evidence as we ourselves would count sufficient in any other case; this is certainly a most unreasonable conduct, and will hardly be justified to the great Governor of the world. To insist upon it, that those laws should be again promulgated in the manner in which they were published at first, and that the extraordinary miraculous facts wrought in attestation of them, should be done over again in every age, and in every nation, for the satisfaction of every single person (for one man in one age and one country hath as much right to expect and demand it in another) would be a most absurd demand; it would be unbecoming the divine wisdom to grant them; and indeed, such extraordinary attestations, by being continually repeated, would cease to be extraordinary, and be regarded no more than common things, and so would lose their force. It is enough that they are transmitted to us in such a manner, and with such evidence that it would be perfectly unreasonable to doubt whether these are the very laws that were originally given as from God, and whether these facts were really done. And it might easily be proved, and hath been often shown, that the Scripture laws and doctrines, and the facts whereby they were attested and confirmed, are transmitted to us with an evidence that scarce any other laws, or any other facts done in former ages were ever attended with.*

Our author himself does not deny, that a matter of revelation is as capable of being conveyed down to posterity as any other matter of fact, of what nature or kind soever, and that either this must be allowed, or we must reject all historical evidence of every other kind.' And then he saith, that he must still insist upon it, that no reason or proof can be given of any revelation as coming from God, but the moral fitness and reasonableness of the thing itself, in its own nature, antecedent to, and abstracted from, any such tradition or human testimony; and consequently, that tradition or human testimony is here brought in, to no manner of purpose and without effect,' p. 85. This writer often puts me in mind of what he is pleased to say, concerning the common run of our enthusiastic pulpiteers, whose manner,' he tells us, it is always first to beg the main point in question, and then triumph upon it as a thing proved,' p. 88. This is the manner of our author, who repeats it on all occasions that moral truth and fitness is the only evidence or proof of any doctrine or law as coming from God; and without offering any argument to prove it, but only supposing it, makes use of this all along as a demonstration that miracles can be no proof or evidence of the divine original of any doctrine or law. And if you will but grant him that the other is the only proof, then he will easily show that this is not a proof. But since it hath been shown that miracles may be of such a nature as to yield a sufficient proof of the divine original and authority of doctrines and laws attested and confirmed by those miracles; then if

See to this purpose, Answer to Christianity as old as the Creation, Part II. chap. iv. v. vi.

human tradition and testimony may give us a reasonable and sufficient assurance that those miracles were really wrought, it is evident that it is here brought in to very good purpose. And that human tradition may be so circumstanced as to give sufficient assurance that these miracles were really wrought, is as true as that human tradition can give us a sufficient assurance of any past facts; nor can this be reasonably denied, except upon this principle, that no past facts can be transmitted to us with sufficient evidence for a reasonable man to depend upon. A thing which the enemies of Revelation have not yet ventured to assert.

All the use he is pleased to allow to tradition or human testimony in matters of religion is this, That we may be probably assured from tradition and human testimony what our fore-fathers believed about God and religion, and what reasons they assigned for it; but whether they ought to have believed as they did, or whether their reasons will hold good or not, is another question, concerning which tradition or human testimony can never inform us,' p. 85. Let us, therefore, proceed upon his own state of the case. I am not to believe any religion to be true and divine, merely because my ancestors believed it; but if I know what the grounds were upon which they believed it, and am satisfied that the grounds were just, then I am obliged to believe it upon those grounds as well as they were. And supposing the grounds upon which it was first received and submitted to as of divine authority, were, besides the good tendency of its doctrines and laws, the illustrious miraculous attestations whereby it was confirmed, tradition may give me a sufficient assurance to satisfy any reasonable mind of the truth of those extraordinary miraculous facts, or that those facts were really done. And this is all that tradition or human testimony is properly brought for. For whether those facts were a sufficient proof of the divine authority of the revelation attested and confirmed by them, must be judged not by tradition but by our own reason, upon considering the nature and circumstances of those facts and attestations. And if our own reason convinceth us that those facts, supposing them true, were proper and sufficient attestations to the divine original of that revelation, and if also we have all the proof that can be reasonably desired that the facts are true, then we are obliged to receive that revelation as coming from God, and as of divine authority. And indeed the proof of those facts is so strong, they are transmitted to us with such convincing evidence, that I am persuaded few resist the argument taken from the facts in favour of Christianity, but who would have been among the unbelieving, had they lived in the very age in which those facts were done. For the true reason of their not believing, is not that there is not sufficient proof of those facts to convince and satisfy a reasonable mind, and such as is esteemed sufficient in any other case; but it is owing to certain prejudices and dispositions of mind, which probably would have hindered their submitting to the evidence brought for the Christian Revelation, had they themselves been eye-witnesses to the facts. And we may well reckon our author one of this make

and disposition of mind, since he takes care to let us know that he looks upon miracles to be no proofs at all, and therefore would not have been moved by them, though he had seen them done before his eyes.

This writer is pleased positively to insist upon it, That there can be no such thing as divine faith upon human testimony; and that this absurd supposition has been the ground of all the superstition and false religion in the world. And that the knowledge of any truth can go no farther upon divine authority, or as a matter of divine faith, than to the person or persons immediately inspired, or to whom the original revelation was made.' pp. 82, 84.

But if, by divine faith upon human testimony,' be only meant, that an original divine revelation may be transmitted or conveyed to us by human testimony, together with the extraordinary miraculous facts whereby it was attested and confirmed, and that in such a manner as to make it reasonable for us to believe that it is indeed a divine revelation, this hath been already shown. And if I have sufficient grounds of reasonable assurance concerning any doctrines and laws, that they came originally by divine revelation, I am as truly obliged to regard them as coming from God, and to believe and obey them on that account, as if I had them myself, by immediate inspiration. For the obligation to believe and obey them doth not depend upon the particular way of my receiving them, but upon my having sufficient to convince me that they came from God. This writer indeed seems resolved that whatever arguments can be brought to prove that any thing is a divine revelation, the receiving it as such shall not be called 'divine faith,' except the person that believeth it hath received it immediately from God himself. But whether he will allow it to be called divine faith,' or not, the calling it by another name doth not at all alter the nature of the thing, or dissolve the obligation. If I have sufficient reason to be convinced that miracles of such a nature, and so circumstanced, supposing them to have been really done, are strong attestations to the truth, and divine original of the doctrines and laws which they are wrought to confirm; and if I have sufficient assurance that these facts were really done, then I am obliged to believe and receive those doctrines, and obey those laws, as of divine authority. To do otherwise would be to refuse to believe doctrines which I have just ground to conclude were revealed from God himself, and to refuse to obey laws which I have just ground to believe God himself hath enjoined; which would be a very criminal conduct, highly displeasing to God, and contrary to the duty that reasonable creatures owe to the Supreme Being.

Thus I have considered what this author offers with regard to the proofs or evidences of divine revelation in general, in which his design is plainly to show that there can be no proper proofs or evidences of divine revelation to any but the persons immediately receiving it, and yet at the same time he affects to own the great usefulness of revelation in the present corrupt and degenerate state of mankind.

CHAPTER II.

An Entrance on the Author's Objections against the Old Testament. The strange Representation he makes of the law of Moses. Some general Considerations concerning the Nature and Design of that Law. Its moral Precepts pure and excellent. Its ritual Injunctions appointed for wise Reasons. The Nature of its Sanctions considered. Reasons of God's erecting the People of Israel into a peculiar Polity. Nothing absurd in this Constitution. It was designed in a Subserviency to the general Good. The miraculous Facts whereby that Law was confirmed not poetical Embellishments, but real Facts. The Author's Reasons to prove that those Facts could not be understood in a literal Historical Sense shown to be vain and insufficient.

HAVING Considered what this author hath advanced concerning divine revelation in general, and the proofs whereby it is established, I now proceed to the particular attempts he makes to destroy the authority of the revelation contained in the sacred writings of the Old and New Testament. He seems willing indeed to observe some measures with regard to Christianity, but as to the Old Testament he throws off all disguise; he everywhere openly rejects, and makes the most disadvantageous representation possible both of the law of Moses and the prophetical writings, and expressly declares he will 'have nothing to do with them in religion,' p. 394. If his representation be true, they are not only no true divine revelation, but a grand imposture, contrary to reason and common sense, and to the liberties of mankind.

To begin with the account he gives of the law of Moses he expressly declares that in its original proper and literal sense, which he says was the only sense intended by the lawgiver, It had neither anything of truth or goodness in it, but was a blinding enslaving constitution, and an intolerable yoke of darkness and bondage, tyranny and vassalage, wrath and misery,' p. 29. That it was a law that introduced and confirmed a state of civil and religious blindness and bigotry,' &c. p. 32. That it was a national slavery, which the Jews had been unjustly subjected to, and which they had a right to throw off whenever they had a proper opportunity, and to assert and reassume their natural and religious rights and liberties,' p. 51. He calls it a wretched scheme of superstition, blindness, and slavery, contrary to all reason and common sense, set up under the specious popular pretence of a divine institution and revelation from God,' p. 71. These and others of the like nature are the handsome epithets he everywhere bestows upon the law of Moses. He is not content with declaring it to be a mere piece of human policy, but makes it the worst constitution in the world. Nor did any of the heathens, the greatest enemies of the Jews, ever speak in such opprobrious terms of Moses and his constitutions as this pretended Christian writer has done. If the law of Moses merits these epithets, it certainly deserves the abhorrence of all mankind, and Moses, instead of being extraordinarily sent and inspired by God, was the most pernicious impostor that ever

was, and the greatest enemy to his nation, who, instead of regarding him as they always did with the utmost veneration, should rather have execrated his memory.

Before I enter on a particular discussion of the objection he advances against the law of Moses, I shall offer some general considerations concerning the nature and design of that law, whereby the true original intent, and the excellency and property of that law may more evidently appear.

At the time when the law was given, idolatry had made a very great progress, the primitive religion which was both derived by tradition from the early patriarchs, the progenitors of the human race, and was also very agreeable to right reason, was very much corrupted, especially in the main principle of it, the worship and acknowledgment of one only the living and true God: and though there were considerable remains of the ancient true religion still preserved in some particular families, yet things were growing worse and worse; and it is highly probable that, if God had not extraordinarily interposed, true religion and the just knowledge and worship of the deity would have been lost among men. It pleased him therefore, in this state of things, to select a nation to himself, among whom the knowledge and worship of the true God should be preserved in a world overrun with idolatry. And to that end he first exerted his own almighty power and goodness in delivering that nation from a state of extreme distress, slavery, and oppression, and that in so extraordinary a manner as exhibited a marvellous display of his own majesty and glory, and an entire triumph over idols in the very seat of idolatry, for so Egypt then was; and then caused the most pure and excellent laws to be given them, which were promulgated with the greatest solemnity, and attested by the most amazing and unparalleled miracles. And, in order the more effectually to answer the main design he had in view, it pleased him to enter into a peculiar relation to that people, and to take them for his own by a solemn public act or covenant, whereby the people on the one hand brought themselves under the most express and solemn engagements, to obey the laws he gave them, and to be absolutely devoted to his service; and he, on his part, engaged to be their God and King in a special relation, to give them the land of Canaan for their inheritance, and to pour forth many signal benefits upon them, and make them a happy people. I see nothing in this unworthy of God, or that can be shown to be inconsistent with his divine perfection. Nor can this writer himself consistently find fault with it, since speaking of the covenant God made with Abraham, in which he promised to be a God to him, and to his seed, and to settle them in the possession of the land of Canaan, and make them happy upon the condition of their continuing in the religion and worship of the one true God,' &c., he saith this was 'a wise and reasonable transaction between God and Abraham; and, had the conditions been performed by Abraham's family and posterity, no doubt but the grant on God's part had been made good.' pp. 258,259: