as induced them to receive him as their legislator, and submit to the authority of his laws? That they had this evidence, I shall endeavour to prove. For, though the miracles in question, being contrary to the course of nature, cannot, we are told, be received as true, on the testimony of the Jews alone; yet, in weighing the internal evidence of the law, we are subject to no imposition. That a commonwealth really existed, of which God, the Creator of the world, was acknowledged as the founder and protector; that it abounded in laws providing for his worship, and guarding against the idolatry of other nations; are facts, upon which there is no doubt, and there can be no dispute. Neither do I despair of showing that the existence of such a polity as that of the Hebrews, is in itself a complete proof of the fact which it professes to record.

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SECTION III.

Peculiar Object of the Hebrew Polity.

THE leading object of the Hebrew polity being evidently the worship of one God, as the Creator; it becomes reasonable to inquire how this speculative truth happened to be made the leading object of civil government; or how Moses alone, of all legislators, came to select this article of faith as the foundation-stone of his legislation.

We must descend of course from all high pretensions, and place Moses on a level with Minos or Lycurgus, with Solon or Numa, with Zaleucus or Charondas.* Let them stand on the same footing with respect to their oppor

*Josephus, in the opening of the Jewish Antiquities, speaking of Moses, might be thought to countenance the idea of his being a human legislator; and any person reading his account of Moses receiving the law, might compare it with the case of Numa or Mahomet. This is to be attributed to the compromising spirit in which Josephus wrote his History.

tunities, and how shall we account for the extraordinary difference which appears in the conduct of the lawgivers, and the nature of their laws? One of the two principal tables of the Mosaic code is solely occupied in providing for the right belief and exclusive adoration of the Creator. A great proportion of the other statutes relate to the mode in which he is to be worshipped. He is declared in a peculiar manner the king or head of the state. A departure from the established belief, and a refusal to worship God under the character assigned to him in the law, is considered as treason, and punished as the most heinous crime. Not to dwell too long on matters that cannot be disputed, it must be obvious to any one who reads the Hebrew laws, that they all refer directly or indirectly to God, as the actual Governor of that people: that the lawgiver seems to think he shall have done all that he need be anxious to effect, if he can establish this belief; and that the whole community professes to have no other bond of union than its sacred observance.

Now, there is no doubt, that the profoundest inquiries of reason terminate in the belief of one God, as inculcated by Moses. But it is notorious, and will be seen hereafter more particularly, that reason did not succeed in ascertaining this fact generally throughout the ancient world. That Moses then alone, without any advantage denied to others, should penetrate the mists of ignorance, or, which are still more perplexing, the mazes of error; and apprehend the Creator, and the spiritual worship which is due to an immaterial Being: nay, farther, that, not contented with satisfying his own mind of this rational belief, he should fix upon this point as the basis of his legislation, and the cement of his civil polity; is a notion too improbable to be received, even with any common authority in its favour; how much more then is it absurd to embrace it, in direct contradiction to the only evidence we possess concerning the establishment of the Hebrew government?

It is true, indeed, that I may be here met by

an objection to this effect : that Moses, considered as a mere political legislator, and consulting of course the welfare of his people and the observance of his laws, would naturally be led to prefix to his legislative code, a history, declaring the dependance of mankind upon a Creator. I am ready to acknowledge that such was the practice of antiquity. It appears, not only in the philosophical treatises of Plato and Cicero, but still more explicitly in the preamble to the laws of Zaleucus,t legislator of the Locrians. All lawgivers have been convinced of the insufficiency of any sanctions which they can employ, to obtain effectually their object of encouraging virtue and repressing vice, without a resort, to some such principle of universal obligation, as the dread of present divine vengeance, or future punish

*

* Cic. de Leg. ii. 6.

+ Diod, Siculus, 1. 12. ،، The first step which the legislator took," says Warburton, Div. Leg. ii. 2. “was to pretend an extraordinary revelation from some god, by whose command and direction he framed the laws he would establish." Bolingbroke, who takes this ground, instances Zoroaster, Hostanes, the Magi, Pythagoras, and Numa.