To this may be added their being forbidden to have any foreign commerce, or to have many horses, which was the great pride of their neighbours in time of peace, and a great advantage to them in time of war.

It has often been faid that Mofes himself, without any divine inftruction, might have formed the body of laws recorded in his writings, and have given all the other directions which he pretended to have received from God. But, befides, that this fuppofition can never account for the whole nation having always believed that they had been led through the red fea, been fed with manna forty years, heard a fupernatural voice delivering the ten commandments from mount Sinai, and having croffed the river Jordan without either boat or bridge, &c. &c. &c. all which facts we find recognized in the moft folemn offices of their ftated public worship, many centuries after the time of Mofes, it is in itself very improbable.

Mofes appears, from many circumftances in his history, to have been a man of the greatest meeknefs, modefty, and diffidence. He was exceedingly averfe to affume any public character; he was cafily governed by the advice of others; and what is particularly worthy of confideration, he wanted those talents which are peculiarly requifite for the part he is is fuppofed to have acted, viz. thofe of an Orator and a Warrior. He had fuch

fuch an impediment in his fpeech, that he was obliged to take his brother Aaron to speak for him before Pharaoh, and the Ifraelites. The whole hiftory of their march through the wilderness fhews that he had nothing of a military turn, without which more especially no man could have expected to do any thing at the head of a people just revolted from the Egyptians. For it is obfervable, that in the engagements which they had with thofe people who oppofed their paffage, Mofes never headed them himself, but left the whole command to Joshua, and others, while he was praying for them at a distance.

It has been faid that Mofes was a man of excellent underflanding and judgment, but his own hiftory by no means favours that fuppofition. For, excepting thofe orders and inftitutions which he published as from God, almost every thing else that is recorded by him shows him to have been a weak man, and of grofs understanding. His behaviour with respect to the killing of the Egyptian, and his embarrassment with a multiplicity of bufinefs, till he was relieved by the fenfible advice of Jethro, and many other circumftances might be alledged in fupport of this opinion. These things fufficiently demonftrate that Mofes, perfonally confidered, was by no means a man capable of devifing fuch a fyftem of laws as his books contain, or of conducting that most intractable

nation,

nation, as they were conducted, forty years through

the wilderness.

Befides, if Mofes had fuch a capacity, and had been of fuch a difpofition as would have prompted him to act fuch an imposture as this, he would certainly have made fome better provifion than he did for his own family and tribe. He had children of his own, and yet they did not fucceed him in his extraordinary offices and power, nor do we find them poffeffed of any peculiar privilege or advantage whatever. They were not even of the higher order of priests, who yet enjoyed no privilege worth coveting; and the tribe of Levi in general, to which he belonged, was worse provided for than any other of the twelve; and, what is particularly difgraceful, Mofes himself relates that the pofterity of Levi were difperfed among the rest of the tribes as a punishment for the bafeness and cruelty of their ancestor, in the affair of the Shechemite

The tribe for which the greatest honours were referved, in the prophecies of both Jacob and Mofes, was that of Judah, with which Mofes had no particular connection. This was the tribe which was marked out as the feat of pre-eminence and power, and especially as the tribe from which the Meffiah was to arife.

Befides, if Mofes had meant to do any great thing for himself, it is not likely that he would VOL. I.

N

have

have detained the Ifraelites fo long in the wildernefs. Forty years exceeds the whole term of the active part of a man's life, according to the common course of it; and a short time would have been fufficient to inftruct the people in the ufe of weapons, and the art of war, as it was practifed in those rude times. Indeed, we do not find that much attention was given to this business, but that, on the contrary, almost their whole time was taken up with inftructions on the fubjects of legiflation, religion, and morals.

Though the Jewish hiftory is far more antient than that of any other nation in the world, and therefore we cannot expect to find it confirmed by any other accounts of such early tranfactions, yet, from the time that the Greeks and other nations began to write hiftory, their accounts are fufficiently agreeable to the hiftory of the Old Teftament, allowance being made for the uncertainty there must have been in the communication of intelligence, in an age in which remote nations had very little intercourfe. However, all the leading facts of the Jewish hiftory, even thofe which refpect Mofes himself, the deliverance of the Ifraelites out of the power of the Egyptians, and many particulars in their fubfequent history, are related by hiftorians of other nations, with fuch a mixture of fable and mistake, as might be expected

from

from people who had no better means of being informed concerning them.

As to the hiftory of the fall of man, and other particulars preceding the time of Mofes, and the memory of his immediate ancestors, it may be allowed that there is a mixture of fable, or allegory in it, without affecting the history that is properly Mofaic, and confequently the truth of the Jewish religion. It should be confidered, however, that Mofes relates only fuch of the more remarkable transactions of the times preceding his own, and of his remote ancestors, as it may well be fupposed that their defcendants would carefully, and might easily tranfmit to their pofterity; and only eight generations intervened between Mofes and Noah.