the universal belief in Egypt, in Chaldea, and Persia; or a very weak man, if being acquainted with this doctrine you did not make it the basis of your religion.

The very best answer the authors of the Jewish laws could make, is this: we own ourselves extremely ignorant; it was very late before we learned to write; our people, a savage and barbarous tribe, which, by our own accounts, wandered for near half a century amidst deserts, at length by the most heinous violences, and the most detestable cruelties ever mentioned in history, seized on a small territory: we had no intercourse with policed nations; then how could we (the most earthly minded of all men) invent a system entirely spiritual?

We used the word answering to SOUL only to signify LIFE; we thought God and his angels to be corporeal beings: the distinction of soul and body, the idea of a life after death, can be only the result of long meditation, and refined philosophy. Ask the Hottentots and Negroes, whose country is a hundred times larger than ours, whether they know any thing of a future life? We thought we had done wonders in persuading our people that God punished evil-doers to the fourth generation, either by the leprosy, a sudden death, or the loss of what little substance a person might have possessed.

To this apology it may be replied; you have invented a system palpably ridiculous; for the evil-doer, who was in health, and whose family prospered, must necessarily laugh at you.

The apologist of the Jewish law would then rejoin: that is your mistake; for among us where one delinquent reasoned rightly, a hundred did

not

not reason at all. a crime, found no punishment declaring itself against him nor his son, still feared for his grandson. Farther, though to-day he had no putrid ulcer on him, to which by the bye we were very subject, it was odds within some years it happened not to be his case; no family is without misfortunes and afflictions, and we brought the people to believe that these misfortunes were sent by a divine hand, punishing secret transgressions.

He who on the commission of

This answer admits of an easy reply: your excuse will not hold water; for every day we see very good people seized with sickness, and by one misfortune or other deprived of their substance; now if there be no family totally free from all misfortunes, and if these misfortunes are divine chastisements, all the individuals of your families were then knaves and profligates.

The Jewish priest might farther reply, that there are misfortunes annexed to human nature, and others sent expressly by God. But this reasoner's mouth might soon be stopped, by shewing the extreme absurdity of thinking, that sickness and hail are sometimes a divine punishment, and sometimes a natural effect.

At length the Pharisees and the Essenes among the Jews admitted the belief of a hell in their way: This dogma the Greeks had already disseminated among the Romans, and the Christians made it a capital article of faith.

Several fathers of the church did not hold the eternity of hell torments; they thought it very hard that a poor man should be burning for ever and ever only for stealing a goat. Virgil might stealing

as

as well have held his tongue as to say in his sixth canto in the Eneid ('),

Sedet æternumque sedebit infelix Theseus.

His IPSE DIXIT, that Theseus is seated in a chair, where he must sit world without end, and that this posture is his punishment, is protested against by many; who farther think the poet to have wronged him greatly, as rather deserving a place in the Elysian fields, than in Tartarus.

Not long since an honest well meaning hugue not minister advanced in his sermons, and even in print, that there would be a day of grace to the damned; that there must be a proportion be tween the trespass and the penalty; and that a momentary fault could not deserve an everlasting punishment. This clement judge was deposed by a body of ministers, of whom one said to him: Brother, I as little believe. the eternity of hell torments as yourself; but let me tell you it is very proper that your servant-maid, your taylor, and even your attorney should believe so. HISTORY

(1) The wisest of the heathen philosophers, without the help of revelation, did believe it agreeable to right reason, that the punishment of the incorrigible should be ziwvios, without any determinate or known end. See Plato in Phæd. This however, we may be certain of, says the learned Dr. Clarke, that the degree or intenseness of the punishment which shall be inflicted on the impenitent, will be exactly proportionate to their sins, as a recompence of their demerit, so that no man shall suffer more than he has deserved.

HISTORY

OF THE KINGS OF JUDAH AND THE CHRONICLES.

ALL (1) nations have written their history, as

soon as they ever knew what writing was; the Jews have also written theirs. Before they had kings they lived under a theocracy, and were reputed to be governed by God himself.

When the Jews clamoured to have a king, like the other neighbouring nations, the prophet Samuel

(1) Under this article our author advances a very bold assertion, though with great appearance of diffidence, viz. that the books of Kings and the Chronicles, are not a part of Holy Writ. He is certainly mistaken; they were always reckoned both by Jews and Christians among the canonical books, and therefore are of the same weight as the other parts of Scripture, of whose divine authority the church never entertained any doubt. As for any contradictions between the books of Kings and Chronicles, it is a bare assertion, unsupported by proof. There may be dif ficulties in regard to chronology, the solution of which the reader will find in the writings of our learned expositors. His arguments are so weak as to deserve no serious refutation; for surely the divine authority of a history does not suppose it to be a relation of divine actions, otherwise no historical part of scripture what ever would be divine; the actions of bad as well as good princes are recorded in Holy Writ, to the end that we make the former an object of our abhorrence, the latter of our imitation. It is, therefore, a most insolent conclusion to say, that if the holy Spirit dic tated this history, he did not chuse a very edifying subject.

Samuel, whose interest it was to exclude a regal government, declared to them, in the name of God, that it was God himself whom they were rejecting. Thus the beginning of monarchy among the Jews was the period of their theo

cracy.

It may be therefore said without blasphemy, that the history of the Jewish kings was written like that of other nations; and that God did not trouble himself to dictate the history of a people whom he no longer governed.

This opinion, however, is advanced with all, possible mistrust and deference. What may be thought a confirmation of it is, that the Paralipomena or Chronicles, very often contradict the book of Kings both in the chronology and the events, as profane histories are known to disagree. Farther, if God continued to write the history of the Jews, we are of course to believe, that he still writes it; the Jews being still his favourite people. They are one day to be converted, and, apparently they may as justly look upon the history of their dispersion to be of divine composition, as to say that God wrote the history of their kings.

Another remark likewise offers itself: if God, after having been their sole king for a very long time, condescended to be their historian, it becomes us to entertain the most profound respect for all Jews universally; the very meanest Jewish pedlar is infinitely above Cæsar and Alexi ander. Shall we not prostrate ourselves before on old cloath's man, who proves to you that his history was written by the deity himself, whilst all the Greek and Roman histories are but the productions of profane pagans ?

If