the conviction of our minds, must bear teftimony to the fitness of the person.

Great

was determined to form a constitution entirely new, (and this he knew was impossible, unless he called in the fictitious aid of religion) he wished to perfuade the ignorant multitude that he was inspired by the Gods after the example of Minos; but notwithstanding the oracles declared for him, he found it difficult. But the fincerity of the man being universally believed, at length banished fufpicion, especially as he retrenched the royal authority, by forming a fort of mixed government. which in a great measure appeared to secure the liberty of the subject. He feigned to unite all into the nature of one family, where reciprocity of interest was the most indissoluble tie. Mofes was not the son of a king like Lycurgus, tho' educated at the court of Pharaoh, and possessed of every necessary education; he was but a private person tending the flock of. his father-in-law, when he undertook to be the deliverer of the Jews. His inspiration was not a fiction, but reality, established in the fight of all the Egyptians; fuch divine power was sufficient to render the people fubmiflive to the laws, especially as these laws were established on the basis of religious duty, and ratified by the profperity attending their obedience, and by the punishments which, as if naturally accompanied their difobedience. The whole people were formed upon the plan of a distinct family, whose profperity depended on their religious duties. The laws of Lycurgus were unwritten and merely traditional, whereas those of Mofes were written. We are told by Aristotle, that before the invention of letters it was customary for people to fing their laws, that this was the reason why musical rules for keeping time were called νομοι. But Solon was the first among the Greeks who established written laws, knowing that tradition was liable to corruption; these laws were written upon tablets of wood; but all the laws of Lycurgus, and of Solon, nay, of all the wifest men in Greece, did not preserve the pure spirit of moral virtue which is contained in the decalogue of Moses; which, improved by the christian system, has become the basis of law to the wisest states of Europe: they are part of the common laws of England,

Great are the abilities necessary to govern a people, who are, already, in a flourishing state,

England, and are in many instances the basis of statute law. And I will venture to affirm that if any intire nation which has any claim to modern improvement in literature were to become downright sceptics, yet they could not conftitute any system of laws which would answer the end of civil government, without having respect to the moral law of Mofes, and borrowing precepts from it as improved and established by the law of Christ. The surest test, therefore, of the superiority of laws is by their duration, for what is intrinsically valuable fociety must adopt. The laws of Solon and Lycurgus are in non-existence, whilst those of Moses shall endure for ever, because they are of divine authority. From hence arises an argument, that since Moses wrote at so early an age, long before the cultivation of knowledge in by far the greater part of the world, he could not have established laws of fuch duration unless he was divinely taught; fince the labours of the wisest men that succeeded him have perished, whilst his remain in full vigour: the very people of the Jews remain as a living monument of the first revelation; nay, it is a standing miracle concerning the mutability of human affairs. Plato, Aristotle, and Polybius have reproached Lycurgus, because his laws were more adapted to make men brave than just: the immorality of his laws is too universally acknowledged to make it necessary to point them out particularly; the manner in which the Helotes were treated is fufficient to shew what little sense the Spartans had of natural justice. When Solon made his laws, learning had advanced in Greece, and their morality was better, yet Solon himself was sensible of the defects of his own laws.

When it is remembered that Lycurgus, brother to Polydectes, was folicited by the Lacedemonians to take the reins of government, and that he nobly refused the offer of his brother's widow, which would have fecured the kingdoin to him, by procuring an abortion, on condition of his marrying her: From a Prince, whose conduct was, on this occafion fo perfectly confiflent with true morality, it might be expected

that

state, and whose municipal laws have been already established, on the firmest basis of political wisdom.

But to influence the minds of the most illiterate people, who had been, during a long series of oppression, reduced to the most abject state; to inspire them with noble and animated ideas, to render them amenable to reason and religion, who had been buried in ignorance and superstition, and that almost instantaneously, must be acknowledged to have

been

that all his laws would have been grounded on the fame principle; but on due examination we are disappointed: Fortitude and valour alone were the basis of his laws, supported only by continual wars. This is observed by * Aristotle, who was of the same opinion with Cicero, that war is to be undertaken in order to procure peace, the laws of peace are moral and religious virtues: in these Lycurgus was deficient; nay, he encouraged deceit, theft, and incontinency: his restrictive rules and sumptuary laws were calculated only to make good foldiers; in other respects vice was encouraged by the most powerful incentives, and adultery sanctioned by reasons which afterwards were very properly exposed by Aristotle.

But after all, what shall we think of Aristotle, the disciple of the divine Plato? one would imagine that he ought in moral rectitude to have exceeded all his predecessors, but it was not so: he authorized the inhuman custom of expofing children who had any deformity, to perish like the offspring of brutes; he justified the barbarous practice of procuring abortion when children exceeded limited number, a practice so juftly reprobated by Cicero †, who says, two things are incompatible, that nature should have procreation, and when a creature is born, that it should not be loved and preserved.

a

been only the work of Almighty Power. Therefore, exalted was the dignity, and everlafting the honour conferred on. Mofes, in being chosen the instrument of emancipating his brethren from this miferable state. Philo, in his fecond book of the life of Moses, says *, "Facultati legislatoriæ quatuor hæc funt conjunctissima, charitas erga proximos, juftitia, amor virtutum et vitio rum odium. Hæc vel fingula, magnum est alicui contingere, mirandum vero fi universa unus poffit confequi, quod in folo Mose licet cernere, eminentibus in eo manifeftis cunctarum modo indiciis." Closely united with the office of legislator are these four, charity, justice, the love of virtue, and the hatred of vice; each of which may be confidered as valuable acquisition to any perfon, but we can no where see those virtues so eminently united by every striking characteristic, as in the person, and especially in the laws of Mofes.

a

Divine Providence, whose watchful eye fuperintends all his works, raises from diftress, from the verge of misery and death, men who have been otherwise Ift destitute of every apparent means of afsistance, humbles their haughty enemies, and raises humble

virtue to exalted stations. Thus, Jofeph, by the unnatural hatred of his cruel brethren, exposed to famine and to death, was raised to be the prime minister of Pharaoh, and became instrumental in saving a nation. Thus Romulus, the Founder of the Roman empire, is faid to have been saved from perishing in the Tiber; and thus also Moses, the great lawgiver of the Jews, was taken out of the Nile, and preserved by Pharaoh's daughter, who educated him as her own fon, and had him carefully instructed in every branch of Egyptian Literature. Thus Clemens Alexandrinus relates the circumstance. “ Τίθεται τω παιδίω όνομα ἡ βασιλις Μωύσην ετυμως, δια τω εξ υδατι ανελεσθαι αυτον, τω γαρ υδωρ μωυ ονομαζεσι. Αιγυπτιοι εις ὁ εκτεθειται τεθνηξομενα.” The Queen gave the boy, Mofes, a name founded in truth, because he was taken out of the water; for the Egyptians call water, moy, in which he was exposed to perish.

It is a circumstance very remarkable, and which has escaped the attention of any commentators that I have met with; that Mofes from his infancy, being educated under the directions of those very persons who hated his brethren, it was natural to suppose, that every sentiment was sedulously cultivated by them, which might impress his mind

: