his chosen people, was pleased, more humano, to assume the title of King, and to administer their civil affairs by a Theocratic mode of Government. Every step in this establishment evinces, that it was his purpose to interfere no otherwise than in conformity to that political assumption. He proceeded on the most equitable grounds of civil Government: he became their King by free choice. It must needs therefore be his purpose to confine himself to such powers of legislation, as human Governors are able to exert; though he extended the powers of administration far beyond the limits of humanity. His Lordship's ignorance of so reasonable a distinction occasioned all this pompous Fallacy. He found in the Mosaic Dispensation OCCASIONAL MIRACLES pretended: and he imagined that, consistently with this pretence, Miracles ought to operate throughout, rather than that the end of the Law should be defeated. But, I presume, GOD could not, conformably to his purpose of erecting a THEOCRACY, and administring it MORE HUMANO, exert miraculous powers in legislating, though he very well might, and actually did exert them, in governing because, in legislation, a miracle, that is, a supernatural force added to the Laws, to make them constantly obeyed, could not be employed without putting a force upon the Will; by which God's Laws would indeed produce their effect, but it would be by the destruction of the subject of them. The case was different in administring the Laws made: here God was to act miraculously; often out of wise choice, to manifest the nature of the Government, and the reality of his regal character; sometimes out of necessity, for the carrying on of that Government on the Sanctions by which it was to be dispensed: and all this he might do without the least force upon the Will.

This is sufficient to expose the futility of his Lordship's conclusion from the circumstance of infinite Power's administring the Law; it being essential to the Law, that infinite Power administring it, should restrain itself within such bounds as left the Will perfectly free. But infinite Power, restrained within such bounds, might sometimes meet with unsurmountable obstructions in the course of its direction, under a Theocracy administered more humano.

II. We have seen how weak his Lordship's reasoning is in itself: Let us now see how much weaker he makes it by ill management; till at length it comes out a good argument against his own objection.

66 was so far from pre

"The Law of Moses" (says his Lordship) vailing over accidents and conjunctures, that the least was sufficient to interrupt the course and defeat the design 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."

To pass by that vulgar mistake (which has been sufficiently exposed above) that the Jews ever ceased to acknowledge their Legislator; let me observe it to his Lordship's credit, that he appears to have understood so much at least of the Mosaic Institution, as to see that the first end of it was peculiar to itself; and that that which is common to all civil Communities was but the second end of This.

:

But is it not strange, when he saw so far into the nature of the Jewish Constitution, that he should not see that this second end was entirely dependent on what he himself makes the principal; namely, to preserve the Israelites from idolatry; but should argue against the divinity of the Law, as if these ends were independent one of another; and that one might be obtained without the other? For, to aggravate the imbecility of the Law, he informs us in the passage last quoted, "that it was not only unable to gain its first end, but its second likewise that the one design was defeated as fully as the other; that the people were not only idolaters in spiritual matters, but poor, miserable, and calamitous in their civil interests." Strange! that he could not see, or would not acknowledge, that the LAW denounces their happiness and misery as citizens, in exact proportion to their adherence to, or their defection from, that Law; when he saw and confessed (what their HISTORY records), that this was their invariable fortune. The whole history of this people (says his Lordship) is one continued series of infractions of the Law, and of national calamities. Now if the whole frame of the Mosaic Law was so composed, as to do that by positive institute which the moral Law does by natural, viz. reward the obedient, and punish the disobedient (and it certainly was so composed, if a continued series of infractions was followed by a continued series of calamities), we must needs conclude that we have here the strongest proof of that divine Wisdom in the Constitution, which this great modern Law-giver pretends to seek, but assures us he is not able to find; and yet, at the same time, brings this convincing circumstance of the truth of the Law;-This design (says he) was defeated as fully as the other. Here his rhetoric, as usual, got the better of his reasoning: Not content to say,-the whole history of this People is one continued series of infractions of the Law,— he will needs add by way of exaggeration-AND OF NATIONAL CALAMITIES. Which has so perverse an influence on the argument as to undo all he had been labouring to bring about, by discovering a

connexion between infractions and calamities, which has all the marks of a divine contrivance.

Had it been the declared design of their Law-giver to separate the two ends, and to form such an Economy as that the People under it might be flourishing in peace and affluence, while they were Idolaters in Religion; or, on the other hand, true Worshippers and, at the same time, calamitous Citizens; then to find them neither religious nor prosperous, under a Law which pretended to procure truth without temporal felicity, or to establish peace and prosperity in the midst of error; this indeed (without taking in the perversity of such a System) would have fully discredited the pretended original. But when, in this Law, truth and happiness, error and misery, are declared to have an inseparable connexion; the freethinking Politician, who shews from history that this connexion was constant and invariable, is intrapped by the retorsion of nature and reason, to prove against himself the Divinity of that Institute he labours to discredit.

Still further: When, on reading the history of this extraordinary People, we find (as Josephus well expresses it) that, in proportion to the neglect of the Law, easy things became unsurmountable, and all their undertakings, how just soever, ended in incurable calamities,* we cannot but acknowledge the divine direction in every stage of such a Dispensation. For, to comprehend the whole of the Historian's meaning, we must remember, that there were some Laws given purposely to manifest the divinity of their original: such as that against multiplying horses; which, when it was trangressed, easy things became unsurmountable; and that which most facilitates a victory, a strong body of Cavalry intermixed with Foot, proved amongst the Israelites a certain means of their defeat. So again, when they transgressed the Law which commanded all the males to go annually to the temple, the historian tells us, their most just undertakings ended in incurable calamities; and sure nothing could be more just than to defend their borders from invaders; yet they were sure to be most infested with them when they thought themselves best secured: that is, while their males were at home, when they should have been worshiping at the Temple.

III. But it is now time to come a little closer to his Lordship. He has been all along arguing on a FALSE FACT, which his ignorance of the nature of the Jewish Separation hindered him from seeing.

He understood, indeed, that this extraordinary Economy had, for its primary end, something very different from all other civil Policies;

• Καθ' ὅσον δ ̓ ἂν ἀποστῶσι τῆς τούτων ἀκριβοῦς ἐπιμελείας, άπορα μὲν γίνεται τὰ πόριμα, τρέπεται δ ̓ εἰς συμφορὰς ἀνηκέστους, ὅ, τι ποτ' ἂν ὡς ἀγαθὸν ὁρᾷν σπουδάσωσιν. -Antiq. vol. i. p. 4.

and that that which was the first (indeed the only end), in others, was but the secondary, end in this. Yet this primary end he saw so obscurely, as not to be able to make it out. He supposed it was to keep the Israelites from idolatry; whereas it was TO PRESERVE THE MEMORY OF THE ONE GOD IN AN IDOLATROUS WORLD, till the coming of Christ: To keep the Israelites from idolatry, was but the mean to this end. Thus has our political Architect "mistaken the scaffold for the pile," as his harmonious friend expresses it. And the mistake is the more gross, as the notion of the ultimate end's being to keep the Israelites from idolatry, is founded in that vain fancy of Jewish pride, that their Fathers were selected as the favourites of God, out of his fondness for the race of Abraham.

Under this rectified idea therefore let us consider the truth of his Lordship's assertion, That no Law ever operated so weak and 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.

Now if we keep the true end of the Law in view, we shall see, on the contrary, that it prevailed constantly and uniformly, without the least interruption, against the most violent accidents, and in the most unfavourable conjunctures; those I mean, which happened when their propensity to the practice of idolatry, and their prejudice for the principle of intercommunity, were at the height: for amidst all the disorders consequent thereto, they still preserved the knowledge of the true God, and performed the rites ordained by the Law. And the very calamities which followed the infraction of the Law, of which the neighbouring Nations occasionally partook, were sufficient to alarm these latter, when most at ease, amidst the imaginary protection of their tutelary Gods, and to awaken them to the awful sense of a BEING different, as well as superior to their National Protectors. Which shews; that the Law still operated its effect, strongly and constantly; and still prevailed against accidents and conjunctures, which it governed and directed, instead of lying at the mercy of them. But as it is very probable that the frequent transgressions, which those accidents and conjunctures occasioned, would in time have defeated the end of the Law, the transgressors were punished by a seventyyears-captivity; the extraordinary circumstances of which made such an impression on their haughty masters as brought them to confess that the God of Israel was the true God; and was so severely felt by them, that they had an utter aversion and abhorrence of Idolatry, or the worship of false Gods, ever after. So that from thence to the coming of Christ, a course of many ages, they adhered, though tributary and persecuted, and (what has still greater force than Persecution, if not thoroughly administered) despised and ridiculed by the

two greatest Empires of the world, the Greek and Roman; and though surrounded with the pomp and splendour of Pagan idolatries, recommended by the fashion of Courts, and the plausible glosses of Philosophers, they adhered, I say strictly, and even superstitiously, to the letter of that Law, which allowed of no other Gods besides the God of Israel. Now if this was not gaining its end, we must seek for other modes of speech, and other conceptions of things, when we reason upon Government and Laws.

Yet this was not all. For the LAW not only gained its end, in delivering down the Religion of the TRUE GOD into the hands of the REDEEMER OF MANKIND; who soon spread it throughout the whole Roman Empire; but even after it had done its destined work, the vigour of the Mosaic Revelation still working at the root, enabled a bold Impostor to extend the principle of the UNITY still wider, till it had embraced the remotest regions of the habitable World : So that, at this day, almost all the Natives of the vast regions of higher Asia, whether Gentiles, Christians, or Mahometans, are the professed worshipers of the ONE ONLY GOD. How much the extension of the principle of the Unity has been owing to this Cause, under the permission and direction of that Providence, which is ever producing good out of evil, is known to all who are acquainted with the present state of the Eastern world.

The reason why I ascribe so much of this good, to the lasting efficacy of the Mosaic Law, is this: Mahumet was born and brought up an Idolater, and inhabited an idolatrous Country; so that had he seen no more of true Religion than in the superstitious practice of the Greek Church, at that time over-run with saint and image-worship, it is odds but that, when he set up for a Prophet, he might have made Idolatry the basis of his new Religion: But getting acquainted with the Jews and their Scriptures, he came to understand the folly of Gentilism and the corruptions of Christianity; and by this means was enabled to preach up the doctrine of the ONE GOD, in its purity and integrity. It is again remarkable, that to guard and secure this doctrine, which He made the fundamental principle of Ishmaelitism, he brought into his Imposture many of those provisions which Moses had put in practice to prevent the contagion of idolatry.

But the great Man with whom we have to do, is so secure of his fact, namely that the Law was perpetually defeated, and never gained its end, that he supposes his Adversaries, the DIVINES, are ready to confess it; and will only endeavour to elude his inference by throwing the ill success of its operations on the hardness of the People's hearts and the impiety of their Governors.* And this affords him fresh occasion of triumph.