and civil laws of the nation, we have perceived, that both were founded on the acknowledged certainty of such an extraordinary Providence; on which depended the limitation of the legislative and executive authorities; the original distribution, and subsequent tenure of property; the extraordinary regulations of the Sabbatic year, and the year of jubilee; the command for all the males to assemble at the capital three times a year; and a variety of regulations in the penal laws of the state, otherwise unaccountable and inadmissible. In a word, it has been shown, that the Jewish polity and the Jewish magistracy were merely mediums employed by the Divinity, to facilitate the regular administration of the extraordinary Providence by which the Deity determined to govern this chosen race, with the * solemn assurance, that wherever that established constitution should be found inadequate for their government, either as to the whole state, or as to individuals, the Deity himself would interfere, and by an immediate and extraordinary distribution of rewards and punishments, exalt virtue, and depress vice. Such was the scheme of the Jewish dispensation. Can we discover why such a system was adopted? Undoubtedly, no mere human sagacity can penetrate into all the reasons of the divine economy; but some reasons, most important, Providence has permitted to appear. Such a scheme was abundantly † sufficient to support the interests of religion and morality, because it was abundantly sufficient to convince man "That God is, and that he is a rewarder "of those who diligently seek him." Still further, it seems very evident this system was the only effectual mode of supporting true religion and sound morality, at that period of society. Because it was the only one which afforded a fair opportunity of directly observing, and experimentally feeling, the existence, the power, the justice, and the providence of the one great Jehovah; and contrasting them with the nullity and the impotence of those base idols which had usurped his place in the estimation of deluded man: and thus subverted the barriers of virtue, and opened wide the flood-gates of vice. Let it be remembered, that the system of idolatry was founded on the belief both of present and future rewards and punishments, as dispensed by the false gods which it upheld. All the * Vide Part II. Lect. III. Vide Warburton, Book V. sect. ii. Vol. iv. p. 153. Heb. xi. 6. surrounding nations attributed their prosperity, as well national as individual, their success or failure in war and commerce; nay, the blessings of nature, the rains of heaven, and the fertility of` the earth, to the influence of their false gods. Now the superiority of the true God could never be established by a comparison of his power in the distribution of future and invisible rewards and punishments. It was only by proving decisively, that he, and he alone, was the dispenser of every blessing and every calamity in the present life, and that he distributed them with the most consummate justice, yet tempered with mercy; that he could completely expose, and for ever discredit, the pretensions of idolatry. This then seems one chief reason why present, not future, sanctions were employed in the Jewish dispensation. Thus only could the cause of the great Jehovah be maintained in the midst of an idolatrous world. Another reason appears to be derived from the intellectual and moral character of the Jewish nation, which was totally incapable of that pure and rational faith in the sanctions of a future state, without which these sanctions cannot effectually promote the interests of piety and virtue. Their desires and ideas confined to the enjoyments of the present world, they would pay little attention to the promises of a future retribution, which they could never be sure were fulfilled. Nor could such motives be able to counteract the temptations of present pleasure or present interest, which vice so frequently holds out; or the allurements of voluptuous festivity and impure gratification, by which idolatry attached its votaries. In truth, the history of the Jewish nation, while under the immediate guidance of their Lawgiver, proves, that far from being familiarized with the just and philosophic notion of the Supreme Divinity, as possessed of power unbounded in its operation and extent, they were inconceivably slow in supposing or believing that he could produce any effect different from what they had already seen him produce, or exercise any power they had not already experienced. Thus the wonders they had seen in Egypt, and the miraculous passage over the Red Sea, did not at all banish despondence, or inspire them with perfect confidence in divine aid. When, two months after, they found their food exhausted, and no na * Vide the quotation from the atheist Vanini; Warburton, v. iv. p. 317. "Bonar"um ac malarum actionum repromissiones pollicentur, in futura tamen vita, ne fraus "detegi possit." 66 66 66 tural supply at hand, immediately they exclaim ;* “ Ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assein"bly with hunger." Although that terror was removed by a regular supply of food from heaven, yet this continued miracle did not prevent them from feeling an exactly similar terror, when a short time after, they found themselves without water to drink. Again they exclaim ;+ "Wherefore is this that thou hast ;† brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children, and our cattle, with thirst?" And afterwards, when they found the people whom God commanded them to invade, were great and powerful, and their cities strongly fortified, their past experience of the divine protection did not yet convince them that God was able in this new difficulty to secure them conquest and success. On the contrary, they were filled with total despair, and determined to rebel against their Lawgiver, and return into Egypt. Now, with such a people, how little influence would the remote and invisible, and therefore to them uncertain or incredible, sanctions of a future state possess? How little would they avail, in opposition to the temptations of vice and the allurements of idolatry? Indeed the only mode of promulgating that important doctrine of a future retribution, with effect, seems to have been that (which the Jewish history, assures us was adopted;) even preparing the way for it, by a continued system of extraordinary Providence, fully proving to both Jews and Gentiles, that the Supreme Jehovah possessed the will and the power to punish vice and reward virtue with the strictest justice. This conviction once confirmed by long experience and unquestionable facts, they would be prepared to believe that the same immutable Divinity would display the same justice in a future state, when that extraordinary Providence should be withdrawn, which had been hitherto employed as best suited to the infancy of mankind, and the peculiar circumstances of the chosen race. But formally to annex the sanctions of a future life to a system of laws, which declared that it was to be supported in every part by an extraordinary Providence, distributing immediate rewards and punishments, appears not only unnecessary, but inconsistent. It would have seemed as if the Legislator who appealed to the sanction of an extraordinary Providence, was yet secretly conscious that his pretended expectations would not be verified by fact; and therefore craftily provided a supplementary sanction, to com *Exod. xvi. 3. + Exod. xvii. 3. Numbers xiv. pensate for this deficiency, by denouncing future rewards and punishments; as to which, no human being could certainly discover whether this denunciation was really fulfilled or not. Thus the nature of the Jewish theocracy, and the character of the Jewish people compared with the purposes that theocracy was intended to effect, and the temptations against which that people was to be guarded, seem sufficiently to account for the sanction of an immediate and extraordinary Providence being employed to support the Mosaic Law, rather than the rewards and punishments of a future state. To support such a theocracy an extraordinary Providence was indispensably necessary. The Deity would be degraded, if supposed to command as an immediate sovereign, without enforcing immediate submission. Add to this, that all national obedience and national transgression could, as such, be recompensed only by national prosperity or national punishment. These therefore God their sovereign undertook to dispense with exact justice;-a wonderful and awful sanction, altogether wanting in every other state. Inferior magistrates were empowered to inflict punishments for such offences against morals, and such violations of the religious constitution, as they could take cognizance of; in the same manner as similar magistrates in other states. But here, and here only, the Supreme Sovereign, even GOD himself, undertook to supply every defect in all inferior administrations, and reward every man according to his works, as immediately and conspicuously as any civil magistrate could possibly do; employing therefore for this purpose immediate and temporal sanctions. In a word, in this polity, offences against the state, and against individuals, were also offences against religion; because the entire Jewish Law was in every part equally the law of God. As, therefore, offences against the state, and against individuals, in this as in every other community, must be restrained by immediate punishments, not merely by the terrors of a future state; so, in order to preserve consistency, and prove that God was really equally the author of the entire system, he undertook to support every part alike, by an exact distribution of temporal sanctions. The sanctions of a future life were therefore in such a system, not only unnecessary, but were foreign from its design, and therefore omitted by its inspired author. But surely the promulgation of a system of Laws thus circumstanced, could not originate from any source but a divine authority. For it manifestly could not be maintained for any length of time by any but a divine power-controlling when necessary the course of nature, and the conduct of man, to accomplish its purposes and execute its will. The confirmation which the evidence of Revelation derives from the extraordinary Providence exercised over the Jews, is not the only good effect resulting from it. In this dispensation, mankind are enabled to discern the principles and the process of that moral government, which God exercises over nations, even in the course of his ordinary providence: which undoubtedly dispenses public prosperity and public calamity, and regulates the rise and decay of empires, on the very same principles which are so strikingly displayed in the history of the chosen people. The divine interposition in the general government of the world is indeed conducted by the regular operation of secondary causes, and therefore more silent and unseen than the course of that extraordinary providence then exhibited; but it is not therefore less certain, or less effective. In this part of sacred history the judgments of God are distinctly and solemnly exhibited for the instruction of man. Here we are convinced by experimental and decisive proofs, that "the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of "men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will;"*"that wisdom “and might are his ;"+ "that the race is not to the swift, nor "the battle to the strong;"‡ for it is the Lord of Hosts who governs the hearts of kings, and subdueth the strength of the "mighty;" "He hath purposed, who shall disannul it? his "hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?”|| " Who "hath hardened himself against him, and prospered?" word, in the history of the Jewish state this great truth is clearly and powerfully impressed-That as "righteousness exalteth a "nation," so "sin is the reproach of any people :"** a lesson which, but for the immediate and extraordinary providence displayed in this awful dispensation, could never have been so forcibly inculcated, or so clearly understood. 66 * Dan. iv. 17. + Ibid. ii. 20. || Isaiah, xiv. 27. ** Proverbs, xiv. 34. Eccles. ix, 11. T Ib. ix. 4. In a |