speaks after the manner of men, as we often know upon making trial: besides, the people, so long used to slavery, and having no warlike dispositions, might be terrified by a sudden war with the Canaanites : not but that God could have raised their courage, or could have made the Philistines favour them, (as the Egyptians did at first ;) but he observed the rule of his ordinary providence, and designing they should overcome the Canaanites, he would have them, as it were, inured and trained for some time. This second reason of their not being led by God the nearest way from Egypt, is set down, lest peradventure the people repent when they see war.

It is further observable, that in their journeying in the wilderness, God led them by a pillar, which stood still when they were to rest, and moved forward when and which way they were to march. This pillar appeared as a cloud in the day, keeping off the scorching heat of the sun; and as a fire by night, to give light; whereby it was manifest the Divine Presence was always with them; for this pillar of a cloud and fire was doubtless the same with the shechinah, or the glory of the Lord before mentioned, and that which was upon the tabernacle a cloud by day, and the appearance of fire by night. It appears that. sometimes the cloud tarried upon the tabernacle a considerable time in the same place, as a month, or a year'. In some places they abode several years; for in thirteen years space there are reckoned but seventeen encampings.

As for their clothes, they were miraculously preserved from decaying, and wore not out in forty years'; and the clothes of children, as they grew

f Exod. xiii. 17. Pentateuch.

8 See the fifth general Remark on the h Exod. xiii. 21, 22. and xiv. 24. and xl. 36, 37, 38. Numb. ix. 15, to the end. Psal. cv. 39. i Numb. ix. So Bishop Usher computes, Annal. A. M. 2515.

22.

1 Deut. viii. 4.

up, might be kept for other succeeding children; so also the clothes of those who died might serve their children when they grew up to their stature. Their food was chiefly man, or manna", which God gave them from heaven. There is indeed a sort of manna now gathered in Calabria in Italy; but this sweats out of the branches and leaves of the ash tree, and is thickened and hardened by the heat of the sun, and has none of the qualities of the Israelites' miraculous manna; as to fall on the ground, to be like coriander-seed, and to taste like wafers made with honey. Further, because they journeyed in a dry wilderness, God miraculously provided water for them, which Moses struck out of a rock, and which seems to have continued flowing like a stream or river, and following them from place to place along the wilderness', till the last year of their travelling, when water again failing, it was renewed after the same manner as before.

Here, by the way, we may take notice, that the whole people of Israel, and that which befel them, were types or figures of Christ and his church, as we learn from the Apostle. Their redemption from Egypt was a type of our redemption from sin; the barren wilderness, through which they passed, of the afflictions of this life; Moses, their captain, of Christ; Canaan, of heaven; the Red Sea, of baptism; manna, of the bread which Christ brought down from heaven, his doctrine of salvation, which nourishes to eternal life, &c.

Most probably from manah, (unde minnah in Piel. Dan. i. 10.) which signifies to appoint or order a distinct share or portion. Hence præparatus cibus for manna, in Wisd. xvi. 20. Buxtorf. et Paquin apud Robertson. Thesaur. Linguæ sanctæ. • Exod. xvi. 33. P Raii Hist. Planq Exod. xvii. 1, s Numb. xx. 2-13.

tarum in Fraxino. 16, 20. 1 Cor. x. 4. the beginning.

&c.

r Psal. lxxviii.

t 1 Cor. x. at

CHAP. VIII.

The Laws which God ordained at Mount Sinai, and particularly the moral Laws.

WHEN the Israelites were on their journey towards the land of Canaan, and, in the first day of the third month after their setting out, were got as far as mount Sinai, (called also Horeb', either because Horeb is an adjoining mountain to Sinai, or that they are only two different risings of the same mountain,) in the wilderness or desart of Arabia Petræa, there God instructed Moses, who was their leader, in the several laws which he had ordained for them to keep. The Jewish rabbies observe, The Lord spake unto Moses face to face; that it was not as to other prophets in dreams and visions, &c. but in such a clear and plain manner as one person may converse with anotherd.

Here, before we proceed, we cannot but observe the sad effects of worshipping idols; for when Moses went up to the mount to receive the laws of God, and stayed there forty days, the people (that is, a great part of them) thinking he was lost, and ob serving the pillar, or cloud, which was wont to conduct them, not to move forward as before, contrived to make some symbol or representation of God's presence to go before them, or that might represent God in a visible manner to them; to which purpose they set up a molten calf, and brought their offerings to it. The reason of this shape might be, be

a Exod. xix. 1.

Deut. iv. 10. Mr. Sandys says, that Sinai hath three tops of a marvellous height; that on the west side of old called mount Horeb, where God appeared to Moses in a bush; being fruitful in pasturage, far lower, and shadowed, when the sun arises, by the middlemost. Travels, book ii. p. 123. edit. London, 1615. c Exod. xxxiii. 11. a Maimon. Porta Mosis, p. 169. e Exod. xxxii. f See Bishop Stillingfleet of Idolatry, chap. i. §. 10.

cause it was such as they had seen in Egypt, (golden bulls being a symbol of the Egyptian god Osiris, which was also called Apis, whom the Egyptians worshipped in the image of a bull; and sometimes they represented him by a live bull, which was kept in the temple of Osiris. In imitation of which, Jeroboam afterwards set up golden calves in Dan and Bethel.) Now it does not appear that they had any intention to cast off that God who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, but that something in the place of God, or representing God, might stand before them: for Aaron proclaimed a feast to the Lord (Jehovah',) and the calf most likely was designed a symbol or sign of his presence; yet God conceived such indignation against the idol-worshippers, that upon his command, three thousand of them were slain by those who clave to the worship of the true God. Whence it appears, that not only setting up an idol for the true God, but also worshipping the true God by an image, is idolatry: the reason is, because the representing God by an idol is a debasing of him, as if he were a corporeal being like ourselves; and therefore the Israelites are said to have changed the glory of God into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass1.

To proceed: The laws which God ordained in mount Sinai were of three sorts, viz. moral, ceremonial, and judicial, or political. The first or moral laws their rabbies call precepts; the ceremonial by the name of statutes; and the judicial they term judgments. First, moral, so called to distinguish them from such laws, which are to be observed merely because they are ordained, and are called

As appears from their ancient historians; Herodotus, lib. ii. and Diodor. lib. i. apud Dr. Prideaux's Connection, part i. book iii. an, 524. h Exod. xxxii. 4. i Ver. 5. Exod. xxxii. 1 Psal. cvi. 20. compare Rom. i. 23. m Hottinger. Thesaurus, lib. ii. cap. iii. §. 2.

positive, or ceremonial: but now the moral laws are such as are founded on the nature of things, and enjoined, because they are good in themselves, and arise from eternal reason, and are suitable to our frame and condition in the world; as that God, who made and preserves us and all the world, should be adored and worshipped by us, and no idol or spirit should partake of his honour; that it must be a high affront to declare a thing in his name, or to appeal to him as a witness in vain, or falsely; that some time be allotted for God's honour and worship; that parents and governors be honoured and respected; that one man should not injure another, in his person by murder, or his wife by adultery, in his goods by stealing, or his reputation by slander and false witness; neither should men covet what is the property of another.

These moral laws are summed up in the Ten Commandments, which God spake" or published from

n There is some variety of expressing the publishing of the law, especially these moral ones, the Ten Commandments. In Exod. xx. 1. it is, And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, &c. and Deut. iv. 12. The Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire. But in Acts vii. 38. St. Stephen tells the Jews, This is he (Moses) that was in the church in the wilderness, with the angel, which spake to him in the mount Sinai, and with our fathers; who received the oracles to give unto us. And verse 53. that their fathers received the law by the disposition, us Sarayas, the ordering or ministration, of angels. And St. Paul, Gal. iii. 19. says, it was ordained by angels in the hands of (Moses) a mediator (between God and them, Deut. v. 5.) And Heb. ii. 2, 3. he makes a comparison between God's speaking the law to the Jews by angels, and his speaking to us by his Son: If the word spoken by angels was stedfast-how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord? So that either we must understand, first, that God himself, in a strict sense, spake the words, which because they came from the Shechinah, or the divine glory, that was encompassed with the host of angels, are therefore said to be spoken by angels. Or, secondly, that one principal angel formed the voice, with the attendance of many others: which, because it was done by the immediate special command