me hither; for God did fend me before you to preferve life. We find nothing like this among the heathens; or if there be any thing of the fame caft, it is not the refult of the fame principles, which will lead to an uniformly generous conduct, even against natural inclination.

Jofeph's piety, and his confidence in the. promife of God appears in his injunctions. to his brethren not to bury him in Egypt, but only to embalm him, and put him into a coffin, in order to his being carried with them when they fhould leave that country, and go to the land of Canaan, which God had promised to their ancestors. To act virtuoufly, as Jofeph uniformly did, from a regard to the will, the command, or the providence, of God, though the most certain principle of virtue, was altogether unknown to the heathen world, or only flightly mentioned by fome philofophers, when, in imitation of the Chriftians, the Stoicks changed their principle of fate, for that of the will and providence of the gods.

After the time of Jofeph it is probable that the Ifraelites in general conformed to

the

the religion of their mafters, and their minds as well as their bodies were bent to fervitude. For though fome individuals might retain the faith and the religious principles of their ancestors, no inftance of the kind appears in the hiftory. Here, then, commences an intire new difpenfation. The whole nation was to be recovered to the acknowledgment of the God, and the religion, of their forefathers, and a series of miracles was neceffary for that purpose. These miracles were wrought, and at the fame time effected their deliverance, and compelled them to receive, and conform to, a complex fyftem of religion, to which they for a long time difcovered a moft extreme averfion.

That the great object of this new difpenfation of religion was the practice of moral duty, and that every thing else in the fyftem was intended to be fubfervient to this, is evident from the ten commandments, which contain the leading and most important articles of it, delivered by God himself from Mount Sinai; fince only one of the ten is, properly speaking, of a ceremonial

nature,

nature, all the reft being purely moral, inculcating fuch a regard to God, the unity of his nature, and the fpirituality of his worship, as is the best foundation of morality; and the rest of the commandments contain the most neceffary moral precepts, as the duty of children to parents, the prohibition of murder, adultery, theft, and falfe witness; hereby giving them fuch a fanction as they never had before, and precluding all cavils and fubtle diftinctions on the subject. And the last commandment of the ten is calculated to give them an idea of the necef fity of attending, not only to the outward actions, but to the heart and inclinations, where are the firft feeds and principles of men's conduct; forbidding not only the actually taking, but even the coveting, any thing that belongs to another person.

Intermixed with the rules of civil policy in the Mofaic code are many excellent maxims of moral conduct, particularly recommending piety, equity, humanity, moderation, generofity, compaffion, and kindness to strangers, and to flaves. Among other precepts we find the following. Lev, xix. 2.

re

Ye shall be holy, for the Lord your God is holy; which could only mean freedom from all mo

ral impurity. Exod. xxiii. 2. follow a multitude to do evil.

Thou shalt not verse 4. If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his afs, going aftray, thou shalt furely bring it back to him again. If thou fee the afs of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, thou shalt furely help with him. verfe 9. Also thou shalt not oppress a ftranger; for ye know the heart of a firanger. Ye were firangers in the land of Egypt. How much muft the frequent attention to fuch precepts as thefe tend to humanize and improve the temper, and difpofe to every good work. More particulars I need not enumerate. They are all written with the fame excellent fpirit. Before his death, Moses wrote, in the last of his books, called Deuteronomy, a recapitulation of the most important of his inftitutions, accompanied with the most urgent and affectionate exhortations to obedience that is extant on any occafion, in any language; promifing his countrymen the divine bleffing in cafe of obedience, and threatening them in case of difobedience, under a clear forefight of every

thing that would befal his nation to the end of time; and all that he foretold has hitherto been literally accomplished.

Religious and moral fentiments are ge nerally apparent in the poetical compofitions of different nations. From the poems of the Greeks and Romans it is eafy to collect a tolerably complete fyftem of their religion. Let the fentiments, fpirit, and moral tendency of them be compared with what remains of the Hebrew poetry, not one tenth fo much in quantity, and fee which of them abounds with the more valuable fentiments, and inculcates the best maxims of moral conduct. The religion of the Greeks and Romans, and indeed that of all the heathen nations, had no relation to morals, and was very confiftent with, and greatly favoured, the moft fhocking indecencies and vices; whereas it is impoffible to look even at random into the book of Pfalms, which is only a collection of mifcellaneous poems, fuch as the Hebrews ufually compofed (for, excepting the fong of Solomon, compofed on occafion of his marriage, there are no others now extant) without perceiving that fenti

ments