Sovereign as well as the tutelary God of the Hebrew nation, undertook to dispense this, as well as every other species of reward and punishment, by an immediate and extraordinary Providence, in which justice should be tempered with abundant mercy, confining the providential and temporary punishment for the parents' crimes to the third and fourth generation; while it encouraged adherence to virtue and to God, by the assurance of a reward, similar indeed in kind, but infinitely superior in degree, and which, under the common course of events, could not be hoped for; promising to extend the blessings obtained by parental obedience and piety, even to the thousandth generation of those who love God.

Thus we perceive, how perfectly all the parts of this awful and wonderful dispensation harmonized together; and with what strict truth, as well as majestic sublimity, the Hebrew Lawgiver describes Jehovah proclaiming his name :† "The Lord, the Lord "God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in "goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving 'iniquity, and transgression, and sin, and that will by no means "clear the guilty;" (and in perfect consistence with these attributes)" visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, "and upon the children's children."

That this sanction of the Jewish Law was not to be understood as a general principle of the divine economy, under every form of civil society, and every degree of religious improvement; but merely as a necessary part of that administration of an extraor dinary Providence by which the Jewish Law was sanctioned and upheld during the earlier periods of its existence; has been proved by Warburton, from a circumstance which infidel writers have laid much stress upon as an instance of contradiction

were,

* Warburton's observation on this subject, Book V. sect. v. Vol. iv. p. 385. seems just and conclusive. "God," says he, "supported the Israelites in Judea, "by an extraordinary administration of his Providence; the consequences of which great temporal blessings, to which they had no natural claim, given them on "condition of obedience. Nothing, therefore, could be more equitable than, on the "violation of that condition, to withdraw those extraordinary blessings from the chil"dren of a father thus offending. How then can the Deist charge this Law with "injustice? since a posterity, when innocent, was affected only in their civil condi"tional rights, and when deprived of those which were natural and unconditional, were always guilty."

† Exod. xxxiv. 6 and 7.

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between different parts of Scripture; when in truth it was only a gradual change in the divine system, wisely and mercifully adapted to the gradual improvement of the human mind. Towards the conclusion of this extraordinary economy, (observes Warburton) when God by the later prophets reveals his purpose of giving them a NEW DISPENSATION, in which a future state of rewards and punishments was to be brought to light (or rather, according to my system, substituted in place of an immediate extraordinary Providence as the sanction of religion ;) it is then declared in the most express manner, that he will abrogate the Law of punishing children for the crimes of their parents. Jeremiah,* speaking of this new dispensation, "In those days they shall say no more, the fathers have eaten a sour grape, " and the children's teeth are set on edge. But every one shall "die for his own iniquity; every man that eateth the sour grape "his teeth shall be set on edge. Behold the days come, saith "the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of "Israel and with the house of Judah: not according to the "covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I "took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt "(which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband "unto them, saith the Lord :) But this shall be the covenant "that I will make with the house of Israel in those days; I will "put my Law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; "and will be their God, and they shall be my people." And Ezekiel, speaking of the same times, says, "I will give them one heart, and will put a new spirit within you; and I will "take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an "heart of flesh; that they may walk in my statutes and keep "mine ordinances and they shall be my people, and I will be "their God. But as for them, whose heart walketh after the "heart of their detestable things, and their abominations, I will recompense their way upon their own heads, saith the Lord "God."

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Thus in the Jewish system, a people of gross and carnal minds and short-sighted views, slow to believe any thing they could not themselves experience, and therefore almost incapable of being sufficiently influenced by the remote prospect of a future * Jeremiah, xxxi. 29-33. Compare Ezekiel, ch. xviii. the entire chapter. Ezek. xi. 19-21.

life, and the pure and spiritual blessedness of a celestial existence, were wisely and necessarily placed under a Law, which was supported by a visible extraordinary Providence, conferring immediate rewards and punishments on the person of the offender: or which laid hold of his most powerful instincts, by denouncing that his crimes would be visited upon his children and his children's children to the third and fourth generation. And this proceeding was a necessary part of that national discipline under which the Jews were placed, and was free from all shadow of injustice. Because, when the innocent were afflicted for their parents' crimes (as Warburton has well observed) it was by the deprivation of temporal benefits, in their nature forfeitable. Or should this not so clearly appear, yet we may be sure, God, who reserved to himself the right of visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, would perfectly rectify any apparent inequality in the course of his providential government over the chosen people, in another and a better world; by repaying the innocent, who had necessarily suffered here, with an eternal and abundant recompense.

LECTURE IV.

A FUTURE STATE KNOWN TO THE JEWS.

SECT. I.-Doctrine of a future state, though it does not form the sanction of the Mosaic Law, is yet contained in the Writings of Moses. Warburton's assertions on this subject hasty and inconsistent with each other, and with the Seventh Article of the Church of England. Future state intimated in the history of the creation and the fall-by the circumstances attending the death of Abel-by the translation of Enoch-by the command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Future state must have been known to the Patriarchs, and influenced their conduct-attested in the Epistle to the Hebrews-instanced in the history of Jacob-of Mosesby our Lord's reply to the doubts of the Sadducees-the declaration of Balaam Future state an object of popular belief among the Jews-from the laws relating to necromancers, &c.

HEBREWS, xi. 13.

"These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and "were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and "pilgrims upon earth.'

IN a former Lecture,* I have endeavoured to establish the first position I had laid down respecting the connexion that subsisted between the Mosaic Law and the belief of a future state of retribution; even that Moses did not sanction his Laws by the promise of future rewards and punishments; and to assign such reasons for this part of the divine economy, as the nature of the subject suggested. I now proceed to discuss the second conclusion, which an attentive perusal of the Old Testament appears to me to establish on this subject; even that the history recorded by the Jewish Lawgiver shows, that he himself believed a future state of retribution; and that it contains such proofs of it, as must naturally suggest it to every serious and reflecting mind, though with less clearness than the succeeding scriptures of the Old Testament, which exhibit this great truth with a perpetually increasing lustre, until by the Prophets it was so authoritatively revealed, as to become an article of popular belief and

* Part III. Lect. III. sect. i. supra.

practical influence amongst the Jewish people, and thus prepare the way for the reception of the Gospel.

This position is abundantly confirmed by the Apostle to the Hebrews, in his eleventh chapter. It appears, however, very different from the opinion of the celebrated Warburton, with whose sentiments on the former part of this subject, I so nearly agreed. The subject of his fifth book is to prove, That the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is not to be found in, and did not take part of, the Mosaic dispensation. One part of this proposition, that a future retribution was not employed as a sanction of the Mosaic Law, and in this sense made no part of the Jewish dispensation, I admit, and have endeavoured to account for, in agreement with the principles of this celebrated prelate. The other part, that the doctrine of a future state is not to be found in any part of the Mosaic records, I am compelled to dissent from. This opinion is, however, strongly expressed by this learned writer. He asserts," In no one place "of the Mosaic institutes, is there the least mention, or any "intelligible hint, of the rewards and punishments of another "life" and afterwards, "I shall show, from a circumstance the "clearest and most incontestable, that the Israelites, from the "time of Moses to the time of their captivity, had not the "doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments."+ This circumstance, if really existing, would certainly be decisive to establish the conclusion it is brought to support. It is in brief, that throughout the entire Old Testament, various as the Sacred Writings are, in their subject, style and composition, and various as the occasions on which they were composed, and the characters of their authors; yet, says this eminent writer, "in none of these different circumstances of life, in none of "these various casts of composition, do we ever find them "acting on the motives, or influenced by the prospect of future "rewards and punishments, or indeed expressing the least hope "or fear or common curiosity concerning them; but every thing they do or say respects the present life only, the good "and ill of which are the sole objects of all their pursuits and "aversions."§ And again, “I infer, as amidst all this variety "of writing the doctrine of a future state, never once appears

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* Vide Book V. sect. i. Vol. iv. p. 133.

Divine Legation, Book V. sect. v. Vol. iv. p. 318.

Ibid. p. 344.

Warburton, Vol. iv. p. 344.

VOL. II.

T