found him of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God.

But this is not all, for Moses adds; And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. The Jews rejected Christ, and God rejected them, and gave them up to destruction; and as their offence against the Messias, and their behaviour after his death, was wicked beyond measure, and beyond example; so God, fulfilled the prophecies of Moses concerning them, that he would require it of them, and that he would make their plagues wonderful, would bring upon them calamities beyond measure, and beyond example.

It may be observed, that a person can be produced who was very like to Moses, namely, Bucchus, who was an Egyptian god. Huetius, in his Demonstratio Evangelica, has with much accuracy and learning drawn up the comparison, and the resemblance is so great, in so many particulars, that it cannot be supposed accidental: but then, first, Bacchus is a poetical deity, and the accounts of him are taken from fabulous history; secondly, many of the actions of the Jewish legislator were in all probability ascribed to him, and he is Moses in disguise t; so the parallel

ceases,

K 3

The

A book which has its use and value, but is more remarkable for erudition than for reasoning; which made a French writer say of it, in the words of Terence,

-ut te, cum tua

Monstratione, magnus perdat Jupiter!

The Egyptians, as Herodotus tells us, ii. 42. had a story concerning their god Hercules, Ηρακλέα θελῆσαι πάντως ἰδίσθαι τὸν Δία, καὶ τὸν οὐκ ἐθέλων ὀφθῆναὶ ὑπ' αὐτοῦ· τέλος δὲ, ἐπεί σε λιπαρέειν τὸν Ηρακλία,

The economy of the Jewish and of the Christian church is similar, in many respects, and upon the whole; tho' in smaller occurrences the resemblance ought not to be too much urged; for so any thing may be made of any thing.

The parallel between Moses and Christ has been examined, in which we are authorised to seek and to expect a strong resemblance; both from the Old Testament, which declares, that a prophet should arise like unto Moses; and from the New, which declares that Christ was that prophet. It deserves consideration, whether this consequence may be deduced, that, if Moses was a type of Christ, the people whom he delivered and conducted may be a type of the people to whom Christ was sent, and of the church which he established. If this should be admitted as a probability (and it should not be offered as any thing more than conjectural) we may say, that the generation which fell in the wilderness represents the Jews who rejected Christ, and perished for their disobedience. The land of promise and of rest, was a symbol of the church of Christ. The idolatry and iniquities of the Jewish nation are too exactly paralleled by the corruption which overspread the Christian church.

Many other resemblances might be pointed out which shall be omitted, since we cannot make it sufficiently

τὸν Δία μηχανήσασθαι, κρίον ἐκδείρανα προέχεσθαί τε τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀπαταμόνα τοῦ κριοῦ, καὶ ἐνδύνια τὸ νάκος, οὕτω οἱ ἑωυτὸν ἐπιδέξαι. Quod fupiLer, quum ab Hercule eum cernere volente, cerni nollet, tandem, quia orando instabat Hercules, hoc commentus sit, ut, amputato arietis capite, pelleque villosa, quam illi detraxerat, induta sibi, ita sese Herculi ostenderit,

This Hercules seems to have been Moses, who said to God, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory. And he said, Thou canst not see mý face, &c. Exod. xxxiii.

ciently evident that they were not accidental. The destruction of Jerusalem, and that second coming of the Son of man to take vengeance of his foes, may perhaps prefigure the destruction of Antichristian tyranny, and the manifestation of Christ, that is, of his power and spirit; and then may commence a better and happier æra, and such a renovation as may be called, New heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

The correspondencies of types and anti-types, though they are not themselves proper proofs of the truth of a doctrine, yet they may be very reasonable confirmations of the foreknowledge of God; of the uniform view of providence under different dispensations; of the analogy, harmony, and agreement between the Old Testament and the New. The words in the law concerning one particular kind of death, He that is hanged, is accursed of God, can hardly be conceived to have been put in upon any other account, than with a view and foresight of the application made of it by St Paul. The analogies between the paschal lamb, and the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world; between the Egyptian bondage, and the tyranny of sin; between the baptism of the Israelites in the sea, and in the cloud, and the baptism of Christians; between the passage through the wilderness, and through the present world; between Jesus [Joshua] bringing the people into the promised land, and Jesus Christ being the Captain of salvation to believers; between the Sabbath of rest promised to the people of God in the earthly Canaan, and the eternal rest promised in the heavenly Canaan; between the liberty granted from the time of the death of the high priest, to him that had fled into a city of refuge, and the redemption purchased by the death of Christ; between

the high priest entering into the holy place every year with the blood of others, and Christ's once entering with his own blood into heaven itself, to appear in the presence of God for us: these, I say, and innumerable other analogies, between the shadows of things to come, of good things to come, the shadows of heavenly things, the figures for the time then present, patterns of things in the heavens, and the heavenly things themselves, cannot, without the force of strong prejudice, be conceived to have happened by mere chance, without any foresight or design. There are no such analogies, much less such series of analogies found in the books of mere enthusiastic writers living in such remote ages from each other. It is much more credible, and reasonable to suppose, what St Paul affirms, that these things were our examples; and that, in the uniform course of God's government of the world, all these things happened unto them of old for examples, and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come: And hence arises that aptness of similitude, in the application of several legal performances to the morality of the gospel, that it can very hardly be supposed not to have been originally intended. Clarke's Evid. of Nat. and Rev. Relig.

THE remaining part of this book shall contain remarks on the apostolical constitutions and canons, the Sibylline oracles, and some passages from ancient poets cited by the fathers, the works of Barnabas, and of Hermas, the Recognitions of Clemens, the Epistle to Diognetus, the Epistles of Ignatius, &c.

AMONGST the ancient Christian books which claim our attention are the apostolical constitutions, which, if

they

they are genuine, are a sacred treatise, and of equal authority with the New Testament; and, if they are not genuine, are an infamous imposture, for which the forger well deserved the punishment inflicted by the Roman laws on the Falsari. Digest. 1. xlviii. Tit.

x. 1.

The authors of them are, it is pretended, the twelve apostles and St Paul gathered together, with Clemens their amanuensis. If their authority should appear only ambiguous, it would be our duty to reject them, lest we should adopt as divine doctrines the commandments of men; for since each gospel contains the main parts of Christianity, and might be sufficient to make men wise unto salvation, there is less danger in diminishing than in enlarging the number of canonical books, and less evil would have ensued from the loss of one of the four gospels, than from the addition of a fifth and spurious one.

But the Constitutions are a medley of old treatises jumbled together, enlarged and adulterated without much wit or judgment by some compiler after the days of Constantine. And yet they have their value, and may be useful on many accounts, and contain several things of antiquity relating to the doctrine and discipline of the church, and extracts from old liturgies, though the whole be so blended with insertions of a later date, that it is now beyond human skill to make the separation with any certainty.

I offered some remarks upon them in Disc. vi. on the Christ. Rel, and I shall here add a few more.

They have a chapter Περὶ Χαρισμάτων, in which they observe, that the word Xapua means either the gift of working miracles, or the gift of spiritual and Christian graces; that the first is conferred on some, the second