Jacob's descendants conquered only a very small country, and that they afterwards lost; whereas the descendants of Ishmael have extended their conquests over a part of Europe, Asia, and Africa, have founded an empire greater than the Romans, and have driven the Jews from those holes of theirs, which they called the Land of Promise.

To judge of things only by the instances of modern histories, it is not likely that Abraham should have been the father of two nations so very different: we are told that he was born in Chaldea, the son of a poor potter, who subsisted by making little earthen idols. Now how should this potter's son go and found Mecca, at the distance of three hundred leagues, and over impracticable deserts? If he was a conqueror, he certainly would have bent his arms against the fine country of Assyria; and if only a poor man, as represented to us, he could hardly found kingdoms in foreign parts, his only monarchy must have been his home.

of age

years Genesis makes him seventy-five when he left the country of Haran, after the death of his father Terah the potter. But the same book says, that Terah having begotten Abraham in his seventieth year, he lived to the age of two hundred and five years (1), and that Abraham

(1) M. Voltaire is ready to start objections, but never offers to give any solution. The scripture says, Gen. xi. that "Terah, after having lived seventy years, begot Abraham, Nachor, and Haran." Now though Abraham be named first, it is not certain that

he

Abraham did not leave Haran till after his father's decease: thus from Genesis itself it is clear, that Abraham, when he left Mesopotamia, was an hundred and thirty-five years of age; and he only went from one idolatrous country to another, called Sichem in Palestine. And wherefore did he go thither? why leave Euphrates' fertile banks for so rocky, so barren (2) a country, as that of Sichem, and withal fo remote ?

The

he was the eldest of the three: on the contrary, it seems probable, that he was not born in the seventieth year of Terah; because it is expressly said, in the following chapter, that Abraham going from Haran immediately after the death of his father, who departed this life at the age of two hundred and five years, was then only seventy-five years old. The consequence is, that Abraham was born in the one hundred and thirtieth year of the life of Terah, and not in the seventieth so that Terah having begun to have children in the seventieth year of his life, Haran and Nachor must necessarily have been born before Abraham : therefore Abraham departed from Haran in Mesopotàmia, not in the one hundred and thirty-fifth, but in the feventy-fifth year of his age.

(2) The author, upon all occasions, represents the country of Palestine as a barren disagreeable spot, and not at all answering the description in Holy Writ, where it is called a Land flowing with Milk and Honey. But we may observe, with the learned Dr. Shaw, that, were the Holy Land so well peopled and culti vated at present as in former times, it would still be more fruitful than the very best part of Syria and Phoenice. The barrenness or scarcity, which some authors, either ignorantly or maliciously, complain of, does not proceed from the incapacity or natural unfruitfulness of the country, but from the want of inhabitants, and the great aversion there is to labour

B 2

and

4

The Chaldean tongue must have been very dif ferent from that of Sichem, neither was it a Sichem is above an hundred trading place. leagues from Chaldea, and with many desarts to pass through: but God ordered him on this journey, intending to shew him the country which his issue were to possess many centuries after him. The reasons of such a journey are what the human mind can never conceive (3).

No sooner has he reached the little rocky country of Sichem, than a famine obliges him as hastily to decamp, and he goes away to Egypt, in queft of a subsistence. Memphis lies two hundred leagues from Sichem; now is it natural to go for corn so very far, and where one knows nothing of the tongue? These are odd peregrinations for a man near an hundred and forty years old.

With him he brings to Memphis his wife Sarah, who, in age, was little more than a child to him, being only in her fixty-fifth year. As she had a great share of beauty, he was for turning it to account: make as if you were only my sis

ter,

it : otherwise

and industry in those few who possess the land is still capable of affording its neighbours the like supplies of corn and oil, which it is known to have done in the time of Solomon. Thus there is no forming an idea of its ancient flourishing state from its present barren condition, which is entirely owing to the want of culture.

(3) One would imagine our author had never heard of such a memorable æra as "The Call of Abraham,” when this holy man was made choice of to be the stock and father of all believers.

ter, said he to her, that I may have kindness shewn to me for your sake. He rather should have said to her, Make as if you were my daughter. The king became smitten with young Sarah, and gave her sham brother abundance of sheep, oxen, he asses, she asses, camels, and man servants, and maid servants; a proof that Egypt, even then, was a very powerful and well policed and consequently a very antient kingdom; and that brothers coming to make a tender of their sister to the kings of Memphis were magnificently rewarded.

Young Sarah had, according to scripture, reached her ninetieth year, when God promised her that Abraham, then full an hundred and fixty, should get her with child within the twelve. month.

Abraham, being fond of travelling, went into the frightful wilderness of Kadesh, with his preg nant wife, who, it seems, was still so young and pretty, as to kindle in a king of this wilderness the like passion which the Egyptian monarch had felt for her. The father of the Faithful here enjoined her the same lie as in Egypt: and thus his wife, passing for his sister, got more cattle and servants; so that Sarah turned out no inconsiderable fortune to him. Commentators having written a prodigious number of volumes to justify Abraham's conduct (+), and reconcile chronology, to those commentaries we must refer the reader. They are all the works of men of great parts and sagacity, consummate metaphysicians, void of all pre

(4) There is no necessity for justifying Abraham's conduct though Sarah might have been Abraham's ·B 3 sister

prepossession, and the farthest in the world from any thing of pedantry.

ANGEL.

ANGEL, in Greek a MESSENGER: it mat

ters little to be informed that the Persians had their Peries, the Hebrews their Malacs, and the Greeks their Demonoï.

But what may, perhaps, be more interesting to know is, that the supposition of intermediate beings between the Deity and us, prevailed among the first men; these are the demons and genii feigned by antiquity; man has always made the gods in his own likeness. As princes were seen to fignify their orders by messengers, the Deity of course also dispatches couriers. Mercury and Iris were celestial couriers and messengers.

The Hebrews, that chosen people, under the immediate guidance of the Deity itself, at first gave no names to the angels whom God, after some time, was pleased to send to them; but, during their captivity in Babylon, they borrowed the names used by the Chaldeans. The first word we hear of Michael and Gabriel is in Daniel, then a slave among those people. Tobias,

a Jew,

sister by the father's side, and consequently the expression be true; yet it was ambiguous, and calculated for deception, and therefore cannot be justified. Abraham, though father of the faithful, was fubject to human infirmities, and here, in particular, he betrayed his distrust of God's providence.