presumptuous sabbath-breaker,* and the false prophet, as they openly shook off all reverence for the great Jehovah, were also: to suffer death.

In other cases of disobedience, proceeding from similar disregard to the Divine Authority, but not manifesting itself by acts so plainly cognizable by human tribunals, the Legislator denounces, "That the perpetrators should bear their iniquity, and "should be cut off from their people:" that is, God would either cut them off from the communion of his people, and all the advantages of that covenant he had entered into with them; or he would interfere, and punish their crime by a supernatural and premature death. Thus, "if a man hide his eyes from him "who giveth his seed unto Moloch, and kill him not; then will "I set my face against that man, says the Lord, and against his

family, and will cut him off."+ The Lord also threatens to cut off the man who did not afflict his soul on the great day of atonement: the man who did not celebrate the Passover, or who broke its solemn regulations: these, and other actions or omissions not easily discoverable by, or proveable before human tribunals, are prohibited under a similar penalty. An equally special interference of Providence, for the detection and punishment of guilt, is implied in the trial by the waters of jealousy,§ and in the penalty denounced against particular acts of impurity ; that the perpetrators of them should bear their iniquity, and¶ die childless.

* Vide Numbers, xvi. 32. Deut. xvii. 12. and xviii. 20.

+ Lev. xx. five first verses.

Lev. xxiii. 29, 30. also Exod. xxxi. 14. of the violation of the Sabbath; Numbers, xv. 30. of the presumptuous offender; Numbers, xix. 13, of him who defiled the tabernacle; Lev. xviii. and xx. of unnatural crimes; also Numbers xix. 20. Lev. xxii. 3, and Exod. xii. 15 and 19.

|| Vide, on the reasons of such of these precepts as relate to actions of a less criminal nature, Maimonides More Nevochim, Pars III. cap. xli. P. 463; and for others, cap. xxxvii. p. 447, where he notices that the prohibition, Lev. xix. 27. against rounding the corner of the hair on the head and the beard, was given, because the idolatrous priests were accustomed to use that particular tonsure. He assigns a similar reason for the precept of not using a garment of linen and woollen mixed together, Lev. xix. 19. this being a particular dress in idolatrous rites; and for the precept, Deut. xxii. 5, that the woman should not wear the dress of a man, or vice versa. Besides its obvious tendency to preserve modesty and purity of manners, Maimonides observes, that a man dressed in a coloured female dress in honour of Venus, and a woman dressed in armour worshipping at the shrine of the statue of Mars. § Numbers, ch. v.-It has been well remarked, that this species of ordeal could not injure the innocent at all, or punish the guilty except by a miracle; while, in the ordeals by fire, &c. in the dark ages, the innocent could scarcely escape, but by a miracle. Levit. xx. 20.

I have thus particularly noticed the severity of the Laws against idolatry, and the peculiar circumstance, of the Mosaic code sanctioning many of its prohibitions by penalties which the direct interference of the Deity alone could inflict; because the submission to laws so severe, and the promulgation of prohibitions so sanctioned, appears unaccountable, if we do not admit the truth of the Mosaic history; which declares, that the Jewish government was founded on a solemn covenant with God, when, on Mount Horeb, the divine glory appeared to the assembled nation, and the Lord talked with them face to face out of the midst of the fire, and delivered the ten commandments, and declared unto the people: "If ye will obey my "voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a pecu❝liar treasure unto me above all people; for all the earth is "mine. And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an "holy nation. And Moses came, and called all the elders of “the people, and laid before their faces all these words which "the Lord commanded him. And all the people answered and 66 said, All that the Lord hath spoken, we will do.”* On this solemn compact was founded the Jewish government in which the Lord Jehovah appeared as the immediate sovereign, and the Jewish people his immediate subjects. Hence such prohibitions as human tribunals could not easily take cognizance of, were sactioned by penalties which God, their sovereign, undertook to execute. Hence, no authority, by the Mosaic constitution, was vested in any one man or body of men in the Jewish Government, nor even in the whole nation assembled, to make new +Laws, or alter old ones, their sovereign, Jehovah, reserving this power to himself. Hence the Jewish constitution recognized no one hereditary chief magistrate; and no power was given to any one body, or even to the whole nation, to elect any supreme governor. It was reserved to Jehovah, their sovereign, to appoint as he pleased who was to preside under the title of judge, and with an authority delegated from him.‡ And finally

* Exod. xix. 5, &c.; also Deut. xxvi. 16, &c.

† Dent. iv. 1 and 2. and xii. 32. Vide also Lowman on the Civil Government of the Hebrews, ch. vii. and Spencer de Theocratia Judaica, cap. i.; also Leydeker's learned work de Republica Hebræorum, Lib. V. de Theocratia Hebræorum.

Vide Numbers, xxvii. 15, &c. for the appointment of Joshua; Lowman, ib, ch. x.: and Spencer de Theocratia Judaica, cap. iv. sect. iii. p. 198.

20

hence every act of idolatry was not only an apostacy from true religion, but an act of TREASON AGAINST THE STATE, * a breach of that original contract and charter, on which the Jewish constitution was founded, and on which the national property and privileges depended; and therefore, according to the principles of every established government in the world, merited and received capital punishment.

NEXT TO IDOLATRY, the Jewish Law seems to have condemned with peculiar emphasis, and punished with peculiar severity, ALL KINDS OF IMPURITY;† every species of incestuous connexion and unnatural crime, was punished with death. Besides, not only was forcible violation capital, as by our Law, but the violation of the marriage vow. The ADULTERER and the ADUTERESS WERE CONDEMNED TO SUFFER A PUBLIC AND IGNOMINIOUS EXECUTION. The same punishment was the consequence, where the female, though not married, was betrothed in marriage. In a word, we perceive the most anxious care to cut off every greater degree of licentiousness, and stigmatize even the least with infamy; yet never did this care degenerate into an extravagant reverence for unnatural austerity, and monastic celibacy. In every rank, from the high priest to the lowest peasant, marriage was encouraged and honorable. Our blessed Lord, indeed, has declared, that some permissions relating to marriage, granted to the Jews for the hardness of their hearts, were inconsistent with the more pure and refined morality of the Gospel; yet, notwithstanding this, we perceive in the Jewish Law so strong on opposition to the usual licentiousness of Eastern manners, and so decided a superiority in this. respect above the legislators and the philosophers of the heathen world, and still more above their religious institutions—as tend strongly to prove, that a system so favourable to the interests of virtue, and restraining so powerfully and yet so judiciously the excesses of passion-a system introduced at that early period, in an Eastern climate, and amongst a people accustomed

* Vide Lowman on the Civil Code of the Hebrews, ch. xii. p. 231, and ch, xii. p. 263, &c.; Warburton's Divine Leg. B. V. sect. ii.; Spenceri Dissertatio de Theocratia Judaica, p. 205.

+ Vide Lev. ch. xviii, and ch. xx. from ver. 10. to the end; also Deut, xxvii. from 20. and xxii. from 22. as to the punishment of adultery, &c.

Vide Matt. v. 27, &c.; and xix. from 3 to 10. plainly prohibiting polygamy and divorce, which were not punishable amongst the Jews, when under certain limitations.

to be irresistibly led by objects of sense-had a higher origin than mere human wisdom; and that to secure submission to its restraints, required an interference more powerful than mere human authority.

Another crime which the Jewish Law punished with peculiar severity, was DISOBEDIENCE TO parents. "Every one," says the Law, "that curseth his father or his mother, shall be surely

66

put to death."* And again, "If a man have a stubborn and "rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father, or "the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened "him, will not hearken unto them; then shall his father and "his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out to the elders "of his city, and unto the gate of his place; and they shall say "unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and re"bellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a "drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with "stones, that he die: so shalt thou put away evil from among and all Israel shall hear, and fear."+ Undoubtedly, in you, thus enforcing filial obedience, the Jewish Law laid the foundation of every virtue. He who despises parental instruction, tramples on parental authority, and feels no gratitude for parental affection in his earlier years, will probably, as his pas sions strengthen, and his depraved habits grow inveterate, trample on the authority of laws both human and divine, and requite with ingratitude all the benefits which man can confer, and all the blessings which the Divinity bestows. But in establishing this important principle, we see nothing is harsh or overstrained; the parents have no such arbitrary power as under the ancient Roman Law,‡ which armed the father with the absolute right of life and death over his children, and even allowed him to sell them three times over; a power which lasted during their whole lives, or ended only with the third sale. Nor was such extreme parental power deemed unreasonable in Greece; where it was maintained, that the power of a father of a family over his slaves and his children was absolute. On the contrary, in the Jewish Law all is just and moderate.§

*Lev. xx. 9.

+Deut. xxi. 18-21.

Vide the Laws of the Twelve Tables, Table iv. Law the first and second; Hook's Roman History, Vol. II. p. 143.

§ Maimonides More Novechim, Pars III. cap. xli. p. 463.

The offence of cursing father or mother implied such hardened impiety, as well as such extreme contempt and malignity towards the authors of our existence, as strikes the heart with horror, and indicates the extremest moral depravity. Equally worthy of reprobation and punishment, is persevering and obstinate stubbornness and rebellion against that exercise of parental authority which would restrain drunkenness and debauchery. And when such disobedience was investigated by a solemn and public trial, and established by a judicial conviction, it surely merited infamy and death: "That all Israel should hear and "fear, and put away evil from among them."

66

MURDER, as it is the highest degree of malignity to which human depravity can ascend, so it was pursued with just rigour by the Jewish Law. "If a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour, to slay him with guile; thou shalt take "him from mine altar, that he die."* But the wisdom of the Jewish Law in securing a fair trial for this offence, so apt to rouse immediate revenge, and in providing asylums for those who were guilty not of deliberate murder, but of manslaughter, is so conspicuous, as to have attracted the notice of the most judicious modern reasoners on criminal law. Moses directed the establishment of six cities of refuge,† three on each side Jordan, at such distances as made immediate flight to some one of them easy from every part of the Jewish territory; hither the manslayer was to fly, until the action was tried: if innocent, he was to continue in the city of refuge, until the death of the high priest for the time being, when it might be supposed the passion of the friends to the deceased would have subsided. On this Law, the sagacious Montesquieu observes— "These Laws of Moses were perfectly wise. The man who "involuntarily killed another was innocent, but he was obliged "to be taken away from before the eyes of the relatives of the "deceased; Moses therefore appointed an asylum for such un"fortunate persons. Great criminals deserved not a place of "safety, and they had none. The criminals who would resort "to the temple from all parts, might disturb divine service. If persons who had committed manslaughter had been driven "out of the country, as was customary among the Greeks,