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impress such sentiments upon the human heart with practical conviction! If the intermixture of such sentiments and precepts with the civil code, and the union of political regulations with moral instruction and religious observances, is unparalleled in any other country, and by any other Lawgiver-does not this circumstance afford some presumptive evidence of the divine original of the Mosaic code.

TO REVIEW THE SKETCH WE HAVE EXHIbited of the Jewish CONSTITUTION, we have seen that it provided for the settlement of 600,000 freeholders, with independent properties, derived not from any human superior, but held in fee from the Sovereign of the Jewish state, even God himself. This distribution of property was guarded by preventing the accumulation of debt, and, if alienated for a time, securing its reversion to the family of the original proprietor, at regular periods. The distribution of this body of freeholders through the land, by their tribes and families, forms an additional provision for their union and happiness. They are employed in agriculture, attached to domestic life, estranged from war, but bound to assemble for their country's defence, and thus forming a secure barrier against hostile violence or insidious ambition. They are governed by a nobility, by magistrates and by elders, possessing properties suited to their several ranks, respected for their patriarchal descent, uniting in their persons civil and military authority, by an hereditary right which precluded jealousy and discord. The whole tribe of Levi is set apart to attend to the religious and moral instruction of the nation, for which they have the fullest leisure, and to which they are bound by the strongest interests; dispersed over the whole, and forming a cement and bond of union between the remaining tribes. In this domestic and family government, as it has been justly termed, population is encouraged-freedom secured-agriculture and residence in the country, and, by consequence, purity and simplicity of manners provided for-domestic virtue, reverence to the aged, kindness to the stranger, bounty to the fatherless and the widow, justice to all, are inculcated in the most forcible manner, and with the most awful sanctions, even the favour or the displeasure of the Lord Jehovah, who is the immediate Sovereign under whom this government is exercised, by whom its Laws are formed, from whom all property is held, to whose powerful interposition the nation

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owed its settlement, and on whose protection it depended for its continuance. All the blessings, therefore, which the Jew enjoyed under this constitution, and by this government, ought to have had the effect of animating his gratitude and piety to God, and enlarging his benevolence to the poor and the stranger, the fatherless and the widow, those peculiar objects of the divine patronage and protection. Is not such a scheme of government worthy of the divine Author to whom it is ascribed? and does not its establishment at so early a period, and amongst a people so apparently incapable of inventing it as the Jews, strongly attest its heavenly original.

LECTURE V.

Importance of the question, whether the Jewish Ritual is opposed to the system of Heathen worship, or in any degree borrowed from it? The latter improbable, if Judaism is of divine original; Spencer's opinion— grounded on supposed political wisdom of such a proceeding-Examples he adduces-mistaken as to these examples-as to reformation from Judaism to Christianity—and from Gentilism to Christianity-Attempt to accommodate Christianity to pre-existing customs, &c.—its mischiefs— Reformation from Popery to Protestantism-Spencer's opinion contrary to Scripture-Parts of the Jewish Ritual more ancient than MosesOrigin of circumcision-Designed contrast between Judaism and idolatry -Jewish Ritual a barrier against idolatry, proved by experience-Josephus-Tacitus-Spencer's opinion supported by insufficient evidence-How far Judaism resembled idolatry—Instances of contrast-Minuteness of Ritual, how useful—and its sanctuary, priests, &c.—Ritual not burthen

some.

ORIGINALITY AND DESIGN OF THE JEWISH RITUAL.

In the preceding Lectures an attempt has beeen made to contrast the theological, moral, and political principles of the Mosaic Law, with the idolatries and corruptions almost universally prevalent at the period of its promulgation, as well as with the carnal temper and short-sighted views of the Jewish people, and their proneness to imitate the worship, and sink into the corruptions of their idolatrous neighbours. And it has been inferred, that the establishment of such a system, at such a period, amongst a people so apparently incapable of inventing it, as the Jews, and so evidently unwilling to submit to it, strongly attests its heavenly original.-In the prosecution of this argument, I did not judge it necessary minutely to examine a question which has been agitated by writers of considerable note,-How far the apparent resemblance between certain parts of the Jewish Ritual, and certain practices of the Egyptians,

and other idolatrous nations, should induce a doubt of the originality of the Jewish Law, and lead us to believe that the Legislator of the Hebrews borrowed many of his rights from the practice of the Egyptians, and others of the surrounding nations, in order to accommodate his Ritual to the habits and propensities of his countrymen, by preserving a similarity between his institutions and those idolatrous rites and customs to which they had been familiarized and attached; many of which he, in a great measure, retained, (as these writers suppose) only altering them so far as to change their object, appropriating them to the service of the true God, and blending them with the rites which originated solely in the divine appointment. Some judicious and candid critics have considered my omitting to notice this question, as a defect in this work; and in deference to their judgment, I feel myself called on to advert to it as far as I judge it necessary in my present view of the subject.

In the first place, then, if the principles and reasonings adduced in the preceding Lectures, and confirmed in those which follow, are just and conclusive, the supposition which we are now considering, becomes totally superfluous, and even in the highest degree improbable. If the great Jehovah, the moral Governor of the world, did in reality separate the Jewish nation to be the depositaries of true religion and sound morality, in the midst of an idolatrous world, and for this purpose brought them forth out of Egypt by a series of stupendous and uncontrolled miracles; if he promulgated to them the Moral Law of the Decalogue, with the most awful display of divine power and majesty if he established over them, as their form of national government, a Theocracy, which could not be supported without the continued interposition of an extraordinary providence; if he retained them in the wilderness for forty years, to discipline and instruct them, until the entire generation, which had been familiarized to the idolatry and corruptions of Egypt, had perished; and if he then planted them in the land of Canaan by a supernatural power, driving out before them its inhabitants, or compelling the Jews to exterminate them, as a punishment for their inveterate idolatry and its attendant crimes, commanding them carefully to avoid all similar profanation and guilt, under the terror of suffering similar

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punishment;-if these facts have been established, so as to prove that the Jewish Lawgiver was clearly delegated by God to institute a particular form of worship, with a variety of regulations and rites, to preserve the separation of this chosen people from the surrounding nations; then the supposition, that he should borrow any thing from these rites and customs, in order to accommodate his system to the prejudices, habits, and propensities of his countrymen, becomes unnecessary, in proportion as we more clearly discern that he possessed authority to conciliate attention and enforce obedience without resorting to any such artifice. And if such an expedient was unnecessary, surely its adoption is extremely improbable. Thus to blend divine appointments and human inventions; to degrade the worship of the great Jehovah with the intermixture of rites, originally designed to honour the basest idols; to reprobate the whole sytem of idolatry, all its profanations and crimes, with the most vehement and indiscriminate condemnation, and prohibit every attempt to introduce any part of it, under the severest penalties; and yet secretly, as it were, pilfer from it some of its most attractive charms, varnish them with a new colouring, and exhibit them as the genuine features of true religion; this seems altogether irreconcileable with the dignity of an inspired Legislator, and the purity of a divine Law, and indeed forms a scheme so jarring and inconsistent, that it appears utterly incredible it should be adopted by Divine Wisdom.

*

The learned Spencer, the most distinguished champion for this opinion, of the rites of the Jewish Law having been borrowed from those of the Gentiles, especially the Egyptians, argues from the political wisdom of such a gradual reformation, by grafting new institutions on customs already familiarized; and he adduces examples from "the triple reformation, first "from Judaism to Christianity; next from Gentilism to Chris"tianity; and lastly, from Popery to Protestantism: in each of "which (as he truly alleges) many instances occur, in which "the rites of the old religion were retained or imitated in the "new." But in this reasoning he seems entirely to overlook the real bearing of the very examples he adduces. Christianity

*Spencer de Legibus Hebræorum, Lib. III. Hogæ Comitum—a. D. 1686. + Spencer, ut supra, Lib. III. cap. ii. sect. 4. p. 27.

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