with any of the neighbouring idolatrous nations. On the dissolution of the state and the dispersion of the people at the Captivity, this law was violated in numerous instances; on the re-assembling of the people, the violation was too glaring to escape the notice of the zealous supporters of the divine code. The history of Ezra describes in the strongest colours the feelings of grief and alarm which this discovery excited, the vast numbers who were involved in this guilt, and the high rank and authority of many of the offenders.* "The princes," says Ezra, "came to me, saying, The people of Israel, and the "Priests and the Levites, have not separated themselves from "the people of the Lands, doing according to their abominations; "for they have taken of their daughters for themselves and for "their sons, so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with "the people of those lands; yea, the hands of the princes and "rulers have been chief in this trespass."

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"When Ezra," says the history, "had prayed, and when he "had confessed, weeping and casting himself down before the "house of God, there assembled unto him out of Israel, a very "great congregation of men, and women, and children; and the "people wept very sore, and Shecaniah on the part of the chiefs "of the people, answered and said unto Ezra, We have trespassed "against our God, and have taken strange wives of the people "of the land, yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this 'thing. Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God, "to PUT AWAY ALL THE STRANGE WIVES, AND SUCH AS ARE BORN OF THEM, according to the counsel of my lord, and of those that "tremble at the commandment of our God, and let it be done "according to the Law. Then arose Ezra, and made the chief "priests, the Scribes, and all Israel, to swear that they should do "according to this word: and they sware." And proclamation was made unto all the children of the Captivity to enforce this law. The greatness of the sacrifice may be estimated by the severity of the penalty under which it was enjoined: "Whosoever "would not come within three days, to comply with this law, all "his substance was to be forfeited, and himself separated from the "congregation." And the offenders assembled in great numbers, and certain of the elders and judges were appointed to examine

* Ezra, the entire chapters ix. and x.

the matter, and so many did the enquiry extend to, that it held for three entire months; and among the offenders we find many of the Priests and Levites: it was not therefore a contrivance of taeirs to strengthen their influence. In a word, I rely on this fact as a full proof, that the code the Jews received after the Captivity was in all respects the very same they had been subject to before it; not then newly compiled, not then artfully modified; but brought forward exactly as they found it, in the known records of the nation, and submitted to with scrupulous reverence, as of undoubted and divine authority.

*

Strong as this proof is, we have another, which may perhaps be deemed even stronger; the Samaritans, we know, from the period of the Captivity became the most bitter enemies of the Jews; this animosity was greatly enflamed at the close of the Captivity, because the Jews would not permit them to join in building the Temple. For they proposed to the chief of the fathers; "Let us build with you, for we seek your God, as you "do, and we do sacrifice unto him, since the days of Esarhaddon, "king of Assyria, who brought us up hither." But their proposal was rejected with contempt. These Samaritans must then have derived their knowledge of the Mosaic institutions from a code which existed at the commencement of the Captivity. According to the history,† which relates, "a priest from amongst "the captive Jews was sent to teach the colony planted by the "king of Assyria in Samaria, the manner of the God of the "land, and he came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how "they should fear the Lord," undoubtedly by instructing them in the Mosaic law. They would never have received as the rule of their religion a new compilation, formed by their enemies at the very moment when they rejected their alliance, and would not acknowledge them as partakers of their religion, or admit them to worship at their Temple. And what is the code which the Samaritans acknowledged? The Pentateuch, and nothing but the Pentateuch. This they preserved, written indeed in a different character from that which the Jews use; they have in some few places altered it, to support the claim of their Temple to a precedence and a sacredness above the Temple at Jerusa

* 2 Kings, xvii. from ver. 24 to the end; and Ezra, iv.; Nehem. iv. and vi. 2 Kings, xvii. 27, 28.

lem; but in all other respects it is precisely the same with the Pentateuch which is preserved by the Jews with the same scrupulous reverence, as of unquestioned divine authority. Does it then admit a doubt, that the code thus received by these two hostile nations, had been acknowledged by both as of divine authority before that hostility took place? I conclude that the Pentateuch was the known sacred Law of the Jews before the Babylonish Captivity commenced, about 580 years before our Saviour's birth.

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Further: An argument of a similar nature brings us through a period of 377 years, and establishes the authority of the Pentateuch, from the destruction of the kingdom of Judah by the Babylonish Captivity, back to its separation from the kingdom of Israel under the son and immediate successor of Solomon. From the revolt of the ten tribes, it became the decided political interest of their monarchs, to alienate them as far as possible from the religion and the Temple of the monarch of Jerusalem. The very first king of Israel discerned this interest, and prosecuted it to the utmost of his power, without the least scruple as to the religious or moral consequences of the means which he determined to adopt. For "Jeroboam* said in his heart, Now "shall the kingdom return to the house of David; if this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, "then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their Lord, even unto Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they shall kill me, "and go again to Rehoboam, king of Judah. Whereupon the 'king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy Gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And he made an house of high places, and made "priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons "of Levi: and he ordained a feast in the eighth month, like "unto the feast which is in Judah; and he placed in Bethel the "priests which he had made." Such was the design of the first king of Israel; a design almost uniformly adhered to by all his successors. Now, to the full and secure completion of this design, the Pentateuch interposed the great obstacle. It allows no such separation of the tribes; it supposes them all united in one confederate body, governed by the same common counsel, * 1 Kings xii. 26.

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recognizing one High Priest, by whom they were to consult the oracle; and commands all the males of the twelve tribes to repair three times a-year to their common Temple, to join in a common form of worship, in adoration of their common God. This system was therefore entirely unfavourable to the views of the kings of Israel. If, then, its authority had not been acknowledged before the separation of the two kingdoms would these monarchs, so watchful and so politic in guarding their separate sway, have permitted it to be introduced and received, to be fabricated and imposed upon the whole Jewish race, and published before the face of that part of it which they governed, as the system which both nations, when united, had acknowledged as of divine authority? Would they, I say, have permitted all this, without making one effort to detect and expose an imposition so flagrant in itself, and so injurious to them? Nay, more, would they, in the very act of forming a new system of worship, while they indulged the gross ideas and idolatrous propensities of their people, by representing the true God under idolatrous symbols; would they, at that very moment, have imitated the rites, and fasts, and sacrifices, of that very code, whose influence they wished to undermine; "ordaining a feast "in the eighth month like unto the feast which is in Ju"dah!"* Assuredly not, except that code had been previously and universally admitted as of divine original, which they knew their subjects had been long habituated to reverence and obey. I conclude from hence, that the authority of the Pentateuch was acknowledged antecedent to the separation of the kingdom of Israel and Judah, above 970 years before the birth of Christ.

But perhaps it may be asserted, that the support which the Pentateuch gives to the claims of the kings of Judah, renders it probable that it may have been compiled for the purpose of favouring their views: and that perhaps its authority was rejected by the kings of Israel and their subjects, though the history of their opposition is now lost-the kingdom of Judah having long survived that of Israel, and reunited all the Hebrews under one common government; and having perhaps taken care to obliterate all records that could justify the past or lead to a future separation. To this I answer, that the Samaritans, whɔ,

* 1 Kings, xii. 32.

though hostile to the Jews, acknowledged the Pentateuch, succeeded to the ten tribes in the possession of their country; that they were intermingled with their posterity; and that it is not possible such a circumstance could have taken place, as that the original Samaritans should have rejected the Law which the Jews received, and for a series of 230 years should have combated its authority; and that immediately after, their successors should have received this Law, and this only, as of divine original, without preserving the least trace of its ever having been disputed; though an hostility as strong subsisted between them and the restored Jews, as had before the Captivity divided the separate kingdoms.

Two particular examples, deserving peculiar attention, occur in the Jewish history, of the public and solemn homage paid to the sacredness of the Mosaic law, as promulgated in the Pentateuch, and by consequence affording the fullest testimony to the authenticity of the Pentateuch itself: the one in the reign of Hezekiah, while the separate kingdoms of Judah and Israel still subsisted and the other in the reign of his great grandson Josiah, subsequent to the Captivity of Israel. In the former we see the pious monarch of Judalı,* assembling the Priests and Levites, and the rulers of the people, to deplore with him the trespasses of their fathers against the divine Law, to acknowledge the justice of those chastisements which according to the prophetic warnings of that Law had been inflicted upon them, to open the house of God which his father had impiously shut, and restore the true worship therein according to the Mosaic ritual; (with the minutest particulars of which he complied, in the sinofferings and the peace-offerings which in conjunction with his people he offered, for the kingdom and the sanctuary and the people, to make atonement to God for them, and for all Israel :) and thus restoring the service of God as it had been performed in the purest times. "And Hezekiah," (says the sacred narrativet) "rejoiced, and all the people, that God had prepared the 'people for the thing was done suddenly:" immediately on the king's accession to the throne, on the first declaration of his pious resolution. How clear a proof does this exhibit of the previous existence and clearly acknowledged authority of those laws which the Pentateuch contains!

2 Kings, xviii. 2 Chron. xxix. and xxx

1 lb. xxix. 36.