the law of Mofes taught only temporal punishments, extending to the fourth generation; and yet, notwithstanding the positive declaration of God delivered in this law, Ezekiel preached the very contrary to the Jews; telling them, "The fon fhall not bear the iniquities of the father ;" and, in another place, he

goes

+ Ezek. chap. xviii. ver. 20.

+ The opinion of Ezekiel was at length the prevailing one of the fynagogue; not but that there were always fome Jews, who, tho' they believed in a state of eternal punishments, yet believed at the fame time that God punished the fins of the fathers upon the children. At prefent indeed they are punished even beyond the fiftieth generation, and yet are in danger of eternal punishment. It may be asked how the offspring of thofe Jews who were not concerned in putting Chrift to death, can be temporally punished in the perfons of their children who were as innocent as themselves? This temporal punishment, or rather this manner of living, fo different from all other people, and of trading over the whole earth without having any country of their own, cannot be confidered as a punishment, compared with what they are to expect hereafter on account of their unbelief, and which they might avoid by a fincere repentance.

fo far as to make God fay, that " he had given "them statutes that were not good, and judge"ments whereby they should not live §."

Notwithstanding these contradictions, the book of Ezekiel was not the lefs admitted into the number of those inspired writers: it is true, that according to St. Jerom, the fy nagogue did not permit the reading of it till after thirteen years of age; but that was for fear their youth fhould make a bad ufe of the too lively defcription in the fixteenth and twenty-third chapters, of the whoredoms of Aholah and Aholibah.

But when the immortality of the foul became to be a received doctrine †, which was probably

:

§ Ezek. chap. xx. ver. 25.

+ Those who have thought to discover the doctrine of Hell and Heaven, fuch as it is now believed by us, in the Mosaic books, have been strangely miftaken their error is owing entirely to an idle difpute about words: The Vulgate having tranflated the Hebrew word Sheol, the pit, by the Latin word, infernum, and this latter having been rendered in French by enfer, hell, they have taken occasion from

about the beginning of the Babylonish captivity, the fect of Sadduces ftill continued to be

from this equivocal tranflation to establish a belief that the antient Hebrews had a notion of the Hades and Tartaros of the Greeks, known to other nations before them by different appellations.

We are told in the fixteenth chapter of Numbers, that the earth opened her mouth and fwallowed up Corah, Dathan, and Abiram, and they and all that appertained to them went down alive into the pit, or grave; now certainly there is nothing faid in this paffage concerning the fouls of thefe three perfons, nor yet of the torments of hell, nor of eternal punishments.

It is very extraordinary that the authors of the Dictionnaire Encyclopedique under the word Hell (Enfer) fhould fay, that the antient Hebrews believed in its exiftence. If this is true, there would be an infurmountable contradiction in the Pentateuch; for why should Mofes have spoken of the punishments after death in one fingle paflage only, of all his works. On this occafion they quote the thirty-fecond chapter of Deuteronomy; but after a mutilated manner. The whole paffage is as follows: "They

I 2

lieve, that there were no rewards or punishments after death, and that the faculties of the

They have moved me to jealousy with that "which is not God, they have provoked me to 186 anger with their vanities, and I will move them

to jealousy with thofe that are not a people, I "will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. For a fire is kindled in my anger, and fhall burn unto the loweft hell; and fhall confume the earth with her increase, and set on fire "the foundations of the mountains. I will heap mifchiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them. They fhall be burnt with hunger, " and devoured with burning heat and with bitter "deftruction; I will alfo fend the teeth of beafts upon them, with the poifon of ferpents of the “duft.”

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But have any or all of thefe expreffions the leaft relation to the idea of hell-torments? On the contrary, it seems as if these words were purposely inferted to prove, that our hell was unknown to the antient Jews.

The author of this article quotes alfo the following paffage from the twenty-fourth chapter of Job. "The eye of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight,

faying, no eye shall fee me, and disguiseth his

"face.

the foul perished with us in like manner as those of the body. They alfo denied the existence of

"face. In the dark they dig through houses which they had marked for themselves in the day-time. They know not the light, for the morning is to them as the fhadow of death; if one know them,

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they are in the terrors of the fhadow of death. "He is fwift as the waters, their portion is curfed "in the earth, he beholdeth not the way, of the

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vineyards. Drowth and heat confume the fnow"waters, fo doth the grave those who have finned."

I quote these paffages entire, otherwise it will be impoffible to form a true idea of them. But let me afk if there is the leaft expreffion here, from which one may conclude, that Mofes ever taught the Jews the clear and fimple doctrine of eternal rewards and punishments ?

Not to mention that the book of Job has nothing to do with the Mofaic law, there is great reafon. to believe that Job himself was not a Jew: this is the opinion of St. Jerom in his Hebrew questions upon Genefis. The word Satan, which occurs in Job, was not known to the Jews, nor is it any where to be found in the five books of Mofes.. This name, as well as thofe of Gabriel and Ra