rality, together with such an account of the creation, as might raise in their minds the most awful veneration of almighty power, wisdom, and goodness, was by him perfonally communicated to each fucceffive generation, until the days of Lamech, the father of Noah. Shem, the fon of Noah, lived to the time of Abraham: from the time of the fettling of Jacob's family in Egypt, to Mofes, was but one hundred and thirty five years; so that we may easily conceive, that traditional knowledge could have scarcely been interrupted from Adam to Moses. And hence alfo appears the error of Rabbi Elias, who faid, that previous to the written law, men were destitute of any certain rule to guide them. It is true, indeed, to the cleareft demonstration, according to the expreffion of our bleffed Lord, that the Jews have made void the law through their vain traditions. For by the written law, tradition was annulled, and rendered unnecef fary; yet it must be acknowledged, that from this fource, all the nations of the world, at first, received the information they had, and altho' it became enveloped in fable, by means of poetic fiction and enthusiasm, yet the dim light it afforded, even in this state, was held in the highest veneration by many heathen philofophers; philofophers: wherefore Plato thus expresses his religious respect for tradition as being the acknowledged source of instruction. " It is just, that both I who discourse, and you that judge, should remember that we are but men, and receiving the probable mythologie tradition of our fathers, it is but meet that we inquire no further into it."

And indeed, unless this be allowed, it will be impoffible to account for a variety of circumstances recorded in the scattered fragments of antiquity; which, like the ruins and monuments of ancient buildings, still are fufficient to indicate the ingenuity of their original founders.

Traditional knowledge was undoubtedly sufficient to answer all the purposes of religion, in the antediluvian world. When the ages of men were protracted to fuch amazing lengths, if any difficulty had then arisen to be folved, relative to religious sentiments, an immediate appeal might have been made to an indisputable authority, to the Protogenitor himself, who would have most readily interposed, to the mutual fatisfaction of the parties. But besides such information, God himself vouchsafed to confirm, and establish the doctrines thus received, by holding familiar converse with his faithful fervants. ThereTherefore, until the idolatry of Nachor, we read of no difference in religious sentiments, and even then, but little, and that arifing probably from the fancies and whims of speculating men; for, about that time probably, began the study of astronomy, which gave rise to idolatry in Egypt, Chaldæ, and Arabia.

Another cause of the corruption of primæval religion, might have originated from the pretensions of innovating impostors to the same familiar intercourse with God, that Abraham and the Patriarchs undoubtedly enjoyed: which will help to explain a difcult passage in ancient history. "Porrò Rex Suphis. στα δε και περιόπείης εις θεος εγενετο, και την ιεραν συνέγραψε Βίβλον. * Moreover this (King Suphis) was a contemplator of the Gods, and wrote the facred book. The word περιοπτης is understood to mean a very familiar intercourse with the Gods, in the fame manner that it is said that Amenophis affected Θεων γενεσθαι θεατην to be a visionary contemplator of the Gods. Pretensions of this, nature having been common among the nations, hence the words of Cicero: Præfentiam fæpe divi suam declarant, sæpe visæ formæ deorum. Sir John Marsham has called the Age in which he has treated

on

on this subject, by the title of θεοπlια and with great propriety.

When tradition became inadequate to the information of man, whose life began rapidly to decline, it pleased the ever-watchful providence of God to make a permanent revelation of his will by the written law.

The Ifraelites, weary of the accumulated oppreffions, beneath which they daily groaned under the power of the Egyptian Tyrant, cried without intermiffion to God, with agonizing fervour, for the accomplishment of the promise made unto their fathers, that he might liberate them from their fufferings, and give them the inheritance they were taught to hope for.

But God is not flack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but is faithful in the accomplishment of all his promises. In his own time, and at an unexpected moment, he visits his people with the joyful profpect of salvation, which first, like the crepusculum or twilight of the morning, gradually increasing, foretels, to a degree of certain assurance, the approaching glory of that bright luminary, before whose glowing countenance, all clouds and darkness dif

SKETCH Π.

THE CHARACTER OF MOSES, PREVIOUS TO HIS MISSION.

LET

us but confider a few outlines of the character of that most illustrious man, who was divinely appointed to be the deliverer of the Ifraelites, and the means of communicating the written law *, and then,

the

* In drawing a comparison between lawgivers, we are always to expect a fuperiority of wisdom from them, in proportion to their having existed in later times, the antiquity of the world, being accounted its infantile state, and it being known that knowledge and learning have been always gradual in their advances towards perfection. We have no perfon to compare Moses with in the age wherein he flourished, and many ages had elapsed before the historical age had made a beginning in any other nation but that of Ifrael. The first person who was deferving of the appellation of lawgiver in the world after Mofes, was Lycurgus, in the 898th year before Christ: he was the son of Eunomus, king of Sparta. A love of moral virtue diftinguished him in the first instance, having spurned at the iniquitous proposal of his elder brother's widow. He travelled into Crete and Ionia, and it is imagined, into Egypt, to study the laws and customs of other countries. On his return to Sparta, as he

was