Israelites in the days of Moses, but also the per manent and municipal law and statutes of the Jewish nation, obligatory upon the king as well as the people.

In whatever age, after Moses, it may be supposed this book was forged, it is impossible it could have been received as genuine; because it could not then have been found; neither in the ark, nor with the king, nor in any other place; and when first invented, all the Israelites must have known, that they had never heard of it before, and, therefore, could not have believed it to have been the book of their statutes, and the invariable law of their land, which soon after their departure from Egypt they had received, and by which they uniformly had been governed.

Could any man, at the present period, invent a book of statutes, or acts of parliament, for England, and cause it to be imposed upon the English nation as the only book of statutes they had ever known? As impossible would it have been to have caused the books of Moses, had they been invented in any age after him, to have been received for what they mention themselves to be; the statutes and municipal law of the Jews; and to have persuaded these people, that they had owned and acknowledged these books from the days of Moses to the time in which they should have been invented. For such a deception to have obtained, the Israelites must

have been brought to have believed, that they had owned books before they had the least knowledge of them! The whole nation also, must, in an instant, have forgotten their former laws and government, if they could have received these books as their former laws? Let it be asked, if ever there was a book of forged laws thus imposed on any nation? With what reason, then, can it be supposed, that the book of the Jewish laws, if spurious, could have been imposed on the Jews? Why will deists suppose an occurrence to have happened to these people, which, it is confessed, could not have happened to any other nation?

- But the books of Moses, it may be remarked, have a much greater evidence of their truth, than any other books of laws possess; for they not only contain the laws of the Jewish nation, but also, an historical account of their institution, and mention that their laws were immediately reduced to practice; particularly, that the festival of the passover was observed;* that from the time it was ordained, all the first-born in Israel were dedicated to God; that Aaron's Tod, which budded, was preserved in the ark, to commemorate the rebellion and destruction of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and also, for the confirmation of the priesthood to the tribe of Levi; that the pot of manna was likewise

* Numb. viii. 17, 18.

+ Ib. xvii.

Exod. xvi. 29, &c.

preserved to perpetuate the fact, that the Israelites were sustained, by manna, forty years in the wilderness;§ that the brazen serpent was kept in memory of the miraculous healing of the people of Israel, on their beholding it, when bitten by fiery serpents in the wilderness ;|| and also, that the feast of Pentecost was celebrated.¶

;

Besides these remembrances of particular actions and events, there were other solemn institutions to commemorate the deliverance of these people from Egyptian bondage; their sabbath; their daily sacrifices and yearly expiation; their new moons, and various feasts and fasts; so that there were yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily remembrances and observances of certain things and occurrences.

The books of Moses likewise mention, that a particular tribe was appointed and consecrated by God, as his priests; by whom the sacrifices of the people were to be offered, and these solemn institutions to be celebrated, and that it was death for any other persons to sacrifice at the altar; that the high priest wore a mitre and magnificent robes, of God's own appointment, with the miraculous urim and thummim in his breast-plate, from whence the Divine responses were given; that, at his word, the king, and all the people, were to go out and come in; that the Levites were the chief judges, even in all civil cases, and that it was a forfeiture of life to

§ Exod. xvi. 29. || Numb. xxi. 9.

Exod. xxiii. 16.

resist their sentence. At what time soever it may be supposed, that these books were forged, after the death of Moses, it is impossible they could have been received by the Jews as genuine, unless they could have been induced to have believed, that they had received them from their fathers; had been instructed in them when they were children, and had taught them to their children; and also, that they had been circumcised, and did circumcise their children, in pursuance to what was commanded in these books; that they had observed the yearly passover, the new moons, the weekly sabbath, and all those various feasts, fasts, and ceremonies enjoined in these books: and further, that they had never eaten any swine's flesh, nor other meat prohibited in these books; that they had a magnificent tabernacle, with a priesthood to administer in it, which was confined to the tribe of Levi, over whom was placed an high priest, invested with great prerogatives, whose death only could give deliverance to those who had fled to the cities of refuge. But altogether impossible would it have been to have persuaded a whole nation, that they had known and practised all these things, if the contrary had been the fact; or to have received a book as true that declared they had practised them, and, as a confirmation of the declaration, appealed to their practice! Here, therefore, is a concurrence of the third and fourth of the marks before mentioned.

Let us now descend to the utmost degree of supposition; that these things were practised before the books of Moses were supposed to have been forged; and that they imposed on the nation, in causing them to believe, that they had regarded these observances in memory of certain things inserted in these books. But will not the same impossibilities occur here, as in the former case? For we must conclude, that the Jews must have kept all these observances in memory of no object, or without having had any knowledge of their original, or any reason why they kept them; whereas these observances very particularly expressed the reasons why they were instituted; that the passover, for instance, was ordained to commemorate God's passing over the children of the Israelites, in the night in which he slew all the first-born of the Egyptians. Let it be supposed, though entirely contrary to the truth, that the Jews were not informed of any reason why they regarded these observances; in such case, would it have been possible to have persuaded them to have believed, that they had kept these observances in memory of facts they had never had any knowledge of?

Should a person now invent some romantic story, which declared, that certain strange things were transacted a thousand years ago, and, in confirmation of this tale, endeavour to persuade

M