manner in which he had been worshipped, not in Samaria only, but also in Jerusalem; but this was done much more effectually by the Jews who were carried captive into Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar.

That the influence which the prophet Daniel had, first at the court of Babylon, and afterwards at that of Persia, and the steadiness with which he and his friends refused either to worship the idols of those nations, or to forbear the worship of their own God, produced the happiest effects both on the Chaldeans and Persians, could hardly have been doubted, though they had not been expressly mentioned in the Scriptures. Cyrus indeed appears to have been a Monotheist; and though we have no evidence of the permanence of Nebuchadnezzar's conversion, there is no room for doubt but that, from the miraculous deliverance of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, he and his people revered the God of the Jews.

The Messiah, however, was to be a blessing to the western as well as to the eastern nations, and they, too, were to be prepared for profiting by his advent. To them, as well as to the Chaldeans and Persians, the law, through the medium of the Jews, was to be made a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ; and the good providence of God so directed the great events of the world—the revolutions of empires-as to make them contribute to the dissemination of his truth. Under the Persian monarchs the Jews were restored to their own country, and generally treated with great kindness.

When Alexander conquered the empire of Persia, he, too, treated the Jews with tenderness, if not with respect; and when he found that his conquests had been foretold by the prophet Daniel, he ordered sacrifices to be offered for himself in the temple of Jerusalem. On the division of the Macedonian empire after his death, the Jews became tributary sometimes to the Syrian, and sometimes to the Egyptian kingdom; and to one of the Greek sovereigns of Egypt we are indebted for the Septuagint version of the Hebrew Scriptures, which must have contributed to diffuse far and wide the knowledge of the true God, as well as to exhibit, in a strong point of view, the impious absurdity of Polytheism and Idolatry. At length the whole civilized world fell, either by conquest or voluntary submission, under the dominion of Rome; and when, in the course of providence, Augustus Cæsar was enabled to give peace to the empire, God, of his infinite goodness, sent his Son-the long expected-Messiah-into the world, to proclaim from Heaven "peace on earth-even the peace of God-and good will towards men.'

Why the fulness of time, for the advent of that seed of the woman which was to restore to mankind what they had lost by the fall of our first parents, was delayed till the reign of Augustus, is a question that hath been often asked; but it might with just as much propriety be asked, why this earth was not formed and peopled at a period earlier than six or seven thousand years ago. "Known unto

God are all his works from the beginning of the world ;" and every man who has tolerably just notions of his attributes, even as they are exhibited in what is called Natural Religion, will readily admit, that his works have all been wrought at the times most proper for producing the effects intended by infinite wisdom and perfect goodness. In us, who know but a very small part of those works that have been wrought and are working on this earth, and are profoundly ignorant of the moral relations that may subsist between us and the rational inhabitants of other worlds, it would be in the highest degree presumptuous to assign a positive reason why the Redeemer of mankind was not sent into the world at a period either before or after the reign of Augustus. It may, indeed, be easily proved, that the period at which he was sent was the fittest on record for diffusing the truth through the civilized nations of this world; and that Christianity, simple as it must be acknowledged to be, both by its friends and its foes, is yet a religion too refined to be understood by savages; but this hath been done in so masterly a manner by Bishop Law of Carlisle, that I have only to refer you to Part Second of his Considerations on the Theory of Religion.

LETTER XI

ON THE ADVENT OF CHRIST, AND THE OBJECT CEITA VITE SOME CISERVATIONS ON THE ANTLIS CREED

- THE Aliness of time being now ecme," and the world in some degree prepared for a purer dispensation of religion than any which had hitherto been vouchsafed to man," God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." It was not, however, to redeem the Jews alone, who were under the law of Moses, that God sent forth his Son, but to restore to all mankind that everlasting life or immortality which had been forfeited by the fall of their first parents; for the Son of God, who was made of a woman alone, was that seed of which it was said to the original tempter, that "it should bruise his head, whilst the tempter should bruise his heel;" or, as the same truth is more clearly expressed in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Son of God “took

upon him flesh and blood, that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage."

This was the great object, for the attainment of which a Redeemer was originally promised to the parents of the human race; but very different are the notions entertained by Christian divines of the nature and extent of the deliverance wrought by Him, according to the sense in which they understand that death, through the fear of which all mankind are here said to have been subject to bondage. Such as believe that the soul cannot die, and that the death incurred by Adam and Eve comprehended not only the dissolution of the body, which all admit, but likewise an innate propensity to sin, together with eternal torments in hell-fire with the devil and his angels, talk of three kinds of death, which they call natural, spiritual, and eternal death. To death, in all these senses, they profess to believe, that not only Adam and Eve themselves, but likewise all their descendants, He alone excepted, who was the Son of God as well as the Son of man, was subjected by their fall; but they do not, and indeed cannot, admit that Christ died for all mankind in this comprehensive sense of the word death; for he himself hath assured us, that, at the day of judgment, the impenitent wicked shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.”

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