and destroy their own offspring, and are freed from any obligations to love and take care of them. The general law is still as much in force as before, that parents are obliged to love and cherish their children, and to use their best endeavours to preserve their lives in all cases, except a particular case should happen, in which the public good or the express command of God himself should require the contrary. And that general law must always necessarily in the nature of things be understood with this limitation; and whenever this limitation doth take place in any particular instance, it doth not at all vacate or dissolve the general law.

Nor does it follow, as this author suggests, that on this supposition God may command the most unfit or unrighteous things, by mere arbitrary will and pleasure;' if by unfit and unrighteous things he means things that are unfit and unrighteous for God to do. For the righteous God can never do a thing that is unrighteous but then that may be fit and righteous for him to do or to require towards us, which it would not be fit and righteous for one man to do or to require towards another. For it would be wrong to supposoe that God is in all cases bound by our laws. His right and dominion over us is of a peculiar and transcendent nature, and not to be measured by our scanty rules, but by what is much superior to them, that is, by what appears to his own infinite mind to be, all things considered, fit and right, and best and properest in the whole. He who has an absolute right over our lives and properties, can whenever he pleases, without injustice, deprive us of our worldly substance, or take from one and give to another; he can afflict us and exercise us with troubles whenever he sees fit for the trial of our patience, submission and resignation; yea, and can take away the lives of the most excellent and useful persons without injustice; because in this case he only doeth what he hath a right to do: whereas in men it would be unjust to do so, because they have no right to do it, and no such absolute dominion over one another. There are some things indeed which God cannot command or require of his reasonable creatures, because they have an inseparable and eternal malignity, and can in no possible circumstances of things ever be fit and right; as, to command a reasonable creature to hate God, to blaspheme him, or renounce him, or to prefer other things before him. There are other things which he cannot do, not because he is tied down to the same precise rules that bind us, but because his own wisdom and goodness will not suffer him to do them. Thus he cannot make an innocent creature eternally miserable. But there is nothing to hinder but that he may make innocent creatures undergo great hardships and afflictions, and calamities for a time, for the trial of their virtue though in such a case we may justly conclude from his goodness, that he will abundantly compensate their sufferings by a glorious reward. And if God should in an extraordinary instance require a parent to offer up his own child, with an intention that he should really execute it, which is not the present case; and should afterwards as a reward of so difficult and trying an obedi

ence raise both father and son to a higher happiness and felicity, which we may reasonably conclude in such a case he would do; I can see nothing in such a procedure that could be proved to be contrary not only to justice but to goodness. Because on such a supposition, as God would do nothing but what he hath a right to do by virtue of his absolute dominion over the lives of his creatures, so let the hardship appear never so great for the present, it is designed to be recompensed by a glorious reward for transcending the greatness of the trial; and both father and son, instead of having an irreparable injury done them, would have their final and greatest happiness secured and promoted upon the whole.

Nor would it follow on this supposition, as the author alleges, that God acts by mere arbitrary will and pleasure;' if by that he means unreasonable will. For God hath always reasons for his own acting in every instance; wise and just reasons obvious to his own infinite understanding, though these reasons are not always known to us. And particularly in Abraham's case, God did not act by mere arbitrary will, but for wise reasons, some of which have been already represented.

As to what he adds, that it would unhinge the whole frame of nature, and leave no human creature any rule of action at all,' there is no just foundation for this reflection. It makes no alteration in the general laws of nature, or in the rules of men's conduct towards one another, or in the fitness or unfitness of the duties that result from such or such relations. The obligations of the paternal and filial relation are no way altered by it, but are still as strong as ever. All that can be concluded from it is, that though we are to love our children or parents, we are to love God more, and that we must yield an absolute unreserved submission to the Supreme Being, and make all private affections and interests give way, whenever they happen to come in competition with the duty we owe to him. And this is no new law, but is properly an eminent branch of the law of nature, of immutable obligation, and which is necessarily founded in the nature and reason of things, and the relations between God and us. It can never possibly cease to oblige us in any one particular instance; whereas the law of our particular relations may in some particular extraordinary cases or circumstances cease to oblige, or give way to higher obligations, then and there incumbent upon us.

Thus I have largely considered the case of Abraham, because this writer is pleased to lay so mighty a stress upon it, and because the authority and credit of the sacred writings is very nearly concerned in it, in which Abraham's faith and obedience in this instance is highly commended.

CHAPTER VI.

The Moral Philosopher's Account of the Original of Sacrifices and of the Priesthood, and of Joseph's first establishing an independent priesthood in Egypt. The Representation he makes of the Mosaical Priesthood, considered. The Priests had not the Government of the Nation vested in them by that Constitution, nor were they exempted from the jurisdiction of the Law, nor had an Interest separate from and inconsistent with the State. Concerning the Church Revenues established by the Law of Moses. The particular Manner of providing for the Maintenance of the Priests and Levites accounted for. The Author's Pretence, that it was an insufferable Burden and Impoverishment to the People, and the Cause of their frequent Revoltings to Idolatry, examined. Some Observations concerning the sacrifices prescribed under the Mcsaical Economy. The Author's Objections against them considered. No Sacrifices were to be offered in Cases where civil Penalties were expressly appointed by Law, and why. The atoning Virtue of the Sacrifices supposed to consist in the sprinkling of the Blood. This shown not to be a priestly Cheat, but appointed for wise

reasons.

I Now return to our author's objections against the law of Moses. He frequently shows how angry he is with the constitutions there made about the priesthood. And this seems to be one principal reason of the strange virulence he every where expresses against that law.

It is scarce worth while to take notice of the account he pretends to give of the original of the priesthood and sacrifices. He represents sacrifices as having been originally nothing but feasts of good fellowship. p. 237. Though how this will agree to holocausts or whole burnt offerings, which seem to have been the most ancient oblations, see Gen. viii. 20; xv. 9, 10, &c.; Job i. 5; xlii. 8, in which the whole was burnt and consumed to the honour of God, and no part of it left to the offerer, is hard to see. But our author's design in this seems purely to be to bring in the priests for the honour of being the chief butlers, bakers, butchers, and cooks,' in these feasts, for so he represents them. And I suppose he will allow the same honour to the princes, patriarchs, and great men, whilst they continued to manage the sacrifices in person,' as he owns they at first did. His account of the Egyptian priesthood, and of Joseph's erecting them into an independency on the crown, though he pretends to give it us for history, is purely of his own imagination. He would have it thought, that Joseph having married the high priest's daughter, by his interest obtained a grant from the king to render their lands unalienable; because it is said their land became not Pharaoh's,' when the rest of the land of Egypt became his, p. 239. But it is evident from the story he himself refers to, that this was owing to their not being under a necessity to sell their lands to him as the other Egyptians did, to procure corn for themselves and their families, as having their por

tion of meat assigned them from Pharaoh. And the sending them this allowance is represented as the act not of Joseph, but of Pharaoh himself; who in this probably followed an ancient custom, see Gen. xlvii. 22-26. As to Joseph's marrying the high priest's daughter, for so our author has it, (though Potipherah, whose daughter he married, is not called the high priest, but the Priest of On): this instead of proving that the priests owed all their dignity to Joseph, plainly shows that they were persons of great eminence before, since when Pharaoh was doing Joseph the greatest honour, and made him next to himself in power and dignity, and ruler over all the land of Egypt, he gave him a priest's daughter to wife. For this marriage was evidently of Pharaoh's own procuring, Gen. xli. 45. And it appeareth from the most ancient accounts we have of the Egyptians, that their priests were men of great dignity and authority, and probably took in all the prime nobility, and heads of the most ancient and honourable families. Concerning which see Shuckford's Sacred and Pofane History, vol. ii. p. 120, &c.

I shall proceed to consider the account he gives of the priesthood under the Mosaical constitution. He tells us, p. 26, that 'Moses constituted a priesthood, which was to govern the nation as prime ministers, representatives, and vicegerents of God, and to drain all the wealth and treasuries of the kingdom into the church, as they must necessarily have done had his law been strictly executed, p. 42, and that the tribe of Levi did not make a sixtieth part of the whole body, and yet it would be easy to prove that the church revenues under this government amounted to full twenty shillings in the pound upon all the lands of Israel.' And then he puts a question, which would be very proper if the matter was as he represents it; 'How came the people to be reconciled to this?' To which he answers in short, 'that they were never reconciled to it all. Their national established worship was so prodigiously expensive, and their clergy or priests, and Levites, such absolute masters of property, that they took all occasions to revolt, and were glad to serve any other gods that would accept them upon easier terms, p. 128, 129. He affirms that the Levites, though servants in the temple were courtiers with the king's livery, and had greater rights and immunities than any prince or first magistrate of another tribe. Levi was a tribe exempted from the jurisdiction of the law and protected against it, as plainly appears from the instance of the drunken Levite and his concubine,' p. 142. And he repeats it again in the next page, that this instance plainly shows, that there was no law for priests and Levites at that time; he goes on to say, p. 142; that under the law of Moses the priests had an interest separate from and inconsistent with the interest of the state or society, and that he looks upon this to be the true state of the case under the Mosaical economy, and by the essential constitution of that law.'

That the priesthood had the government of the nation in their hands according to the Mosaic institution, as this author suggests,

is far from being true. Moses had the chief government in his own hands during his lifetime, while Aaron was high priest; and he did not vest the government after his decease in Eleazar the high priest, but appointed Joshua, who was not of the tribe of Levi, to succeed him in the government of the people. Afterwards, when the nation was governed by judges for some hundreds of years, in whom the supreme power resided, they were taken indifferently out of every tribe, as it pleased God to appoint; but not one of them was the high priest, nor of the priestly order, or of the tribe of Levi, till Eli and Samuel, the last of the judges. They were afterwards governed by kings till the Babylonish captivity, who had it in their power to depose the high priest, as Solomon did Abiathar. In a word, the judging and governing the people is never once mentioned in the law, as properly belonging to the high priest's office.

The inferior judges that were appointed by Moses to judge the people, Exod. xviii. 20, 21, Deut. i. 13, 15, and afterwards the seventy elders, whom God appointed to assist Moses in the greater and more difficult causes, which the inferior judges were not able to decide, were chosen out of all the tribes, and not that of Levi only, Numb. xi. 16, 17, 25; and it is agreed by all the Jews that the great Sanhedrim or council, the supreme court of judicature, of whose power they say such great things, consisted not merely of priests and Levites, but of any other persons of other tribes that were qualified by their knowledge of the Law; and Maimonides saith, that even if there were not one priest or Levite there, it was a lawful judicatory; and that the high priest did not sit there merely by virtue of his place or birth, except his knowledge in the law was such as fitted him for it.' Concerning this, see Selden de Synedr., lib. ii. cap. 18, §. 1.

And whereas this writer pretends, that even the Levites, though servants in the temple, had greater rights and immunities than any prince or first magistrate of another tribe; and that Levi was a tribe exempted from the jurisdiction of the law and protected against it; this is entirely false; there are no such immunities or exemptions from the jurisdiction of the law allowed to priests and Levites by the Mosaical constitution. The judges are commanded to judge all persons and causes without respect of persons, and to take criminals even from the altar. Exod. xxi. 14: If a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour to slay him with guile, thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die ;' that is, as the most eminent Jewish authors interpret it, though he were a priest and were then ministering at the altar, ready to sacrifice, he was to be taken thence and the Jerusalem Targum expressly saith, although it were the high priest that was then ministering, they were to take him from the altar and put him to death. And so far is it from being true, that the whole tribe of Levi was exempted from the jurisdiction of the law, that it is agreed amongst the Jews, that even the high priest himself as well as others was subject to the jurisdiction even of the lesser courts; yea, to the least of them all, the tribunal of three, in causes that came before those courts ;