means to be endured. What has this great Critic never heard that, amongst the writings of the ancients, there was a certain allegoric piece known by the name of The Judgment of Hercules, written by a Grecian SAGE, to excite the youth of his time to the pursuit of virtue, and to withstand the allurements of pleasure? HERCULES was as well known by history and tradition to the Greeks, as JOB was to the Jews. Did that polite people think this an odd amusement?. Did they think the truth of History destroyed by it; and nothing left in its room but a monstrous jumble of times and persons, brought together, that were in reality separated from each other by the distance of a thousand or twelve hundred years? for so many at least there were between the age of Hercules and the young Men of the time of Prodicus. Or does this Cornish Critic imagine, that the Sages of Greece took the Allegory for History or believed any, more, of a real rencontre between Virtue, Pleasure, and young Hercules, than Maimonides did of that solemn meeting of the Devil and the Sons of God before the throne of the Almighty?

But that curious remark of destroying the truth of History deserves a little further canvassing. I suppose, when Jesus transforred the story of the Prodigal and his sober Brother to the Gentiles and the Jews, and when St. John transferred Babylon to Rome, in allegory, that they destroyed the truth of History. When ancient and modern dramatic Writers take their subject from History, and make free with facts to adapt their plot to the nature of their poem, Do, they destroy the truth of History? Yet in their case there is only one barrier to this imaginary mischief, namely the Drama: In the book of Job, there are two, both the Drama and the Allegory. But after all, some hurt it may do, amongst Readers of the size of this Answerer; when they mistake the hook of Job for a piece of Biography, like the men Ben Jonson laughs at, who, for greater exactness, chose to read the History of England Shakespear's Tragedies. P. 330.

HH 4

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P. 330. [U] But the Cornish Critic, who has no conception that even a patient man may, on some occasions, break out into impatient heats, insists on the impropriety of Job's representing the Israelites of Ezra's time. "To represent the murmuring and impatient Jews (says he) it seems Ezra takes a person "who was exemplary for the contrary quality-and then, to adapt him to his purpose, makes him break "out into such excesses of impatience as border on blasphemy." p. 50. I doubt there is a small matter amiss in this fine observation. The Author of The Divine Legation did not write the book of Job: therefore whatever discordancy there be between the Tradition of his patience and the written History of him in this book, it is just the same, whether Joв or whether EZRA wrote it. After so illustrious a specimen of his critical acumen, he may lie in bed, and cry out with the old Athlet,

.66

Cæstum artemque repono,

However, he meant well, and intended that this sup posed. absurdity should fall upon the Author of The Divine Legation, and not upon the Canon of Scripture. In the mean time the truth is, there is no absurdity at all, but what lies in his own cloudy pericranium. Whether the traditionary Job represented the Israelites or not, it is certain, he might with much decorum represent them. And this the following words of The Divine Legation might have taught our Critic, had he had but so much candour as to do justice to a Stranger, whom he would needs make his Enemy." It is remarkable, "that Job, from the beginning of his misfortunes to "the coming of his three comforters, though greatly "provoked by his wife, sinned not with his lips; but,

persecuted by the malice and bitterness of his false "friends, he began to lay so much stress on his inno

cence as even to accuse God of injustice. This was "the very state of the Jews of this time; so exactly "has the sacred Writer conducted bis allegory; They

6

"bore

"bore their straits and difficulties with temper till their "enemies Sanballat, Tobiah, and the Arabians, gave "them so much disturbance; and then they fell into "indecent murmurs against God." But lest our Answerer should again mistake this, for a defence of the Author of the Divine Legation, and not of Ezra, let him try, if he can reconcile the traditional patience of Job with the several strokes of impatience in the written book, upon any other principle than this, That the most patient man alive may be provoked into starts of impatience, by a miserable Caviller, who, being set upon Answering what he does not understand, represents falsely, interprets perversely, and, when he is unable to make the Doctrine odious, endeavours to make the Person so, who holds it. In conclusion, however, thus much is fit to be observed, that if the sole or main intention of the Writer of the book of Job (be he whom he will) were to exhibit an example of Patience, he has executed his design very ill; certainly in so perverse a manner that, from this book, the faine of Job's exemplary Patience could never have arisen. Hence I conclude in favour of an Hypothesis which solves this difficulty, by distinguishing between Job's traditional and written story. But now comes a Cornish Critic, and makes this very circumstance, which I urged for the support of my Hypothesis, an objection to it. Yet he had grounds for his observation, such as they were; He dreamt, for he could not be awake, that I had invented the circumstance, whereas I only found it.

P. 340. [X] The different situations in which this Folly operated in ancient and modern times, is very observable. In the simplicity of the early ages, while men were at their ease, that general opinion, so congenial to the human mird, of a God and his moral government, was too strong ever to be brought in question. It was when they found themselves miserable and in distress, that they began to complain; to ques

tion the justice, or to deny the existence of a Deity On the contrary, amongst us, disastrous times are the season of reflection; repentance, and reliance on Providence. It is affluence and abundance which now give birth to a wanton sufficiency, never thoroughly gratified till it have thrown off all the restraints of Religion.

I imagine it may not be difficult to account for so strange a contrariety in the manners of Men..

In the ancient World, the belief of a moral Providence was amongst their most incontested principles. But concerning the nature and extent of this Providence they had indeed very inadequate conceptions; being misled by the extraordinary manner in which the first exertions of it were manifested, to expect more instant and immediate protection than the nature of the Dispensation afforded. So that these men being, in their own opinion, the most worthy object of Providence's concern, whenever they became pressed by civil or ' domestic distresses, supposed all to be lost, and the world without a Governor.

But in these modern ages of vice and refinement, when every blessing is abused, aud, amongst the first, that greatest of all, LIBERTY, each improvement of the mind, as well as each accommodation of the body, is perverted into a species of luxury; exercised and employed for anusement, to gratify the Fancy or the Appetites, as each, in their turn, happens to influence the Will. Hence even the FIRST PHILOSOPHY, the science of Nature itself, bows to this general abuse. It is made to act against its own ordinances, and to support those impieties it was authorized to suppress.— But now, when calamity, distress, and all the evils of those abused blessings have, by their severe, but wholesome discipline, restored recollection and vigour to the relaxed and dissipated mind, the dictates of Nature are again attended to: the impious principles of false Science, and the false conclusions of the true, are shaken off as a hideous dream; and the abused Victim

of

of his vanity and his pleasure flies for refuge to that only Asylum of Humanity, RELIGION.

P. 340. [Y] Thus both Sacro and Sacer have, in Latin, contrary significations. The reason is evident. Some things were consecrated and some devoted to the Gods: those were holy; these execrable. So God being invoked sometimes to bless, and sometimes to curse, the invocation was expressed by one word, which had contrary senses. And this agreeable to the genius of language in general.

P. 344. [Z] The Cornish Critic says-" Above all, "and to support the allegory in its most concerning "circumstances, as the Jews were obliged to put "away their idolatrous wives, so Job should have put "away his, in the upshot of the Fable. This would

CERTAINLY have been done, had such an allegory "been intended as Mr. W. supposes." p. 66. Let this man alone for his distributive justice. I thought, when, in the conclusion of the book, we have a detailed account of Job's whole family, his sons, his daughters, and his cattle, and that we hear nothing of his wife (and, I ween, she would have been heard of had she been there), the Writer plainly enough insinuated that Job had somehow or other got rid of this Affliction, with the rest. But nothing else will serve our Righter of wrongs but a formal bill of divorce. ---- ́ Indeed I suspect, a light expression I chanced to make use of, gave birth to this ingenious objection. See above, p. 339.

P. 356. [AA] Divine Wisdom procures many ends by one and the same mean; so here, besides this use, of throwing the Reader's attention entirely on the Serpent, it had another, viz. to make the Serpent, which was of the most sacred and venerable regard in the Mysterious Religion of Egypt, the object of the Israclites' utter abhorrence and detestation.

P. 365.