Jews. Melchezideck, though no Jew, was the high-priest of the living God. Balaam, though an idolater, was his prophet. The Holy Scripture then teaches us, that God not only tolerated every other religion, but alfo extended his fatherly care to them all. And shall we, after this, dare to be perfecutois !

CHA P. XIII.

The Great TOLERATION exercifed among

the JEWS.

HUS then, under Mofes, the Judges, we

TH

and the Kings, we find numberless inftances of toleration. Moreover, we are told by Mofes, that "God will vifit the fins of the "fathers upon the children, unto the third and "fourth generation." This threat was neceflary to a people to whom God had not revealed the immortality of the foul, and the rewards and punishment of a future ftate. These truths are not to be found in any part of the Decalogue, nor in the Levitic, or Deuteronomic law. They were the tenets of the Perfians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Cretans; but made no part of the Jewish religion. Mofes does not fay, "Honour thy father and 66 thy mother, that thou mayeft inherit eternal "life;" but that thy days may be long in' "the land, which the Lord thy God giveth

thee:" that is, in this life; and the punishments with which he threatens them, regard only the prefent mortal ftate; fuch as being fmitten with the fcab and with the itch; with

blaft

blafting and with mildew; that they fhall betroth a wife, and another man fhall lie with her; that they fhall build houses, and others fhall dwell therein; that they fhall plant vineyards, and shall not gather the grapes thereof; that they fhall eat the fruit of their own bodies, the flesh of their fons, and of their daughters, and be obliged to bow down before the ftranger that is within their gates +: but he never tells them that their fouls are immortal, and fhall tafte of felicity or punishment after death. God, who conducted his people himself, punifhed or rewarded them immediately according to their good or evil deeds. Every thing relating to them was temporal, and this the learned bishop Warburton brings as a proof of the divine origin of the Jewish law ; inafmuch,

Deut. chap. xxviii. ver. 28. & feq.

There is but one paffage in the whole Mofaic law, from which one might conclude that Mofes, was acquainted with the reigning opinion among the Egyptians, that the foul did not die with the body. This paffage is very particular, and is in the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy: "There shall "not be found among you any one that useth divi"nation, or an obferver of times, or an inchanter,

fays he, as God being their king, and exercising justice immediately upon them, according to

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or a witch, or a charmer, or a confulter with familiar fpirits (Python), or a wizard, or a ne"cromancer." From this paffage it appears, that by invoking the fouls of the dead, this pretended necromancy fuppofed a permanency of the foul. It might alfo happen, that the necromancers of whom Mofes fpeaks, being but ignorant deceivers, might not have a distinct idea of the magic they operated. They made people believe that they forced the dead to fpeak, and by the power of their art restored the body to the fame flate as when living; without once examining whether their ridiculous operations might autho-" rize the doctrine of the immortality of the foul. The antient magicians were never philofophers, they were at beft but a fet of ftupid jugglers, who played their tricks before as illiterate fpectators.

But what is very frange and worthy of obfervation is, that the word Python fhould be found in Deuteronomy, fo long before that Greek term was known to the Hebrews; and indeed, this word is not to be found in the Hebrew, of which we have never had a good translation."

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There

their tranfgreffion or obedience, found it not neceffary to reveal to them a doctrine which he referved for after-times, when he should no longer fo immediately govern his people. Those who through ignorance pretend, that Mofes taught the immortality of the foul, deprived the New-Teftament of one of its principal advantages over the Old. It is certain, that

There are many infurmountable difficulties in this language: it is a mixture of Phoenician, Egyptian, Syriac, and Arabic, and has undergone many alterations to the prefent time. The Hebrew. verbs had only two moods, the prefent and the fu ture the reft were to be gueffed at by the fenfe. The different vowels were frequently expreffed by the fame characters, or rather indeed they were not expreffed at all; and the inventors of points have only increased the difficulties they meant to remove. Every adverb had twenty different fignifications, and the fame word had frequently feveral contrary fenfes. Add to this, that the language was in itself very dry and barren; for the Jews. not being acquainted with the arts, could not, exprefs what they knew nothing of, In a word, the Hebrew is to the Greek what the language of a pedant is to that of an academic,

the