and subjects himself to their penalties, acts as if he had no belief in the authority of the one, or in the infliction of the other. When he yields to temptation, regardless of the consequences; exhortations, warnings, experience, and examples, are all thrown away upon him. The State might address these delinquents in the words quoted by Mr. Gibbon-"How long will this people provoke me; how long will it be, ere they believe me?" The kind of unbelief, which is exemplified in these cases, is well defined by the terms used in certain forms of indictment :-("not having the fear of God before his eyes; but being moved and instigated by the devil.") Thus the crimes of the Israelites were denounced by God as sins of unbelief; that is, of a defective and inoperative faith.

- But unbelief, in a special abstract sense, was impossible in the case of the Israelites. A man cannot disbelieve his own eye-sight, his own senses, and his own experience; nor does any such impossibility appear, as Mr. Gibbon says it does, in the "whole tenor of the Mosaic history "—but quite the reverse, as we have shewn.

Seduced by the daughters of Moab, "the people bowed down to their gods, and joined themselves to Baal-peor." But these grievous sins were not perpetrated by the nation generally. The offenders, though numerous, were limited in number. They amounted to " twenty-and-four thousand," who all

perished in the plague." All the men that followed Baal-peor, the Lord thy God hath destroyed them from among you. But ye, that did cleave unto the Lord your God, are alive every one of you this day." (Deut. iv. 3.) Can such partial instances of defection as these justify the following passage?

Under the pressure,' says the historian, 'of every calamity, the belief of these miracles has preserved the Jews of a late period from the universal contagion of idolatry and in contradiction to every known principle of the human mind, that singular people seems to have yielded a stronger and more ready assent to the tradition of their remote ancestors, than to the evidence of their own senses.' adverted to most of the occasional lapses of the early Israelites, and have shewn that they were not so very

We have

singular a people" as to refuse assent to the evidence of their own senses. A very 66 singular

people" indeed they must have been, if they had. But let us see whether their remote descendants of a "late period" were, in so superior a degree, preserved from the "universal contagion of idolatry."

In the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes (B.c. 174.) "went there out of Israel wicked men, who persuaded many, saying, Let us go and make a covenant with the heathen that are round about us; for, since we departed from them, we have had much sorrow. So this device pleased them well. *** Whereupon they built a place of exercise at Jerusalem according

to the customs of the heathen: and made themselves uncircumcised, and forsook the holy covenant, and joined themselves to the heathen, and were sold to do mischief." (Maccabees i. 11.) Again, at a subsequent period, after the expedition of Antiochus into Egypt," many also of the Israelites consented to his religion, and sacrificed unto idols, and profaned the sabbath."

Instead of this "contradiction to every known principle of the human mind," on which Mr. Gibbon insists, we find a very curious parallelism between the conduct of the Jews of this late period and their more remote ancestors.' "There came one of the Jews, in the sight of all, to sacrifice on the altar, which was at Modin, according to the king's commandment. Which thing when Mattathias saw, he was inflamed with zeal : wherefore he ran, and slew him upon the altar. Thus dealt he zealously for the law of God, like as Phineas did to Zimri the son of Salu.'

Whoever reads the first chapters in the book of Maccabees will see, that a more false assertion was never made by an historian, than that "under the pressure of every calamity the belief of the miracles (recorded by Moses) preserved the Jews of a later period from the universal contagion of idolatry." No assertion can be more false, except the remark by the same writer, that "the cotemporaries of Moses

and Joshua beheld with careless indifference the

most amazing miracles."

Such are the weapons of scepticism even in the most skilful hands.

NOTE E. p. 353.

The writer remembers to have met in the year 1814, while travelling in the states of the Grand Duke of Baden, an officer belonging to a regiment in the contingent of Hesse d'Armstadt, who told him, that he and his corps were in garrison at Badajoz, during the memorable siege of that fortress. This statement might have been a mere gasconade. The officer's assertion did not prove the fact, that he and his corps were there. But, in the year 1847, thirty-three years afterwards, the present writer happened to read in Mr. Grattan's Memoirs of the "Connaught Rangers," the following sentence in the account, which he gives of that siege. "One entire regiment of Germans, called the regiment of Hesse d'Armstadt, that defended the ravelin, was put to death. (p. 274.)

Nor

This is in the nature of an undesigned and accidental confirmation of the officer's statement. is this testimony at all weakened, because Mr. Grat

tan somewhat exaggerated the circumstances, by describing the entire regiment (as put to death-one officer having certainly survived, if the informant was present. The evidence is sufficient to prove the account generally, though there may be an error in strict and minute particulars. Thus, the quotations by Clement, Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome, of sentences found in St. Matthew's Gospel, sufficiently prove that this history was extant, and was received as of authority, in their day, whether it was written by Matthew or not. The testimony is postponed as to time; it is also indirect and accidental; but it is the more convincing on the latter account. It certainly is not absolutely impossible, in the one case, that the officer was not present at Badajoz though his regiment was: or, in the other, that the sentences quoted by Clement from the epistle of Barnabas, though found in Matthew's gospel, were inserted from some other previous writing, which Barnabas might have quoted, and Matthew also-but, in both cases, such presumptions would not be fair, reasonable, and candid doubts, but obstinate and perverse cavils.