361. The books here referred to are precisely the same, that from the beginning have been received by Christians, and that are still acknowledged by the modern Jews, concerning whose undivided attachment to them, all that is here asserted by Josephus is verified to the present day.

The authenticity of the Old Testament Scriptures, against which there is no contradictory testimony, is confirmed by many collateral evidences of customs, traditions, and natural appearances, which have been collected from every part of the world. It is likewise supported by all the notices to be found respecting them in the most ancient heathen historians. Josephus appeals to the public records of different nations, and to a great number of books extant in his time, but now lost, as indisputable evidence, in the opinion of the Heathen world, for the truth of the most remarkable events related in his History, the account of the early periods of which he professes to have taken principally from the Pentateuch. Porphyry, one of the most acute and learned of the early enemies of Christianity, admitted the genuineness of the Pentateuch, and acknowledged that Moses was prior to the Phoenician Sanchoniathon, who lived before the Trojan war. He even contended for the truth of Sanchoniathon's account of the Jews, from its coincidence with the Mosaic history. Nor was the genuineness of the Pentateuch denied, by any of the numerous writers against the Gospel, in the first four centuries, although the Christian fathers constantly appealed to the history and prophecies of the Old Testament in support of the Divine origin of the doctrines which they taught. The power of historical truth compelled the Emperor Julian, whose favour to the Jews appears to have proceeded only from his hostility to

the Christians, to acknowledge, that persons instructed by the Spirit of God once lived among the Israelites; and to confess that the books which bore the name of Moses were genuine; and that the facts which they contained were worthy of credit.

Of the genuineness and authenticity of their Scriptures, the Jews had the strongest evidence, which produced a corresponding impression. The five books of Moses are addressed to the Israelites as his contemporaries, and had they not been both genuine and authentic, they never could have been imposed on his countrymen, whose religion and government were founded upon them. The transactions of their own times were narrated by the several writers of the other books, and the truth of their respective histories was witnessed by all their countrymen who lived at the same period. The plainest directions were given for ascertaining the truth of the mission of all who declared themselves prophets, those who were sent being furnished with ample credentials, while every one who pretended to deliver the messages of God, without these credentials, was to be put to death. Deut. xviii. 20. And although false prophets did arise, and for a time obtained a degree of influence, their wickedness was exposed by the failure of their predictions, or by the judgments inflicted on them, as in the case of Hananiah. From the miracles, too, which the people of Israel constantly witnessed, as well as the fulfilment of the prophecies which was all along taking place, they had complete proof that the true prophets wrote by the authority of God himself. During the whole period from Moses to Malachi, a succession of them was raised up, under whose direction the Word of God was infallibly distinguished from all counterfeits; and by their means, in

connexion with the visible interference of the God of Israel in punishing those who made the people trust in a lie, the Scriptures were preserved pure and unadulterated. These books are handed down to us by that nation, whose history they record with an impartiality for which we shall seek in vain in the annals of any other historians. There are here no national prejudices, and no attempts at embellishment. The history of the people of Israel is recorded by the uncompromising hand of truth. Their ingratitude, and their obstinacy, are alike exposed; their sinful incredulity on many occasions is published; their virtues are not magnified, and their courage is not extolled. This history contains an account, not in confused traditions, but in minute detail of time, place, and circumstances, of great public facts transacted in the presence of the whole people, in which they were actors, and of which permanent memorials were instituted at the time when they occurred.* These facts involved their submission to a

* Mr Leslie, who writes on Deism, in proving the authenticity of the books of Moses, lays down the following rules as a test of truth, which all meet in these books. Wherever they do meet, what they refer to, he affirms, cannot be false. On the contrary, they cannot possibly meet in any imposture whatever.

"1. That the matter of fact be such, that men's outward senses, their eyes and ears, may be judges of it.

"2. That it be done publicly in the face of the world.

"3. That not only public monuments be kept in memory of it, but some outward actions be performed.

"4. That such monuments, and such actions, or observances, be instituted, and do commence from the time that the matter of fact was done.

"The two first rules make it impossible for any such matter of fact to be imposed on men at the time when said to be done, because every man's eyes and senses would contradict it. The two last rules render

religion entirely different from that of all the surrounding nations, which laid them under great and painful restraints, and to laws and institutions, which, while they secluded them from the rest of mankind, exposed them to their utmost detestation and contempt. Had such facts never taken place, they could not at any period have been forced upon the belief of a whole nation, so as to be ever afterwards acknowledged by them, without one dissenting voice. It is a striking singularity in their laws, that they were promulgated not from time to time, but in one written code, and were permanently binding both on the rulers and the people, never to be in any respect either altered or added to.

Nor are the Jews alone referred to as witnesses of some of the most important of those transactions, the scene of which is not laid in an obscure corner, but in the midst of the most civilized nations of the world. The entrance of their ancestors into Egypt; their continuance for centuries, and increase there; the manner in which they were oppressed; the causes of their being suffered to depart, and the awful catastrophe which accompanied that departure,—are facts in which the people of Egypt were equally implicated with themselves. Their subsequent continuance during forty

it impossible that the matter of fact should be invented and imposed some time after."

After proving, in a variety of ways, that all his four rules meet in the books of Moses, he observes :-" You may challenge the whole world to show any action that is fabulous, which has all the four rules or marks before mentioned. It is impossible.—I do not say that every thing which wants these four marks is false, but that nothing can be false which has them all."

It is said that Dr Middleton endeavoured for twenty years to find out some pretended fact to which Mr Leslie's four rules could be applied, but without success.

years in an uncultivated desert; their invasion of Palestine; the long-continued contest, and their final occupation of that land,-were public and permanent facts, brought home to the inhabitants of that country, who lived in the centre of the civilized world. The train of the history too, which, as well as the style and tendency of all the separate books, is entirely consistent with itself, proceeds in so uniform a manner, and one thing so naturally rises out of another, that unless on the supposition of what goes before, that which follows cannot be accounted for. This remark holds good with respect to the state of the Jews even to this day; and all that is recorded is necessary to explain their present unexampled situation. Impressed with an unalterable conviction of their Divine origin, they have, at the expense of every thing dear to men, tenaciously adhered, as far as circumstances permit, to the outward form of the religion, the laws, and the institutions engrossed in their sacred records. And although they themselves are condemned by these books, and know that they are employed to support a system which they mortally hate, they have, under all circumstances, down to the present hour, continued to be faithful depositaries of the Old Testament Scriptures.

"The honour and privilege," says Bishop Cosin, in his history of the Canon of the Holy Scripture," which the posterity of Jacob sometime had, above all the world besides, was to be that peculiar people of God, to whom he was pleased to make his laws and his Scriptures known; nor was there then any other church but theirs, or any other oracles of God, than what were committed to them. For they had all that were then extant, and all written in their own language.

"These they divided into three several classes, where