observe it, during many ages, while they subsisted as a political body; and that they still entertain the. highest veneration for it, and yield obedience to such of its precepts as are practicable in their present circumstances. This is surely a very astonishing fact. A people of the most stubborn dispositions submit to a most troublesome law; to a law which it seemed madness to obey. To endeavour to account for this fact, by supposing some artifice to have been employed by Moses to deceive them into a compliance with his measures, is by no means satisfactory. Their situation was not favourable to any trick or deception. Had they been separated into small companies, and scattered over the face of a large country, they might have become an easy prey to some cunning men in the interest of Moses, who might have succeeded in deluding them one after another; but they were united in one body in the wilderness, and were too unwieldy a mass to be moulded by the hand of an impostor. It is impossible to account for the reception of his law on any other principle, than that he satisfied the people with regard to his authority to enact it. Force could not have been employed; fraud would have been detected; and flattery would have been tried in vain on a froward and jealous multitude. But no authority less than divine could have sufficed to sanction such a law; no other authority could have controlled and silenced the many interests and passions which rose in opposition to it. Nothing could have overawed and subdued the turbulent spirit of the Israelites, but manifest tokens of the presence of God with Moses, and the dread of his almighty power. The reception of his law, therefore, may be

considered as a proof, that the Israelites had seen such works done by him, as convinced them that he was the minister and messenger of Jehovah, the God of their nation. He who will dispute this reasoning, must oppose it, not by impertinent cavils, of the futility of which he is himself probably sensible; but by shewing how Moses could have succeeded, without a divine commission, in making so vexatious and dangerous a law be embraced by so perverse a people.

Agreeably to these observations, we find him in the law appealing to miracles which are said to have been wrought before their eyes. This appeal is a proof that they were actually wrought; for Moses would not have risked his credit and influence among his countrymen, by boasting of attestations from heaven, which it must have been known by all who heard him or read his writings, were never given. He would not have dared to affirm, that Egypt was smitten by terrible plagues, if none had been inflicted upon it; that the Red Sea was divided before them, if they had not passed through the midst of its waves; that manna fell from heaven around their tents, if they had never eaten that heavenly food; or that God spake to them out of the midst of the fire, if they had not heard his voice publishing the decalogue from Sinai. These events, on the supposition that they really took place, were exposed to the senses of all the people; and no man, who had not witnessed them, could have been persuaded that he had. If, however, it be conceived possible for one man to be reasoned or cheated out of his senses, we may, without hesi tation, deny the possibility of such a deception in the case of two or three millions of spectators.

The miracles, then, to which Moses appeals, were actually wrought, and, consequently, he was declared to be a prophet, and his law to be a revelation from God; for, as we have seen in the case of the apostles, the miracles were the seal of heaven set to his commission. Hence we infer, that his writings, in which the law is contained, were inspired, because the same supernatural assistance, which he enjoyed in delivering it to the congregation, we may be certain, was vouchsafed to him in recording it for the benefit of succeeding generations. It is unnecessary to repeat the reasoning under the first argument for the inspiration of the New Testament, which might be employed, in this perfectly similar case, without any alteration. But it being once admitted that he wrote his law by inspiration, we can feel no difficulty in believing, that he was under the same infallible direction in the other parts of his writings. We may be confident that he, whom God hath empowered to make a revelation to mankind, will not be permitted to mingle his own stories and opinions with it. All those things, therefore, which are inserted in the same volume with the law, as the history of the creation, and of the world from the first ages to the deliverance from Egypt, are equally authentic as the law itself, and the account of the miraculous transactions in the wilderness. It would be highly unreasonable to limit the proof of inspiration from his miracles to one part, or to some parts of his writings. In strict language, the miracles attested his character, or pointed him out as a divine messenger; and from such a person we are bound to receive as equally true and authoritative,

every thing which he delivers in the name of God, whether law, history, doctrine, or prediction.

I have been the longer in proving the inspiration of the five books of Moses, because they are the fundamental part of the Jewish scriptures; and a firm belief of their divinity will prepare us for the reception of those other books, which we proposed in the next place to consider.

II. Let us now direct our attention to the Historical Books.

It is not my design, under this division, to discuss separately the proofs of the inspiration of each particular book; nor perhaps is it necessary, that I should attempt to prove their inspiration at all, because, since the days of the Samaritans, few, who admitted the divinity of the five books of Moses, have refused to acknowledge the authority of the remaining parts of the Old Testament. There is no satisfactory evidence in support of the vulgar notion, that the historical books were rejected, together with the prophetical, by the Sadducees. Josephus brings no such charge against them; but on the contrary he says, that, though they disregarded the traditions of the elders, they received a veɣgauμενα the written books. They are not accused of this crime by the Rabbies, nor is it likely that so great an offence would have been tolerated by their zealous countrymen; and they are represented by the Talmudists as reasoning from the other books, as well as from the law. Indeed the inspiration of the Pentateuch being supposed, that of the historical books seems naturally and almost unavoidably to follow. And it is no inconsiderable argument for their inspiration, that they are necessary to exhibit

a complete view of that plan of providence respecting the Jews, of which the giving of the law constituted, I may say, the first step. The following observations will illustrate this idea.

On the supposition that the books of Moses were inspired, and that the law delivered in them is divine, in might have been expected, that we should be furnished with a narrative of the settlement of the Israelites in the land of Canaan, which their lawgiver had promised them, in the name of God, as their inheritance, and in which alone his law could in all its parts be observed. A history, too, of the divine dispensations towards them subsequent to that event, might have been looked for, to shew, that, in their national capacity, they were treated according to the sanctions of their law; and that, as they prospered by obedience, so they were visited for their crimes with temporal calamities. In consequence of the change of the form of government, which was administered for a long period by judges, but afterwards became regal, an account was wanted of the causes which gave rise to this revolution; and in particular, of the elevation of the family of David to the throne, from which the Messiah was to spring. As of the twelve tribes, which originally composed the nation of Israel, ten having revolted from Rehoboam the grandson of David, and forsaken the worship of God at Jerusalem, were, after some time, led away captive into a land from which they never returned, a short history of these tribes seems necessary to acquaint us with the reasons why God rejected so large a portion of a people, whom he had chosen as his own inheritance. The history of the tribe of Judah was peculiarly