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"like unto Mofes," and confequently it muft appear, that his Law was not to be of perpetual obligation, but was intended to be fuperfeded by one that was to be of the greatest consequence to mankind; as the Almighty announced its future promulgation, even at the time when he gave his express commands to his chofen people. The Law of Mofes was confined to the children of Ifrael; the Law of Chrift was univerfal, defigned to illuminate every part of the earth, and to fulfil the promise originally made to Adam, `and repeated to Abraham. The promife of another Lawgiver and Prophet was a continuation of the great chain of Prophecy, intended to keep in the view of the contemporaries of Mofes and the fucceeding generations, the affurance of the coming of the Meffiah,

CLASS

CLASS I.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

The Fulfilment of the conditional Promises and Threats pronounced by Mofes to the If

raelites.

Y. W

2513. B. C.:

1491,

IF we confider Mofes as a patriot, an' hiftorian, a philofopher, and a founder of a ftate, independently of his character as a Prophet and a Teacher fent from God," it will be acknowledged that he ftands unrivalled in the annals of mankind. Of all lawgivers he was the most virtuous and the most fublime. In times of the most remote antiquity, when the groffeft corruption of manners and the most irrational and cruel fuperftition prevailed in all the furrounding nations, this great Legiflator arofe to confirm his countrymen in the worship of the true God, and give them a rule of conduct, in which religious, moral,

and civil duties were fo intimately blended, as to preclude any attempt to feparate them, and to which their defcendants have continued to adhere for above 3200 years. His laws are tranfmitted perfect to the present age, whilft nothing remains of the productions of other legislators but a few fragments and the names of their authors. A great part of the inhabitants of the globe revere them, and have adopted them in many points into their own civil and religious inftitutions.

But it is not poffible to account for the fuperior wifdom, the perfect consistency, and the fingular fate of the laws of Mofes, without the acknowledgement that he received them, by an efpecial revelation for an efpecial purpose, from God himself. The uninterrupted attachment indeed of the Jews, and the general veneration in which Mofes and his laws have ever been held, have arifen from the perfuafion, that this great Legislator was divinely infpired: a perfuafion founded upon the fublime nature of his laws, the miracles he wrought to establish in his countrymen the belief of their divine origin, the folemn and tremendous fanctions which he prophetically annexed in confirmation of their divine authority, and the fulfilment of the conditional promifes

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promises and threats to which every age has fucceffively borne witness. This laft circumstance may be confidered as proving not only the divine miffion of the Jewith Lawgiver, but as proving alfo the conftant fuperintendance of God over the people he had chofen to diftinguish by this peculiar difpenfation, according to the promife, which, as we have feen, was given to Abraham. To this point then we shall at prefent confine our attention.

a

Mofes, after he had delivered particular instructions relative, to political and religious duties, and had fixed the particular punishments and rewards which were best calculated to fecure public order and domestic happiness, pronounced in the most explicit terms to the Ifraelites, that profperity, peace, and abundance fhould be the certain national rewards of their piety and obfervance of the Divine commands; and that mifery and war, at

a The Lord thy God hath chofen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did, not fet his love upon you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people; bat because the Lord loved you." Deut. vii. 6, 7, 8. See likewife 1 Cor. i. 27. James ii. 5.

tended

tended with every public calamity and private affliction, fhould be the certain national pu nishments of their difobedience.

Predictions

in general do not include fuch an alternative; fince they have commonly a view to one fixed train of events, and to no other. But we here find a twofold condition propofed, and the event was to be determined by the manner in which the Ifraelites fhould act-" I call heaven and earth to record this day against you," faid their great Lawgiver, "that I have fet before you life and death, bleffing and curfing; therefore choose life, that both thou and thy feed may live:" The fanctions thus annexed to the objects of choice, are peculiar to the laws of Mofes. Other lawgivers had a view only to the immediate punishment of any individual subject;-the Hebrew Legiflator goes much farther; his declarations are extended to the future fortunes of his people in their collective and national capacity. He marks out the precise mode in which they were afterwards to be happy or miserable, and the particular circumftances in which they were to be involved in the course of a long series of ages. No legiflator, who was not infpired, could poffibly have anticipated a hif

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