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Their laus.

their history, that he was the fole director of every momentous tranfaction under Mofes, and the dictator of the main body of his laws. Joshua, though not honoured fo far as to receive the divine commands from the mouth of God, yet confulted him by the urim, upon all emergencies. The judges were valiant and wife men, whom God made choice of to govern the people, and to deliver them, from time to time, from thofe thraldoms which their frequent rebellions brought upon them. Accordingly, when Gideon had delivered them from the Midianites, and the people offered the government to him, and his pofterity, he modeftly replied, that neither he, nor his fons b, but the LORD GOD, fhould rule over them. When, in procefs of time, their defire for a king was grown to fuch a height, that all Samuel's expoftulations could not divert them from it, though he told them, that, by fo doing, they rejected the LORD from ruling over them; GOD was pleafed to nominate Saul, and, after him, David, to the regal dignity, and to make it hereditary in the pofterity of the latter, referving to himself, nevertheless, the power of altering the fucceffion from the eldeft to a younger branch, whenever he thought fit; as he actually did in his immediate fucceffor Solomon. Nay, we may fay, that God himself, forefeeing that they would be for a kingly government, did referve to himself the choice, and prescribed fome wholfome laws for the conduct of thofe who fhould enjoy the regal power; and if, at any time, either the kings or the people refused to be directed by him, or difobeyed the laws which he had given them, they never failed of fome fevere punishment, to remind them of their dependence, and to recall them to their duty. The kings of Ifrael, indeed, after their revolt from thofe of Judah, did reign more arbitrarily; but their endeavours to fhake off the yoke of GOD proved a fource of endless evils to the rebellious tribes; till, at length, when neither his prophets exhortations and threatenings, nor his fevere judgments, could bring them to obedience, he intirely caft them off, and condemned them to an endless captivity. Thus not only the kingdom of Judah, but even that of Ifrael, corrupt and idolatrous as it was, continued still under a theocracy, until its diffolution. This is what will more evidently appear by the fequel of this hiftory.

As for their laws, the greatest part of them were given to Mofes on mount Sinai, and the reft at different times, • Vide Deut. xvii, 14, & feq.

↳ Judg. viii. 22, 23.

and

and as occafion required; as we fball fee in the fequel. Whether, therefore, we look upon them as the firft body of laws that ever was compiled, whilft other nations had not fo much as name for a law, as Jofephus d has endeavoured to prove against his learned antagonist, from the writings of Homer, the most antient writer, in which the word nomos [law] is not fo much as once mentioned; or whether we fuppofe, with others, that the Egyptians, and other nations, had already laws of their own, and that Mofes was permitted by GoD to model and improve his own by them, by altering or retaining what he liked or difliked, of which more in its proper place; it is plain, that the greatest part of them were dictated by GoD himself; and that the rest received, if not the last perfection, at least their fanction Receive and approbation from him. And indeed, if we confider, their that they extended to all duties, cafes, and exigencies, whe-sanction ther moral, political, or ceremonial; that the moral were from to be of eternal obligation; that the political were to laft GoD. as long as the Jewish polity; that great part of the ceremonial were typical of, and confequently to endure, at leaft, till the coming of the MESSIAH; if we confider further, that the priests and rulers were to be no more than the bare guardians of them, and that they were forbid, under pain of death, and of the divine curfe, to add, diminish, or alter, the leaft part of them; it will be scarce credible, that Mofes would have given them fuch a firm and durable fanction, and backed it with the divine authority, had any but GOD been the author or confirmer of them.

HOWEVER, our defign is not to dwell here upon the difplay of their excellency above thofe of all other nations, much lefs to confute all the empty cavils that have been raised against them. That has been already done by Josephus, Philo, Maimonides, Mofes Gerundenfis, and many others among the Jews, but by a greater number of learned divines, both of our own and other churches; to whose province it belongs more particularly f. We might indeed, conveniently enough, have followed their diftinction of them into moral, political, and ceremonial, and fo have given the following body of them under thofe three heads; efpecially as fuch a diftinction is generally thought to be hinted at by the three different terms which Mofes makes use of, laws or precepts, judgments, and statutes &: but, if a Cont. Apion. ibid. SPENCER de leg. ritual. Jud. paff. LE CLERC, & al. Vide inter al. GROT. SELDEN, PUFF.

e

CUMBERLAND, GASTREL, L'ABBADIE, CUNAUm, Basnag.
BASNAG, republ. Heb. 1. i. c. 18.

we confider, that Mofes makes ufe of fome other terms likewife to exprefs them by, fuch as ordinances, teftimonies, and fome others, in a very undeterminate sense; that he calls the fame laws fometimes by one, and sometimes by another of these names; and, laftly, that this diftinction will not hold with respect to very many of thofe laws, which are partly moral, and partly ceremonial and political, and fo vice verfâ; we fhall have little ground to think, that the Jewish lawgiver defigned to intimate any fuch diftinction by thofe terms. Thus the law concerning the feventh day, or day of reft, is partly ceremonial and typical, and partly moral and political, as it was defigned as well for the ease and reft of the labourers, fervants, and flaves, as for that of their masters. To this we may add here, that these laws did likewife differ with respect to their observance and obligation. Some of them, fuch as、 the making the tabernacle, altar, fetting up the bleffings and curfes on mount Ebal and Gerizzim, were to be observed but once for all; others were to laft no longer than the time of the MESSIAH, and others to the end of the world. When therefore they are commanded to observe all the laws and ordinances of Mofes, fome of which were of no force out of the land of Palestine, the Jews, in those cafes, understand the precept not of an actual obfervance, but of a conftant remembrance, and readiness to obey them, whenever they shall become in force again k.

4

INDEED, as we are writing the hiftory of the Jews, it might perhaps be thought more proper, that we should give the body of their laws in the fame order and method in which they themselves have collected and digefted them out of the five books of Mofes, which they call, by way of excellency, Ha-thorah, the law (A); but the truth is, they

* Confer Exod. xx. 9, 10. cum Deut. v. 14. MUNST. præf. in Genef.

(A) This n, Thorah, or law, they divide, as we do, into five books, which they call by the first words of each: thus, they call Genefis nwa Bereshith, that is, in the beginning; Exodus they call ninuba Ellehemoth, Thefe are the names; Leviticus Vajikra, And be called; Numbers, Vajdab

k Vide

ber, And he fpake; and Deute

-Elle אלה הדברים ronomy

eadevarim, Thefe are the words. These five books, or pentateuch, are again fubdivided into 54 parasboth, or fections, of unequal lengths, according to the fubject; fo that, by joining two of the shortest together, they read the whole law once a year. The genera

they have jumbled them fo together, without order or method, and blended them fo with those which they pretend were delivered by GoD to Mofes, and conveyed by oral tradition (B), that our readers would be rather confounded than inftructed by them. Those who are willing to be further

lity of the Jews attribute thefe divifions, and the conftitution of reading them on the fabbath, to Mofes; but the Chriftians, with more probability, to Ef dras (1); from whom it was continued even to the times of the apostles, if not longer (2). The first parafa reaches from Gen. i. 1. to Gen. vi. 9. and is called Bereshith: the fecond reaches to Gen. xii. 1. and is called Noach, from Noah being the chief person mentioned in it: the third, which reaches to Gen. xviii. is called

Lek Leka, go thy ways, from the command of GOD to Abraham to go out of his native land; and fo of the reft.

(B) To the written law the Jews do add the oral one, which, they pretend, was alfo given by GoD to Mofes, during his abode on mount Sinai. For first, they think it abfurd to fuppofe, that he spent all that long interval of twice forty days in the bare writing of the written law, for which less than one quarter of that time was more than fufficient. They affirm therefore, that he was taken up all the reft of that while in learning the oral law by heart, which he afterwards did carefully de liver by word of mouth to Aaron, to Eleazar, and to his fer

vant Joshua, and these to the seventy elders; from whom it paffed to all the prophets; the three laft of whom, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, delivered it to the grand fanhedrin; from whom the wife men of Jerufalem and Babylon received it. Thus they affirm, that this oral law, given to Mofes, was tranfmitted from one generation to another, intire and uncorrupted, under the name of cabbalah, or tradition, which was afterwards committed to writing by feveral hands, in that volume which they call the Talmud, confifting of two parts, the Mishnah and Gemarrah ; to which they give, by far, the preference with respect to the written books; whence that faying of theirs, the Mikdaf, or Old Testament,is like water, the Mishnah like wine, and the Gemarrah, more plain and perfect, like hippocras, or the richest of wines. For they add, fecondly, that the obfcurity of the written law, its feeming inconsistency in several refpects, and the ill use which Gon forefaw would be made of it by the wicked, rendered the oral one very neceflary, fince, without it, the other would have proved in many respects useless, if

(1) Vide Packhurft mazerab, fez. de Parafhab. iii. 15, 27. xv. 21,

B 3

(2) Vide As

not

ther fatisfied with refpect to this fubject, may fee the abridgment which Munfter has given us of them, and of the Jewish comments upon them, with his verfion of each, as he has collected them from their Talmud, and other rabbinic works. We fhall therefore only add, that they acknowlege no other divifion of these laws, but into negative and affirmative (C), in imitation of the decalogue, which not only begins with three negative laws, but contains, in all, eight of that kind, and but two affirmative. Accordingly, they reckon up the negative laws to the number of 365, and the affirmative to 248; in all, 613 and as they have a wonderful skill in fetching some

not dangerous. Thefe learned gentlemen, who love to call themfelves Merabtze-hathora, fixers or givers of reft to the law, have taken a deal of pains to find out fundry inftances of pretended inconfiftency and obfcurity, which we fhall not trouble our readers with, fince they are but mere trifles, in comparison of those which we meet with in the Talmud, and its learned expofitors; through which there reigns fuch a continued chain of obfcurity, contradiction, and inconfiftency, to fay nothing of their fabulous dreams, as almoft quite darken the plain text of that divine lawgiver (3) for this reafon we fhall not spend any more time in confuting this vain pretence of theirs, nor the abfurd and fabulous comments with which it is ftuffed, but fhall content ourselves with giving now-and-then a fhort sketch of them, in a note, as we go on with the body of their laws, as well when they are judicious and right, as when they are fuperftitious or wrong,

and deferving of the cenfure which our SAVIOUR past upon them, that they had made the word of GOD of none effect by their tradition (4).

(C) These they divide, according to the genius of the Hebrew tongue, into commandments, thou shalt, or shalt not do, or, as we rightly render it, negative and affirmative; concerning which they make this difference, that if a man fin against the latter, it will be forgiven him upon his repenting, or doing fome penance for it; whereas he that fins against a negative precept cannot be cleared by any acts of repentance, but continues under the guilt of it until the day of expiation, at which time it will be forgiven. He that commits a fin worthy of death cannot be fufficiently cleared on the expiation-day, or by any thing but by GoD's fevere chaftifements; but as to those that profane or blafpheme the name of GOD, nothing can expiate their fin but their being put to death for it.

(3) Vide Maimon. præfat. in Misbn. Munft. præfat. in Mitzvoth-batbora, Cun, Bafnag, & al, (4) Matt. xxiii, 24, & Mark vii, 13, & alib.

fignificant

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