tut facred fires; and this luftration was fuppofed to free them from every natural pollution, and to make them through life the peculiar care of the deity in whofe honour it was performed. The true God, however, who would have no Spencer, fellowship with idols, forbade all fuch purgations among his lib. ii c people, whether done by fires confecrated to himfelf or to 13. the bloody deities of the Syrian nations. "There shall not be found (fays he) among you any one that maketh his fon or his daughter to país through the fire +." There are, in the Jewish law, few precepts more fre. xvii. 10. quently repeated than that which prohibits the feething of29. and a kid in its mother's milk ; and there being no moral fitnefs in this precept when confidered abfolutely and without Exod. regard to the circumstances under which it was given, in- 19. 111. fidel ignorance has frequently thought fit to make it the 26. Deut. fubject of profane ridicule. But the ridicule will be for. xiv. a. borne by thofe who know that, among the nations round Judea, the feafting upon a kid boiled in its mother's milk was an effential part of the impious and magical ceremonies celebrated in honour of one of their gods, who was fuppoted to have been fuckled by a fhe-goat. Hence, in the Samaritan Pentateuch, the text runs thus; "Thou fhalt not feeth a kid in its mother's milk; for whoever does fo, is as one who facrifices an abominable thing, which of fends the God of Jacob §." Another precept, apparently & Spencer, of very little importance, is given in these words: "Yelib. i. cap. fhall not round the corners of your heads, neither fhalt thou mar the corners of thy beard." But its wifdom is seen at Levit. once, when we know that at funerals it was the practice of xix. 27. many of the heathens, in that early period, to round the corners of their heads, and mar their beards, that by throwing the hairs they had cut off upon the dead body, or the funeral pile, they might propitiate the fhade of the departed hero; and that in other nations, particularly in Phoenicia, it was customary to cut off all the hair of their heads except what grew upon the crown, which, with great folemnity, was confecrated either to the fun or to Saturn +. The un-t Spencer, learned Chriftian, if he be a man of reflection, muft read lib. ii. cap. with fome degree of wonder fuch laws as thefe: "Thou fhalt not fow thy vineyard with divers feeds, left the fruit of thy feed which thou haft fown and the fruits of thy vineyard be defiled. Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an afs together. Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers forts, or of woollen and linen together ‡.' But his wonder† Deut. will ceafe when he knows that all these were practices from xxii. which the Sabian idolaters of the cast expected the greatest 9, 10, 11. advantages. Their belief in magic and judicial aftrology led them to imagine, that by fowing different kinds of corn among their vines they fhould propitiate the gods which were afterwards known in Rome by the names of Bacchus and Ceres; that, by yoking animals fo heterogeneous as the ox and the afs in the fame plough, they fhould by a charm fecure the favour of the deities who prefided over the affairs of husbandry; and that a garment compofed of linen and woollen, worn under certain conjunctions of the ftars, would protect its owner, his flocks, his herds, and his field, from all malign influences, and render him in the highest

2

degree

18.

fal of A

Theol gy degree profperous through the whole courfe of his life §. from the But magical ceremonies, of which the very effence feems dain to the to have confifted in uniting in one group or jumble things emy of never brought together by nature, were always performed Chrit, in order to render propitious good or evil demons (fee MAGIC); and therefore fuch ceremonies, however unin portant Sper in themiclves, were in that age molt wifely prohibited in 30, 31, 33. the Mofaic law, as they naturally led thofe who were addicted to them to the worship of idols and impure fpirits.

lib. is cap

156

The Mofaic laws

enforced

rai fanc

tions.

Deut. pafim.

I: the whole ritual of the Jewish economy be examined in this manner, every precept in it will be found to be disected against fome idolatrous practice of the age in which it was given. It was therefore admirably calculated to keep the Ifraelites a feparate people, and to prevent too clofe an intercourfe between them and their Gentile neighbours. And their civil inflitutes, even those which appear the moft trifling, were all contrived with the moft confurn mate wisdom to promote the fame end. The diftin&tion made by their law between clean and unclean animals (fee SLAVERY, 123.) rendered it impoffible for them, without a breach of that law, to eat and drink with their idolatrous neighbours; their facred and civil ceremonies being directly levelled against the Egyptian, Zabian, and Canaanitifh fuperstions, had a tendency to generate in their minds a keen contempt of thofe fuperftitions; and that contempt mult have been greatly increafed by their yearly, monthly, and daily facrifices, of the very animals which their Egyptian mafters had worshipped as gods.

That thefe laws might have the fuller effect upon minds grofs and carnal, they were all enforced by temporal fanc. tions. This was indeed the natural and even neceffary con by tempo- fequence of the theocratic government cftablished in Ifrael; for when God condefcended to become their fupreme civil magiftrate, he of course engaged to execute, either immediately by himself, or by the medium of his vicegerents the judges and the kings, all the offices included in fuch magiltracy. Hence it is that Mofes affured them, that if they would hearken to God's judgments, and keep them, and do them, they fhould be bleffed above all people; threatening them at the fame time with utter deftruction if they fhould at all walk after other gods, and ferve them, and worship them. Nor were thefe temporal rewards and punifhments held out only to the nation as a collective body; they were promised and threatened to every individual in his private capacity as the certain confequences of his obedience or difobedience. Every particular Hebrew was commanded to honour his father and mother, that it might go well with him, and that his days might be prolonged; whilft he who curied his father or his mother was furely to be put to death. Against every idolater, and even against the wilful tranfgreflor of the ceremonial law, God repeatedly declared that he would fet his face, and would cut off that man from among his people: and that individuals, as well as the nation, were in this life actually rewarded and punifhed according to their deferts, has been proved by bishop Div. Warburton with a force of evidence § which muft carry Le book conviction to every mind which his lordship's rude railings v. fect. 4. at fome favourite fyftem have not filled with prejudices against all his works. Indeed the Mofaic law, taken in its literal fenfe, holds out no other prolpects to the Ifraclites than temporal happinets; fuch as, health, long life, peace, plenty, and dominion, if they should keep the covenant; and temporal mifery, viz. difcales, immature death, war, famine, want, fubjection, and captivity, if they fhould break it. "See (fays Moles), I have let before thee this day life and good, death and evil; in that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments, and his flatutes, and his judgments, that VOL. XVIII. Part II.

fall of A

+ Deut.

19. XXX.

rafhly in

had no

hope be

From this notorious fact, which hardly any man of let.XXX. 15ters will now dare to deny, fome divines have concluded, 25. we think rafhly, that the ancient Ifraelites had no hope 157 whatever beyond the grave; and that in the whole Old Whence it Tellament there is not a fingle intimation of a future ftate. has been That many of the loweft vulgar, who could neither read ferred that nor write, were in this ftate of darkness, may be true; but that the it is impoffible that fuch of them as understood the book of ancient Genefis could be ignorant that death came into the world Hebrews by the tranfgreffion of their firit parents, and that God had repeatedly promifed to redeem mankind from every confe- yon the quence of that tranfgreffion. They muft likewife have known grave. that, before the deluge, Enoch was tranflated into heaven without tafting death; that afterwards Elijah had the fame exemption from the common lot of humanity; and that, as God is no refpecter of perfons, every one who ferved him with the zeal and fidelity of these two prophets would, by fome means or other, be made capable of enjoying the fame rewards. The God of Abraham, Ifaac, and Jacob, was not the God of the dead, but of the living.

In the earliest periods of their commonwealth, the Ifraclites could, indeed, only infer, from different paffages of their facred books, that there would be a general refurrection of the dead, and a future ftate of rewards and punishments; but from the writings of the prophets it appears, that before the Babylonish captivity that doctrine muft have been very generally received. We fhall not, in fupport of our opinion, quote the famous paffage in the book of Job §, Chap. because it is not determined at what period that beautiful xix. verfe and fublime poem was admitted into the Jewish canon; but 25, &c. in the Pfalms, and in the prophecies of Ifaiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel, there are feveral texts which feem to us to prove, incontrovertibly, that, at the time when these inspired books were written, every Ifraelite who could read the fcriptures must have had fome hopes of a refurrection from the dead. We fhall confider two of these texts, because they have been quoted by a very learned and valuable writer in fupport of an opinion the reverse of ours.

158 In a fublime fong, compofed with a view to incite the This opipeople to confidence in God, the prophet Ifaiah has these nion conremarkable words; "Thy dead men fhall live; together futed. with my dead body fhall they arife. Awake and fing, ye that dwell in the duft; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth fhall caft out the dead ." We agree with Chap. bishop Warburton that these words are figurative, and that xxvi. 19. they were uttered to give the Ifraelites confolation in very difaftrous times. The purpofe of the prophet was to affure them, that though their community fhould, in Babylon, be as completely diffolved as a dead body reduced to duft, yet God would restore them to their own land, and raise that community again to life. This was indeed a prophecy only of a temporal deliverance; but as it is exprefled in terms 3 N

relating

G

**Div. Leg, book

a

fall of A

The hope

not from

But though the more intelligent and righteous Ifraelites Theology certainly "all died in faith, and not having received the from the pronites, but having feen them afar off, were perfuaded of dam to the them and embraced them, confeffing that they were rangers coming of and pilgrims on earth, who defired a better country, that Chrift. is, a heavenly one †," we are not to fuppofe that this hea- 159 venly defire arose from any thing taught in the law of r Mofes. 'That law, when taken by itself, as unconnected of the Hewith prior and fubfequent revelations, makes no mention brews, whatever of a heavenly inheritance, which St Paul affuresh wever, us was given 430 years before to Abraham by a promile their own which may be traced back to the first ray of comfort vouch-law. fafed to fallen man in the fentence paffed on the originalt Heb. xi, deceiver. "Wherefore then ferved the law? It was added 3, &c. (fays the apoftle), because of tranfgreffions, till the feed6-19. fhould come to whom the promise was made." The tranfgreffions here alluded to were polytheilm and idolatry, which, with their never failing train of cruel and deteftable vices, had overfpread the whole world; and the primary intention of the law was to ftem the torrent of thefe corruptions, for which we have feen it was admirably calcu lated; and, like a schoolmafter, to inftru&t the Ifraelites in the unity and worthip of Jehovah, and thus by degrees bring them to Chrift.

Theology relating to the death and refurrection of man, the doctrine of from the refurrection mult then have been well known, and generally fall of A. dant to the received, or fuch language would have been altogether uncon ing of intelligible. No (fays the bishop); that the language might Chrift. be intelligible, it was only neceffary that the Ifraelites fhould have diftinct ideas of a refurrection from the dead, with out knowing that the natural body is indeed to rife again; and as he thinks that fuch metaphorical expreffions as this would have the greatest force where the doctrine of the refurrection was unknown, he concludes that it must have been unknown among the Ifraelites in the days of Ifaiah *. Had there been no facred books among the Ifraelites vi. fect. 2. before this prophecy was uttered, his lordfhip's reafoning would have been at least plausible, if not conclufive; but that a people who knew how death had entered into the world, who believed that they were by fome means or other to be freed from its fting, who, it is natural to fuppofe, often meditated upon the bruifing of the ferpent's head, and the nature of the bleffing which all nations were to derive from the feed of Abraham, should form diftinct ideas of a refurrection, and read this prophecy without believing that the natural body is indeed to rife again, we cannot poffibly conceive. The very fuppofition is one of his lordfhip's molt irreconcileable paradoxes; and it is a paradox which his fyftem did not require him to fupport.

+ Chap, Axvii. 3.

The prophet Ezekiel, when the flate of things was moft defperate, is carried by the Spirit into a valley full of dry bones, and asked this queftion; "Son of man, can thefe bones live?" To which he answers; " O Lord God, thou knoweft ;" an anfwer which the fame learned prelate thinks the prophet could not have made, had he been -brought up in the knowledge and belief of a refurrection from the dead. Our opinion is directly the reverse of that of his lordship, who feems to have mistaken the nature of this scenical reprefentation. The prophet was not afked if all the dead would rife at the laft day; but only if the particular bones then prefented to him could live at that time, and while other bones were mouldering in corruption: and to fuch a question we cannot conceive any aufwer that a man brought up in the belief of a general refurrection could have given, but-" O Lord God, thou knowelt." Had Ezekiel been a stranger to the doctrine of a general refurrection, or had he not believed that doctrine, he would doubtless have answered the queftion that was put to him in the negative; but convinced that all men are at fome pe. riod to rife from the dead, "that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad," he very naturally faid, that God alone knew whether the bones then exhibited to him in the valley would rite before the general refur

rection.

Gal. ii.

But though it is apparent that a future ftate of rewards and punishments made no part of the Mofaic difpenfation, yet the law had certainly a fpiritual meaning to be underflood when the fulnefs of time fhould come. Every Chriftian sees a ftriking resemblance between the facrifice of the pafchal lamb, which delivered the Ifraelites from the detroying angel in Egypt, and the facrifice of the Lamb of God, which taketh away the fin of the world. Indeed the whole ritual of facrifice must have led the more intelligent of them to faith in a future facrifice; by which, while the heel of the feed of the woman fhould be bruifed, the head of the ferpent should be completely crushed (fee SACRI-` FICE); and as prophets were raised up from time to time, to prepare them for the coming of the Meffiah, and to foretel the nature of his kingdom, there can be no doubt but that thofe infpired teachers would lay open to them, as far as was expedient, the temporary duration of the Mofaic law, and convince them that it was only the fhadow of better things to come. From the nature of their ritual, and the different prophecies vouchfafed them, which be- Why the came more and more explicit as the time approached for typical. their accomplishment, they muft furely have been led to expect redemption from the curfe of the fall by the fufferings of their Meffiah; but that any one of them knew precifely the manner in which they were to be redeemed, and the nature of that religion which was to fuperfede their own, is wholly incredible (B). Such knowledge would

have

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law was

cap.