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get out of her own Egypt, and out of the grasp of the wrong spirit that governs her?

Why should I not examine with candour and simplicity, whether my soul is not in a state of wilderness, in a dry, barren system, in a condition of imperfection and ignorance, the shadow of the waste desert in which the souls of the people of God are represented, after they have been withdrawn from a distressing, tyrannizing error? Would it not be exceedingly advantageous to me, to apply to my soul, and to practise in fulfilment of the law, those essential purifications, those mental ceremonies, those religious observances, which the spirit Moses recommends to the souls that are the descendants of Abraham's righteousness? Why should not my soul, by the trials and contradictions she has to sustain in her wilderness, be, as well as they, in preparation to a better condition, like the promised land, the Zion, the Jerusalem, to which the people of God is brought up by degrees?

O that it were given to my soul to perceive within herself the Babylon in which she is in captivity; to meditate upon it, and to pray that she might be led back to the Jerusalem that would make her free and happy!

Why should I feel any objection to apply to myself what is said in Daniel, of the fall of Nebuchadnezzar by pride, that father and mother of all vices, that source of all our misfortunes; what is said of the loss of his understanding, of his mental degradation, of his being deprived of the heart of a man, and receiving for a while, and for his correction, that of a beast?

So foolish was I, and ignorant, I was as a beast before thee. Psalm 73. 22.

But at the same time I should have great hopes that towards the end of the seventh philosophical year or stage of my instructive probation, a state of difficulties intermixed by the goodness of God with many alleviations and consolations, it would be given to me to lift up the eyes of my soul to the spiritual knowledge; great hopes that my former reason would return unto me; that I should have the good sense of praising and honouring the King of heaven, whose works are truths and His ways judgement; and who is able to abase the souls that walk in pride: in fine, that after having gone through the different degrees of the first probation, which is the Scriptural world; and perhaps, according to my deeds, through a protracted time of bitter and painful reprobation, or of a second, severe, unmitigated probation, (Rev. 20. 6,) decreed against me by Divine Justice and Mercy, for my correction, I should be reinstated in the wisdom of a soul image of the Spirit Creator, and in the government of mine, and restored for ever to a state of felicity, (John, 14. 2,) unknown to me in my present lamentable lowness.

Instead of considering the Old Testament as an historical account of what had happened to a small nation that existed 2000 years ago in Palestine, which view of it tends to confine it to a peculiar set of men, would it not be more instructive for me to believe that the Almighty, the Maker and the Father of all, gave it, the same as the New, for the amendment of all his creatures, without any reference to the spot they inhabit, and the time they live in; and to apply the whole of it to my soul, and to those who will receive a new life from Abraham's righteous spirit, and from the companion of his soul the spi

rit of the new Covenant, (Gal. 4. 22,) to those who will circumcise themselves of their pride, vanity, ambition, revenge, covetousness, &c. (Rom. 2. 28, 29,) and who will go through the various circumstances and instructions, or regenerating degrees of the Old Testament, that they may become the true children of the spirit Israel, near unto, or drawing nigh to God? Psalm 148. 14.

I have no doubt, Theophila, that, should we refer the whole of the Scripture to our soul, the hidden man of the heart, (1 Pet. 3. 4,) as having been intended for her benefit, for her admonition, (1 Cor. 10. 11,) by the holy mercy who bestowed it upon us, she would receive much more consolation than she can reap in continuing in the track of the early converted Jews; who, from want of understanding the Sacred Writings, and from inability to raise themselves to the sublimity and spirituality of the Gospel, lowered and accommodated it to their former erroneous notions, which pressed heavy upon them: the consequence of which has been the doubtful and unsatisfactory, though till this day useful, system which they adopted; and which may be said, notwithstanding trifling differences, to prevail still among nearly all classes denominated Christian; all of which understand the Scriptures, save very few points, mostly alike the converts of the first century: whose system, if discussed without prevention, could not, I think, be reconciled with the word of God, on account of their material notions, which seem to me totally at variance with the philosophical and the spiritual meanings of the language of the Sacred History.

From the New Testament, and from what we know

of the Jews who existed before it was made known, it appears to me evident that the Lord God had not been pleased to grant them the intelligence of the Old; and from the system that was framed by those who were converted, having retained a part of their previous notions,* I am equally confident that it has not been the will of God to give them a correct understanding of the New. I believe that their religious system, not being founded on the right intelligence of the Bible, was not, and could not, be true. Should you inquire seriously into it, as you cannot depend upon such an opinion as mine; and should your meditations on the Scripture, bring you to the conclusion that not a word of it, as I do think, ought to be taken in the common literal sense, then I suppose the Jewish and Christian systems, now in vogue, will seem to you, some how or other, mistaken and false.+ In

The same as they had given up the practice of eating but unleavened bread, and had ceased to see any harm in eating pork, when they learnt from the Gospel, that hypocrisy is the leaven from which one ought to beware, (Luke, 12. 1,) and that the soul is not defiled by that which goeth into the mouth, (Matt. 15. 17,) so I believe they ought to have parted with all the literal notions of their ancestors, respecting the Old Testament, and to have sought for its hidden and real meaning. Let me add, that I imagine that the mouth in verse 17, and the heart in 19, ought not to be taken in the natural sense.

+ Since I wrote the greatest part of this extract, I have met with the Bible that was published in London, in 1780, by a reverend gentleman and others, with notes and commentaries having for object, as they say in the preface "to reconcile the Sacred Records with the events that took place in the heathen world, and to confute the "deistical objections (unknown to me), which (according to them), "lay upon the following points: namely that the Scripture History "did not in the least accord with that of the heathen; which, as the

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searching for one that would agree better with the spirit of the Holy Writings, one that by entering into it might

"deists say, appears plainly from the Scripture accounts disagreeing "with ancient geography and chronology."

From what the editors say in their notes, I am inclined to believe that neither the Egyptian historians, nor any others among their neighbours, have made any mention of Pharaoh, of Moses, of the ten plagues inflicted by him or rather by the power of God acting through him, on Egypt; of the Israelites being led out of it under his command; of their miraculous passage through the Red Sea; and of the destruction in it of any of the kings of Egypt with the whole of his army as it is recorded of Pharaoh and his host in the Sacred History. I suppose that on finding the total silence of the Egyptian writers on so considerable events, most deserving to be transmitted to posterity, far more than many which they have related: for which the editors account no otherwise than in saying that "in a period of "such remote antiquity, many events must have happened, even of "the most extraordinary nature, which have been buried in oblivion "by the course of time." I suppose, I say, that some persons would have been so astonished at no historian of those times having spoken of those strange occurrences, that they would have considered it as quite impossible to reconcile Sacred with civil history; would have given up such an attempt, which I should deem injurious to the high reverence that men ought to have for the Scripture, as it tends to bring it down, in part, to a tradition or a vulgar history; and would have been led to conclude that, since those marvellous circumstances had not, to all probability, occurred in our Egypt, that which is spoken of in the Holy Writings, and in which they happen most undoubtedly, must be different from the outward Egypt, and must belong to another earth, as yet unknown to us. The editors I am alluding to did not take the silence of ancient writers in so conclusive a manner, as I do, against the literal system of the Jews, which seems to me to be nipped in the bud by it; and as they were absolutely in want of a visible Pharaoh to support it, they have imagined, in full spite of civil history, that Amenophis, the illustrious Sesostris's father, who reigned in Egypt at the time that they supposed that the Scripture Pharaoh must have

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