P. 365. [BB] To this Dr. Grey says, that the three friends likewise accuse Job of his present faults. Well, and what then? Does this acquit them of injustice for falsely charging him with preceding ones?

P. 371. [CC] Indeed, had the book of Job the high antiquity which the common system supposes, the contending at the saine tine for the spiritual sense of this text, would be followed with insuperable difficulties: but these, let the supporters of that System leok to. The very learned Author of the Argument of the Divine Legation fairly stated, &o. hath set these difficulties in a light which, I think, shews them to be insuperable : "Those men (says this excellent writer) who maintain "this system, [of the high antiquity of the book, and "the spiritual sense of the text] must needs regard the text to be direct and literal, not typical or figuratice. "But then this difficulty occurs, How came MOSES "if he was the Author) to be so clear in the book of "Job, and so obscure in the Pentateuch? Plain ex"pression and typical adumbration are the contrary "of one another. They could not both be fit for the "same people, at the same time. If they were a

spiritualized People, they had no need of carnal covers, such as Types; and if they were a carnal"minded people, the light of spiritual things would *only serve to dazzle, not to aid their sight.

"Nor is the matter mended, but made worse, by "supposing the book to be written by JOB himself, or "any other Patriarch earlier than Moses: That "would be only transferring the Charge from Moses,

to the God of Moses: For while the book of Job

was designed by Providence, for part of the Jewish "Canon, it is the same unaccountable conduet though "removed"thither. The RESURRECTION is open and "exposed to all in the book of Job; and it is hid and "covered under types and figures in the Pentateuch. "From whence arises this noble truth worthy of its "inventers, That the same doctrine may, at one and

"the

"the same time, be the proper object both of clear "and manifest, and of dark and uncertain contemplation, to the same Persons." p. 134.

P. 376. [DD] Here the Cornish Critic observes, "That it does not appear that Job had any particular “revelation of it, [i. e. his future felicity]; and there "fore his contidence (if he had any such) must proceed upon some such principle as this, That God would at length infallibly deliver the good Man "out of trouble. And again, this principle must be "founded on that other of an equal Providence: "from whence otherwise could it arise but from a "persuasion that God will most certainly do what is equal and exact in this life? And yet the ingenious

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Author, as if fond of reconciling contradictions," "nakes Job's Thesis to be this, that Providence is "not equally administered, at the same time, that he "ascribes to him a confidence which could NOT POSSIBLY arise but from the persuasion of an equal "Providence." p. 156.

I make Job hold that Providence was not equally administered. I make him to hold likewise, that he himself should be restored to his former felicity: And this, our Critic calls a CONTRADICTION, His reason is, that this latter opinion could arise only from his. persuasion of an equal Providence. This may be true, if there be no medium between an equal Providence and no Providence at all. But I suspect there is such a medium, from observing that it is not uncommon, even in these times, for good men in affliction, to have this very confidence of Job, without ever dreaming of an equal Providence,

The truth is (and so I have said in the words which gave occasion to this notable observation) that Job had through the distemperature of passion advanced some things which on cooler thoughts he retracted. His argument against an equal Providence was sometimes pushed so far as to have the appearance of concluding

against

against any Providence at all. But he, at length, corrects himself for this extravagance of expression; and deliberately concludes, that though the ways of God were somehow or other become unequal, yet that Providence had not deserted the case of mankind, but would at length bring the good inan out of trouble. Yet this is the confidence, which, this most confident of all Critics says, could NOT POSSIBLY arise but from the persuasion of an equal Providence: And for this it is that he charges me with a fondness for reconciling contradictions. Here I shall take my leave of this Discourser on the book of Job, with declaring, that a more contemptuous, disingenuous, and ignorant Writer, never assumed the honourable name of ANSWERER; yet I would not deny him his station amongst the Learned. I think the same apology may be made for him, that a namesake of his, in his history of the Carthusians, made for their general Bruno," that "doubtless he could have wrote well if he would, "for he printed a Missal in an exceeding fair letter, "and delicate fine writing paper." PETREI Bib. Carth. fol. 35

P. 389. [FF] This wicked fancy some early Christian Writers seem to have gone far into; particularly ORIGEN ; who, because Celsus had supposed, absurdly enough, that the propagators of the Gospel-had borrowed the Doctrine of a future state from the Pagan Philosophers, was resolved not to be outdone, and therefore tells his adversary, "that where Gop says in the book of Moses, which was older than all the Pagan writings, I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land, unto a good land and a large; unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of *- the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Periszites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites [Exod. iii. 8. he did not mean, as ignorant men immagine, the country of Judea, but the kingdom of heaven for

that

that. how good a land soever Judea might be, it was yet part of that earth which had been put under the curse, and therefore," δε τεχ ὁρῶν ὅτι Μωϋσῆς, ὁ πολλών καὶ τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν γραμμάτων ἀρχαιότερο, εἰσήγαγε τὸν Θεὸν ἐπαγ[ελλόμενον τὴν ἁγίαν γῆν, καὶ ἀγαθὴν καὶ πολλήν, ῥέεσαν γάλα καὶ μέλι, τοῖς κατὰ τὸν νόμον ἑαυτῇ βιώσασιν εδ ̓ ὡς, οἴονταί τινες τὴν ἀγαθῆν, τὴν κάτω νομιζομένης Ιεδαίαν, κειμένην καὶ αὐτὴν ἐν τῇ ἀρχῆθεν κατηραμένη ένα τοῖς ἔργοις τῆς παραβάσεως τα Αδαμ γή. Cont. Cels. p. 350. He that can rave at this strange rate must needs consider the whole sanction of temporal reward and punishment as a mere figurative representation of future. But is not the hearkening to such Interpreters exposing divine Revelation to the contempt and scorn of Infidels and Free-thinkers? And yet perhaps we must be obliged to hearken to them, if the endeavours of these Answerers become successful in proving the NON-EXISTENCE of the extraordinary Providence (as promised by Moses) against the reasoning of the D. L. that it was ACTUALLY administered, in pursuance of that promise. For, by Origen's Commentaries (published by Huetius) it appears, that he was led into this strange opinion by taking it for granted, as Sykes, Rutherforth, Stebbing, and such like writers have since done, that under the Law, the best and most pious men were frequently miserable, and the wicked prosperous and happy.

P. 413. [GG] One of these Answerers of this Work employs much pains to prove that these words could not mean, That it was to be well with them that fear God IN THE PRESENT LIFE. Rutherforth, p. 363. i.e. he will prove, the words could not bear a scase to which they are limited aud tied down by the words immediately following,--But it shall not be well with the wicked, NEITHER SHALL HE PROLONG HIS DAYS. What is to be done with such a man?

P. 418. [II] Which (to observe it by the way) unanswerably confutes that Seni pagan Dream of the

soul's sleeping till the resurrection of the body. And yet, what is strange to tell, this very text, in the course of disputation, which, like the course of time, brings things, as the Poet says,

-to their confounding contraries,

hath been urged to prove that sleep, or no separate life; and this, by no less considerable a man than Mr. HALES of Eaton. Christ (saith he) proveth the future resurrection of the dead from thence, that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Whence he concludeth, that they live to God, that is, SHALL BE recalled to life by God, that he may manifest himself to be their God or Benefactor. This argument would be altogether fallacious, if before the Resurrection they felt heavenly joy: For then God would be their God or Benefactor, namely, according to their souls, although their bodies should never rise again. All which is a mere complication of mistakes: as is, indeed, his whole reasoning from Scripture, throughout that chapter. But they who hold the soul to be only a quality, and yet talk of its sleep between death and the resurrection, use a jargon which confounds all languages as well as all reason. For such a sleep is an annihilation; and the waking again, a new creation.

P. 419. [II]" Though this argument was a new one, (says Dr. Rutherforth) though the Pharisees "had never made this inference, and that therefore it "does not appear from hence, that Moses inculcated "the Doctrine of a future state; yet as it was a con "clusive argument, as it was an inference which might have been made, it will prove to us that Moses was not studious to conceal this doctrine, nor purposely omitted every thing that might bring his "Reader acquainted with those notices of Redemp"tion and of another life, which the Patriarchs were A brief Inquiry, chap. viii.

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"favoured