ments from mount Sinai, and having crof fed the river Jordan without either boat or bridge, &c. &c. &c. all which facts we find recognized in the most folemn offices of their stated public worship, many centuries after the time of Mofes, it is in itfelf very improbable.

Mofes appears, from many circumftances in his history, to have been a man of the greatest meekness, modefty, and diffidence. He was exceedingly averfe to affume any public character; he was eafily governed by the advice of others; and what is particularly worthy of confideration, he wanted those talents which are peculiarly requifite for the part he is fuppofed to have acted, viz. those of an Orator and a Warrior. He had fuch an impediment in his fpeech, that he was obliged to take his brother Aaron to speak for him before Pharoah, and the Ifraelites. The whole hiftory of their march through the wilderness fhews that he had nothing of a military turn, without which more efpecially no man could have expected to do any thing at the A a 2

head

Lud of a people juk revolted from the Egyptans. For it is chervible, that in

engagements which they had with thol people who oppoled their paige, Moles Lever healed them him, but left the whole command to John, and others, wille he was praying for them at a diftance.

It has been faid that Moles was a min` of excellent understanding and judgment, but his own history by no means favours that fuppofition. For, excepting thofe orders and inftitutions which he published as from God, almost every thing else that is recorded by him fhows him to have been a weak man, and of grofs understanding. His behaviour with refpect to the killing of the Egyptian, and his embarrassment with a multiplicity of business, till he was relieved by the fenfible advice of Jethro, and many other circumftances might be alledged in fupport of this opinion. Thefe things fufficiently demonftrate that Mofes, perfonally confidered, was by no means a man capable of devifing such a system of laws as his books contain, or of conducting

that

that most intractable nation, as they were conducted, forty years through the wildernefs.

Befides, if Mofes had fuch a capacity, and had been of fuch a difpofition as would have prompted him to act fuch an impofture as this, he would certainly have made fome better provifion than he did for his own family and tribe. He had children of his own, and yet they did not fucceed him in his extraordinary offices and power, nor do we find them poffeffed of any peculiar privilege or advantage whatever. They were not even of the higher order of priests, who yet enjoyed no privilege worth coveting; and the tribe of Levi in general, to which he belonged, was worfe provided for than any other of the twelve; and, what is particularly disgraceful, Moses himself relates that the pofterity of Levi were dispersed among the rest of the tribes as a punishment for the baseness and cruelty of their ancestor, in the affair of the Shechemites.

The for which the greatest honours ed, in the prophecies of both

- Ilties, was that of Judah, with lias had no particular connection.

tribe which was marked out

a da Lua të pre-eminence and power, and

e from which the Mef

shad meant to do any it is not likely that

12 me zestined the Ifraelites fo

Ing at me vilderes. Forty years exSe Table of the active of the active part of

wing to the common

Some of a bort time would have

true the people in the

18 the art of war, as it was

thek made rude times. Indeed, we 1-3 that much attention was given to this bullhell, but that, on the contrary, dimok their whole time was taken up with intructions on the iubjects of legislation, religion, and morals.

Though

Though the Jewish history is far more antient than that of any other nation in the world, and therefore we cannot expect to find it confirmed by any other accounts of fuch early tranfactions, yet, from the time that the Greeks and other nations began to write hiftory, their accounts are fufficiently agreeable to the hiftory of the Old Teftament, allowance being made for the uncertainty there must have been in the communication of intelligence, in an age in which remote nations had very little intercourfe. However, all the leading facts of the Jewish history, even those which refpect Mofes himself, the deliverance of the Ifraelites out of the power of the Egyptians, and many particulars in their fubfequent hiftory, are related by hiftorians of other nations, with fuch a mixture of fable and miftake, as might be expected from people who had no better means of being informed concerning them.

As to the hiftory of the fall of man, and other particulars preceding the time of Mofes,

A a 4